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YALE
UNIVERSITY LIBRARY

HISTOEY

OP

CHEISTIAN NAMES.

BY THE AUTHOE OF
' THE HEIK OF EEDOLXETE,' ' LANDMAEKS OP HtSTOBY,"
ETO.

VOLUME II.

LONDON:
PAEKEE, SON, AND BOUEN, WEST STEAND.
1863.

LONDON

PMNTED BY O. EHUTS, 13 S M, T0IHHL STEEEI, WESTMUISTER.

CONTENTS

OP

THE SECOND VOLUME.

PAET V.

PAOB
Names from the Keltic  i

CHAPTER I.
§ I. The Keltic Bace  ih.
%. The Cymry and the Gael  6
3. The Keltic Languages  11
4. Keltic Beligion  13
5. Keltic Nomenclature  tj

CHAPTER n.
Ancient Keltic Names  24.
§ I. Welsh Myths of the Flood  ii-
2. Lir and his Daughters  33
3. Bri  4.1
4. Fear, Gwr, Vir  53

CONTENTS.

CHAPTER m. PASS
Gadhaelio Names  59
§ I. Scottish Colonists  «6-
¦A. TheFeen  6+
3. Finn  ^7
4. Cu, Cun, Gal  74-
5. Diarmaid and Graine  84
6. Cormac  9°
7. Cath  9*
8. Fiachra  96
9. Names of Complexion  97
10. Feidlim, &c  108
II. Names of Majesty  no
12. Devotional Names  113

CHAPTER IV.
Names of Cymric Romance  121
§ X. The Round Table  ih.
¦J,. Arthur  125
3. Gwenever  .130
4. Gwalchmai, Sir Gawain, and Sir Owen . . 136
5. Geraint and Enid  14.1
6. Trystan and Yseulte  143
7. Hoel and Ryence  14.8
8. Percival  150
9. Merlin  154
10. Llew  ¦ ¦ 159
II. Cymric Saints  160

CONTENTS.

Teutonic Names

PAET VI.

FA6B 162

CHAPTER I.
The Teuton Race  162
§ I. Ground occupied by the Teutons . . . ib.
2. The Tribes of Teutons  165
3. Teutonic Nomenclature  169

CHAPTER n.
Names from Teuton Mythology  172
§ I. Guth  ib.
a. The Aasir  180
3. Odin, or Grimr  185
4. Frey  190
5. Thor  201
6. Baldur and Hodur  207
7- Tyr  213
8. Niord, &c  215
9. HeimdaU  219
10. Will . . ....... 223
II. HUda  233
12. Ve  238
13. Gerda ......... 240
14. CEgir  241
15. Ing — Seaxnot  245
16. Eormen  250
17. Erce  254
18. Amal  256
19. Forefathers  260

CONTENTS.

CHAPTER m.
PAGE
Names prom Objects connected ¦with I^ythologt . 265
§ I. Day  j&'
2. The Wolf  267
3. Eber, the Boar  270
4. The Bear  274
5. The Horse  277
6. The Eagle  280
7. The Raven  285
8. The Swan  287
9. The Serpent  2S8
10. Kettle  291
II. Weapon Names  292
12. Thought  300

CHAPTER IV.
Heroic Names of the Nibeluno  304
§ I. The Nibelung  ib.
z. Sigurd  306
3. Brynhild  311
4, Gunther  31^
5. Hagen  315
6. Ghiseler  321
7. Qhernot  323
8. Folker  320
9. Dank-wart  331
10. Theodorio  332
II. TJta, Ortwin  330
12. Sintram  3.g
13. Elberich  jj_

CHAPTER V. PAOl
The K.&RLING Romances  351
§ I. The Paladins  ib,
a. Charles  356
3. Roland, &c  360
4. Renaud  372
5. Richard  379
6. Astolfo  382
7. Ogier le Danois  384
8. Louis  387

CHAPTER VL
Dbscriptivb Names  393
§ I. Nobility  ii.
2. Command'  401
3. Brightness  403
4. War  406
5. Protection . . . . . , . .411
6. Power  415
7. Affection  422
8. Appearance  424
9. Locality  428
10. Life  434

PAET VII.
Names from the Slavonic  ij.37

CONTENTS.
CHAPTER L PAOX
§ I. Slavonic Races  437
2. Slavonian Mythology  44*
3. Warlike Names  447
4. Names of Might  449
5. Names of Virtue  45*
6. Names of Affection  453
7. Names from the Appearance .... 454

CONCLUSION.
Modern Nomenclature  456
§ I. Greece  457
2. Russia ......... 458
3. Italy  462
4. Spain  467
5. France  470
6. Great Britain  477
7. Germany  488
8. Scandinavia  494
9. Comparative Nomenclature  495

HISTOEY or CHEISTIAN NAMES.

PART V.
NAMES FROM THE KELTIC.
CHAPTER I.
Section I. — The Keltic Race.
We now pass to a class of names -whose associations belong ,
almost entirely to the modem world, yet ¦whose history is far
more obscure than that of those on ¦which we have previously
dwelt. From the Hebrew, the European family have derived their
religion; from the Greek, their ideas; from the Roman,
their la-ws ; from the Teuton, their blood and their energy ;
but from the Kelt they have taken little but their fanciful
romance. In only one country has the Kelt been dominant,
and then with a Latinized speech, and a Teutonic name, tes
tifying to the large modifications he must have undergone.
Among the rugged moors and cliffs which fence Western
Europe from the Atlantic waves, he did indeed preserve his
freedom, but without amalgamation with other nations ; and
in lands where he fell under subjection, he was so lost among
the conquerors as to be untraceable in language or feature,
and with the exception of the Gaul, has bequeathed nothing
of his character to the fused race upon his soil.
VOL. II. > B

2 NAMES FROM THE KELTIC.
We trace the Hebrew nation with certainty from its ma
jestic source ; the Greek shines on us in a dazzling sunrise of
brilliant myth ; the Roman, in a grave, stern dawn of cha
racteristic legend; but of the earlier progress of the wUd,
impulsive Kelt we have but the faintest indications.
Much as he loved his forefathers, keen as was his delight
in celebrating the glories of his race, oral tradition contented
him, and very strong was the pressure from the neighbouring
nations before his bards recorded anything in writing, even
the long genealogies hitherto preserved in each man's accu
mulated names. The beauty of their legends did indeed
recommend them to the general store-house of European
fancy, but though the spirit may be Keltic, the body through
which it comes is almost always Teutonic.
Thus we have chiefly to trust to the brief hints of the
external history-writing nations for our knowledge of the
migrations of the Kelts, collating these with the circum
stantial evidence of the remains in tombs, and the etymology
of the names that they have left to mountain and river, lake
and headland ; for it was they who above all were the nomen-
clators of all the great natural features of the lands in their
course, and have thus left way-marks by which to note their
steps. The Appenines, Pennine Alps, bear the same name as the
Cambrian Pen, and Scottish and Irish Ben ; the Rama, or
projecting cape, is found on the Euxine, in Cornwall, and in
Ireland; the Don, or bro-wn colour, of the stream, named
rivers* in Russia, Germany, Scotland, and Ireland ; the Avon
is to be traced everywhere, in Hypanis, in Rhen-avon, run
ning water; the Eridanus, Redanus, and Rodanus of the
Romans; and the Rhine and Rhone of modern times; in
the Garv-avon, or swift river, now the Garonne ; in the Sen
or slow river, Shannon in Ireland, Seine in France: and
countless other instances are brought by the philologist to
* Donan.

THE KELTIC RACE. J
prove that it was the Kelt who first had poetry enough to note
the characteristic of hill or water, and impress on it the title
that later tongues have mispronounced, but not forgotten.
It is the general opinion that the first European settlers
were the stunted Mongols, who have since receded to the ex
treme North, leaving traces of themselves here and there in
rude stone weapons, and it may be, in the strange lacustrine
habitations recently brought to light in Switzerland and Ire
land. These inhabitants were succeeded by a tall, though
loosely made people, of well-proportioned skulls, betokening
faculties more acute than sedate, of sanguine complexion,
with hair varying from red to black, indomitably free, and
owning no institution but the patriarchal, the very Arabs of
the West. Their progress, as long as they only drove before
them the inferior Mongol, was entirely unmarked, and our
first notices of them are only obtained through their col
lisions with the more civilized nations of the South.
Gomer, the son of Japheth, as mentioned in the Book of
Genesis, is supposed to mark their origin ; and Ezekiel pro
phesies against an invasion of Gomer, and of the house of
Togarmah, in conjunction with Gog, or the Scythian race.
Gimiri occur in the cuneiform inscriptions of Darius Hys-
taspes, but there is no certainty of their identity, though it
is highly probable that they were the same with the Kimme-
reoi mentioned by Homer as ' dwelling at the farthest limit
of the ocean, beyond the ken of the sun.' This grim region
is supposed to have been the northern shore of the Black
Sea ; for when Herodotus first gives the enquirer a com
paratively firm footing, the Kimmerians had been recently
expelled from those quarters by the Scyths, and had only
left their name to the Kimmerian Bosphorus, and Kimmerian
Chersonesus, a name which, with the peculiar tenacity of
Keltic local nomenclature, still adheres to the Crimea, or
Grim Tartary.
On being driven out, they seem to have made a raid into
B2

4 NAMES FROM THE KELTIC.
Asia Minor, where they tormented the lonians tUl they were
finally turned out by the father of Croesus, king of Lydia.
Herodotus likewise speaks of Keltai, as he calls them, living
in the far West, near the city Pyrene, meaning probably the
Pyrenean mountains, which are thought to be called from the
Keltic pyr, or fir tree. Geographers referred to by Plutarch
describe both Keltai and Kimmerioi as dwelling in ' a woody
country in the interior of Europe, where the sun is seldom
seen, from their many lofty and spreading trees.' This was
in all likelihood the Black Forest, and was the dark Cimme
rian forest to which Milton banished Melancholy.
Italian traditions likewise place them in the regions of the
Avemian Lake, and the languages of ancient Italy bear ¦wit
ness to their influence. Many Latin words can only be
explained by a reference to the Keltic, and as usual they have
left titles to natural objects. Our Trent, from the root ter,
river, is echoed from Otranto, or Tarentinus, as well as from
the Tyrolean city of the pseudo council.
The Romans begin to bear testimony to Keltic history.
Apparently the pressure of the Teutonic migrations was felt
by the Kelts in central Europe about 400 years before our
era, for a nation, termed by the Romans, Galli, showed them
selves above the Alps, and marauding in the plains below,
effected settlements, subdued the tribes of northern Italy, and
so weakened those in the centre as to render them a ready
prey to growing Rome. Alpine Italy became GaUia Cis-
alpina to the Romans, who at first suspected, and afterwards
knew, Gauls to inhabit the land beyond those inhospitable
summits ; and of Gallic hardihood and violence, Rome soon
had a proof in that gigantic foray around which her most
brilliant legends centre, and which inaugurates her authentic
history. The Keltai of the Pillars of Hercules and city of Pyrene
had in the meantime become mixed with the Iberi, a people
of uncertain origin, but who have left their name to the

THE KELTIC RACE. 5
Ebro, and are thought to survive in the Basques. The
blended nation of Celtiberi, as the Romans termed them,
fell under the influence of the great Phoenician colony at
Carthage, as did the Galli named Massilia, under the civil
izing power of the Greek city ; and it was through friendly
tribes that Hannibal marched over the mountains that gird
the great gulf that separates the two peninsulas.
The Roman reduction of the Celtiberians was a sort of
episode in the Punic wars, though their reduction cost long
and severe fighting, and one of the terrific sieges charac
teristic of Spanish history. The country was settled by
Roman colonies, and the language so thoroughly Latinized,
that the Keltic element is almost inappreciable, and the
local appellations alone show who were the old inhabitants.
In B.C. 279, the Galli, probably maddened by the steady
Teutonic advance, made a backward rush, came upon Mace
donia, plundered the temple at Delphi, and ravaged Asia
Minor, where they finally established themselves round
Derbe and Lystra, speaking the old tongue, called barbarous
by the Greek St. Luke, and retaining a character which, as
sketched by St. Paul in his epistle to them, shows that they
were Gauls in nature as well as name. They are identified
by Josephus with the sons of Gomer.
B.C. 103, there came do^wn from Jutland, then called the
Cimbric Chersonesus, what sounds like an unnatural alliance
of Cimbri and Teutones, as if the foremost of the Teuton
and hindmost of the Keltic tribes had united to force their
way southward. They made terrible ravages in civilized
Gallia Transalpina and in Spain, until being totally defeated
by Marius, the survivors of the battle relieved the world of
themselves, their wives, and children by a general self-
destruction. Rome was slowly consuming Gaul, and under
the eagles of Caesar completed the work, so far as the South
and centre were concerned, but entirely failed in obtaining
even nominal submission in the hills and moors of the North-

6 NAMES FROM THE KELTIC.
West. The reduction of Gaul opened the way to that of
Britain. Csesar did no more than come and see; but
Agricola conquered the accessible portion of the island, and
four centuries of occupation stamped the Roman seal on the
nation and country.
To the North, however, lay the unconquerable Caledonian
Kelts, and in the Western Ocean the large deeply indented
island of Erin, whither the conquerors of the world had not
even attempted to penetrate before their twelve centuries of
dominion closed, and the Kelts whom they had tamed fell
with them before the Teutonic axe.*

Section H. — The Qymry and the Groel.
We have seen the external history of the Kelts ; it re
mains to endeavour to distinguish between the two chief
branches of the race as at present existing, — the Cymry and
the Gael. It is not certain how far these were anciently
veritable distinctions, or whether we may not be confounding
together names by which the nation called itself, and by
which its neighbours called it ; but these two titles are need
ful to designate the descent and character of the modern
Kelts and their classes of language.
Grail is a stranger in Gaelic ; teach is a habitation. One
tribe would call another Galteach, strange habitations, per
haps the source of the word Keltai or Celti. Besides which,
G-aidhoil, pronounced Gael, is the self-given title of the Gael
- or Galli. Or Celtai may be from the Cymryc Celt, Qeilt, a
covert or shelter ; Geltiad, a dweller in woods. However this
may be, the Gael have left their name in Asia to Galatia, in
Austria to Galizia, in Spain to Gallicia, France has hardly
ceased to be called Gaul ; Comugalliae, or the Horn of Gaul,
? Ra-wlinson, Herodotus; Chahners, Caledonia; Villemarqufi, Preface
•to Legoindec's Dictionnaire Breton-Frangois ; Turner, Anglo-Saxons ;
Diefenbach, Geltica.

THE CYMRY AND THE GAEL. 7
is Comouailles on one side of the channel and Cornwall on
the other ; our neighbours still call our western principality
Galles, and the extreme West of Scotland is Galloway, as in
L-eland it is Galway.
It would seem as if the Gael had been the foremost, the
wildest, the fiercest, and the most gigantic of the tribes ; the
first to set foot in each country in succession in their western
race. They were probably the Keltai of the Pyrene, and the
Galli of southern France, though there are authors who dispute
their identity with the Kelts, and in order to show that they
were considered as essentially different, appeal to Ptolemy
and Dion Cassius, who separate between Gallia and Celtica,
and to Appian, who gives to Galatea and Polyphemus three
sons, Celtus, Elyrius, and Galas ! However, there can be
little doubt that the Gael dwelt in Italy, southern France,
and Spain, when history first takes cognizance of them, and
the Irish tradition points in the same direction. The isle of
Erin has been supposed to be named from Eri, the West, but
of late philologists have traced it to the same root as the
other names indicating a branch of the Aryan, or ploughing
race. It seems, according to its o^wn historians, to have been
peopled by various imigrations from the West, the most im
portant of whom were the Tuath de Danan, whom they trace
from Boeotia, and who brought the stone of destiny, said to
have been Jacob's pillow at Bethel, to which was attached
the belief that the sovereignty of the whole country would
devolve on the line of chiefs who sat on it at their coronation.
After these followed a tribe who by unvarying report are
said to have come direct from Spain, and to have been termed
Scots. From their leader, Milidh, they are known as Mie
Milidh or Milesians, and theirs is considered as the noblest
blood in Ireland. Whether the Scots were called from Mi-
lidh's wife, Scota ! or from his ancestress, Scota, daughter of
the Pharaoh who was drowned in the Red Sea ! ! or from
Scythia, or from Scuit, a fugitive, or as Matthew of West-

8 NAMES FROM THE KELTIC.
minster suggests, from things heaped together being called
scot (scot and lot?), we need not discover, but the large pro
portion of inhabitants of Erin were Scots when first the
civilized world knew anything about them. These Scots
were undoubtedly Gael, and there is great likelihood that
they came from Spain, as there has always been a strong
resemblance between the Spanish and Irish peasantry ; and a
few likenesses to Phoenician rites, render it probable that
intercourse was kept up after the Celtiberians were con
nected with Carthage.
The Gael, Galli, or Keltai, appear to have been followed by
another division of the race, namely that which, as we have
seen, the Greeks called Kimmerioi, and the Romans Cimbri,
names in which we can scarcely fail to recognize the native
word Cymry, which Welsh antiquaries derive from cym, the
first. Plutarch and Festus indeed tell us that Cimbri, in the
Gallic tongue, meant robbers; but when the fierce Cymry
were the perpetual torments of the civilized Gauls around
the' Roman settlements, it was no wonder that a Cimbrian
and a thief easily became synonymous terms, by somewhat
the same process as that which, in the Thirty Years' War,
created the word marauder, in consequence of the depreda
tions of the lawless band of Count Merode.
However this may be, the Cymry appear to have left
plenty of traces of their national title athwart the map
of Europe, beginning with the Crimea, then giving its first
title to the Cimbric Chersonese, and leaving it to Cambrai,
Coimbra, Cambrilla, Quimper, Cumberland, and Cambria.
AU regarding them is obscure, and controversy about them is
endless ; but the general opinion is that they were in the rear
of the Gael, and spread into lands which had been left unoccu
pied by their predecessors. Northern France, the shores of
the German Ocean, and the island of Britain, were chiefly
inhabited by them when the Romans took cognizance of

THE CYMRY AND THE GAEL. 9
them ; the Pryddain, or Pryd's people, being one of their
tribes. Another large division of this people were the Cale
donians, called from caoill, a wood, who occupied the entire
North : these were Cymry ; but it is thought that the Gael
were driven by them into the far North, and inhabited the
highlands and islands.
The tradition of the whole people points to a migration
from the East, and, disguised as it is by fable, it agrees too
well with history to be entirely discarded. There is reason
to believe that the invaders who sacked Rome were Gael,
led on by a chief of the Cymry, and that a close connection
subsisted between the Cymric race on either shore of the
Channel. The Cymry were brought much nearer to the Teutons than
were their Gallic brethren, and one of their tribes, that in
the rear, underwent a slight Teutonic admixture. This tribe
was called by the Teutons by a word probably taken from
one which in Sanscrit is mlecMa, meaning a person who talks
indistinctly, therefore a foreigner. In old high German
it was walh, in Anglo-Saxon, vealh; the Romans made
it Belgse, and we now call it Welsh. To the present day
we call our foreign nuts, wal-mxts ; the German term for
tiurkies is welsch hahnen, and for Gallia Cisalpina, Welsch land.
Others, however, derive the word from the Cymric Belgiad,
a ravager, Belgwys, the foragers, and connect them with the
Fir-Bolg, one of the races who peopled Erin. At any rate
these ' Welsh ' have left their mark in like manner in Wal-
lachia, Wallenstadt, Wallenstein, Walcheren Island, the Wal
loons or Belgians, Wallingford, Welshpool, Wales. It must
be confessed that W and G are so convertible that all these
bear a suspicious resemblance to the names attributed to the
Gael, and it is not impossible that these words may after all
be mispronounced Gauls ; but on the other hand, it is certain
that there were such broad distinctions between the two
branches of the Keltic root, that it is hardly likely that the

IO NAMES FROM THE KELTIC.
most easterly Cymric tribe would be confounded with the
western Gael.
Csesar, in alliance with the Gauls, already civilized, made
war on the yet unsubdued Kymry, and brought them to a
nominal submission. Thence he passed to the British tribes,
and met with less success ; but in the reign of Claudius the
southern part of the island was reduced.
The Caledonians, however, remained unsubdued, and turned
back the Romans from the Grampians, nor did the eagles
ever show themselves beyond the firths of Forth and Clyde.
A province was indeed formed by the Romans in the Lo-
thians, and called Valentia, but its tenure was very insecure,
and when the wall was built along the Border it was virtually
abandoned. The Caledonians, however, cease to be mentioned,
or are generally called Picti, a word explained as Peithwyr,
men living an exposed life, from Peithw, open country:
Chalmers says that the West or wooded country was Ca-
lyddon, the East or open country, Peithw. Whether these
Picts were really Cymry has been the subject of hot dispute ;
the celebrated single word, Penvall, and a list of their kings'
names being all there is to work upon, but the concurrence
of opinion is in favour of their Cymric blood and language.
The Gael, of whom the Scots were the chief tribe, still
remained free in Ireland, and somewhere about the third
century they began to migrate to Caledonia, large divisions
passing from time to time, fighting desperately with the Picts,
and annoying the Romanized inhabitants south of the wall.
These migrations continued, and the wars consequent on them
lasted for several centuries, until in 843 a marriage took
place between the king of the Picts and the daughter of the
king of the Scots, and the nations were melted together.
The stone of dominion had been brought from Ireland by
the Scots, and appears to have secured to them the predomi
nance ; and when Edward I. carried it off to Westminster, it
did not fail to fulfil its mission, and bring dominion !

THE KELTIC LANGUAGES. 1 1
The Gael filled the Highlands, and effaced all Cymric traces,
except in the region of Strathclyde; but in the meantime
the Roman power had melted away from Gaul and Britain,
and the Teutonic invasions had gradually brought in a new
race, between whom and the Kelt reigned the bitterest
enmity. Finally, the Kymry in Bretagne, Cornwall, and
Wales, the Gael in Ireland, the Highlands, and the Isle of
Man, were alone left above the Teutonic flood, their inde
pendence only to be taken from them by slow degrees, and
their hostility to their neighbours slowly extinguished by
peace instead of war.*

Section HI. — The Keltic Languages.
The Keltic nations used languages which showed that
they came from the Indo-European root, and which are still
spoken in the provinces where they remain. They have no
really ancient literature, and were left at the mercy of wild
tongues, so that their losses have been very great, and the
divergence of dialects considerable.
The great and distinguishing feature of the entire class is
their peculiar inflections, which, among other puzzling fea
tures, insert an aspirate after the primary consonant, so as
entirely to change its sound, as for instance in an oblique
case, mor, great, would become mhor, and be pronounced vor,
to the eternal confusion of people of other nations, who,
however the vowel or the end of a word might alter, always
trusted to know it by the main syllable. A large number of
guttural sounds distinguished these languages, and some of
* Max MuHer ; Rawlinson, Herodotus ; Chalmers, Caledonia ; Courson,
Peuples Bretons ; J. 'W. Kennedy, On Ancient Languages qf France and
Spain; TrichaiA, Celtic Nations ; Ossianic Society ; Kemmer, Chronicle ;
History of Ireland, En. Brit. ; Jones, Welsh Sketches; Davies, Rites of
the Druids.

1 2 NAMES FROM THE KELTIC.
these were annihilated by the ensuing aspiration ; but when
spelling began, the corpses of the two internecine letters
were still left in the middle of the word, to cumber the
writer and puzzle the reader, so that the very enunciation of
a written sentence requires a knowledge of grammar.
The vowels likewise sometimes change in the body of the
word when it becomes plural, and the identification of plurals
and of cases with their parent word is so difficult that few
persons ever succeed in the study of Keltic, except those
who have learnt it from their mothers or nurses, and even
they are not always agreed how to write it grammatically.
The Keltic splits into two chief branches, so different that
Caesar himself remarked that the Gauls and Cimbrians did
not use the same language. For the sake of convenience
these two branches are called by philologists the Gadhaelic
and the Cymric. The first is the stock which has since di
vided into the Gaelic of the Highlands, the Erse of Ireland,
and the Manx of the little intermediate isle. In fact they
are nearly one ; old Gaelic and old Erse are extremely alike
when they can be found written, and though they have since
diverged, the general rules continue to be the same ; and some
of the chief differences may be owing to the fact, that whUe
the Highlanders have adopted the Roman alphabet, the native
Irish still adhere to the Anglo-Saxon.
The Cymric is still spoken in Wales and Brittany, and
only died out a century ago in Cornwall. Welsh and Breton
agree in so many points that the natives of either country
are said to be able to understand one another, though they
would be entirely unintelligible to an Irishman or Highlander.
Indeed it may be doubted whether Greek and Latin are not
more nearly akin than the two shoots of the Keltic tree.
One great difference is that the p of the Kymric always be
comes A or c hard in the Gadhaelic : thus plant or chUdren in
Wales, are the well kno^wn Gaelic clan; Paisg, Easter, is
Gaisg ; pen, a head, is cean ; and the Cornish word Pentyr

KELTIC RELIGION. 1 3
the head of the land, or promontory, is the same as the
Scottish Oantyre*.f

Section IV. — Keltic Beligion.
Of Keltic mythology we may be said to know almost no
thing. Neither portion of the race began to write tUl Chris
tianity had long been adopted, and though some of their
heroic poems and tales have been supposed to be ancient
traditionary myths, this is mere conjecture ; and every one
who has been concerned in the matter has become more or
less frantic and untrustworthy, and has further been so
violent in contradicting his predecessors, that very little is
left us to believe.
There does not seem to have been a pantheon such as those
of most other nations ; idols do not appear to have been in
use, — at least not by the greater number ; and though a few
names of deities have come do^wn to us through the Latin
¦writers, they are confused by the inconvenient fashion of
identifying the gods of all nations, and Tacitus has mixed up
German, Keltic, and Latin gods in the utmost obscurity.
Through the Belgse the Romans heard of a god called
Hesus. It may have been a mistake for the Teutonic Aesir ;
but it is remarkable that the Erse uses the word .^sar for
god; and on a stone found in the foundations of Notre Dame
at Paris, was a bas-relief engraven with this name. It was
of Roman workmanship, and thus proved that the Gauls
under their power had carried on the worship of their native
deity. * De Meyer divides the Kymry into three chief branches. The first is
the Alwani, named from Alw, -whence Alw-ion or Albion, the Isle of Al-w.
The second -were the jEdini, from Aedd, of -whom more anon.
Third, the Britons, from Bryt or Pryd.
t Max Muller ; Encyelop<sdia Britannica ; Villemargu^, Legoindec's
Dictionary ; Hanmer, Chronicle ; Clark, Student's Handbook of Comp.
Grammar ; Prichard, Celtic Nations.

14 NAMES FROM THE KELTIC.
Another name stands out, in the reports of Keltic worship
and in the traditional rites still observed by the peasantry
¦wherever they inherit Keltic blood. It is that of Bel, Beli,
or Belinus, the sun god, in whose honour the Beltan fire
smoked on Midsummer eve, the period of the height of his
course, from the Alps to Connaught, long after the Teutons
had trodden down the Kelts, and Christianity had effaced
almost every other remnant of their religion. Was he the
same with the Chaldean Bel, the owner of the nine-storied
temple of Belus, and does he assist to mark, that the Kelts
and Chaldeans had once parted, far away in the East ? This
is a more probable supposition than that which connects him
with the Phoenician Baal, and would bring him to the coast
of Cornwall with the tin traders. Beli is the father of one
of the Pictish kings who reigned in 674. Bel is however
also war or the war god, and is used on British Roman altars .
as an equivalent for Mars.
Livy tells us that Teutates was the Celtiberian Mercury;
and if, on the one hand, this may be likened to the Phoenician
Taut, yet on the other hand, Tuath is a lord in Irish, and it
may be that these are all of one origin.
Old Erse poems speak of a supreme god called Crom, or
Crom Eacha, the fire god — the sun, as author of light and
heat ; also called Crom Cruith, God the creator, from cru-
thaich, to create. Ana was their mother of the gods. Does
she answer to Anna, who was a sort of goddess of the Car
thaginians ? They also had Man-a-nan, the god of waters-,;
also called Mac Lir, or son of the sea ; and another deity of
the winds; also Bridh, the goddess of wisdom, strength,
and song, the daughter of the fire god, and a great favourite
with the Irish. But the relics of their mythology are ex- -
ceedingly hard to trace.
It is certain however that the Druidical system extended
to them, and that some part at least of what we know of the
Cymric worship in Gaul and Britain must have been likewise
true of Ireland, though probably the ceremonies were far less

KELTIC RELIGION. 1 5
formal than those of Britain, the great centre of Cymric
Druidism. It is known that Mona, now Anglesea, was regarded as
sacred by all the Cymry, and that pupils came across the
Channel to the British Druids. The remains of the great
open-air temples of their worship are to be found as mighty
circles of huge unhe-wn stone, from the standing stones of
Stennis, in the Orkneys, to the moor of Karnak in Brittany.
The menhir, or taU solitary stone ; the cromlech, or raised
tomb, and even many a rocking stone and innocent boulder,
have become associated in our minds with dark rites of super
stition and human sacrifice ; but our knowledge is exceed
ingly slight, and the very precision and fulness of some of
the explanations offered make us doubtful how much rests
on solid groimd.
The name, probably from dru, an oak, though others make
it derwyz, having knowledge, is tolerably clear ; and likewise
that their observances were highly mystical, in honour of a
supreme and unseen deity, adored without the intervention of
idols, but not without human sacrifice.
An order of priests and an order of poets, the Druids and
Bards were common to both races, and in the case of the
latter were stUl held in the highest estimation long after the
times of Christianity, both in the Gaelic and Cymric lands.
The Welsh indeed tell us of three orders, — ^Druids, Bards,
and Avenydd, who, even to comparatively modem times,
carried on mystic and poetic rites in conjunction with Chris
tianity. Their existence in latter times is certain, their an
tiquity is less so, at least in the regular form they describe.
They have handed down many beautiful sentences in the
Triads, — their peculiar mode of composition; but it is scarcely
possible to tell which of these have a Christian colouring from
their authors, and which, as they would have us believe, express
the ancient presages of the truth among the old Druids.
Many curious myths exist among the Kelts, chiefly of the
heroic order. The Rev. Edward Davies collected all the Welsh

1 6 NAMES FROM THE KELTIC.
ones that he could find to bear, as he thought, upon the Flood,
and showed us the ark and its contents ; Noah and the rainbow
figured in many various aspects, some grand and poetical, some
decidedly ludicrous. In later years. Lady Charlotte Guest's
translations of the Mahinogion, or Children's Stories, made
scholars laugh Dr. Davies and his arkite traditions to scorn,
and declare some to be mere nursery tales, others to be know
ingly the work of Christian Bards, intended for edification.
The truth probably lies between the two extremes. Many a
childish story is a myth shorn of its beams, and these may
have been the germs worked out with over zeal by the Bards,
who have succeeded in destroying aU our satisfaction and
confidence in the legends they have dealt with.
These tales have, however, had their effect on nomencla
ture, and will therefore have often to appear in the ensuing
pages. The Gauls had been completely Romanized in the South
before they heard of Christianity. They gave up Greek and
Roman idols rather than Druidism when they listened to
the Gospel. It is thought that the first seeds were sown by
St. Paul, and that afterwards the Eastern Church at
Ephesus, under St. John, had much communication with
them. Britain probably owed her first gleams of light to
the imprisonment of Caractacus and his family at Rome;
but however this might be, Gaul furnished hosts of martyrs
in the persecution, and Britain did her part in testifying to
the truth. Many districts long remained unconverted, how
ever, in both countries. St. Martin is said to have completed
the conversion of Gaul in the end of the third century, and
in Wales St. Germain still found a host to baptize in the
fifth century. Indeed, the predominance of heathen remains
over Christian, have made antiquaries very doubtful whether
Britain could have been by any means universally converted bv
the end of the Roman empire. It had, however, sent forth
one great missionary, namely, St. Patrick, from the northern

KELTIC NOMENCLATURE. 1 7
province of Valentia. He found a feeble Church in Ireland,
but so enlarged its borders and won all hearts, that from hia
time that island was Christian in name, and filled with such
clusters of hermitages and convents as to win its title of the
Isle of Saints.
This Keltic Church, with its eastern traditions, was the
special missionary Church of these little heeded times.
From Ireland, St. Columba went forth to lona, whence he
and his disciples gradually converted the Picts ; and though
St. Gregory's mission laid the foundations of the polity
of the Anglo-Saxon Church in Britain, there were the
Scottish Aidan, the Welsh Chad, and Gallic Birinus doing
the work quietly, in which the Roman monks had been
less successful. From Ireland again, St. Columbanus, St.
Gall, and many others set forth to complete the work of
conversion in France and Switzerland, and many churches
and convents regard as their founders and patrons, obscure
Irish hermits forgotten in their own country. These have
been the chief diffusers of Keltic names, called themselves
by some hereditary native word, which their saintliness
was to raise to high honour.*

Section V. — Keltic Nomenclatv/re.
The Kelts were highly poetical and romantic in their
nomenclature. In general their names were descriptive;
many referred to complexion, and many more described
either masculine courage or feminine grace and sweetness.
But, unfortunately, the language is so uncertain, and ita
commentators are so much at war, that in dealing with these,
after the well-criticized ancient tongues, it is like passing from
• Knight, Pictorial History ; Mazzaroth ; Knight, Gelt, Roman, and
Saxon; Grimm, Deutscha Mythologie ; Jones, Welsh Sketches; Irish
Poems ; Montalembert.
VOL. II. C

1 8 NAMES FROM THE KELTIC.
firm ground to a quaking bog, and in many cases there
is but a choice of conjectures to deal with.
The names to be dealt with are of various kinds. First,
the historical ones that have come through Latin -writers,
terribly disguised, but the o^wners of them certain to have
existed. These are usually more Cymric than Gadhaelic,
and Welsh and Breton writers find explanations for them.
A few truly mythological ones will be considered with these,
and placed according to the order — if order it can be called —
assigned to their some supposed owners of them in the
pedigree of Brut, in which England used to believe on the
word of Geoffrey of Monmouth, and the Welsh on that of
their native chronicle of Brut. Then follow a most contro
verted collection, chiefly of the two Gadhaelic nations. They
were the property of a set of heroes called the Feen, who are
the great ancestry of the chiefs of the Scottish race in both
islands, and who are said to have performed fabulous exploits
at some distant period, which gains some sort of date from
the poem representing Ossian, the last survivor of the band,
as extremely miserable under the teaching of St. Patrick.
The fact was probably that the floating myths of the Gael
attached themselves to some real adventurous band, and the
date is no more to be depended on than those in Geoffrey of
Monmouth; but it gives a point by which to arrange the
names stUl in great part surviving both in Ireland and Scot
land, though often confused with those imported from other
languages. After this follows the cycle of names made popular by
the romances of King Arthur's court, which naturally find
their place at the time of the fall of the Roman power in
England. These, as far as they can be understood or inter
preted at aU, are Cymric, and some have become tolerably
weU kno^wn throughout Europe.
The different classes connected ¦with one or other of these
will nearly dispose of all the Keltic names worth notice.

KELTIC NOMENCLATURE.

19

The remaining wUl chiefly belong to the saints, in which
Wales, Brittany, and Ireland were particularly prolific. The
odd thing is that aU the Welsh saints were in some way
or other of royal birth, or else the royalty of Wales must
have been peculiarly pious. Brittany, Ukewise, had sundry
hermits ; and Ireland deserved its title of the Isle of Saints,
though, as wUl be seen, some of them were of a pecuUarly
Irish order, and regarded as strong cursing powers.
The Gadhaelic race had the remarkable custom of calling
their children the servant, the disciple, or the votaress of the
patron saint, so that it is not till recent times that the pre
fixes GioUa, Maol, and Cailleach have been entirely dropped,
and their traces are often remaining in appellations in Ire
land and Scotland.
The name was entirely personal, not hereditary ; but the
pride of ancestry caused the father's, grandfather's, fore
father's names, to the remotest generation, to be heaped
upon one head, connected in Gadhaelic by Mac, the son,
in Welsh by Mob, or, as it was contracted, Ap. Fiodhbha-
dach mac Conduilig mhic Conani mhic Sunanaig mhic
Creachain muaidhe mhic Bruide, answers to his equally
cumbrous cougin, Owen ap Rhys ap Gruffydd ap Dauffyd
ap Hugh, &c., &c., &c.
The Welsh, about the fifteenth century, found these pedi
gree names unmanageable in contact with ordinary society,
and contented themselves each with one ancestral surname
for good. Some incorporated their Ap, as Pryce, Ap Rhys,
Pugh, or Ap Hugh ; some, in English fashion, adding the
possessive s to the end of the father's name, like the hosts of
Joneses and Williamses ; others took some favourite name from
the roll of ancestry, or called themselves after their estates.
In Gadhaelic, the word ua, ui (plu.), uilh (dat.) (see
the Greek utos), signified the grandchild, as in vernacular
Scottish oe still does. In consequence, when the patience
was exhausted by Macs and Mhics, a leap was made back
c 2

20 NAMES FROM THE KELTIC.
to the great ancestor of the clan, and the man who called
himself Mac to his father, called himself Ui, or 0, to his
chief forefather. His sister would be caUed ni, a contrac
tion of nighen, a daughter. When surnames first became
fashionable, at a date which is. perfectly uncertain, though
Irish authors placed it in the time of Brien Boromhe,
in the beginning of the eleventh century, the clans in the
Highlands called themselves Mac, those in Ireland, Mac
and 0, or rather Hy in the plural, according to their taste,
only Mac was generally the nearer, 0 the more remote re
lation; and sometimes both would be used by some minor
division of a great tribe. Thus an off-shoot of the O'Brien
became Mac I Brian, the son of the children of Brien.
These names, commencing with 0, were never used in
Scotland, though Mac was common to both divisions of the
race. After the English conquest of Ireland, not only did
foreign pronunciation make strange work with the native
surnames, but some of the Irish, living within the English
pale, took EngUsh surnames; and in the time of Edward
IV., an Act of Parliament commanded those dwelling in
the counties of Dublin, Myeth, Uriell, and Kildare, to go
apparelled like Englishmen, wear their beards after the
EngUsh manner, and take EngUsh surnames, imder pain
of forfeiting their goods yearly tiU the premises were done,
to be levied two times a year to the king's wars !
Terrible havoc did this Act make with the Erse Os and
Macs. Some translated, — and hideous were their transla
tions, — some assimUated, some took the name of their native
home, and some ran the risk of forfeit and never changed
at all ; but even they were considerably disguised by pro
nunciation, and the same work has gone on ever since.
Thus O'Conor becomes Conyers; O'Reilly, Ridley; Mac
Mahon, Matthews ; in fact the catalogue is endless, and the
only wonder is, that so many old Erse names stUl exist.

KELTIC NOMENCLATURE. 21
The chief of the family used to sign official documents
with the surname only, Misi O'Neill, I am O'Neill, and
was spoken of as the O'NeiU, or whatever he might be,
as a sort of title, though all his family had an equal right
with himself to the prefix. This distinction continues in
use at the present day, and is sometimes thought an affec
tation. There is a much greater variety of ancient surnames in
Ireland than in Scotland, where the dependents of a clan
generally took the name of their chief; and, besides, the
space was much smaUer, and the Lowlanders followed the
English system of surnames.
Cornwall and Brittany seem to have had nothing of the
clan spirit, but to have used localities to give the surnames
of their inhabitants. The old saying —
'By Pol, Tre, andPen,
You may know the Cornish men,'
is equally true of their cousins the Bretons, with the addi
tion of Koet, a wood, and Kaer or Ker, a rock or fortified
place. The Keltic taste in names was of the grand order, gencr
rally in many syllables, and lofty in sense and sound, much
in the style of the Red Indian. Thus we find Brithomar,
the great Briton; Bathanat, son of the boar; Louarn, the
fox ; CarviUus, friend of power, among the Kymric nations
of England and the Continent : and in less complimentary
style, Mandubrath, man of black treason. This man of
black treason was, in Britain, Avarddwy Bras, also called
one of the three disgraceful men of Britain. It is said that
Caswallon had murdered Avarddwy's father, and afterwards
set out on what the Triads caU one of the three unwise
armaments, which weakened the force of the country. The
cause is romantically described by the Triads to have been,

22 NAMES FROM THE KELTIC.
that his lady-love, Flur, had been carried away by a Prince
of Gascony to be presented to Julius Csesar ; moreover, the
Mahinogion says, he and his two friends went as far as
Rome to recover her, disguised as shoemakers, whence they
are called the three-fold shoemakers of the Isle of Britain.
The aid that he gave the Gauls, does, in fact, seem to
have attracted the notice of Csesar, and the black treason
was Avarddwy's invitation to the Romans. He was the
father of Aregwydd Voeddog, whose second name, derived
from victory, was certainly the same as Boadicea, though
her deed identifies her with Cartismandua. Caswallon, or
Cassivellaunus, as the Romans called him, is sometimes
explained as Cas-g wall-lawn, chief of great hatred, some
times as lord of the Cassi. The Gaels have many grand
men's names, but, perhaps, have used the most poetry in
those of their women. Feithfailge, honeysuckle ringlets ;
Lassairf hina or Lassarina, flame or blush of the wine ; Lassair,
or flame, the same in effect as the Italian Fiamma ; Alma,
all good, a real old Erse name, before the babes of Septem
ber 1854, were called Alma, after the Crimean river, which
probably bore a Keltic name. Bebinn, or as Macpherson
•writes it, Vevina, the melodious woman ; Essa, the nurse ;
Gelges, swan white ; Luanmaisi, fair as the moon ; Ligach,
pearly. Yet thirst had her namesake, Ita ; and famine hers, Una ;
and besides these, Derdre, was fear ; Dorenn, sullen ; Uailsi,
proud ; Unchi, contentious.
All of these, and many besides, have entirely fallen into
desuetude, and all the Keltic countries have a practice of
adopting names- from their neighbours, supposed to answer to
their own, but often without the slightest affinity thereto.
Thus Anmcha, courageous, is supposed to be translated
by Ambrose; Aneslis is rendered by Stanislaus and Stan
dish ; Fachtna, is Festus ; Baothgalach, or youthful courage
Boethius.

KELTIC NOMENCLATURE. 23
Corruptions must be permitted to our English tongues
and throats, which break down at a guttural, so it is no
wonder that Berach (looking full at the mark) should be
turned into Barry, Dorchaidhe, sometimes into Darkey, which
really translates the word, and sometimes Darcy ; but it is
rather hard when we have to read Gillespie for Archibald,
and Edward for Diarmaid.*
* VillemarquS; O'Donovan; Highland Society's Gaelic Dictionary.

24

CHAPTER n.
ANCIENT KELTIC NAMES.
Section I. — Welsh Myths of the Flood.
Welsh myths we say advisedly, for whether these were really
Druidical myths or not, they have become so much disguised
by Welsh bards, do^wn to Christian times, that there is no
knowing what was the original framework. We must be
content to tell the story uninterruptedly as it is told in the
poems attributed to Taliessin and Aneurin, and in the prose
Triads, without pausing over the discussion whether the le
gends are genuine, and how much in them is Druid, or how
much Christian. Our concern is with the names connected
with these traditions, of which there are many.
The primary personages of semi-divine rank in these tra
ditions are Hu Gadam, or the Mighty, the sun god, and his
wife Ceridwen. The whole world was inundated, and only a
man and woman named Dwyvan and D^wyvach escaped in a
vessel without oar or saU, together with two animals of each
sort. The Addank or Avanc, or beaver, kept the earth
under water till Hu Gadarn commanded his oxen to draw it
out ; but the exertion was so great, that the eye-balls of one
of them burst, and he died as soon as his task was completed;
his companion refused all food, and likewise died.
One legend makes the Addank, or Avank-dhu, or Avagdu
the black beaver, also mean utter darkness ; and be the son
of Ceridwen, together with another brother, Mor-vran the
sea-raven or cormorant ; and a daughter called either Criez-
vion, the middle of the egg, or Creir-wy, the token of
the egg.

WELSH MYTHS OF THE FLOOD. 25
Avagdhu is represented in one of these poems as in dread
of another deluge, until the danger was averted by the form
ation of Arian-rhod-mach-Don, the goddess of the sUver
wheel, that is, the rainbow. She is the daughter of Beli, or
the sun, and was formed out of the flowers. She rides upon
a pale bright horse with rich trappings, upon the springing
grass, so swiftly that no pursuer, ride as rapidly as he may,
can come up with her ; and it was her office to scare away
the spirits of wrath from the earth, and remove the bane
or poison of the deluge, as well as to become the bride of
Avagdhu. A still -wilder story made Ceridwen a sort of hag, desirous
of imparting -wisdom to her son Avagdhu. For this purpose
she proceeded to brew a cauldron of mystic contents which
were to bring forth a drink of inspiration. The boiling was
to last a year, during which she set a blind man named Morda
to keep up the fire, and a dwarf called Gwion (Sense) to
watch him, and stir the fire. While she was absent gathering
herbs, three drops flew out of the cauldron on Gwion's finger.
He put it to his lips, and the first taste revealed to him all
that was to come, especially his own danger from the -wiles of
Ceridwen. At the same time the cauldron burst, and its
contents were dispersed. Ceridwen returning, pursued the
dwarf in a fury, when a set of transformations took place,
Uke those of the princess and the genie in the Arabian
Nights. Gwion, to elude her, became a hare ; she pursued
him as a greyhound : he leapt into a river as a fish, she
followed as an otter ; then he flew up like a little bird, she
hovered over him as a hawk ; he feU on the bam floor as a
grain of wheat, and she, as a high-crested hen, pecked him up.
But in process of time the unfortunate Gwion was reborn
of the hag Ceridwen. So much did she hate him, that she
had resolved to destroy him ; but the beauty of the infant
moved her not to kill him, but to place him in a coracle
covered with skins, and set him afloat on the lake.

26 ANCIENT KELTIC NAMES.'
Meantime, Elphin, son of Gwydnu, had gro^wn up the most
helpless and needy of youths, always in distress, till as a last
hope his father granted him the produce of the drawing of
the nets on the weir for one night, to give him a start in life.
The nets were wont to yield largely, but on the May eve in
question nothing was found but a leathem bag. On opening
it, the infant within was so gloriously beautiful, that the
fisherman started back, exclaiming, ' Taliessin ! ' (radiant
brow.) Elphin proceeded to carry his foundling home on
horseback, while the child consoled him with a song, assuring
him that ' In the day of trouble I shall be
Of more worth to thee than fifty salmon.'
He redeemed his promise, when Elphin was afterwards made
prisoner by a hostile prince, and was released, won a horse
race, and found a cauldron of gold, all through the wonder
working powers of Taliessin, who became the mythic parent
of Bardism in Britain.
Such are the legends that Welsh and Breton antiquaries .
treat as the faith of the Druids, and as distorted traditions of
the Flood, the Rainbow, and the finding of Moses. Later
critics, however, hold that the Welsh poets christianized the
legends knowingly. lolo Goch, Owen Glendwyr's bard,
made confusion worse confounded, by describing the real
Noah, under the mystic name of Hu Gadam; and Rhys
Brydedd, a century later, glorifies the sun as Hu :
' An atom of glowing heat is his car,
Great on land and in the sea.'
Indeed, in the miracle plays, he and his oxen, — their har
ness supposed to resemble flames, — seem to have played a
part, perhaps somewhat as early painters brought in the
winds of .^olus blowing the ship of the Apostles. Mr.
Davies imagines that Hu had worshippers in the fourteenth j
century, and found in support of this theory a denunciation i

WELSH MYTHS OF THE FLOOD. 27
against ' the men of Hu ' by Dr. John Kent, for ' false
inspiration and filthy predictions,' but this is thought to ap
ply to some of the prophecies that the Welsh were fond of
coining. Even from this it is evident that some old belief in Hu
existed ; and it is further believed that the two sacred islands
of lona and Mona were both originally Ynysgwaw Hu, the
island of the worship of Hu. Others, however, say, that
lona was only I-thon, or isle of the waves.
Other traditions make Hu Gadarn the leader of the ori
ginal migration of the Cymry from Taprobane, in Asia, —
another instance of curious confusion between a religious and
a colonizing myth.
The word Hu is not explained ; but it has passed into a
name in Wales and Brittany. Old French has the name in
flected as Hue, Hues, Huon, and the feminine Huette ; and
the true anglicized Welsh form is Hu or Hew, though it
is now universally confounded with the Teutonic Hugh,
from hugur, thought, with which it may be cognate, and
the Welsh patronymic Ap Hu is always spelt Pugh.
The Triads speak of Aed Mawr, or Aedd, as father of
Pridain, but he may have been either a title of Hu, or else
the god himself. He had died and lived alternately, and in
the Kanes Taliessin, the bard speaks of having once been
Aedd. There is an elegy on Aeddon of Mona, attributed to
TaUessin, that speaks of him as the leader of a migration
from the land of Gwydion, in charge of a sacred ark. It is
very curious after this, to find that the Gadhaelic name of
Aedh or Aodh, in both Ireland and the Highlands, is always
translated into English nomenclature as Hugh, though it means
fire. Is this a reminiscence of some ancient time, when the
Kymry and the Gael were one, and Aedd, or fire, was a title
of Hu ? Aodh is, in fact, in sound and sense, closely related
to the Greek ai6oi (aitho), and our heat is of the same kin.
Dr. Meyer thinks this Aed Mawr of the Triads was the

28 ANCIENT KELTIC NAMES.
forefather from whom the .^dui mentioned by Csesar were
caUed, and further derives from him C«er Aeddon, or Dun
Aeddon, Dun Edin, or Edinburgh. Yet, on the other hand,
M. de ViUemarque explains the .^dui as eaters of wheat;
and it is a part of our English faith that Auld Reekie is
our Northumbrian Edwin's burgh.
Aed, Aeddon, Aodh, Aedhan were far more popular
names than those derived from Hu. Aeddan is lamented
by Aneurin as a British warrior slain among the victims of
Henghist's treachery ; and two Aoidhs reigned, the one in
Connaught, the other in Scotland, in 570 ; and to the latter
of these, caUed by Scottish historians Aidan, or Edan, they
ascribe the foundation of their capital ; but it was at that
time in the possession of the Angles, and if caUed after
Aodh, it must have been after an earUer one. The Irish
Aodh is said to have been about to expel the bards, but to
have been prevented by the intercession of St. Columb.
At one time Ireland was afl3icted with thirteen contempo
rary Aodhs ; and at least two so called reigned in Scotland —
Aodhfin, or the white, the Ethfine of historians, and Aoidh,
or Eth, the swift footed. So common was the name among
the Irish that one hundred Aodhs and one hundred Aoddans
were killed in the battle of Maghrath, of which we shall have
more to say in time. The Mac Aodhs of Ireland were once
many in number, but are now translated into Hughson or
Hewson. But the most interesting person so called is kno^wn
to us as Aidan. Connaught lays claim to his birth, and says
he was surnamed Maeldog, or Moedog, servant of the star,
from the appearance of a star before his birth. He visited
Wales and Scotland, became a monk of lona, and then
went forth as a missionary to the North of England. He
was the friend of the admirable Oswald, free of hand king
of Deira, who used to interpret his Keltic speech to the
Angle population ; and his gentle teaching won to the Church
multitudes whom the harshness of former missionaries had
repeUed. He is reckoned as first bishop of Lindisfam and

WELSH MYTHS OF THE FLOOD. 29
has left his name to sundry churches of St. Aidan. Aoidhne,
or Eithne, was the Irish feminine once distinguished, but now
disused. Aidan is stiU a female name among some Welsh families,
and it is very possible that the old French Eudon and Eudes
may be really sprung from Aeddan, rather than from the
German Odd, to which they are generally referred.
Another Irish St. Aeddan, who was bishop of Ferns about
the year 632, has a most curious variety of namesakes —
some from his baptismal name, others from his soubriquet of
Maidoc, or Madwg, the beneficent. The Latin translation
of Aidan, Aideus, or Aidanus, has adhered to him in Basse
Bretagne, but has there been cut down into De, St. De being
the appeUation of a viUage there, the church of which is
dedicated to him ; but in his native country, in the families
of O'Doyle and Kavanagh, Maidoc or Mogue, is the here
ditary Christian name adopted from him, and which is by
the Protestants anglicized as Aidan, by the Roman Ca-
thoUcs as Moses ; an exceedingly strange rule.
Madog, or Madawc, was the usual form in Wales, where it
has always been in great favour. Madawc, prince of Powys-
land, who died in 1158, in great favour ¦with Henry H.
Another Madawc, prince of North Wales, sailed westward
about the year 1169, and is supposed by some to have been
the traditional teacher from the East dimly remembered by
the Aztecs of Mexico ; thus furnishing Southey with the
subject of his poem of Madoc, a tale of adventure that
would be more inviting were it in prose instead of blank
verse. Some Ap Madoc has bestowed on England the sur
names of Maddock and Maddox.
Returning to the other supposed traditions connected with
the deluge, we are told in the beautiful myth of Arianrod,
that the wheel in some of the Cunobelin coinage is her silver
wheel, or rainbow; but later enquiry insists on our con
sidering her story as a mere fairy tale. The Triads mention
Arianrod as sister of Caswallon, and mother of two chiefs,

30 ANCIENT KELTIC NAMES.
who joined their uncle in his ' unwise armaments,' when he
went to Gaul, and so brought Csesar down on Britain. At
any rate, Arian is the Welsh word for silver, and Arianwen,
silver lady, is the name of a very early Welsh saint, and
has frequently been repeated even down to the present day.
Neither the name nor the story seem, however, to have tra
velled beyond the Cymry. The leek is said to have been
used by the Welsh in the worship of Ceridwen. Afterwards
a story rose that, in one of CadwaUawn's battles, his Welsh
men marked themselves with leeks from a garden hard by,
and the story was transferred to the Welsh troops of the
Black Prince in France.
Ced, or Cyridwen, in whom Mr. Davies sees an emblem of
the ark, shows no namesakes ; but huadh, or hudd, victory,
furnished for her the epithet of Buddug, or Buddud ; and,
perhaps, she is the Boundonica mentioned by Dion Cassius
as a Keltic goddess. Probably it was either as a victorious
omen, or else in honour of her, that the name of Buddug
was given to that fierce chieftainess of the Iceni, whose
savage vengeance for her ¦wrongs has won for her a very
disproportionate fame, as much changed as her name, when
we call it Bonduca, or, more usuaUy, Boadicea. Aregwedd
Voeddog, or Foeddog, who betrayed Caradwg, is said by
some to be this queen ; but though the name is the same,
the nature is far otherwise. It has not met with much repe
tition, yet we have heard of a family so patriotic as to con
tain both Caractacus and Boadicea. Buadhach was how
ever, long a man's name in Ireland, and Budhic was one of
the early Armorican princes.
Gwion, the unlucky dwarf, the victim of Ceridwen's brew
ing, seems to have left his name behind him, whether it be
as M. Pitre Chevalier explains it, esprit, sense, or be con
nected with the Welsh gwyth, and Cornish gwg, anger.
Aneurin mentions a knight named Gwiawn as having been
slain in the battle of Cattraeth ; and Gwion is a knight of

WELSH MYTHS OF THE FLOOD. 31
Arthur's court, figuring as Sir Guy among the knights of
the Round Table, and furnishing Spenser with his Sir Guyon,
the hero of the second " Book of Courtesie " in his Faerie
Queen. Guy has since been a favourite name, but it has become
so entangled with the Latin Vitus that it is almost impos
sible to distinguish the Keltic from the Roman name. It
appears to have prevailed in France very early as Guy,
Guies, Guyon, in the feminine Guiette; and besides the
Sicilian infant martyr, Vitus, obtained two patrons, St. Guy,
the Poor Man of Anderlecht, a pilgrim to Jerusalem, who
died in 1014 ; and the Italian, St. Guido, abbot of Pomposa,
in Ferrara, who died in 1042. Both lived long after their
name had become so popular, that it could not have depended
upon them. Queen Matilda, in her Bayeux tapestry, labels
as Wide, the Count Guy of Ponthieu, who captured Harold
on his ill-starred expedition to Normandy, and thus she evi
dently does not consider him as Vitus.
The Guy, Earl of Warwick, who killed the Dun Cow, went
on pilgrimage, became a hermit, and slew the giant, Dane
Colbrand, before the gates of Winchester, bears in his name
tokens of Anglo-Norman invention, though he is said to
have Uved under .^thelstan. His traditions have been traced
back no further than the thirteenth century, and, perhaps,
were inspired by the huge bone, called the Cow's Rib, and
shown at the Church of St. Mary Redclyffe. Guy's Cliff,
at Warwick Castle, is likewise connected with him ; and he
really seems to have been the occasion of the naming of the
veritable Guy, Earl of Warwick, of Edward II. 's reign, who
so fearfully took vengeance for Piers Gaveston having called
him the Black Dog of Arden.
Guy and Guido were both fairly frequent with us, until
' Gunpowder Treason ' gave a sinister association to the sound
of Guido Fawkes, and the perpetual celebrations of the 5th
of November, with the burning of Guy Fawkes in effigy.

32 ANCIENT KELTIC NAMES.
have given a meaning to the term of Guy, that will probably
continue long after the last tar-barrel has flamed, and the
last cracker exploded over his doom.
Guido and Guidone were the proper ItaUan forms, much
used in the whole Peninsula, and appearing in Ariosto's
poem in the person of Guidon Selvaggio, a rustic, unci
vilized knight. From the sound it was long imagined that
the names came either from guide or from guidon, a banner
or ensign ; but there can be no doubt that either the Keltic
G^wion, or the Latin Vitus was their true origin.
Elphin, who fished up the young bard Taliessin, is by Mr.
Davies supposed to have been called from phanes, the sun ;
but this is a very ¦wild conjecture. Elphin was really a
British name, and the Triads say Elfin was one of the four
men who were despatched by Llewfyr Mawr to bring home
the Gospel to Britain. The rationalizing process explains •
the tale of the finding of Taliessin thus. The bard, a full-
grown man, was said to have been fishing in a skin coracle
when he was taken prisoner as before, but made his escape,
pushed off in his o^wn coracle, and was carried by wind and
tide to the Weir of Aber-dyvi, where he was caught in the
nets of Elphin ap Gwyddnu as before, and, like every one
else, both were absorbed into the court of King Arthur.
As to Taliessin, there was a veritable poet of the name
who lived in the sixth century, and is called one of the three
baptismal bards of Britain. Genealogies make him the son
of St. Henwg, the bard ; and one MS. says that he buUt the
church of Llanhenwg to his father's memory. Some few
poems of his are preserved, but an immense number of much
later authorship have been fathered upon him, together with
a number of prophecies after the pattern of those of
Merlin. It is highly probable that he was the namesake of some
mythical Taliessin, and it is just ¦within the bounds of pos
sibiUty that some distant remembrance of Moses may lurk

LIR AND HIS DAUGHTERS. j;^
in the infant of radiant brow, poet and lawgiver, preserved
in the wicker coracle. Taliessin has, however, been since
used as a name in Wales ; Talorgan, splendid brow, was a
Pictish king ; and Elphin has had some limited use, but it is
not easy to distinguish its derivatives from those of the Teu
tonic Elf. Indeed, it probably likewise comes from the Indo-
European alb, white, which probably named Albin, Albion,
and Albany,* as well as the Alps and the Elbe. It was the
name of one of the ambassadors sent by Lucius to Rome to
bring home Christian teachers, and belonged to a Pictish
king, who was killed in 727 at Pit Elpie. In 730 a Pictish
princess, marrying into the Scottish royal family, gave the
same name to her son, who was called Alpin, and was killed on
the borders of Galloway, at a spot called from his tomb Lacht
Alpin, the stone of Alpin, in 836. The clan of Alpin con
tinued in the Highlands, and its members bore the name of
Macalpin. Professor Cosmo Innes, however, relates an
amusing promotion from the original sumame of Halfpenny
to the aristocratic Macalpin.f

Section H. — Lir and his Daughters,
Geoffrey of Monmouth made the eleventh of his kings,
descended from Brute, to be called Leir, and live at Leircester
of Leicester, on the river Sore, somewhere about the time of
the prophet Elisha.
He is one of the earliest authorities for the story of Leir and
the ungrateful daughters, whom he calls Gonorilla and Regan.
He gives the name of Cordeilla to the reserved but faithful
daughter who could not pay lip service, but redeemed her
* Chalmers, however, derives the Keltic Alban from a word meaning
the heights.
"[¦ Da-ries, Bites of the Druids ; Pitre, Bretagne Ancienne et Modeme ;
Meyer ; Butler ; Lappenburg, Anglo-Saxons ; Donovan ; Lower ; Chal
mers ; Cosmo Innes ; Cambro-Briton.
VOL. II. D

34 ANCIENT KELTIC NAMES.
father's kingdom when he was exiled and misused by her
flattering sisters. It was a very remarkable conception of
character, even thus barely narrated, without the lovely
endowments with which we have since learnt to invest the
good daughter. The sequel in Geoffrey's chronicle related,
that after his kingdom was restored, old Leir died in peace
at Leicester, and was buried by Cordeilla 'in a certain vault
which she ordered to be made for him under the river Sore,
at Leicester, and which had been built originally under the
ground to the honour of the god Janus ; and here all the
workmen of the city, upon the anniversary solemnity of that
festival, used to begin their yearly labours.'
He further narrates that CordeiUa was dethroned by her
nephews, and committed suicide in despair. To this story
adhered both the old ballad-monger and Spenser, in the
history studied by Sir Guyon; but Shakespeare loved his
sweet Cordelia too well to stain her with self-murder, and,
though omitting all allusion to Christianity, made her in all
her ways and actions a true Christian, and never perhaps
showed more consummate art than in producing so perfect an
effect with a person so chary of her words.
Whence did Geoffrey get the story which has produced
such fruits ?
Lir, beyond a doubt, is the word in aU Keltic tongues for
the sea, and has named places in aU countries. He is also a
mythological personage, a god in the elder Irish beUef, and
father of Man-a-n^n, the Erse Neptune.
' Their ocean god was MSn-l-nan, Mac Lir,
Whose angry lips
In their white foam full often would inter
Whole fleets of ships.'
Indeed, his name seems to have been adopted by the
Scandinavians, for, with them, Hler is another name for the
sea god, also called (Egir, or, the terrible.
Afterwards, later ballads humanized Lir, and made him
the father of Man-a-nan, one of the Tuath De Danan, or

LIR AND HIS DAUGHTERS. 35
early conquerors of Ireland, and Lord of the Isle of Man,
which is said to be called after him. There is a tradition
in Londonderry that his spirit lives in an enchanted castle
in the waves of Magilligan, and that his magic ship appears
every seventh year. Moreover, the daughters of Mananan,
granddaughters of Lir, were called Aine and Aoiffe, and had
a desperate quarrel whose husband was the best hunter.
Wales, on its side, shows in the Isle of Anglesea a crom
lech, called the tomb of Bronwen, daughter of King Llyr or
Leirus. The tomb was opened in 1813, and an ancient um,
once probably containing ashes, was found there. It seems
that a somewhat more substantial Llyr lived about the time
- of the Roman conquest, and was the father of Bronwen,
who married the king of Ireland, was ill-treated by him,
and received a box on the ear, which was one of the three
fatal insults of the Isle of Britain. This lady is very
probably the Bronwen of the cromlech ; but the conjecture
of the Rev. Edward Davies is, that in the story of King
Leir, we may have the remains of an ancient myth.
It is certainly remarkable that the notion of Lyr, in con
nection with turbulent daughters or granddaughters, should
be common to both Britain and Ireland. Mr. Davies ex
plains Cordelia to have been originally Creirdyddlydd, the
token of the overflowing, also called Creirwy, or the token of
the egg. Orair is a token, the sacred article on which a man
makes oath, whence it came to mean either a relic or a
jewel ; and Creirwy is explained by Dr. Owen Pugh, as a fine
woman. Creirdyddlydd might thus be the jewel of the sea,
or the token of the flood. At any rate, Creirdyddlydd or
Creirwy is a creation of ancient Welsh poetry, once mythical,
the daughter of the sea, Llyr or Llud, on which Geoffrey seized
for his history. Bronwen, or fair bosom, is either another
daughter of Lyr, or else Creirdyddlydd under another name,
and is supposed to have been the British Proserpine. Both
Bronwen and Creirwy are called Gwrvorwyn, man-maid, or
virago, and it does not seem impossible that here we see the
D2

36 ANCIENT KELTIC NAMES.
origin of CordeUa, Regan, and Goneril, as they have been
adapted to English pronunciation, the token of the overflow
ing, the fair bosom, and the virago. Surely these are the
daughters of the ocean, rebellious and peaceful. Dynwen,
too, is the white wave, the patroness of lovers ; and as we
shall find by-and-bye wave names are remarkably common
among the Welsh.
Lear is also called Llwyd, the grey, or the extended, a
fitting title for the sea, and which has passed on to form
Lloyd, so common as a Welsh Christian and sumame, and
passing to England as Floyd.
Creirdyddlydd has due justice done her in the Mahinogion,
where we further learn that she remains with her father till
the day of doom, and that in the meantime two kings,
Gwyn ab Nudd and G-wythir mab Graidiawn, have a battle
for her hand on every May-day.
Cordula is set do^wn in Welsh and German calendars on
the 22nd of October as one of the 11,000 virgins, her feast
following that of St. Ursula. It may be remembered that
8t. Ursula was said to be Cornish ; and that her only re
corded companion should bear a Cymric name, is in favour
of some shade of foundation for her story. Kordula is in con
sequence a German name. Kordula was a princess of Lingen
in 1473 ; and Michel and Kordel are two children in Ger
man household tradition so constantly falling into mishaps as
to have become a proverb for folly.
The Germans fancy Cordula is the diminutive of the
Latin cor, a heart ; others have wildly made it the feminine
of Cordeleo, Uon heart, and it has been confused with DeUa,
the epithet of Diana, from Delos, her birthplace ; but Creir
dyddlydd is certainly its origin, and remembering that in
Welsh d is softened and aspirated by being doubled, is not
far from it in sound. Cordelia is hereditary in some Irish
famUies ; but is chiefly used for love of Shakespeare's
heroine of filial love.

LIR AND HIS DAUGHTERS. 37
Bronwen makes her appearance again in the romance of
Sir Tristram, under the name of Brengwain, the maid of
Yseulte. When the Lady Yseulte was sent from her home
in Ireland, under the escort of Tristram, to be married to
King Mark, of Cornwall,
' Her moder about was blithe,
And tok a drink of might,
That love would kithe,
And tok it Brengwain the bright
To think
At a spouseing a night
Gif Mark and her a drink.'
Unfortunately, a tempest arose on the voyage, and, in the
consequent exhaustion, ' Swete Ysonde, the fre, asked Breng
wain a drink.' ' Brengwain was wrong bi thought,
To that drink sche gan win ;
And swete Ysonde it bitaught,
Sche bade Tristram begin
To say.
Her love might no man turn.
Till her ending day ! '
Even the ' hound that was there biside, yclept Hodain,'
who licked up the drops that were spilt of the philtre, became
attached to the knight and lady with the same magic love.
Hereupon Davies carries us off to the realms of mystic
myth, and tells us that Brengwain was the old goddess Bron
wen, and that her draught was of the liquor of the mystic
cauldron of Ceridwen, or of the wine and bragget by which the
Welsh bards were initiated, and that even Hodain represented
the priesthood ! Be that as it may, Bronwen or Brengwain
has since been in use as a Welsh female Christian name.
The names of the granddaughters of the Irish King Lear
were Aine and Aoife, and their dispute was whose husband
was the best hunter. Aine means joy or praise, Aoife is
another form of Aoibheal or Aoibhinn, pronounced Aevin,

38 ANCIENT KELTIC NAMES.
and usually meaning pleasant; but Aoibhle also means a
token, and thus remarkably reminds us of Creirwy. Aine,
the daughter of Eogah-hal, was looked on as queen of the
fairies of South Munster, and her abode was said to be Cnoc
Aine or Knockany, the HiU of Aine, in county Limerick ;
Aoibhinn was queen of the fairies in Thomond or North
Munster ; Una, of those in Ormond. This answers curiously
to Unna, the daughter of the Scandinavian sea giant, Hler,
whom Professor Munch thinks was called from the same word
as that whence Unda, a wave, arose.
Another legend made Aine and Milvachra, daughter of
GuiUim Cualgne, of the Tuath De Danaan. Aine was the
beloved of the great Fionn, but she had unfortunately made
a vow never to marry a man with grey hair, and her jealous
sister contrived by her enchantments to form a magic lake
beside SUeve Guillim, endowed with the property of bringing
premature old age on the bather. She then assumed the form
of a white doe, and beguiled him into pursuing her into the
water, or according to another version, she dropped her ring
into the lake and begged him to dive for it. He emerged a
withered old white-haired man. His followers pursued her
to her cave, and forced her to restore his youth and beauty
by a counter draught from a magic cup, which even enhanced
his former strength and wisdom.
In some parts of Ireland there is a Banshee, the harbinger
of joy, as the ordinary Banshee is the messenger of evil :
they are distinguished as the Banshee Haine of joy, the
Banshee Wain of woe.
Aine continued to be a favourite name in Ireland for many
centuries ; but in later times it has become the practice to
anglicize it as Anna and Hannah, and possibly Anastasia,
though this may have come more directly from the Greek.
In 705 reigned a Scottish king called Aineecalleah or Ainbh-
ceallach the Good. He is turned by different authors into
ArincheUar, Armkelleth, AmberkeUetus, etc., and his right

LIR AND HIS DAUGHTERS. 35
one is either joyful war, or agile war, or if with the h, fero
cious war. He was too good for his .savage people, and was
dethroned at the end of a year, and is usually mentioned
by the few historians who name him as Amberkelleth.
It is evident then that Aine had come to Scotland with
other Gaelic names, and it is probable that this is the word
that had come forth as Anaple or Annabell in Scotland long
before the period of devotion to St. Anne. In 11 58 An
nabel Fitz Duncan, daughter to Duncan, Earl of Moray,
carried the name into the Lucie family ; AnnabeUa of
Strathem appears in 1244; Annaple Drummond was wife
to King Robert HI. of Scotland, about 1 390 ; and thence
forth Anaple has been somewhat common in Scotland, while
Anabla and Anabella are equally frequent in Ireland, and
AnnabeUa is occasionally used in England as Anna made a
little finer.
Aoiffe was more generally used than Aine, but most likely
is the origin of the Effie of Scotland, now always used as short
for Euphemia, though the Highland version of this name is
now Aoirig, or Oiglrigh. In other places Aoiffe seems to have
been turned into Affrica. In the beginning of the twelfth cen
tury ' Affrica,' daughter of Fergus of Galway, married ' Olaus '
the Swarthy, King of Man, and her daughter ' Effrica' mar
ried Somerlea, Thane of Argyle and Lord of the Isles, by
whose genealogists she seems to have been translated into
Rachel. Africa is stiU used as a female name in the Isle of
Man and in Ireland. Aoiffe was the wife of OuchuUin in
the Ossianic poetry, and Evir Allin and Evir Coma, properly
Aoibhir Aluir and Aoibhir Caomha, the pleasantly excellent
and pleasantly amiable, both appear there.
The recognized equivalent for Aoiffe was, however, Eva,
beginning almost from the first Christian times, so that, until
I found Aoiffe in such unquestionably heathen company as
Lear and Mananan, I had made up my mind that she was
the Gadhaelic pronunciation of our first mother.

40 ANCIENT KELTIC NAMES.
Eva is found in the oldest documents extant in Scotland,
and high in their genealogies : Eva O'Dwhine carried the
blood of Diarmid to the Anglo-Norman CampbeUs ; Eva of
Menteith married one of the first Earls of Lennox ; and
Alan, the first High Steward of Scotland, married Eve of
Tippermuir, and made her the ancestress of the Stuarts;
about the same time that the Irish Aoiffe or Eva, for she at
least is known to have borne both names, was being wedded
to stout Earl Strongbow.
Aevin, or Evin, is occasionally found in the house of Ken
nedy, but Eveleen is by far the most common form of both
names in Ireland, and has held its ground unchanged ever
since it emerged from the form of Aioibhinn.
To our surprise, however, Aveline or Eveline make their
appearance among the Normans long before the marriage of
the Earl of Pembroke. Aveline was the name of the sister
of Gunnar, the great grandmother of William the Conqueror ;
and Aveline or Eveline was so favourite a Norman name that
it well suits the Lady of the Garde Douloureuse in the Be
trothed. Avelina de Longo-Campo, as the name is latinized
in old chronicles, married the last Earl of Lancaster, and
was the mother of that heiress Avelina or Eveline, who,
though short-lived and childless herself, carried to her hus
band, Edmund Crouchback, and the sons of his subsequent
marriage, the great county of Lancaster, which made the
power of the Red Rose formidable.
Eveline has never been frequent, but was never entirely
forgotten in England, (for instance, an EveUne Elstove was
baptized in 1539,) and was revived as an ornamental name
by Miss Burney's Evelina. At present it is one of those
most in vogue, but it ought not to be spelt with a y, unless
it be intended to imitate the sumame Evelyn, the old French
form of the Latin avellana, a hazel. It was well the tree-
loving author of the Sylva should bear such a surname and
from him and his family, men have frequently been christened

BRL 41
by it ; but ladies do not follow the old Eveline of song and
romance unless they use the true feminine termination.
It is curious that several Erse names should have come to
us with the Normans. They may either have been of the
set interchanged with the Northmen at some pre-historical
time, or old Keltic ones picked up from the Gallic inhabitants
of Neustria, or from the Bretons on the border. In the
present case, the latter supposition is the most likely, as the
Scandinavians do not seem to have used Eveline. It may of
course be after all a diminutive of Eve, but the alternate
use of the initial A and E seems to contradict this, and
identify it with Aoibhinn or Aoiffe, daughter of the Irish
King Lear ; and may not it be likewise the remnant of the
days when the Kelt tongues were one, and Aoibli in Cymric,
as well as in Gaelic, was the token ?*
Section HI. — Bri.
The next hero worthy of note in Geoffrey of Monmouth
is the first of the Kelts, whose name has been preserved to
us by the Romans, — namely, Brennus, as we have learnt to
call him from those Latin legends that are so much more
familiar to us than our own.
The root hri, meaning force or strength, is found in many
branches of the Indo-European tongues. It is considered to
be akin to the Sanscrit mrja, strength, and is found in the
Greek verb jSpi^u (hritho) , to be heavy, or to outweigh, and
the adjective /Sptapos (hriaros), strong. And thus it named
the hundred-handed Titan, whom gods called Briareus, and
men .^geon, and who, in the Titanic revolution, was dis
posed of either in the iEgean sea, or under Mount .^tna.
Briennios, the surname of some of the eastern emperors,
must have come from this root.
* Dmes, Keltic Mythology ; O'Donoran; Mahinogion; Dasent; Miss
Brooke; Geoffery of Monmouth; Dr. Owen Pugh; Highland Society's
Dictionary; Cambro-Briton.

42 ANCIENT KELTIC NAMES.
In the Keltic tongues it again appears in Irish as hri or
hrigh, force or valour, answering to the Roman virtus (a near
connection, as we shall presently see), and in Britain it
named the tribe known to the Romans as Brigantes. Welsh,
Breton, and Cornish, aU repeat it in various forms, and from
thence arose the titles for a mler, judge, or king,— in
GaUic, Brenhin ; in Irish, Brehon ; in Breton, Barner ; in
Cornish, Bren or Brennyn. Many Breton local names retain
the word, such as Kerbriant, Cruehriant, Croeshriand, Tro-
Iriant, Qhateauhriant ; and the old French word hrie, pecu
liarly expressive of the gay, light Gallic courage, was a now
forgotten legacy from the ancient population.
, Brennius, as Geoffrey calls him, is made in his British
history, the son of Dunwallon, and brother of Belinus. Ex-
peUed by his brother, he proceeds to Gaul, there marries the
daughter of the Duke of the AUobroges in Switzerland, and
raises an army to attack his brother ; but their mother re
conciles them, and they set off together to conquer Gaul and
the Franks ; then proceed to Rome, where they defeat the
consuls Gabius and Porsena, and pillage the city. Thence
Belinus returned home, and built the gate called after him
Billingsgate, on the top of which, after his death, his ashes
were placed in a golden urn.
The subsequent career of Brennius in Italy, good Geoffrey
declines to narrate, as being to be found in Roman histories.
By this, no doubt he meant the account given by Livy of
the defeat of the Gauls by CamiUus, just in time to pre
vent them from carrying off the ransom, and the death of
Brennus in battle. Unfortunately, modem critics have
taught us to believe that the grand romance of the Senators
in their ivory chairs, the ascent of the Tarpeian rock, the
cackling geese, the heroism of Manlius, the tardy forgive-*'
ness of CamiUus, and even the Vcb victis of Brennus, are
little more trustworthy than the um upon the top of Bil
lingsgate, and that the Gallic foray was really even more
terrible and fatal than Roman vanity chose to avow. It was

BRI. 43
) Caleb Balderstone's thunder storm, or Edward the First's
truction of charters, for it utterly ruined early Roman
;ory, if ever there were any, and left us only what se non
•ro e hen trovato.
Che Gallic invaders are known to have been Senones, men
a Gaelic tribe ; and from the Kymric form of the name
Brennus, it is conjectured that he must have been of the
er branch of the race, so that it is possible that Geoffrey
f have found some tradition of his British birth.
Another Brennus was the leader of a division of the great
t of Gauls that, about B.C. 279, came out of Pannonia,
made a backward rush towards the East. One of their
ds settled in Asia Minor, ani ¦were the parents of the
atians; but Brennus was less successful. He marched
n Delphi, promising his followers the plunder of the
iple ; but was totally defeated by the Delphians ; and
ing his army destroyed, and himself severely wounded,
an end to his own life.
II the Mahinogion, Bran is son of Llyr, and brother of
nwen. To avenge her box on the ear, he invaded Ireland,
le a great destruction there ; but was mortally wounded,
caused his head to be buried on White Hill in London,
a spell against aU further invasions. But in the
ids, one of the three fatal disclosures is when Arthur
aled the spot, because he scorned to keep the kingdom,
pt by his o^wn might.
Text time Bran comes to light, it is altogether in Welsh
ng. The Triads and the prolific Genealogy of Welsh
its, are the authorities for the existence of a prince of
name. Bran the Blessed, the son of Llyr Lledaith,
father of Caradwg, is, we are told, one of the three
3ed princes of Britain, having brought home the faith
Shrist from Rome, where he had been seven years as a
age for his son Caradwg, whom the Romans put in
)n after being betrayed through the enticement, deceit,
plotting of Cartismandua, or by her Welsh name,

44 ANCIENT KELTIC NAMES.
Aveywedd Foeddog, the daughter of Avarwy, who betrayed
Caswallon. Her act is called by the Triads one of the three. =
secret treasons of Britain.
Now Caradwg is, without a doubt, the Caractacus of ^
Roman history, and the captivity of his family exactly
coincides with the time of St. Paul's first journey to Rome.
Moreover, as has been aU-eady sho^wn under the head of
Aristobulus, there is great reason to consider that Aristo-
bulus, the friend of St. Paul, was the same as the Arwystli,
whom the Triads commemorate as among their firs|; mis
sionaries. A farm-house in Glamorganshire, called Trevran,
house of Bran, is pointed out as the place where Bfan
used to reside, and it is near Llanilid, which is considered as
the oldest church in Britain.
Such is the British account of the father of Caradwg.
The Roman account is, that Cunobelinus was king of the
Silures, and husband of Cartismandua, queen of the Bri
gantes, and was a prosperous and powerful prince in league i
with the Romans. In confirmation of this account, gold
coins have been found bearing the head and name of Cuno
belinus, and supposed to have been moulded on dies made in
Gaul or at Rome. This Cunobelinus, they say, had three
sons, Adminius, Togodumnus, and Caractacus. The first was
exiled, and going to Rome, invited Caligula to his abortive
invasion. The other two, they say, quarrelled after their
father's death ; but bravely encountered the invasion of
Claudius, untU Caractacus was betrayed by the wicked Car
tismandua, came to Rome, and made the noble speech so
well known to us.
Geoffrey of Monmouth gives his Kymbelinus two sons,
Guiderius and Arviragus. In the battle with the Romansgl
Guiderius is killed ; but Arviragus puts on his armour and "
gains a complete victory ; after which, he makes peace with
Rome, and goes thither on a friendly visit to marry Claudius's
daijghter. Arviragus is a name really found on ancient

BRI. 45
tish coins, and is mentioned by Juvenal as a British
ice. There can be little doubt that it is, in fact, a
nized title, Ardhrygh, chief king, of which we shall have
re to say.
Dunobelinus is in like manner a title, though not of man.
tl is, as will be shown in due time, a chief or lord. Bel
Belin was the Keltic god of light and of war, in whose
lOur British coins were struck in the heathen days of
m, whose o^wn name the Romans thought they were read-
on his coins. Beli also meant war, and more than one
g was called from him. The Triads, however, make
three brave sovereigns of Britain, Cynvelyn Weedig,
radwg, son of Bran, and Arthur. This separates Bran
m Cymbeline ; but these compositions were so late that
y are rather illustrations than commentaries. They,
rever, mention, as the three primary battle princes, Cas-
llawn, son of Beli, Caradwg, son of Bran, and Gweirryd,
! son of Cynvelyn ; thus showing whence came Guiderius,
ler from him or the brother Gwydyr, whom British pedi-
es give as the sons of Cynvelyn. One of them may be
Togodumnus, mentioned by the Latin authors as a third
of Cunobelinus ; out of whom the Cynvelyn of the Triads
i probably manufactured.
Bran the Blessed may thus be our old friend Cymbeline, a
ne repeated in Cornwall, but from literature, not tra-
!on. Cartismandua, or Aregwydd, is the wicked queen,
I Caradwg one of the sons. Guiderius is not accounted
, but the Romans call him Togodumnus. Cogidumnus,
prince who became imperial legate in the South, was
rtismandua's son, and must have been Cloten, whose
ae Shakespeare took from an elder king in Geoffrey of
mmouth.ks to Imogen, the real charm of the play, no British lady
ler accounts for, or explains her name ; but in German
lealogies we fall upon Imagina, of Limburg, in 1400 ; and

46 ANCIENT KELTIC NAMES.
there are various other instances of the like, so that Shake- i
speare may be supposed to have heard of one of them, and
adopted her as the heroine of the old story of the deserted
and betrayed wife, which he so strangely placed at the court
of the last independent British prince. Or Imogen may be
a Shakespearian version of Ygnoge, daughter of Pandrasus,
emperor of Greece, and wife of Brutus, according to Geoffrey
of Monmouth. In Anne of Brittany's funeral oration, in
15 14, her birth was deduced from this last.
Caradwg's own proper name comes from the same root as
the Greek x«pW' grace, and the Latin carus, dear. It
means beloved, and has the Breton form Keridak. Caer
Caradoc in Shropshire, retains the name of his camp. He
had a worthy namesake in Caradawc Vreichfras, or strong :
armed, called the pillar of the Kymry, and one of the three
battle knights of Britain. Vreichfras means the strong
arm, but the French trouveurs rendered it Brise-bras, the
wasted arm ; and told of an enchanter who fixed a serpent on
the knight's arm, from whose torture nothing could reUeve >
him but that she whom he loved best should undergo it in his
stead. His faithful wife offered herself ; the serpent was just
about to seize on her, when her brother smote off its head with
his sword ; but her husband thus never recovered the strength
of his arm ! Others, however, read Vreich-fras as Fer-a-
hras, iron arm; and thus, perhaps, from some Breton ro
mance, was one of the HauteviUe brothers called WilUam
Ferabras. Hence, again, did the French and Italian ro
mancers name their fierce Moorish champion Ferraii, or Fer-
ragus, the same who lost his helmet, and possessed the healing
salve, valued by Don Quixote as the balsam of Fierabras !
Caradwg's wife, Tegan Euvron, or golden beauty, was men
tioned by the Triads as one of the three fair ladies and ;
chaste damsels of Arthur's court, possessing three preciou's||
things, of which she alone was worthy, — the mantle the
goblet, and the knife. Later romance and baUad have ex-

BRI. 47
ided these into the story of the three tests of the faithful
Fe ; and Sir Caradoc and his lady remain among the prime
rthies of the Round Table.
In the twelfth century a saint named Caradwg retired
im the world in disgust at the violence shown to him by
i master, Rhys, prince of South Wales, on learning the
IS of two greyhounds that had been in Caradwg's charge.
3 Uved in various hermitages in Wales, and left a well in
e parish of Haroldstone, called by his name. Moreover,
an after his death, he was said to have suddenly closed his
nd, in frustration of the designs of the historian, William
Malmsbury, who wanted to cut off his little finger for a
lie. Our insular saints were decidedly of Shakespeare's
inion, and had no desire to have their ' bones moved,' or
made reUcs of.
Caradwg, Caradoc, and Keriadek continue to be used in
ales, Scotland, and Brittany; several Welsh families con-
ier themselves as descended from Sir Caradoc, and the
imame Cradock is not uncommon in England.
Gara, friend, was sometimes prefixed to a saint's name by
e Christian Gael, as Cara Michel, friend of St. Michael, as
e name of his devout client, and thus arose such surnames
Carmichael.
This pursuit of Cymbeline and his family has carried us
r from Bran the Blessed. Under this, his proper name, he
ands forth in old Welsh romance as the original importer
' the Sanc-greal. One very old and wild version says that
ing Bran brought from Ireland a magic vessel, given him
jT a great black man in Ireland, which healed wounds and
lised the dead. It was one of the thirteen wonders of the
ie of Britain, and disappeared with the enchanter Merlin,
: the glass vessel, of which more wUl be told in the sequel.
his Bran may have been altogether an ancient mythical
laracter, for the cup was an old Druidical idea, connected
ith the famous cauldron of Ceridwen, and it is curious that

48 ANCIENT KELTIC NAMES.
both this and the magic cup of Brengwain should come from
Ireland. Mr. Davies would make Bran a raven, and con
nected with the raven of the flood ; but though hran or vran
does mean a raven in the Keltic tongues, this interpretation
of the name has been rejected by the later authorities.
Bran and Branan, in the sense of raven, were occasionally
given in Ireland.
In the twelfth century the Sanc-greal had assumed its
Christian character, and Bran the Blessed, as the first
Christian prince of Britain, was said to have received it
from St. Joseph of Arimathea, and guarded it to the end
of his life. No wonder, therefore, that Brittany loved and
honoured his name.
Bran the Blessed is further said by an Irish fairy tale to
have had four brothers, who were all turned into swans by
their cruel stepmother, — a curious reminiscence of Bran's
©¦wn wife, Cartismandua.
But Gaelic tradition chiefly commemorates Bran as the
dog of Fingal, whose hunting exploits were equal to his
military achievements. Gleann Bhrain, Bran's Vale, in
Scotland, is so termed in his honour. Bran, too, was a
Pict prince, killed in 839, in battle with the Danes, and it
is highly probable that St. Birinus, the Keltic apostle of
Wessex, was another form of Bran.
Brian has been from very old times a favourite Christian
name in both Brittany and Ireland, the first no doubt from
the Christian honours of the blessed Bran, the second from
the source whence he was named.
The great glory of Brian in Ireland was in the reno^wned
Brian Boromhe, or of the tribute, so called from the tribute
that he imposed upon Ulster. He defeated the Danes in
twenty-five battles, and finally was slain in the great battle
of Clontarf, on the Good Friday of 10 14. Around that
battle has centered a wonderful amount of fine legendary
poetry on both sides. If the man of Caithness beheld the

BRI. 45
Valkyrier weaving their web of slaughter ; if the northern
pirate, in his vessel on the ocean, beheld the vision that
impelled him to cast in his lot with the just king, seek
baptism on the eve of the fight, and fall as a Christian
warrior; on the other hand, Brian had his warning in a
vision of the night, that the victory should be purchased
with his life, and that from his time the glories of Erin
should fade away. Crucifix in hand, he reviewed his men
in the grey of the morning, declared his readiness to be
sacrificed on that sacred day above aU others of the year, and
commanded that there should be no pause in the battle to
remove his corpse from the field till night. Victory and
'death were his portion, but such was the spirit of his troops
that, when on their homeward march they were attacked by
the men of Ossory, the wounded insisted on being tied to
stakes planted in the ground, that they might do their part
in defending his corpse. The lament of his bard, Mac Liag,
is caUed ' Kinkora,' from the name of Brian's Castle, and is
one of the favourite Erse poems. One of the verses has
been thus translated: —
' They are gone, those heroes of royal birth.
Who plundered no churches, and broke no trust ;
'Tis weary for me to be living on earth,
When they, O Kinkora, lie low in the dust.
Low, O Kinkora I '
¦From this very noble king descended the great sliocht,
sept or clan, of the O'Briens of Thomond. At one time its
minor branches took various additional agnomina by way of
distinction, as the Mac I. Brien Ara ; Mac Brian Coonagh,
'&c. ; but these were found cumbrous, and Mac Brian and
O'Brien alone are in use.
Brian, or Bryan, is a very frequent Christian name, but
according to the usual lot of its congeners, has an equiva
lent, i.e., Bernard, with which it has not the most distant
'tSonnection. Bryney is its contraction, sometimes Barney.
VOL. II. B

50 ANCIENT KELTIC NAMES.
Brien was always a favourite in Brittany, and is very
common as a surname with the peasantry there. The
Bretons, who joined in the Norman conquest, imported it to
England. Two landholders, so caUed, are recorded in Domes
day Book ; and during the first century of Norman rule it
was far more common than at present, when it is considered as
almost exclusively Irish. Some of our older etymologists have
been beguiled into deriving it from the French hruyant, noisy.
The feminine Brennone is given in German dictionaries,
but it, as well as Brennus, are there derived from old Ger
man, and explained as protection, which is clearly a mistake.
Bri occurs in other words and names. In old Welsh, the
primrose is hriallw, from hri and gallu, power, no doubt
from the magic force ascribed to them, since together, with
the well-known hri wi march, or vervain, they were ingre
dients in the magic cauldron of the Druids.
Brieuc was a Breton saint; Breasal was once common in
Ireland, and survives in a few families, but is generally
turned into Basil, and sometimes to Brazil, in which shape
the Manxmen frequently bore it.
It may be worth mentioning here, that Brazil itself was
probably called from Hy Brasail, the Isle of the Blessed, the
paradise of the heathen Irish, and their fairyland after their
conversion, always supposed to lie far away on the Western
ocean, and thus expressing the Irish notion of the Fortunate
Isles, or the Land of Atlantis. This accounts for the Brazil
so perplexingly mentioned in a Papal Bull, long before the
discovery of the Continent of America.
Brigh, or strength, is the most satisfactory explanation of
Brighid, the daughter of the fire god, and the Erse god
dess of wisdom and song, skill and poetry. ,
' Bride was their Queen of Song, and unto her
They prayed with fire-touched lips ! '
Cormac, king and bishop of Cashel, explains the word as

BRI. 5 1
a ' fiery dart ;' but this looks like one of the many late and
untrustworthy interpretations of Keltic names.
Brighid was always a favourite female name in Ireland,
and has become one of the very few Keltic ones of European
popularity. This was owing to a maiden who was brought
up by a bard, and afterwards became a pupil of St. Patrick ;
and from a solitary recluse at Kildare, rose to be the head
of five hundred nuns, and was consulted by the synod of
bishops. She died in 510, and after her death, a copy of
the Gospels was found in her cell, too beautiful to have been
¦written by mortal hand, ' with mystical pictures in the
margent, whose colours and workmanship were, at first blush,
dark and unpleasant, but in the view marvellously lively and
artificiall.' It was long kept at Kildare, and a little hand-bell, such
as was much used by the Irish missionaries, and which had
belonged to her, and was, therefore, called Clogg Brietta,
or Bridget's Bell, was exhibited to the devout, in both Eng
land and Ireland, until it was suppressed by a prohibition from
Henry V., perhaps, because it tended to keep up a national
spirit. She was one of the patron saints of Ireland, and was re
garded with such devotion, both there and in Scotland, that
children were baptized as her servants, Maol Brighd, GioUa-
brid ; and to the present day, hers is the favourite name
in Ireland.
St. Bride's churches are common, both in England and
Scotland, and the village of Llanaffraid, in Wales, records
her in her Welsh form of Ffraid. Bridewell was once the
palace of St. Bride, and after its conversion into a prison,
spread its sinister name to other like buildings. The Por
tuguese believe themselves to possess the head of St. Bridget
at Lisbon, and have accordingly more than one Dona Brites
among their historical ladies.
Sweden has also a St. Bridget, or rather Brigitta; but
E 2

52 ANCIENT KELTIC NAMES.
her name is in her own tongue Bergljot, shortened to
Bergiit, and then confounded with the Irish Bridget. It
unfortunately means mountain fright, or guardian defect,
though German antiquaries have twisted both Bridgets into
Beraht Gifu, bright gift. Be that as it may, the Swedish
Brigitta was a lady of very high birth, who, in her widow
hood, founded an order of Brigittin nuns, somewhere about
1363, made a pilgrimage to Rome, and was greatly revered
for her sanctity. She named the very large class of Nor
wegian, German, and Swedish Bridgets, who are almost as
numerous as the Irish.
There is a favourite Erse ditty, caUed Bright dinn Ban
mo star, meaning Bridget, my white treasure ; and another
Bridget is famous for having been recognized by her bUnd
lover, by the touch of her hand, after nearly twenty years'
absence.*

Enghsh.
Bridget
Bride

Irish.
BrighidBiddy

Scotch.
Bride

French.
Brigitta

Italian.
Brigida
Brigita

Portuguese.
Brites

Swedish.
BrigittaBritaBeggaBergliot
Bergiot

German.
Brigitta

Esth.
Pirrit

Lusatian.
Brischia
Brischa

Lettish.
Britte
BirtePirre

Lith.
Berge Berzske

Lapp.
PirketPikkaPikke

* Hayes, Irish Poetry; Campion, Ireland; Lady C. Guest; Mahino
gion; Scott and Liddell; Yillemaxqufi ; Butler; O'Donovan; Dasent,
Burht Nial; Jones, Welsh Legends; Bees, Welsh Saints; Campbell^
Highland Stories; Hanmer, Irelamd; WilUam, Ecclesiastic Antiquities';
Professor Munch, Om, Betydningen af vore Nationale N'avne.

FEAK, GWR, VIR, ^^
Section IV. — Fear, Gwr, Vir.
The free days of the Kelt were fast ending. He fell before
man discipline, though not without a worthy struggle.
In Cisalpine Gaul, Marcellus and Scipio themselves found
itomartus, or Viridomarus, king of the Boii, so worthy an
tagonist that Marcellus, having slain him in single fight,
iicated his spoZm of)ima in the temple of Jupiter Feretrius.
Spain, a Lusitanian hunter or shepherd, named Viriathus,
rried on a guerilla warfare with the Roman legions for four-
jn years. In Gaul, Csesar mentions Virdumarus among
3 allies the .^duans, and says that their chief magistrate
LS termed vergohretus, and among his enemies, the UnelU
d Arverni, he records Viridovix, Vergosillanus, and Ver-
igetorix. The last chieftain was one of the most gallant men who
:uggled in vain against the eagles. Even by Caesar's o'wn
count, his defence of the mountains of Auvergne was con-
.cted with infinite skill and courage ; and when at last he
uld no longer hold out his fortified camp of Alesia, the
mains of which are still in existence, he freely offered him-
[f to be deUvered up to the Romans, as an atonement for
3 countrymen, was exhibited as a captive in Caesar's tri-
aph, and met -with the usual fate of the prisoners of that
Igenerous nation. It is strange that whUe we English
3at the Silurian Caradoc as a subject of national pride, the
:ench, though still Gauls in blood, have well nigh forgotten
cherish the fame of the opponent of the great Julius.
However, our concern is chiefly with his name. In fact,
ese Virs of Caesar might have been placed in our preceding
vision, for they are from the same root, hri, or force, and stUl
ore resemble the Sanscrit virja, as well as the Latin virtus,
id vir. Exactly answering to vir, though coming in an
dependent stream from the same source, the Gadhaelic man

54 ANCIENT KELTIC NAMES.
is fear, plural fir ; the Cymric is gwr, gen. gyr, plural wyr.
Again, valour or virtue is in Welsh gwyrth, and gwr is the
adjective for excelling.
Thus there can be no reasonable doubt, that the ver or vir
of the Latin version of these Keltic heroes was a rendering
of the fear of the Gael, or of the gwr of the Cymry, both
not infrequent commencements ; and the double name of the
hero of Cisalpine Gaul, Viridomarus, or Britomartus, brings
us back to the original root. He might be explained as Fear-
dhu-mor, great black man, and thus would not be far from
the existing Irish name, Ferdoragh, or Fardorougha, mean
ing dark-visaged man, and now generally murdered by being
made Frederick, or Ferdinand; or it may be that Brito
martus referred to his great strength. Any way it was
probably the Keltic sound of the name that made Spenser
take it from the Cretan goddess for his Britomart. Nay,
could the Cretan goddess of skill have been a Keltic legacy
of Brighid?
Vergobretus, the magistrate of the iEdui, is explained
either as Fear-co-hreith, man who judges, or War-cy-fraith,
man placed over the laws ; or, taking gwr as excelling, and
hrawd, as justice, he would be excelling in justice.
Viriathus must be referred to fear, man, and, perhaps,
to aodh, fire.
Vercingetorix himself may be translated into Fear-cuin-
cedo-righ, man who is chief of a hundred heads ; and his
cousin, Vergosillanus, is the man either of the banner or the
spear, according as sillanus is referred to saighean, a banner,
or to saelan, a spear.
Here, then, are the tokens of kindred between the Gauls
of the continent and the Gael of our islands, for Fear the
frequent commencement in both Ireland and Scotland, is as
suredly the word that Caesar rendered by Vir, more correctly
both in sense and sound than he knew.
Fearghus, man of virtue or of action, from gus, a deed

FEAR, GWR, VIR. 55
according to Dr. O'Donovan, is the rendering of one of the
most national of Gadhaelic names, though Macpherson makes
it Fearguth, man of the word. Chalmers thinks the us a
mere addition to fearg, a champion ; and Mr. Campbell to
fearg, wrath.
Bold genealogists place Fearghus at the head of the line of
Scottish kings, and make him contemporary with Alexander
the Great. Another Fergus was son of Finn, and considered
as even a greater bard than his nephew, Oisean. Poems said
to be by him are still extant, in one of which he describes
his rescue of his brother, Oisean, who had been beguiled into
a fairy cave, and there imprisoned, till he discovered himself
to his brother by cutting splinters from his spear, and letting
them float down the stream that flowed out of the place of
his captivity. Fergus was the mildest of all the Fenians :
' Mild Fergus then, his errand done.
Returned with wonted grace,
His mind, like the unchanging sun.
Still beaming in his face.'
Fergus is thus apostrophized in Macpherson : ' Fergus,
first in our joy at the feast, son of Rossa, arm of death,
cometh like a roe from Malmor, like a hart from the echoing
hills.' It is possible that Ferragus, the giant of Karling
romance, may be another version of Fergus.
Fearghus Mac Roigh is reckoned as king of Ulster in the
first century ; and there was a huge Irish clan Fhiarghus,
but it was divided into lesser sliochts or septs, which went
by their own patronymics, so that there are no surnames thus
formed except the Scottish Fergusson, frequent as still is the
baptismal Feargus or Farghy.
Fearghus, the son of Ere, a Dalriad prince, was, in 493,
blessed by St. Patrick, and led the great migration of Scots
to Albin, together with his brothers Loam and Aonnghus, who
each named their own district, whUe he reigned over the

S6 ANCIENT KELTIC NAMES.
whole region of the Scots, — that around Argyle ; whither he,
had transported the stone of dominion, that sooner or later-
brought conquest to the race v,'ho possessed it.
Fearghal, or man of strength, long existed in Ireland, and ,
has resulted in the sumames O'Ferroll and Ferral.
Fearachur is another Scottish form, which some translate
a champion, from fearachas, manhood, and others a hunter.
Ferquard is given as prince of the Scots in Ireland, at some
incalculable time ; and Fearchur or Ferchar was the king of
the Scots just after St. Columbus' death. He is latinized,
as Ferquard ; and this was the name of an Earl of Rosg in
123 1 ; and as Farquhar has continued in favour in the High-.
lands, and has thrown out Farquharson as a sumame.
Gwr, or Wr, is the Cymric form of the same word, andj
the parallel to Fergus among the Picts was Wrguist, or Ur-
guist, a prince who lived about 800, and whose daughter was
called after him, married the Scottish Eacha or Achaius, and
thus led to the union of the two races under her descendant,
Kenneth Mac Alpin. Some call her Fergusiana, but this is
probably from the Scottish pronunciation of her first syllable,
the whole being afterwards latinized.
The Welsh appearance of the prefix Gwr is far less creditr
able. It is in the person of an extremely fabulous monarch,.
of whom, whether in history, romance, or the compound of
both that passes for the former, nothing icreditable has ev^r
been said.
One would, think he wished to escape, for he owns a perfect
cloud of aliases. Vortigern is the title by which he has,
descended to us, through Latinizers ; but a Gallic bishop,
his contemporary, caUs him Gortigernus ; the Welsh haye.
him as Gworthigern, Gortheym, and Gwrtheirn ; the Anglo-
Saxons know him as Wyrtgeorn ; the Irish as Foirtotiern. On
the whole, there cannot be much doubt that a person there,.
was by name Gwrtigearn, i. e., excelling king ; that he was
native prince of the Silures, at the time when the rebeUion,

FEAR, GWR, VIR. 57
of Maximus had involved the Roman empire in confusion,
and left Britain without any legions to defend it against
the robber nations round ; that he made some attempt at a
partial revival of national spirit ; but, failing this, entered
into a treaty with the Anglo-Saxon invaders, and was thought'
to have betrayed the cause of his country.
What these doings were is another inatter. We all know,
the romantic history of Vortigern's letter, to Henghist and.
Horsa ; of his visit to the Saxon camp ; of Rowena, her
cup, and her greeting was hael ; of the Isle of Thanet
marked out by strips of cow hide ; and of the treachery
of- the Saxons at Stonehenge. There is nothing morally
impossible in the story as it was dished up for modern
history, and it used to satisfy our ancestors before they had
found out that a small king on the Welsh border could hardly
have dealt with Thanet, and, moreover, that the Teutonic
immigration had been going on for many years past on the
eastern coast.
As to the cow hide and the massacre, they are said to
be old Thuringian traditions ; and the Welsh seem to have
either invented or preserved the story of the fascinations of
Rowena. At any rate, they named her ; for, alas for Saxon
Rowena, there is nothing Teutonic in the word, and the
Kymric meaning Rhonwen, white skirt, betrays its origin.
Rhonwen, or Bradwen, is the name by which she is called in
the Gododin, a poem ascribed to the bard Aneurin, and,
perhaps, containing some germs of truth, though its con
nection with the Stonehenge massacre is hotly disputed. One
of the Triads, too, speaks of the three treacherous meetings ;
the betrayal to the Romans by Avarddwy ; the plot of the
long knives through Gwrtheyrn Gwrthenan ; and the treason
of Medrawd against Arthur. Another Triad makes the
coming of Hors, Henghis, and Rhonnwen one of the three
fatal counsels.
Romance, however, adopted Vortigern into her own hands.

58 ANCIENT KELTIC NAMES.
There is some reason for thinking that he may have been a
sort of Julian the Apostate towards Druidism, and that he
thus acquired his fame as the first, though unwilling, patron
of the magician Merlin, at whose command the blocks of
Stonehenge were transported to Ireland. Geoffrey of Mon
mouth breaks away in his reign from all semblance of fact,
and bursts out in dragons, portents, and prophecies, aU which
later romance amplified. And finally, Vortigern is made to
murder Uthyr Pendragon, and be burnt to death in a tower
by Aurelius Ambrosius.*
* Ossianic Society ; O'Donovan, Irish Names ; Pearson, Early and
Middle Ages of England ; Charlotte Brooke, Reliques of Irish Poetry ;
Csesar, de Bello Gallico ; Smith, Dictionary ; Zeuss, Deutchen und die
Nachber Staume ; Diefenbach, Geltica; Andersen, Royal Genealogies;
Chalmers, Caledonia ; Highland Society's Dictionary ; Dr. Owen Pugh,
Dictionary.

S9
CHAPTER HI.
aADHAELIC NAMES.
Section I. — Scottish Colonists.
B strange and wild beliefs that prevailed regarding the
jinal settlement of ancient Ireland, have left strong traces
the names still bome by the population, both there and in
)tland.SV^e need not go back quite to Adam's great grandson, and
: wicked race that sprang from him, and all perished, ex-
t one giant, who took up his abode in a cave, and there
sd till he was baptized by St. Patrick ; nor to Fintan,
3 was changed into a salmon during the time that the
d prevailed, and afterwards gave rise to the proverb, ' I
Id tell you many things were I as old as Fintan.' A
d, so called, was said to have existed, and a poem is
ributed to him, which gives a very queer account of the
t settlers, though he does not there claim quite such a
rtling experience.
?omorians. Fir Bolg, men dwelling in caves, or, more pro-
ly, ravaging men, and Tuath De Danan, i. e., chiefs,
3sts, and bards, are all conducted in tum to Erin by
iition and poetry ; but none equal in fame or interest
tribe called Milesian, from whom the purest Irish blood is
posed to descend.
Che favourite legends start this famous colony from the
5t, where Phenius, the head of the family, was supposed
have taught the Phoenicians letters, and left them his
ae ! His son, Niul, not to be behindhand with him,
led the NUe, having been sent on an embassy to Egypt ,

6o GADHAELIC NAMES.
where he married Pharaoh's daughter ! Whether her name
was Scota or not, authorities are not agreed ; but all declare
that it was her father who was drowned in the Red Sea, and
that a subsequent dispute with the Egyptians caused either
Niul or his son to migrate to Spain. /
It is this Niul, or Neill, to whom the whole legion of
Neals are to be referred. The name, from niadh, means a
champion, and was probably carried backwards to the ancestor
from the various NeiUs, who thought they might as weU
claim the Nile as their namesake.
NeiU of the Nine Hostages, was one of the greatest of
the ancient heroes; he was the last but one of the pagan
kings of Ireland, and himself most unconsciously imported^
the seed of the Gospel, for it was his men who, in a piratical
descent on the Roman colony of Valentia, carried off the
boy who, in after days, was to become the Apostle of Ireland,
— one of the many slaves by whom the Gospel has been
extended. NeiU of the Nine Hostages was killed by an as
sassin about the year 405 ; but his family, the Hy Neill, or
children of Neill, became one of the leading septs in the
North of Ireland. Of them the story is told, that on going
to settle on the Ulster coast, one of them resolved to take
seisin of the new country by touching the shore before any
one else, and finding his boat outstripped, he tore out his
dagger, cut off his right hand at the wrist, and threw it on
the beach, so that his fingers were the first laid on the
domain. Such, at least, is the tale that accounts for the
O'Neill war-cry, Lamhdearg Ahoo (Red hand set on), and for
the red hand on the shield of the O'Neills and of Ulster.
^he red handed shield was afterwards given by James I. to the
knights baronets, whom he created as ' undertakers ' of the
new colony of English, which he wished to found in Ulster ;
and thus it is that the inescutcheon argent, a hand dexter
gules, couped, at the wrist, has become the badge of a
baronet.

SCOTTISH COLONISTS. 6 1
The O'Neills of Ulster claim another great ancestor, Niall
Glundubh, monarch of Ireland, who was killed in a tre-
¦mtendous battle -with the Danes in 919, after which, the
sovereignty of Ireland passed to Brien Boromhe of Ulster,
though the O'Neills continued to be kings of Ulster ; and
after the royalty had passed away, ' the O'Neill,' or head of
' the family, was inaugurated in a stone chair in the open
field at a place called TuUagh-og, or the hUl of the young
men, now called TuUaghogue, in the county of Tyrone. The
O'Neills were for many years one of the five famiUes of
'mere Irish ' blood admitted to English privileges ; but, after
'the great rebeUion of Hugh O'Neill, in Queen Elizabeth's
time, the chair of stone was broken down by the lord deputy.
Neale, as a Christian name, and the surnames, Neale, NeiU,
and both with the 0 and the Mac, swarm in Ireland. The
O'Neill, indeed, were considered by all the North of Erin to
be the greatest of all their clans ; and a contention took
place among the bards of the island, in the reign of James
I., in which it was asserted that the comparative value of
the Hy Neill to all other races, was as a hundred pounds
to one.
Scotland likewise made much use of Niel, as it is there
' sjpelt, but it is far more surprising to meet with it among the
Scandinavian races. It is evidence that there must have been
some considerable intercourse between Ireland and the North
before the days of the piracies of the historical ages. The
old Irish legends constantly speak of Norway as Lochlinn, or
the land of lakes, and show visits taking place between the
' inhabitants ; and there are names to be found in both coun-
' tries borrowed from one another too far back to be ascribed
to the Norse invasions.
In the Landnama Boh, the Domesday Book of Iceland,
no less thin three Njals appear, and the Njalssaga, the
history of. the noble spirited yet peaceful Icelander, who,
'even in the tenth century, had never shed blood, and pre-

62 GADHAELIC NAMES.
ferred rather to die with his sons than to Uve to avenge
them, is one of the finest histories that have come down to
us from any age. Njal's likeness to the contraction Nils,
has caused many to suppose that it also is a form of Nicolas,
but the existence of Nials both in Ireland and Iceland before
the conversion of either country contradicts this. Nielsen
is a frequent Northern patronymic, and our reno-wned name
of Nelson probably came to us through Danish settlers.
The Northmen apparently took their Njal to France with
them, and it there was called Nesle or Nele. Chroniclers
latinized it as Nigellus, supposing it to mean black ; and in
Domesday Book twelve landholders called Nigellus appear,
both before and after the Conquest, so that they may be
supposed to be Danish Niels, left undisturbed in their
possessions. Nigel de Albini, brother to him who married the widow of
Henry I., must have been a genuine Norman Niel; and
through the numerous Anglo-Norman nobles who were'
adopted into the Scottish peerage, this form was adopted in
addition to the old Gaelic Nial, or as a translation of it, for
the young brother of Robert Bruce is called by both names,
Nigel and Nial. At present this latinized Normanism of
the old Keltic word is considered as peculiarly Scottish,
chiefly because it has been kept up in that form in old
Scotch famiUes, and latterly on account of the interest given
by Scott to poor ' Nigel Bruce' and Nigel Olifant.
The original NeiU of the Nile appears to have had a son,
who, according to the Scot, Hector Boetius, was caUed
Gathelus ; married Scota, went to Spain, caused his foUowers
to be called Scots, and, after another tradition, invented
Gadhaelic, that is, as the same authority delares, Ghvidhealace,
a compound of many tongues. Cuinfada, however, makes
Scota come out of Scythia and marry MUidh, the son of
Neill ; and Royne the Poetical, who considers Scota to be
mother and not wife of this hero, says that his original

SCOTTISH COLONISTS. 63
name was Ilith, and that in Spain he got the noble name of
Milidh, whence his descendants were called Mie MUidh, the
sons of the warrior, now termed Milesians.
His eight sons came to Ireland with their followers, and
after a great deal of desperate fighting, established them
selves as the leading race. It is in favour of this unvary
ing belief that the Scots came out of Spain, that the Irish
who boast Milesian blood, are for the most part dark-haired,
and with the fine figure and carriage of the Spaniards,
though with the peculiar deep, dark blue eye that is a re
markable characteristic of Irish beauty.
Heremon, one of the sons, had namesakes in the Mac
Sweeny family, but they turned into Irwin, and show us the
source of Irwin and Irving in Scotland.
A king caUed Cairbre Riada, of the Milesian race, settled
in Ulster, and from him came the name now called Carbury,
meaning a strong man.
His people were called Dalriada, or the race of Riada, and
it was they who, from the third to the fifth centuries, were
gradually migrating to Albin, until they had transferred the
term of Scotia from one isle to the other ; Fergus, Loarn, and
Aonghus are said to have been the three brothers who led
the migration in 503, and Loarn and Angus gave their
names to two districts in Scotland. They brought with them
to Argyle the stone of empire, said to be that of Jacob's
piUar. Aonguss was indeed a popular name both in Scotland and
Ireland : it comes from the numeral aon, one ; also conveying
the sense of pre-eminence, means excellent strength, and is
generally pronounced Haoonish in Gaelic. Irish genealogists
make Aongus Turimheach king two hundred and thirty-three
years before the Christian era ; and we are afterwards told of
another Aongas, king of Munster, also called Enghus and
Oengus, who had a family of forty-eight sons and daughters,
of whom he gave half to St. Patrick to be monks and nuns.

' 64 GADHAELIC NAMES.
In Hanmer's Chronicle, King Arthur visits Ireland and con
verses with King Anguish, which painful title is precisely
that which Henry VHL, in his correspondence, gives his
brother-in-law, the Earl of Angus.
Angus is specially at home in Scotland, but there it has
been called Hungus and Ungus, likewise Enos, and is now
generally translated into .^neas, the christened name of many
a Scot who ought to be Angus ; and the Irish are too apt to
do the same.'* Section II. — The Feen.
A remarkable cycle of traditions are cherished by the
GadhaeUc race regarding a band of heroes, whom they call
the Feen, or Fenians, and whose exploits are to them what
those of Jason, or Theseus, were to the Greeks.
Scotland and Ireland claim them both alike, and point to
places named after them and their deeds ; but the balance of
probability is in favour of Ireland, as their chief scene of
-adventure, although they may also have spent some time' ia
Morven, as their legends call the West of Scotland, since the
Gadhaelic race was resident in both countries, and kept to-
' gether in comparative union by its hatred to the Cymry in both.
-This supposition is confirmed by the semblance of a date that
-is supplied by the conversion of the last survivor of the band
by St. Patrick, which would place their era in the end- of the
* fourth century, just when the migrations of the Scots were
-taking place, supposing these to have lasted from about A.D.
250 to 500. After aU, the Feen may be only one of the
ancient imaginations of the Gael, and either never have had
'-¦any corporeal existence at aU, or- else ancient genuine myths
' may have fixed theinselves upon' some forefathers, who under
* Haniner, Chronicle; Ossianic Society's Transactions; Taylor, Hist.
of Ireland ; Dasent, Nialsaga ; Highland Society's Dictionary • ' Ellis'
- Domesday Bd'oh. * ' '

THE FEEN. 65
their influence have been magnified into heroic — not to say —
gigantic proportions.
These tales, songs, and poems lived among the story-telling
Highlanders and Irish, unnoticed, until the eighteenth cen
tury, when the Scottish author, James Macpherson, per
ceived that they contained a mine of wild beauty and heroic
deeds, and were, in fact, the genuine national poetry of his
race. In that age, literary honesty had not been invented,
the curiosity and value of so called barbarisms were not
perceived, and translators deemed it their duty, not so much
to give a representation of their author, as to polish up to
the taste of the public. Traduttori, traditori, was a proverb
especially true at that time, though the treason chiefly con
sisted in disguising every hero, from the Euphrates to the
Boyne, in a sort of Franco-classical court suit.
Macpherson used this license to the utmost. He put his
fragments together into the books of an epic, and wrought
up the measured metre of the Gaelic into a sort of stilted
English prose, rhythmical, and not without a certain grandeur
of cadence and expression ; moreover, he left out a good deal
of savagery, triviality, repetition, and absurdity; and pro
duced an exceedingly striking book, by expanding the reaUy
grand imagery of the ancient bards, and, perhaps, uncon
sciously imparting Christian heroism to his characters. The
poet Gray admired, the literary ladies were enraptured at
their introduction to heroes more magnanimous and pure in
sentiment than those of Homer ; and even the great Na
poleon himself preferred these poems to any others.
There had been some unscrupulousness from the first.
Either from nationality or ignorance, Macpherson had en
tirely ignored the connection with St. Patrick, and made his
heroes altogether Scottish, though passing into Ireland;
and when a swarm of critics arose, some questioning, some
mocking, he did not make a candid statement of what were
his materials, but left the world to divide itself between the
VOL. II. • JP

66 GADHAELIC NAMES.
beliefs that the whole was Ossian's, or the whole Macpher-
son's. Had he been truthful, he would have gained high
credit, both as poet and antiquary; but taking the part he
has done, he has brought on himself the reputation of an
impostor, his literary talents have been forgotten, and the
poems themselves are far less regarded than they deserve,
except by those of Keltic birth, whose patient investigations,
honestly set forth, have done much to establish a correct
opinion on the matter.
Be the truth what it may, the names of the Feen were
in constant use long before Macpherson was heard of
In Ireland and West Scotland, the early poems represent
Finn and his friends performing high feats of prowess.
' Great were their deeds, their passions, and their sports !
With clay and stone.
They piled on strath and shore their mystic forts,
Not yet o'erthrown :
On cairn-crown'd hills they held their council court,
¦While youths alone
With giant dogs explored the elk resorts,
And brought them down.'
Their dogs, indeed. Bran the strong, and Luath the swift,
were almost as famous as themselves, and almost every strange
work of nature, or unexplained antiquity, is attributed to
them. Finally, the Feen either invaded Ireland, or became ob
noxious to the natives, and were set upon at the battle of
Garristown, or Gabhra, pronounced Gavra, loud shouting;
Gavra named a king of the Scots at the time of King Ida's
invasion. The last survivor of them was the poet Oisean,
or Ossian, as he is now called, who was said to have lived tUl
the coming of St. Patrick, and to have been taken into his
monastery, where old Irish poems show him in most piteous
case, complaining much of fasts, and of the ' drowsy sound
of a beU.'

FINN. 67
' Alas ! though Patrick from Eome saith
That the Fenians surely live not,
I deem not that his speech is true ;
And my delight is not in the meaning of his Psalms.
' Alas ! whither go the men that were mighty.
That they come not to succour me ;
0 Oscar, of the sharp blades of victory,
Come, and release thy father from bondage.'
Then St. Patrick comes and argues with him after the
fashion of the poem translated by Captain Mclntyre to the
antiquary. Ossian must have been a terribly unpromising
convert ; but he finally makes a really touching end, dying
before St. Patrick's eyes, under his reproof for still in his
last' prayer entreating that his dear Fenians may be with
him at the last day ; in spirit like the Saxon who refused
to receive baptism from Charlemagne's priests, because he
preferred to share the perdition to which they rashly con
signed his forefathers, forgetting that the heathen ' to their
own master stand or fall.'
No wonder that ' Ossian after the Feen ' is in Scotland a
proverb for dreariness.'*

Section HI. — Finn.
Leader of the Feen, and bestowing on them their very
title, stands the great Fionn or Finn, the grand centre of
ancient Gadhaelic, giant lore ; caUed in Ireland, Finn Erin,
or Finn Mac Coyle ; and in Scotland, Fion na Gael, or Finn
Mac Cumhall, or Fionna Ghal, whence tradition has handed
him down to us moderns as Fingal, a name he bears in
Barbour's Bruce.
There is no doubt of the meaning of finn. It is the same
* Ga.nifyie'i,Talesof the Highlands; Ency cl. Brit. ; Macpherson, Os»ia?i;
Papers of the Ossianic Society; Hayes, Ballads of Irelamd.
¥2

68 GADHAELIC NAMES.
with the Cymric Gwynn, or Wynn, and like them signifies
white, fair or clear, as in the name of Lough Fyne, and in
the proper name of the Phoenix Park at Dublin, which was
once Fion Uisge, or clear water, the latter being the same
word that entitled the many Usks and Esks, and the Exe,
to say nothing of whiskey and usquebaugh. In the days of
scholarship, sound guided spelling into Phoenix ; and the
effigy of the self-consuming bird has entirely fixed the
Dublin mind into the notion that the appellation is bestowed
on the ' Phoenix ' in honour of its exclusive perfection.
One very remarkable feature in the history of Finn is
that the same meaning of white attaches to it in ancient or
poetical Scandinavian, though not in the other Teutonic
languages ; nor is the name found iu any Teuton nation
but the northern ones, except that in the Saxon chronicle
Finn is Odin's fourth forefather, whereas he is his grand
father in the Edda.
The island of Fuhnen is said to be called from Finn, as a
form of Odin. Mr. Kemble thinks that the term may be
rel&tei to fan, fin, fun, funs (Goth.), fuss (Norse), all giving
the idea of motion, — and pre-supposing a last verb, finnan,
fan, fimnon, funnen, — and thus it would mean the moving
acting deity. It is impossible to say whether this be so or
not, if Woden's title of Finn be borrowed from the Keltic
white, or if again the Keltic hero Finn, avowedly bom in
Denmark, brought home a Danish title conveying the idea
of deity.
In the great AngUan poem of Beowolf Finn is king of
the Frisians, but is conquered by the Danes, strangely
enough, under Henghist ; another poem, caUed the Battle
of Finnsburh, records the strife— Finn lost half his king
dom, but the next year killed Henghist; then being set upon
by the other Danes, lost his crown and life. It is lUsely
that old as the poem is, it has been much altered and that
it really existed before the Anglian colonization of England ;

FINN. 69
indeed, there is reason to suppose that it was in memory of
the burgh of this Frisian Finn, that Finsbury manor in the
city of London acquired its name.
It is evident that Finn was known in the North, and as
something apart either from the aboriginal Finns or Lapps,
or from the Norse inhabitants of the Finmark.
Finn is a giant in Norway, compeUed by the good Bishop
Laurence to erect the church at Lund, after which he was
turned into stone by way of payment, wife, chUd, and all,
as may stiU be seen. Again in Denmark as a trolld, he did
the same service for Esbern Snare, building Kallundborg
church, on condition that if his name was not guessed by
the time the church was finished, his employer should become
his property. As in the German tale of Rumpel Stitzchen,
the danger was averted by the victim, just in time, over
hearing this amiable luUaby in the hole of a rock —
' Be still, my babe, be still,
To-morrow comes thy father Finn,
Esbern's heart and eyes for a toy thou shalt -win.'
Next moming Esbern saluted Finn by his name as he
was bringing the last half pillar, whereupon he flew away,
pillar and all, wherefore the church only stands to this day
on three pillars and a half!
Finn alone, and in combination, is rather a favourite in
the North. The Laudnama-hok, which gives the Icelandic
genealogies from the settlements there in the ninth century
down to the middle of the thirteenth, has five men named
Finnr, two, Finni, and three ladies called Finna; and in the
three countries in the mainland it has been equally common,
even to comparatively recent times, when Finn Magnusson
was one of the chief authorities for Scandinavian antiquities.
Among the compounds of the name the Swedes have Flnn-
gaard, which their pronunciation contrives to make sound
like Fingal, with what is called the ' thick I;' and in modem

70 GADHAELIC NAMES.
times is so spelt in allusion to Macpherson's hero, though it
would properly mean ' white house,' or 'white defence,' unless
indeed we refer it to the mythical Finn, and make it Finn's
defence. The name Finnketyl, or Finnkjell, with the femi
nine Finnkatla, is better explained as the cauldron or vessel
of some semi-divine Finn, than as only a white kettle, its
more obvious meaning. Kettles are rather common in the
North, but almost always belong to some divinity of high
rank, which is in favour of the dignity of Finn. He has
his weapons, as Finnbogi, or Finbo, a white bow ; Finngeir,
a white spear ; his sport, as Finleik, or white reward ;
his forest, as Finn-vidr, or white wood ; as well as his
guardianship, as Finn-vardr, or white ward, all represented
in northern nomenclature, in a manner analogous to those of
the national deities.
All this makes it highly probable that Finn was an idea
borrowed from the Gael by the Norsemen, especially as the
hammer of Thor is sometimes to be heard in Scottish legend
resounding in the hand of Finn. Another curious feature
in the history is, that Scottish tradition makes Fionn the son
of a Scottish king who came from Ireland, and of a Scandi
navian princess, and says that he and his men drove the Danes
from Scotland. The Book of Sowth, which is extremely
inimical to him, makes him very nearly a Dane himself,
being sixth in descent from a certain Realmond, king of
Ulster, who was banished and took up his abode in Denmark.
In the third century, Finn and a large party of foUowers
invaded Ireland, and fought a seven days' battle with the
natives at Fentra in Ulster, after which the Irish hired them
to defend the country against further Danish incursions, and
a long Ust of the names and the places they guarded is
given. After this they grew insolent, and oppressed the
Irish, and whilst Finn was absent at Rome the Milesians
mustered against them, and defeated them totally in the
terrible battle of Garristown. Finn himself was further

FINN. 7 1
said to have made sundry expeditions, among others a
visit to the king of Denmark, who offered him his daughter
in marriage, but finally to have died a beggar in great
misery. AU the traditions agree in this fatal battle of Garristown,
more poetically called Gaura, from Gara or shouting, and it
is the subject of Macpherson's poem of Temora. Fionn's
own fate does not seem clear, but he has floated into a
gigantic being of mist and wonder, receiving the credit of
aU the stupendous works of nature, whose regularity and
design suggests the idea of a magnified human architect.
His is the basaltic cave of Staffa, which, however, is also
caUed the King's Cave, and said to have held Bruce ; but
Finn, as the giant, has undoubted right to the huge pier of
columns, projecting from the coast of Ulster, his stepping-
stone; his boiler is in Perthshire; his habitations in Liosmor
and at Stratheam; and his tomb, Cill Fhinn, pronounced
Killin, is likewise in Perthshire.
Was he really, as the Booh of Howth says, a leader of
Norsemen ? Every name of his followers contradicts this ;
there is not one that is not genuine Kelt, except, perhaps,
that of Osgar. Or is it open to us to imagine that the Kelt
had not entirely melted from the Danish peninsula, and that
it was a last migration from thence that he led ? The difficulty
in this supposition is that the Chersonese was Cimbric, and
that he and his followers bear Gaelic names ; but if he and
his chief friends were really of Erse extraction, and took the
command of a fugitive tribe, this would account for the
names. At any rate it is a curious feature, that though
Fionn evidently resided much in Ireland, he is there re
garded as an enemy, while in Scotland he is a national hero,
and he and his men are favourite ancestors.
Fionnaghal Mac Donald, King of the Isles, was reckoned
as a descendant of the great Fingal, and from him de
scended the Mac Intyres, or sons of the carpenter, so

72 GADHAELIC NAMES.
called from the father of their race (an illegitimate son
of Fionnaghal) stopping a hole in the bottom of the boat
both were sailing in, by thrusting in his thumb and cutting
it off. ' My fine lad, the thumb carpenter,' said the kmg,
and T'saor, a carpenter, has thus furnished the name of
Macintyre. Indeed, the Irish Mc'Intyres have gone back
again to Carpenter. A Fingal was king of Man in 1066;
and Finn long continued to be used in Scotland and Ireland,
until the Scots devised translating it into Albany, as a word
of like meaning, since which time it has disappeared, though
leaving behind it the surnames of Phinn, Mac Phunn, Fin-
lay, &c.
Of Gal, Ghala, or Cumhall, we will speak imder its own
head. There are many other names connected with Finn in
the sense of white, such as Finghin, or the fair offspring,
which became Finian or Fineen ; and as such was the name
of two saints, one a friend of St. Patrick, and a teacher of
St. Columb, but with ideas like those which are said to pre
vail in the Vatican as to copying ; for when Columb had
¦written out the Psalms from a book lent by him, he claimed
the copy on the plea that it was the offspring of his manu
script. Nevertheless, St. Columb took care that St. Finan
should be duly revered in Scotland, where he has various
churches, and one royal namesake, for probably he was the
real original of the Finnan, whose reign is placed B.C. 134.
Another St. Finghin is patron of Ulster, and left his name
to be a favourite in the families of M'Carthy, O'SulUvan,
and O'DriscoU, until Finghin M'Carthy anglicized himself
as Florence, in which he has ever since been imitated by
his countrymen, though the name did not bring him much
good fortune, as his enemies represented that his alias
showed sinister intentions ; and for other more definite mis
deeds, he was thirty-six years imprisoned in the Tower of
London. It was a mistake in Lady Morgan to make Flo-

FINN. 73
rence M'Carthy a woman, for Florence and Fiory in Ireland
are always men. We do find a Florence mentioned as con
temporary with St. Patrick ; but this is doubtless meant as a
translation of Finghin.
The ladies, however, have not been behindhand in spoiling
their derivative from Fionn. Fionn-ghuala, or of the white
shoulders,, was a tough-looking name enough, though no one
need complain of it as Finnala, as it actually is spoken, still
less as Fenella. Early Keltic maidens used it frequently,
and it is found in all manner of shapes in genealogies. In
the clouds at the opening of Scottish history, we find
Fynbella, or Finella, recorded as the cruel Lady of Fetter-
cairn, who, in 994, killed King Kenneth HI. A ruin in
the pro^vince is still called Fenella's Castle, and Denfenell at
Ecclesgreig is said to have been the place where she was
taken, and put to death.
Another Fynbella was Lady of the Meams in 1174;
Finvola is found in the M'Leod pedigree twice in the four
teenth and fifteenth centuries. The Macdonnells called her
Finwald in 1497 ; but they may have obtained this form
from the Scandinavians of the Hebrides, in which case it
would rather mean white power. Finvola and Finola thickly
stud the Irish pedigrees ; and it was perfectly correct in
Scott to make Fenella the name of the little wild dumb
sprite, whom he placed in the Isle of Man as a daughter of
the house of Christian. In almost all its original homes,
however, Fenella has been discarded, having been ousted
by its supposed equivalent, Penelope (a weaver), and only
in a few Irish families is it still retained, and then in the
form of Nuala. In Scotland it has tumed into the well-
known Flora or Florie, the special name of the island and
highland lassie. '
The other feminine forms of Finn have entirely passed
away. They were Finbil and Finscoth, white blossom and

74 GADHAELIC NAMES.
white flower, answering to the Blanche-fleur of romance,
which it is possible was really meant as a translation;
Findelvh, fair countenance ; Finnabhor, of the fair eyeUds ;
Finni, the fair ; and Findath, fair colour. The notable Fin
tan, the salmon, was called from this source. Besides that
worthy, there were three Irish saints so called, one of whom
also had the surname Mwynn, and is thence mentioned m
an old Scottish breviary as St. Mund.
Men in Ireland were also called Fionnan and Fionnagan,
or the fair, and the latter has resulted in the surnames
Finucane and Finnegan.
According to the usual rule of affinities, the Gwen of
Wales ought to come under this head ; but the prefix plays
so important a part in the Round Table cycle of romance,
that we prefer reserving it.*

Section IV. — Cu, Cun, Gal.
We have treated the name of Fionn alone, because that is,
comparatively, plain sailing, while the second syllable of the
name by which we call him is beset with interminable per
plexities. If he was only Fingal, it would be easy enough to translate
him by 'white courage;' but unluckily we know that this
was a Lowland contraction, used indeed in Barbour's Bruce,
in the fourteenth century, but not the original form. He
was Fionn-na-Ghal, Finn MacCoyl, or Finn Mac Cumhall;
or, according to Hector Boece, in 1526, Finn, filius Cceli,
Finn, the son of Heaven; thus making him — as every
* Kemble, Introduction to Beowolf Campbell, Tales of West High
lands ; Hanmer, Chronicle ; Grimm, Mythologie ; Munch, Navnret;
Ossianic Society ; O'Donovan; Irish Society ; Marryat, Sweden ; Laud-
nama-bok ; Anderson, Genealogies ; Butler, Lives of the Saints.

cu, CUN, GAL. 75
mythic worthy from Hercules to Arthur has been made —
an astronomical parable.
In the first place, it may be observed that Cumhall is in
pronunciation nothing but Coul, or Coyl. That murderous
letter h has destroyed the m, and itself into the bargain, and
their only use is to testify to what the etymology of the
word has been. That word appears to be cu, a chief, in com
bination with gal, courage, or else gall, a stranger. Leaving
out the chief, then, we have Finn, son of the stranger, or
Finn, son of courage, or, more properly, Finn, son of Chief
Gall, otherwise Conghal, a very common name in Ireland, and
Cor, Scotland, but always running into Coul when spoken,
according to the suicidal propensities of Gadhaelic.
Here we unite with the other branch of the language in a
most curious manner, for Col, Coel, or Coll, was a highly
mythic personage in Kymric legend, connected with the
original population of Britain.
He is one of the three great swineherds of Britain, in the
Triads, the other two being PwU and Tristram ; also, he is
one of those who conferred benefits upon Britain, and appears
in company with Hu Gadam.
The title of the Swineherd is accounted for in the Welsh
tale of a sow called Henwen, the old lady, who was placed
under his charge, and came swimming straight for Britain,
with Coll holding by her bristles, wherever she swam. There
were predictions that Britain would suffer harm from her
progeny, and Arthur therefore collected his forces to oppose
her landing ; but at Aber Tarrogi she came to the shore, and
at Wheatfield in Gwent she laid three grains of wheat and
three bees, whence com and honey are the great pride of the
district. At Dyved she produced a barleycorn and a pig, to
the subsequent benefit of Dyved beer and bacon. She fa
voured Lleyn with rye, but on Snowdon she bestowed the
wolf and the eagle, and on Mona a kitten.

76 GADHAELIC NAMES.
Without going back, like Mr. Davies, to make the sow
either into the ark, or a Phoenician ship, it is worth observmg
that there are traces in Ireland of some pig myth. There is
a famous poem called The Hunting of the Pig, resulting m
its being slain at Muckamore ; and much, a pig, and tore, a
boar, are constantly found in old names of places, as if the
swine cult had been of a higher kind than that at present
received by the species.
Would not this throw back the period of the mythic Col
sufficiently, to connect him in name at least with the Ootd
who was father to Finn ? In like manner his name might
have come from gall, a stranger.
Not wholly substantial is the next British Coel-ap-Cyllin,
who with Bran the Blessed, and his own son Lleurig, makes
up a triad of promoters of Christianity in Britain.
We are scarcely sure of more than his existence; not
quite that he left his name to Colchester, and far less that he
is the father of the Empress Helena, the mother of Constan
tino ; and he is further relegated to the realms of fable, by
the rhyme that, basely transmuting his fame in the Triads,
sings — ' Old King Coal
Was a merry old soul.
Himself and his fiddlers three.'
The Col thus introduced was however probably the source
of the frequent sumame of Col and Coulson. Col or Gall
was the name of a companion of St. Columbanus, and, hke
him, one of the great missionary saints of Ireland, who
finished the imperfect work of conversion of the Kelts, scat
tered in the borders of France, Germany, and Switzerland.
His name of St. Gall is still attached to the great monaster^
near the Lake of Constance, and that he was indeed the
founder is remarkably confirmed, as we are told, by the pre
servation there of MSS., with illuminations in the pecuHai
style of early Irish art.

cu, CUN, GAL. 77
The prefix cu is, in its primary meaning, a dog, and is thus
declined : cu (nom.) , conn (gen.) , coin (dat.) ; thus showing
its kindred with the Sanscrit gvan, Greek Kvutv (cyon), and
Latin canis, the chien of France, and cane of Italy; hund
and hound elsewhere. Only the land of the magnificent wolf
hound would have made his designation, elsewhere a term of
scorn, into the title of a brave warrior, and thence into that
of a chieftain. And so again it is the Kelts of Britain that
transmuted the mungoose and snake of the Indian legend
into the faithful dog and wild wolf of Bedgelert, the grave of
the hound. Caleb, and an occasional Danish Hund, have
alone elsewhere endured the name of the most faithful of
animals ; but in Gaelic it is a most favourite prefix. By the
author of the Annals of Ulster, it is literally translated canis,
reminding us how the Khans of Tartary were by the medi
aeval imagination confounded with great dogs, and making us
wonder whether, in the Scala family. Cane, so famous in
Dante's time, could have been a rendering of some ancient
Celtic Cu.
Conn, when standing alone, as in the case of Conn of the
Hundred Battles, means wisdom ; but at the beginning of a
word, it is generally either a dog, or a chief.
Several of the most distinguished Fenians have this prefix,
and have handed it on to a great number of successors. Con
ghal would seem to have been the proper name of Finn's
father; and, in Macpherson's poem, a Congal reigns over
Ulster, as many a Congal assuredly did both before and after
his time. There is no resisting telling the story of Congal
Claen, or the Squinting, who, in 637, brought a dangerous
Scottish invasion on his country, and was killed in the battle
of Magh Rath. Invasion, battle, and death, are fact ; the
causes of all are given in an ancient Erse Jiarrative, written
not later than the twelfth century, and recently edited by the
Irish Society.
Domhnall, king of Erin, and foster-father to the king of

78 GADHAELIC NAMES.
Ulster, dreamt that he saw Feargloun, his favourite hound,
collecting the dogs of Erin, Albin, and Britain, who all made
war on him and his men for seven days, until all the dogs
were killed. In much alarm he went to consult an old retired
king, who was living in a hermitage (an Irish one), with ten
women and a hundred clerks to sing mass. This sage ad
vised him to obviate the mischief evidently in store, hy
inviting all the under-kings to a great banquet, and obtaining
hostages from them, meanwhile closely imprisoning the foster-
son, who was evidently intended by the pet dog.
To this part of the advice Domhnall demurred as dis
honourable towards his foster-son ; but he had no objection to
the banquet, and issued his invitations to all his under-kings,
to feast with him at his new palace of Dun-na-gedh, or Fort
of the Geese, and sent out his purveyors to collect every sort
of provision for the occasion, especially goose eggs, perhaps
in compliment to the name of his fort, though it is said that
neither his queen nor himself deemed it melodious.
These collectors unfortunately carried off a vessel full of
goose eggs, intended as the food of a bishop, who was so
holy that he spent the whole day in praying up to his neck
in the Boyne, with his Psalter on the bank, and lived upon
nothing but a goose egg and a half every evening, with three
sprigs of cress. Now it seems that the Irish notion of a
saint was of a strong cursing power, for aU the evUs that
befell Erin were occasioned by the curses of the hungry
bishop !
Domhnall did indeed send for the twelve Apostles of Ire
land, each with a train of a hundred saints, to say grace,
and thus obviate the malediction ; but unfortunately not
untU Congal Claen, who had been sent in to survey the
arrangements, had tasted half a goose egg and thereby
centred the curse upon himself, though the rest of the com
pany were exempt.
In consequence, when by way of dessert, a goose egg on a

cu, CUN, GAL. 79
silver dish was set before every king, Congal's was trans
formed into the egg of a red feathered hen, upon a wooden
dish. At first, Congal took the indignity quietly, but his
servants sung songs till they lashed him into going before
Domhnall with a list of grievances. The first was, that
when an infant, fostered by Domhnall, a bee had stung him
in the eye and caused his squint ; the second, that when on
Domhnall's behalf he had assassinated the previous king of
Erin, the victim had thrown a chessman at him, which put
out the damaged eye ; the third, that he had not due pre
cedence at the feast ; the fourth, the hen's egg. Therewith
he went away in a rage, and Domhnall sent all the saints
out with bells and croziers to recall him. They threatened
if he would not come back to curse him, but Congal declared
that if they did he would slaughter them all. Whereupon
they waited till he was out of hearing and cursed him after
wards, and into the bargain a certain Suibhne who had taken
away by force a many-coloured garment committed to the
charge of one of them. As they observed in their song,
each saint had the influence of a hundred men ! It is
satisfactory that though the tale mentions St. Columb Kill
and other real saints, they all had been dead long before
the battle of Magh Rath. Congal went off to consult his
uncle, a bed-ridden old warrior, who so strongly felt the
insult of the hen's egg as to declare that he would kill his
nephew himself unless it were duly avenged, and advised
him to go and ask aid from the kings of Albin and Britain.
In spite of the profusion of saints, Eochoid Buidhe, king
of Albin, kept a Druid named Dubhdiadh, who introduced
Congal at his court and gave him advice. The king would
not go himself to fight with Domhnall because they had
sworn friendship together, but- he allowed his four sons to go,
after a contention which was to be Congal's host.
By the Druid's advice this was to be determined by the
choice of the king, to which he should lend his magic caul-

8o GADHAELIC NAMES.
dron to entertain Congal, for this cauldron not only cooked',
and provided food for any number of guests, but adapted the
fare to their rank, so that there was no difficulty in ordering
dinner. Each of the son's wives used her eloquence to
obtain this loan, one pleading that her husband deserved it
for his bounty, another for his absence of jealousy, another
for his generosity, the fourth for his hospitality. To none
of them however was the cauldron granted, and the voice of
prophecy was decidedly averse to the expedition. However,
Congal went on to Britain, and there found the king and
queen in perplexity as to the identity of their only son, who
had gone out in quest of adventures twenty years before,
and behold, three heroes had appeared, each claiming to be
their son. The true son had also returned and 'proved him
self to his mother by a ring and a mark on the shoulder.,
He showed them a long bridge, one by one, and asked them
what they wished to see it fuU of: ' Gold and silver,' said the
first ; ' Thou art the son of a base mechanic,' said the king's
son, and put him to death. The next wished it were fuU of
flocks and herds, so he was decided to be a farmer's son. The
third desired to see it full of fighting men, each a match for
himself, and he was indeed a king's son, but a banished
prince of LochUnn, not the prince of Britain. Lastly, the
real son's truth was further tested by being made to Uft a
stone that a false hand could not lift, and ride a himdred,
steeds who would not move under a liar.
Men of Albin and Britain, however, alike joined Congal,,
and DomhnaU convened his men at Magh Rath. The king
of Ulster rather doubting of the bravery of some of his
men, especially the foreigners, exposed them all suddenly to
the sight of a furious dog and a man with a javelin, who
both appeared to attack them^at once. Only one stood the
test, and he kiUed man and dog, and had nearly kiUed.
Congal too in his rage. Whereupon, to prevent the cowards
from taking flight, Congal fettered them aU in pairs ; other-, -

CU, CUN, GAL. 8 1
wise the battle, though lasting seven days, was not more in
teresting in the detail than other battles, from Homer do'wn-
wards ; and the chief events to be mentioned are that the
Suibhne who had shared in the 1200-saint-power curse went
mad upon the spot, in consequence of the number of rhymes
made upon him, and took three furious leaps over men's
heads which carried him out of the battle. Such a slaughter
was made that the place was called Magh Rath of the Red
Pool, and on the seventh day Congal himself was mortally
wounded by a dart from an idiot ; but afterwards he revenged
himself by slaying one hundred Aodhs, one hundred Aedans,
fifty Conchobhars, and Christian names of all the letters of
the alphabet in proportion ; and finally, when his right hand
had been cut off, disappeared out of the battle, — no man
knowing his fate.
As to the rest of his forces, only six hundred Ulster men
escaped, and of the foreigners, only Dubhdiadh, the Druid,
who swam all the way to Scotland with a dead man fettered
to his leg !
The more matter-of-fact history says that Congal Claen,
king of Ulster, slew Suibne, king of Ireland, but was then
attacked and defeated by Domnall H., Suibne's successor;
that he then fled to Donald-brec, or the Freckled, king of
the Scots, and brought him to Ireland to be defeated at
Magrath, in 637.
Congal is generally tumed into Connal, or Connel, a name
which, whether it is this, or whether, as some say, it means
friendship, is given to one of the Ossianic heroes, who
makes a great figure in Macpherson's epic, and is said
to have named Tirconnel. The name continued in great
favour, and the popular tales of the Highlands describe a
certain ingenious Conal whose adventures are a most curious
mixture of those of Ulysses and Sindbad the Sailor, and are
related in the same way as those of the Three Calenders
and other worthies in the Arabian Nights. An Irish saint,
VOL. II. <i

82 GADHAELIC NAMES.
called Congal, founded the Great Abbey of Ben-chor, in
Ulster, answering to Ban-chor, in Wales, and thus formed
the nursery of the great missions of the Irish Church in the
sixth century. Connel has ever since been a frequent and
favourite Irish name, though latterly disfigured as ComeUus
and Constantine. O'Connel's name was one constantly, be
fore the last generation, to the Kelt as a hero-patriot, to
the Saxon as a traitor.
Conan of small renown, as Macpherson caUs him, was an
unfortunate Fenian, who always served as the butt of the
rest, and is called in other legends Conan Maol, the bald, or
the dwarf. He is in character a good deal Uke the Sir Kay
of Arthur's court. The M'Connons now have borrowed the
English names of Kenyon and Canning. His name comes
to light in the Cymric branch, in the person of the British
Conan, or Kynan Meriadech, who is said to have led a mi
gration of Britons to Armorica, and to be the patriarch of
the Dukes of Brittany. Of him is told the pretty tale of
the spotless ermine, that took refuge under his shield, and
was spared by him, its skin thenceforth forming the cog
nizance of Brittany, with the motto, Malb mori quam fcedari.
He is also said to have been the intended husband of St.
Ursula ; and, at any rate, suggested the name of many a
Conan among the Breton princes, until the father of the
imfortunate Constance, a name very possibly given as a sup
posed feminine to Conan, since Constantine has devoured all
manner of varieties of cu and con, and thus occasions the
numerous occurrences of this imperial designation as labels
to the grim portraits in the haU at Holyrood, who, after all,
look more like Roman Constantines than Caledonian Congals,
Conaires, or Conchobars.
Connchobar is also translated as ComeUus and Charles.
Here conn means strength, and cobhair, aid, and it is a word
as variously rendered by those who wish to retain its native
form as by those who try to change it into an ordinary name.

cu, CUN, GAL. 83
Macpherson calls it Conachar, and thence we have the assumed
name of the unfortunate young chieftain whom Sir Walter
Scott placed in the deadly fight between Clan Chattan and
Clan Kay, to exeinplify the struggle between constitutional
timidity and fear of shame. Conchabhar, who reigned in
Scotland in 847, and Cunechat or Conquhare, who was
Maormar of Angus in the tenth century, are both forms of
Connchobhar, which in Ireland is likewise called Crogher
and Crohoore. The last is said to be the best representation
of the spoken word; but Connor is the usual version, and
much the most euphonious to English ears ; but then it is
said also to represent Connaire, hound of slaughter, and
Conmor, also in use in the days of the Fenians. Indeed,
Ireland had many royal Connors, one dignified as the Great ;
but Conchobar, Conmor, and Connaire, are all confused in
them. Constantine is used in the Maguire family as a rendering
of Cu Connacht, the hound of Connaught, as odd a Christian
name as could well be invented ; Munster, Cu Mumhan ;
Cashel, Cu Chaisil. The river Shannon has Cu Sionna; the
mountain has Cu-sleibhe ; and, strangest of all, there is Cu-
gan-mathair, hound without a mother. Cu-mhaighe, hound
of the meadow, is simply pronounced Cooey ; but in the
O'Kane famUy has been turned into Quentin, and it may be
concluded that a similar process in Scotland changed the
meadow-hound into the fifth, and accounts for the various
Quentins. Ulster's hound, Cu Uladh or CuchulUn, is the name of the
hero with which Macpherson's epic opens : ' CuchulUn sat by
Tara's waU, by the tree of the rustUng leaf His name is
explained in the note to mean the voice of UUin or Ulster ;
but Dr. O'Donovan's explanation is proved by the other
similar names. CuchulUn was a great hero, and a Gaelic
proverb, 'as strong as CuchulUn,' is stUl in use. To Cu
chulUn belongs the Keltic version of the story of the single
02

84 GADHAELIC NAMES.
combat between the unkno^wn father and son, only recognized
too late by the tokens left with the mother. In Persia and
Ireland the son is kUled ; in Greece, the father ; in Germany
alone the conclusion is happy !
As to the MacCuinns, they have dignified themselves as
Mac Queen in Scotland, while their cousins in Ireland from
O'Cuinn have become Quin. After aU, when our Sovereign
was a Wolf (Guelf), it was no wonder he reigned over dogs.
Cuillean, usually called Culen, belonging to the king of
Scotland in 965, was the diminutive, a whelp ; and the Caw
of Britain, father of Gildas, is called by the Scots, perhaps
rightly, Cu.'*

Section V. — Diarmaid and Graine.
Of all the heroes of the Feen, Diarmaid was one of the
most distinguished, and though not brought in by Macpher
son, his legend bears the same sort of relation to the main
cycle, as does the story of Orlando to the Court of Charle
magne, or that of Lancelot to the Round Table.
Diarmaid has been explained to come from Bia, divinity,
and arm, arms, and to mean the god of weapons ; but the
more correct interpretation is a freeman. Graidhne is de
rived from gradh, love.
Graidhne was the daughter of Cormac Mac Art, king of
the fifth of UUin, who built at Tara for her the Grianan of
one pillar, or royal palace, which was one of the models of
Dom-na-Gedh. She was a lady of extremely quick wit, and
gained the heart of Fionn by her answers to a series of ques
tions, which tradition still preserves ; such as, —
* Campbell, West Highlands ; Dayies, Rites of the Druids; Rees, Welsh
Saints; Montalembert, Monks of the West; Eoujoux, Rois et Dues de
Bretagne ; Pitre Chevalier, Bretagne, Ancienne et Modeme ; Hanmer,
Chronicle.

DIARMAID AND GRAINE. 85
What is whiter than snow ?
There is the truth.
What is swifter than the wind ?
A woman's thought between two men.
What deed is the best of deeds ?
A high deed and a low conceit.
The like series of questions are to be found in the Lowland
Scottish ballad of the Proud Sister, and in a similar Danish
one in the Kcempe viser, though the results are different.
Fionn, then, was enamoured of the ingenious lady; but he
met with the usual fate of uncles in romance, for his nephew,
Diarmaid, feU in love with her too, and was the more irre
sistible, as he had a beauty spot, which made every woman
who saw it fall in love with him. They fled away together,
and there is an extremely long poem on their adventures and
mutual affection, but fate at length overtook Diarmaid. A
great hunting took place, at which all the Feen were present;
in the course of which they came on the track of a venomous
boar, whose back was sixteen feet long, and soon after on some
shavings of wood made by Diarmaid in cutting out dishes
with his knife. Having thus discovered his retreat, Fionn
summoned his rival,' and commanded him to join in the hunt,
in hopes that he would thus meet his death ; but Diarmaid
kUled the animal without receiving damage. Fionn then
remembered that Diarmaid, like Achilles and Siegfried, had
a fatal spot in his foot, and desired him to measure the boar
by pacing it against the hair. One of the bristles went into
the fatal spot, and Diarmaid fell dying ; he asked for some
water, and Fionn was bringing him some from the stream
between his hands, when he thought on Graine, and let it
run through. Diarmaid died, and his corpse was brought
home to his wife, whose lamentation is given as a separate
poem. There are all manner of different versions. She is
sometimes Fionn's wife, sometimes Diarmaid's, sometimes

86 GADHAELIC NAMES.
devoted to Diarmaid, sometimes betraying him and com
passing his death ; but his love for her, his death from the
boar's bristle, and her subsequent marriage to Fionn, are aU
clear. I believe she is the Roscrana of Macpherson, who,
he says, was a proverb for beauty, and whose name means
a rose-bush. She is said to be the mother of Ossian :
' Fin once o'ertook Graine the golden-haired,
The fleet and strong ;
From her the lovely, and from him the feared,
The primal poet sprung.'
Diarmaid was called from his father's name, O'Duinhe, the
son of the Bro'wn ; and a clan of O'Dwins arose in Scotland,
claiming to be his descendants. The heiress, Eva, married
Gillespiug Campbell, of an Anglo-Norman family, and
Campbell has ever since been the Lowland surname of the
great clan; but in the North they are still the sons of Diar
mid ; and their crest, the boar's head, is in memory of the
fatal hunting. Dearg, or the Red, was his soubriquet, and
appears in Macpherson, who calls him Dergo, king of spears,
and his wife, Mingala, meaning the soft and fair : ' Why
dost thou lift the stone, 0 bard, why dost thou shut the
narrow house ; Mingala's eyes are heavy, she must sleep
with Dergo ! ' as she there sings.
Diarmaid continued in use both in Scotland and Ireland ;
and in historical times it was Diarmaid, king of Leinster,
who acted the part of Paris, and ruined his country by the
abduction of Devorgoil of Meath ; and then, when forced by
the superior king to give up the l^dy, revenged himself by
calling in Earl Strongbow and the English.
Diarmid, or as it is commonly called Dermot or Darby, is
StiU common among the Irish ; but it has not escaped the
usual lot of absurd equivalents, and is sometimes translated
into Edward, or, more frequently, by Jeremiah. Its sur
name, Mac Dermot, has not only continued in its own right,
but has been adopted as more English than O'Dubhdiermar, '

DIARMAID AND GRAINE. 87
the son of Black Dermot. Where the saying about Darby
and Joan arose, I cannot discover. Darby is the form of
Diarmid in Limerick and Tipperary ; Jeremiah in Cork and
Kerry. Graidhne's name has been equally popular with that of her
lover. Ancient Irish ladies constantly used it; the most
celebrated being Graine O'Maille, a notable sailor chief
tainess of the south-western coast, whence she once sallied
forth to pay a friendly visit to Queen Elizabeth ; and when
the two high-spirited women were together, the semi-bar
barian was more than a match for the civilized queen. She
scorned Elizabeth's feminine habits, and despised the gift of
a lap dog, offering, however, in return her own infant son,
who had been bom on the voyage. The English queen was
welcome to educate him, since he would never make a man of
spirit, for his father came of a bad stock.
On her return, Graine being in want of provisions, made
a visit to the St. Lawrences of Howth ; but the castle gates
were shut ; the family being at dinner, she could obtain no
thing, and in her rage she carried off the heir of the family,
who was fostered in a cottage on the shore ; and when after
a time, she restored him, it was on condition that ever after
the castle doors should be left open aU dinner time, and a
vacant seat should be always left at table, a custom that has
ever since been preserved.. Graine's own family were such a
race of saUors that the old Irish proverb ran thus : —
' A good man never was there
Of the O'Malleys, but a mariner ;
The prophets of the weather are ye,
A tribe of affection and good wUL'
Graine was soon after translated into Grace ; indeed, the
piratess was also called Grace O'MaUey; and ever since,
Grace has been a favourite national name in Scotland and
Ireland, wherever Graine had been used; it has been ac-

88 GADHAELIC NAMES.
cepted for its English meaning and pleasant sound, and is
now very frequent.
The form gradl connects Graidhne with the name of several
of the Cymric branch : Gradlon, which belonged to several
Counts of Comouailles, one of whom has great fame m
Breton legend as Gradlon Mor, or the Great. In a Breton
poem of the sixth century, his story is told. He was be
loved by a fairy, whom he had first met while she was bath
ing in a fountain, and who gave him a splendid horse named
Gadifer, a coffer of gold, and invincible armour, teUing him
that if he would keep his secret, he had only to call her and
she would be instantly with him. He faithfully observed her
commands, till at a great feast given by the king of Brittany
at his castle of Pen Coat, the queen was brought forward,
and all the guests were required to declare that she was peer
less in loveliness. Gradlon alone was silent, and when pressed
to reply, declared that his lady-love was thirty times fairer.
The wrathful king and queen insisted on his producing her ;
he summoned her, but she appeared not, and in vain he re
paired to her fountain and invoked her. The spell was
broken, and she was his no more. For his insult to the
queen, he was condemned to die ; but as the axe was lifted
up over his head, his fairy spouse stood beside him in her
radiant beauty, and bore him away in her dragon chariot
to the fountain, where they had first met. There she told
him that though she had saved him, their compact was
broken, and she must leave him, then plunged into the
water. He leaped in after her, she prevented him from
drowning, and they were reconciled. It is said that in the
next century these adventures were transferred to King
Arthur's court.
Wales has a curious homely parody of the story, where
the hero is a farmer, and the nymph endows him with the
power of catching her by sending him some moist fairy
bread. She brought with her a whole herd of cattle, and

DIARMAID AND GRAINE. 89
lived with him long enough to have three sons ; but the speU
was broken by the farmer hurrying her one day to fetch
home his horse, touching her arm three times with his glove,
and saying, ' Go, go, go ! ' whereupon she and all her cattle
vanished into the lake. She afterwards had an interview
with one of her sons, and was supposed to have imparted to
him some noted secrets in medicine, for aU three were great
physicians. In the legends of Sts. Corentin and Gwennole, Gradlon
is a king, and appears in a very different aspect. He was
at first a furious and violent man, but was entirely tamed by
the exhortations of St. Corentin, whom he used to visit at
his hermitage, and sometimes partake of that one perpetual
fish, which was always ready to spare a meal out of its body
for the saint, and was renewed the next day, much after the
pattern of St. Neot's, and likewise of the Prince of the
Black Islands, in the Arabian Nights. For this saint the
king founded the see of Quimper Corentin, and left that
town free to the new bishop, himself retiring to the sea-
coast city of Is, a place of extreme wickedness.
This city was built on so low a part of the shore that it
was only guarded from inundation by dykes and dams. The
keys of the hatches were kept in a golden casket under the
king's pillow ; but his wicked daughter, Dahut, stole them,
like Scylla of old, and gave them to her lover. The doors
were unclosed, the water rushed in, the king was warned by
St. Gwennole just in time to mount and ride for his life,
with his daughter behind him on his horse ; the waves gained
on him, till at the stem command of the saint, he undid the
hold of the wretched woman, whose weight of sin was bear
ing him down, and escaped with his life.
Gradlon was buried at St. Gwennole's convent of Lan-
deoenet, and his stone coffin was visible not more than forty
years ago, for he was a veritable personage who lived about
435-

9© GADHAELIC NAMES.
The Bretons stiU suppose that the ruins of the city of Is
are to be seen under water, and there is every reason to be
Ueve that extensive buUdings are submerged in the bay now
called Dou-ame-nez. In fkct, Breton vanity imagines that
Is was so splendid that the derivation of Paris is Par-is, as
the only peer of Is. There is a popular song of Brittany,
describing the treachery of Dahut and the destruction of
the city, ending with representing her as still a mermaid,
combing her golden hair, and singing as plaintively as the

Section VI. — Cormac.
Cormac is a name that makes a great figure in the
Ossianic poems, and no one seems to dispute that it means
the son of Corb, i. e., a chariot. Cormac, king of Ulster, was
the young ward of CuchuUin ; and another Cormac, called
Cairbar, or the strong, is the father of a lady called Moma,
or more properly, Muirne, who when one lover returned from
battle, announcing that he had slain his rival, she demands
his sword stained with the blood, and then takes revenge
by plunging it into his breast, then kiUed herself with it.
A stUl more misty Cormac figures in ancient pedigrees, as
having been choked by the bone of an enchanted salmon;
and Cormac Cas is a more remote ancestor of the O'Briens
than the great Brien Boromhe himself.
Another Cormac is named in Irish calendars, as an abbot
of eminent sanctity in the days of St. Columba, and is
further thought to have visited lona, and at home enjoys
the credit of having endowed the sept of the Hy Muireadach
with ' prosperity of cattle, the gift of eloquence, success in
fosterage, the gift of good counsel, and the headship of peace
and protection.' His name has since been common in Ire-
* Ossianic Society; Campbell; VillemarquS; Pitre Chevalier, Bre
tagne Ancienne et Modeme ; Dr. O'Donovan.

CORMAC. 91
land; and Crofton Croker has a pretty ballad founded on
a fairy legend of Galway, of a maiden carried off by the
fairies beneath Lough Corrib, riding past, like Tamlane, in
the elfin procession, and rescued by her lover's utterance of
the sacred name :
' And now on CorriVs lonely shore,
Freed from his word by power of fairy ;
To life, to love, restored once more,
Young Cormack welcomes back his Mary.'
Cormac used to be barbarously spelt Cormick and Cor-
muck, and the MacCarthy family have substituted Charles
for it. There is a long Icelandic poem on a hero named
Kormak, who, though his parents and brothers have Norse
names, evidently had Milesian blood as well as name, for
he is described as having dark eyes and hair, with a fair
skin. He was an admirable warrior and poet, but was the
victim of hopeless love for a lady named Steingerda.
Cairbre, strong man, is likewise one of the Ossianic
names, as well as a soubriquet of Cormac. Cairbre again
is reckoned as the first of the Milesians to settle in Ulster ;
and another Cairbre, son of NiaU of the Nine Hostages,
bequeathed his name to the district now called Carbury.
Cairbre appears as the Irish sovereign who was the great
est foe of the Fenians, and commanded at the battle of
Gabhra, in which their force was broken ; and the. son of
Oisean, the grandson of Fionn, the beloved Osgar, was
treacherously slain, by a thrust in the side, by Cairbre
himself. The only times that the great Fionn was seen to
shed tears, were for his grandson Osgar, and for his faithful
dog Bran ; and a great quantity of poetry has clustered
round the death of this young hero, both in popular ballad,
and in the poem entitled Temora. So famous has he become,
that Oscar has been adopted as a Christian name in modem
France, and a French Oscar has recently sat upon the Swed-

92 GADHAELIC NAMES.
ish throne, though amongst us, this, like others of the Fenian
names, has descended to dogs. It is explained as the bound
ing warrior, and the Mac Oscars, in Ireland, have been tumed
into Cosgrove and Costello.
The like fate has befaUen the object of Osgar's love,
Malvina, as Macpherson calls her, a name of which the first
syllable is perhaps Mael, the handmaid. It has been adopted
by French women to such an extent, that Malvine is one of
the regular Parisienne's names, and it has further travelled
to Gennany. Thus Osgar and Malvina, though with few
namesakes in their own country, are the only Fenians who
have been commemorated in continental nomenclature.
Muirne Monchaoimh, beloved maid with engaging wiles, was
the name of the mother of Finn, as well as of the revengeful
lady mentioned above. The first word is softened into Moma,
and is, as weU as Mona, a hiU, considered a Highland name.'*
SBCTio:!jr VII. — Cath.
Universal among the Kelts is Cath or Cad, a battle or
defence, such a prefix that is sure to fiourish in every war-
Uke nation. Thus the Cadrhael, defensive boundary, stUl
exists in part, showing the rampart of the old British
kingdom of Strathcluyd, which occupied the Roman pro
vince of Valentia, between the departure of the Romans
and the full colonization of the Angles.
Cathmor, or great in war, is the brother of Cairbre, and
too generous to share in his treason, according to Macpher
son, and finishes the battle of Gabhra. CathuU, eye of
battle, is a great chieftain attended by three hundred fol
lowers ; and Cathal, as the name became, continued in use
in Ireland till it was turned into Charles. The favourite
hero there was Cathal Convdearg, or of the red hand who
* O'Donovan; Mac^heraoa ; Irish Society ; Hy Fiachra ; Butler; Miss
Brooke.

CATH.

93

fought hard against the English invaders; and, therefore,
was described by them as a blood-thirsty ruffian, and by
native historians as pious and amiable, probably being both
characters in turn. His name was probably the parent of
the Scottish surname, Cadell ; but a Welsh saint, named
Cadell, a battle-defence or shield, lived in the twelfth cen
tury. He had been a fierce warrior, and a great enemy to
the English ; but during his recovery from some severe wounds,
he repented, went to the Holy Land as a penitent, and finally
became a monk, and the patron of many a Cadell besides.
Cathlin is, in the Ossianic poems, both a lady and the
name of a star, and is translated by Macpherson, beam of
the wave ; and thence came the Kathleen, generally treated
as the Irish endearment of Katharine.
Cathbar means battle-choice. Cathbat was so renowned a
chief, that to strike his shield with a spear was the summons
to his clan to arm. Cath Comar Mac Mhic Con, is a hero of
tradition among the Fenians. Cathaoir, or battle-slaughter,
exactly answering to the German Hedwig, became Cathir,
then Cahir, and finally was destroyed by the substitution
of Charles. The Welsh made great use of the same prefix.
Cadwallon, apparently from cadw, to defend, has always been
common among them. CadwaUon was the brother of the
Madoc of Southey, and a much earlier Cadwallon was the
father of Cadwaladyr, or battle-arranger, regarded by the
two parties much as Cathal was ; for by the Saxons, Cead-
waUa, as they call him, the slayer of the good Edwin and
Oswald, is regarded with unmixed horror, whUe his own
Cymric countrymen revere him as a glorious patriotic prince,
second only to Arthur, and worthy of saintly honours; in
deed he was canonized by Pope Sergius in 688, and is sur
named the Blessed. Cadwaldr hi Breton, and CadwaUadyr in
Welsh, continue to the present day. Cadwallader is also
used in the Highlands, though, perhaps, this may be a
blunder for some Gaelic Cath.

94 GADHAELIC NAMES.
Saints of this name were numerous. Among them was
Cedd, as his adopted people called him, the Good Bishop,
whose Keltic ecclesiastical habits were so distasteful to the
fiery Wilfred of York, and who finally is revered at Lich
field as ' good St. Chad,' a form in which it lingered among
the midland peasantry. The grandfather of CadwaUadyr
was Cadvan, whose Latin epitaph calls him ' Catamarus,
rex sapientissimus,'' and whose name means battle-horn. An
other Caduan, or Cadvan, was a hermit who migrated from
Brittany to live on the coast of Caernarvonshire, on the isle
called Bardsey by the English, and Ynis EoUi, Isle of the
Current, by the Welsh. It was reputed a place of so much
sanctity, that it was called the Rome of Britain ; and so many
saints were buried there, that it was a saying of the bards —
' Twenty thousand saints of yore.
Came to lie on Bardsey's shore.'
Cattwg, or Cadoc, was of princely blood, founded a monas
tery, and trained the veritable bard, Taliessin. ,
The Greek Adelphios was translated by the Welsh intq
Cadffrawd, brother's war. Sir Cados is one of gentle Enid's
enemies, in the French romance of her constancy ; but Cado,
her son, in Welsh pedigree, sweUs the roll of saints. Cadfar,
or stout in battle, is almost certainly one of the Armorican
contributions to the Paladins of Charlemagne, in the shape of
Sir Gadifer, the Don Gayfcros of Spanish ballad and of Bon
Quixote. Ceallach was another Scoto-Irish name, meaning war ;
but it had a saint who gave it a better reputation. Most
likely this was the proper name likewise of the missionary,
saint who has been grsecized in Germany into KUUan.
Grig, properly Gairig, is the fierce or cruel. He reigned,
in Scotland from 88 1 to 897, and was highly praised by the
monks of St. Andrew's as their Gregory the Great. From,
this word springs the name of the clan M'Gregor.

CATH. or
Grim, meaning war or battle, was originally only the
soubriquet of King Kenneth IV. ; but it turned into
Graeme, and became the patronymic of the gaUant Grahams,
from whom it has had a tendency to be adopted as a bap
tismal name.
Grimsdyke, battle rampart, or strong defence, was the
Keltic term for many of the works of the Romans, and as
the most noted to which it was permanently attached was
the wall of Antoninus Pius, tradition decided that the
breach was so caUed iu memory of its having there been
forced by the Scots, led by the father of the Grahams.
In the Triads Cattwg-doeth, or the wise, appears as one
of the three blessed youth-trainers of the Isle of Britain ;
again, as one of the three knights of a virtuous discretion
at the court of Arthur, whose principles were to defend the
infirm, orphans, widows, and virgins, and all who should put
themselves under the protection of God and His peace, and
every one that was poor, feeble, and a stranger. Again, with
mtut and Bwrt, he is one of the three chaste knights of
the court of Arthur ; can he be the veritable origin of
Sir Galahad ? Another Triad makes the three knights
that guarded the Greal, Cattwg, lUtud, and Peredur ; and,
lastly, another triad, evidently made after the foreign ro
mances had influenced the bards, are Galath ab Lawnslot dy
Lac, Peredur ab E'vrog, and Bwrt, the son of King Brwt.
The word Gal, in Welsh, is pure or fair. Galath is the
Milky-way, probably borrowed from its Greek title ; but this
is no reason that the late British name of Galath should not
have been formed from it by persons who believed that Arthur
was the Great Bear. Of course this is the merest conjecture.
Cadwgan was a king of North Wales, whose name survives
as Cadogan, once a common Welsh Christian name.*
* O'Donovan ; Macpherson, Ossian; Campbell, Western Highlands ;
WiUiams, Ecclesiastical Antiquities of the Kymry ; Eees, Welsh Saints;
Lappenberg, Anglo-Saxons ; Lady C. Guest, Mahinogion ; Chalmers, Cale
donia; Dr. Owen Pugh; Highland Society's Dictionary.

96 GADHAELIC NAMES.
Section VHI. — Fiachra.
Fiachra, or Fiaghra, is said to be in Erse, an eagle, as the
Scottish Fitheach is a vulture, but Fiach also means worthy, so
the meaning must be uncertain ; Fiachere Mac Fhinn is a son of
Fingal, who does his part among the traditions of the Fenians ;
and another Fiachra was the father of the last pagan king of
Ireland, who, as Erse lore relates, reigned over Erin, Albin,
and Britain, and as far as the mountains of the Alps. He suc
ceeded his uncle Niall of the Nine Hostages, in 405, and went
to the Alps to revenge his death. Being still a pagan, he demo
lished a tower of sods and stones sixty feet high, in which
lived a saint, eleven feet from the light, and was accordingly
cursed by the saint, and killed by a flash of lightning ; but
his servants put a lighted sponge in his mouth to imitate his
breath, by way of concealing his death for some time. He
was called Dathi, from his skill (daire) in darting, and the
Hy Fiachrach, or great clan of children of Fiachra, have
kept it up till the O'Dowds, one of their branches, tumed it
into David. Another branch of them, the Mac Fiachrach,
were corrupted into M'Keighry, then into Keary, and lastly
anglicized as Carey.
Fiachra was the name of a hermit who left home to seek
for solitude in France, and lived at Brenil, about two leagues
from Meaux. He particularly applied himself to the culti
vation of his little garden, and has ever since been con
sidered as the patron of gardeners; and his austerity was
such, that no woman was allowed to come within his precincts.
He died about 670, and his relics began to obtain a miracu
lous reputation, which increased so much, that, though little
known in his o'wn country, France is full of churches dedi
cated to him.
Anne of Austria was particularly devoted to him; she
thought the recovery of her husband, and the birth of the
great Louis XIV. himself, were due to his intercessions;

NAMES OF COMPLEXION. 97
and she made a pilgrimage to his shrine, remembering so
well his objections to womankind, that she never attempted
to cross his threshold, but knelt before the door.
It does not appear, however, that the name of Fiacre was
adopted by any one in deference to this devotion, except,
perhaps, the Fiak of Brittany. All it did was to pass to
the first hackney-coaches of Paris, which, from being used
as a commodious mode of going on pilgrimage to the shrine
of St. Fiacre, received the appeUation they have had ever
since. It is a whimsical concatenation that has named the
fiacres of Paris after the misty eagle of the race of Fingal.
What a difference between the associations of the coach of
St. Fiacre, and of the staff and cockle-shell of St. James.
Ron or Ronan certainly means a seal or sea-calf in Gaelic.
It would be dangerous to decide that this is the right mean
ing of the unexplained name of Ronan, but it is the only
word that resembles it. Ronan is a hero whose death is
lamented in the Ossianic poetry, and his name was afterwards
bome by a large number of Irish and Scottish saints, from
whom Ronan became a common Scottish name, and once had
the Irish feminine Ronat.*
Section IX. — Names of Complexion.
Names of complexion were very frequent among the various
branches of Kelts, often as mere affixed soubriquets, but grow
ing from thence into absolute individual names. Bhu and
ciar, the black ; dorchaid, the dark ; dearg and ruadh, red ;
don, brown ; boid, yellow ; ban and finn, white ; odhar, pale ;
fann and corcair, ruddy ; lachtna and uaithne, green ; glas,
which is blue in Wales, green in Ireland, and grey in the
Highlands ; gorm, blue ; Hath, grey ; riahhach, greyish, have
all furnished their share of names and epithets.
* O'Donovan ; Macpherson ; Maitland, History of Scotland ; Cosmo
Innes; Saturday Review ; Butler.
VOL. II. H

98 GADHAELIC NAMES.
Macpherson introduces us to ' that cloud in war, Ducho-^
mar,' whom he translates a ' black well-shaped man,' and
makes him that slayer of Moma's lover, whom she despatches
with his own sword before destroying herself with it. He
desires that his corpse may be given to ' Moina, the maid,'
Duchomar was the dream of her night. This lady's name
is said by Macpherson to be Moiha, the gentle, and is pro
bably the same as Moncha, now considered as Monica in
Ireland. In Islay, Mr. Campbell found a story where Finn is called
MacDhuil or MacDuguld, which he translates as the son of
black and white ; or, might not Mac Dhugal be only the son
of the black gal, or stranger, the epithet instead of the title-
Cu ? Indeed, Duffgallus is the earliest Latinism of DougaU,
as in the Lennox pedigree.
Be this as it may, DougaU and Dugald have been from
time immemorial Highland names, and, together with Donald,
serve as the national nickname of the Gael among the Low-
landers. Dowal is used in Ireland. Donald is the AngU-
cism of Donghal, brown stranger, an early Scottish and
Irish name, and likewise of Domhnall, which is probably
really the same, though the Irish glossographers translated it
a proud chieftain, and now have turned it into Donat
and Daniel, or Dan. In Wales it is made to answer to
Dynnval, which Chalmers translates, ' what was of the
weaned couch.' Dunwallon, another Cymric form, was last
king of the Strathcluyd Britons, and on being conquered by
Kenneth III. of Scotland, in 975, resigned his crown, and
became a monk at Rome.
Donald is reckoned as the first Christian king of Scotland. '
Dhuboda, who reigned in 961, has been handed do^wn to
posterity as Duffus, by the same respectable authority that
declares that he suffered from a deadly sickness produced by
the incantations of some witches, who roasted his waxen
effigy before the fire, but were detected in time to save his

NAMES OF COMPLEXION. go
life ; though he was soon after slain by surer means, and his
body concealed for six months, during which the sun, moon
and stars hid their faces. We feel ourselves getting into the
regions of Macbeth, and, in fact, he was really great grand
father to Lady Macbeth, who derived from him certain
claims to the throne, passed over by Shakespeare. Many of
the names in Macbeth are names of complexion, and this
seems the place for discussing most of those connected with
that wonderful tragedy, which is verily truth of nature,
though may be, not historical truth.
The truth, as far as can be gathered, is that there was an
uncertain and hotly-disputed succession to what was rather
a chieftainship than a cro^wn. Grim, the grandson of
Duff, reigned for a short time, but was slain in battle, in
1004, by Malcolm, the representative of the other branch of
the family, and his son Boidh was set aside, and disabled
from reigning. The daughter Gruach was pursued with the
utmost hatred by Malcolm, who surrounded the castle where
she was with her husband, Gilcomginn, and set fire to it,
after the terrible fashion of Gaelic malignity, paralleled
again in the sixteenth century, as in the piteous ballad
of Edam of Gordon, and unhappily even in the nineteenth,
in Ireland. Her husband and fifty of his friends perished ;
but she barely escaped with life into the lands of her rela
tive, Macbeath, Thane of Ross, son of Doada, daughter of
Malcolm H., who defended her from her enemies, and finally
married her, uniting their two streams of royal blood. After
Malcolm's death, he was succeeded by the son of his
daughter Bethoi, Donnacha, Duncha, or Duncan, caUed by
the Scots the pure breathed, by Shakespeare, the gracious.
After all, the t.emptation to murder the sleeping enemy, and
the views upon the crown, were less unprovoked than we feel
them to be, when the predictions of the witches have the
entire credit of the mischief, as Shakespeare has made them,
in accordance ¦with old Hector Boece. The only wonder is,
H 2

lOO GADHAELIC NAMES.
how Duncan could trust himself for a single night under the
same roof with the injured Gruach.
That most inharmonious name of hers is from gruag, hair,
and is the same in meaning, though not in sound, as the Irish
Mongfinn, of the fair hair, and Murrinn, of the long hair.
Macbeth himself meant son of life; Our verb to be is
near of kin to the Keltic, in Gaelic bith, in Welsh hezu,
and thence came the word for existence or life, heath or bezu.
The Scots of either island loved to call good men Macbeath,
sons of life, and this was the name of the Thane of Ross
and of Cawdor, and lastly king of Scotland. He seems to
have been a fair specimen of a monarch for his day, and
entered into correspondence with Rome, a great step out of
barbarism ; but nothing to his credit can do away with the
impression left by the weakness of the brave man, goaded
into crime, or the remorse of the strong woman. Bethoc,
his rival's mother, likewise was named from life, and the
same name was frequent among the early Scottish ladies, but
was soon tumed into Beatrix, as even Duncan's mother is
termed by latinizing historians. The old name of Bethia,
to be found in various English families, probably came from
an ancestral Beth, on either Welsh, Scots, or Irish sides, and
there can be scarcely a doubt that the Manx feminine
Bahee is another form of the same, and Beoan, lively, is Irish.
To this source likewise must be referred the Latinism of
Bega or Begga, for a saint, called otherwise Hien or
Hayne. She was of Irish birth ; but about 620, was im
ported by some of the Keltic missionaries of the North of
England, and St. Aidan consecrated her at Whitby as
the first nun in Northumbria. Leaving St. Hilda to govern
there in her stead, she founded the abbey, known by her
English name of St. Bees, and at present serving as a uni
versity. A French St. Begga, whose mother was Northum
brian, was wife to a man whose strange destiny was to
be first Maire du Palais, then Bishop of Metz, and lastly to

NAMES OF COMPLEXION. 10 1
be killed in the chace. After his death, she founded a
monastery, which is considered by some to have ,been the
germ of the admirable institution of b^guines, who did the
work of sisters of charity in the Netherlands long before the
French order was established by St. Vincent de Paul. Some,
however, deduce them from a priest at Liege, called Lam
bert le begue, or the stammerer. Begga was probably im
ported by the Danes to Scandinavia, where it is still in use,
though there it may be a contraction for either Bergljot or
Brigitta. The Venerable Bede himself, the father of English
history, called Beda in Latin, is referred to the Welsh
Bedaws, another form of the word life ; but it has been more
usual to explain his name by reference to the Teuton verbs,
meaning to bid or to pray. However, that several Keltic
forms did prevail is certain, especially among the churchmen
of the northern counties.
Banquo was Bancu, the white chief, or white dog. Banan
is an old Irish name, and Banba was one of those given to one
of the Tuath de Danan ; but finn is much more usual in
names than ban, though, as a soubriquet, this last is very
common, as in Donaldbane, younger son of Duncan, and his
namesake in Waverley, Donald Bean Lean. It figures in
various words as the Gaelic term for a queen. Ban Righ,
the white king ; also in Banshee, the white spirit. Chalmers,
however, thinks the names of both Banquo and Fleance un-
Gaelic, and mere inventions ; yet what we call Fleance, must
have been the same -with the Flann of Ireland, signifying
rosy, and now immolated to Florence, while its feminine
Flannahas disappeared. Ceara and Corcran, in Ireland, both
meant the same, but have left no remains but in the sumame
Corcoran. Boidh, Lady Macbeth's brother, was yellow, a name sur
viving in the Scottish family of Boyd. Her son Lulach, who
reigned for a short time after Macbeth, is explained as
Luilleach, or the mimic. Macduff himself no doubt was so

I02 GADHAELIC NAMES.
caUed from Dubhoda, Maormar of Fife. Another Duff had
exchanged the Gaelic Maormar for the EngUsh Earl, m
1 1 15, and Dubican was Maormar of Angus, in 939.
Ireland had Dubhan, Dhubdothra, black man of the Dod
der — the river, Dubhdaimbher, black man of the two rivers,
Dubhdaintuath, black man of the two territories, also Dub-
halteach, Dubhdalethe, Dubhdhaa, all the latter of which
they anglicize as Dudley.
Among ladies they had Dubhdeasa, dark beauty, Dubh-
choblaith (pronounced Duvcovla), or black victory, and
Dubhessa, or black nurse. Duvessa O'FarreU died in 1301 ;
and this same appellation Spenser must afterwards have heard
in Ireland, when, struck, no doubt, by the du at the com
mencement sounding like two, as did the other Irish name
Una resemble one, he called his emblem of falsehood, or per
haps of the Church of Rome, the false Duessa, while he gave
the title of Una to his lovely personation of the one truth,
the one true undivided Church, the guide of the Red Cross
Knight. Irish antiquaries assure us that Una means dearth
or famine ; but it hardly suits this etymology. Una is queen
of the fairies in the county of Ormond, in which character
she appears in one version of the story of the soldier billeted
on a miser. The man was amazed at his hospitable recep
tion and entertainment, as he thought, by the avaricious
squire in question, until moming disclosed that the fairy
queen Una had raised the mansion and provided the supper,
but from the prime cow in the miser's herd.
Una has continued in use among the Irish peasantry,
though much corrupted, being often pronounced Oonagh,
and anglicized as 'Winny, the contraction of Winifred, the
English version of the Welsh Gwenfrewi.
The female Christian name of Douglas, which belonged to
one of the unfortunate wives of Queen Elizabeth's Earl of
Leicester, was either a free version of one of those varieties
of ' dark ladyes,' or else was one of the first specimens of a

NAMES OF COMPLEXION. IO3
surname converted into a Christian name, perhaps in compli
ment to Lady Margaret Douglas, the niece of Henry VlH.
and mother of Lord Darnley. Douglas was, without doubt,
a territorial designation from the dark vale and stream of
Douglas; but the heralds and genealogists of the gallant
lineage of the bleeding heart made out an ancestor, ' Sholto
Dhu Glas ' (see the dark grey man) , and thence Sholto was
adopted as a name in the Douglas family, and crept from
thence to others. I have found no instance of it before
the seventeenth century in looking through the peerage of
Scotland, and the probable derivation of the word would be
sioltaich, a sower.
Macduff is stiU a patronymic in Scotland, and so are Duff
and Dow. Ireland, her O'Dubhda into O'Dowd and Doady,
her O'Dubhagain into Duggan, her O'Dubhain into Do^wnes,
O'Dubshlaine into Delany, O'Duibhida into O'Dwyn ; and in
England, Dew, Dewes, and Dove, both the gentle doctor and
the beautiful river, all are the offspring of the Keltic dhu.
King Duncan himself was either Donnachu, bro-wn chief,
or Donngal, bro^wn stranger, both which names were rife
among the Scots, and Duncan has so continued ever since.
Duncan and Donald both occur as Keltic slaves in Iceland,
in the Saga of Burnt Njal ; and, perhaps, not only the Irish,
but even the saintly Scottish David, may have been at first
an anglicized Domnhall, or, as in the case of some of the
earlier kings, it is called Dunvenald.
Don stands alone as a name in Hanmer's list of Finn's
warriors ; and Diarmaid, as son of Don, left the name of
O'Dhuine to his descendants. Donnan was an Irish name,
and Donchada became Donoghoe, sometimes even now bap
tismal, but best known as the O'Donoghoe, the great vision
ary horseman of Killarney.
The word is really the same as our dun, though that has
now come to express a misty dark grey, whUe don evidently
means brown haired, as in the feminine Duinsech. Don, as

I04 GADHAELIC NAMES.
it Stands at the end of the name of ' The O'Connor,' simply
shows that he is the head of the brown branch of that sept,
which anciently split mto bro^wn and red — O'Connor Don
and O'Connor Roe, like the black and red Douglases of
Scotland. Roe is the Anglicism for ruadh, the colour that goes by
the same title in all our cognate tongues, from the Greek
poSos to the Gadhaelic ruadh, and Cymric rud, rhud. It plays
the chief part in nomenclature in Ireland and Scotland, where
the true undiluted Gaels are divided between the black and
the red, as their epithets constantly testify ; as in the case of
Owen Roe O'Neill, the leader of the rising of Ulster, in 1641,
and in Scotland of the well known Rob Roy. Thus it is that
the numerous surnames of Roe, Rowe, and Roy have arisen.
Ruadh or Rory is the Highland ' byword ' for the fox, who
is at full length madadh ruadh, the red dog ; but famiUarly
in the many Highland fables founded on his shrewdness he is
Rory, like his English cousin Reynard, and the German Rem-
ecke Fuchs, leading us to suspect that these his titles may
originally have been a Keltic legacy, although since adapted
to Teutonic names, and associated with the treacherous Frank,
Count Reginhard.
It is only what the fox's human namesakes have done for
themselves ; for the Irish Ruadri, Ruadhan, Ruadhaic, the
Scottish Ruaridh, and Welsh Rhydderch, have all alike dis
guised themselves as Roderick, which is in each case supposed
to be the full name of those who in ordinary parlance call
themselves Rory or Roy.
In Welsh myths we meet with Rhwddlwan Ga-wr, the red
bony giant, and in Merddhyn's time we come upon Rhyd
derch Hoel, or the liberal, the champion of the Christian
faith, who was the friend of St. Columba, restored St. Kenti-
gem to Glasgow, and was promised by the former that he should
never fall into the hands of his enemies, but should die -with
his head on his pillow — a promise that a Saxon long after would

NAMES OF COMPLEXION. IO5
have scorned. He was a discourager of Druidism, and is
reviled by Merlin. His name may come from rhydez, the
exalted. Several less shado^wy kings reigned in Wales, the most
distinguished of whom united all the three principalities till
the year 877, and was called Rydderch Mawr, or, as it is
barbarously called in our histories, Roderick Maur; much
resembling what has been done with Roderick Dhu. The
Rory O'More of Irish ballad was one of the leaders of the
great Irish rising suppressed by Cromwell, and Roger Mc
Carthy, another bitter foe of the English, was only another
version of the discarded Ruadri. In fact, Rogers has been
assumed as a sumame by the family of Mac Rory, just as
the Welsh ap Rydderch became first ap Rody, and then
Brodie. O'Ruadhin has become Rooney, and Ruadhaic's
children were Mac Ruaric, or O'Rourke, a name memorable
to Ireland, for it was the O'Ruarc of Breffny whose wife's
abduction led to the conquest of Ireland by the English.
Her name, Dearbhforgail, or Derforgal, is translated by the
Four Masters, ' purely fair daughter ;' but later critics make
it ' the true oath,' from dearhh, an oath, anifior-glan, true.
It was a name common to both Erse and Gael, and there is
a legendary heroine in Ireland so called, whose betrothed was
so eager in the chace that he forgot it was his wedding day,
whereupon he took the peculiarly Hibernian way of atoning
for his omission by immediatdy making war on her father.
His troops were defeated, whereupon he stabbed himself to
the heart ; and the scene closes on the lady snatched away
from passionately embracing his corpse and thrown 'ito a
dungeon by her father, on the same principle on which
Horatius stabbed his sister.
Dearbhforghal was a very tough name for the genealogists,
and they had a good deal of it, for it was very fashionable in the
twelfth century both in Scotland and Ireland, and was tumed
into Devorgilla and Domadilla by the much tormented chroni-

Io6 GADHAELIC NAMES.
clers ; and they had enough of it when the Anglo-Norman
BaUiol, originally from Cambray, married the Devorgoil of
GaUoway, the rights of whose mother, Margaret, as the
eldest daughter of David of Huntingdon, caused the house of
BaUiol to acquire their unfortunate notoi;iety in the history
of Scotland, and her uncouth name to be rung out by the
contending parties. Even to the present day, however,
BaUiol College, Oxford, observes the statute of its founder,
the father of the ex-king, and mentions his wife Devor-
gil, in the commemoration of its benefactors. Devorgoil
was again the lady above referred to, the faithless wife of
O'Rourke; and thus, curiously enough, Devorgoil was, in
each country, the occasion of English invasion, — innocently
on the part of the Scottish lady, guiltily on that of the Irish
one. The name occurs again in the great Anglo-Irish house
of De Burgh, the grand-daughter of the great Hubert bearii^
it ; but it was soon discarded, unless Dowsabel be considered
as the equivalent.
Lachtnan, from the Erse lachtna, green, is less easily ac
countable, unless it meant fresh and flourishing. It is now
turned, in Ireland, into Loughnan, and more often into Luciusj
and the families of the O'Lachnans are now either Mac
Loughlin or Loftus. The Scottish name so like in sound
Lachlan or Loughlan, is however more probably from
laochail, warlike, and Maclauchlan is the patronymic.
Glas, grey, blue, or green, changes its meaning wherever it
goes ; but Glasan, in Irish, is its only Christian name, though
it was a great epithet in all its countries and has resulted m
many a surname of Glass, besides the Highland Maglashan,'t
Cearan, or Ceirin, from ciar, black, was the name of
one of the twelve Irish bishops whom St. Patrick con
secrated. He betook himself to solitude in a place sur
rounded with bogs in Ireland, called from him Saiger, or Sier
Kieran ; but a tribe of disciples followed him, and a monas
tery arose ; so, in search of loneliness, he fled to Cornwall,

NAMES OF COMPLEXION. IO7
where he Uved in a cell, and taught the inhabitants so much,
that they ascribed to him even their knowledge of mining ;
and the 5th of March, his day, was considered as the tinners'
holiday, in honour of their patron saint. His name, however,
following the rule of the Cymric p for a Gadhaelic h, has
turned into Pirin, or Perran, and is, in this form, not yet
lost among the Cornish miners. His cell had a church built
over it, called St. Pierans in Sabulo, or in the sand, and
now Peranzabuloe. And in the sand it is, for it was abso
lutely choked by drifting sands, and abandoned in favour of
a new one. In 1835 it was disinterred, and found to be a very
curious specimen of ancient architecture ; and it was strongly
appealed, and rather overworked, as a proof of the existence
and individuaUty of the ancient British Church before the
time of Augustin's mission. Another Ceiran was the patron
of the Scots who first came from Ireland ; he was surnamed
Mac Iter, the carpenter's son, and left his name to many a
Kilkeran on the west coast. He is sometimes called St.
Queran. Cear is the soubriquet of Caoinnach I. of Scotland, who
was kiUed in 621, after a reign of three months. The mean
ing of the epithet is questioned in his case, some calling it
ciar, black; others, cearr, left-handed. The king himself
rejoices in many varieties of name, — Caoinnach, in Irish,
Coinadh ; then again, Conchad, Connadh, Kinat, and Cinead;
till, finally, it has settled into the national Scottish Christian
name of Kenneth in the Lowlands, Caioneach in the Gaelic,
denoting a fair and comely, or mild tempered or peaceable man.
Another Kenneth was the king in whom the long con
flicting lines of Picts and Scots were united.
' Quhen Alpyne, this Kyng was dede.
He left a sowne was cal'd Kyned, •
Dowchty man he was, and stowt,
All the Peychtis he put owt.'
This * dowchty man and stowt ' brought the stone of do-

I08 GADHAELIC NAMES.
minion from Argyle to Scone, and is looked upon, though
incorrectly, as the lawgiver of Scotland.
Kenneth III. is the contemporary of Edgar the Peaceable,
who, as English stories tell, was amazed to see the tall
Englishman obey so small a man ; but, unguardedly express
ing his surprise, was taken by the king into a wood, given
his choice between two swords, and bidden to try what a
little man could do. He was murdered by the lady of Fetter-
cairn, in revenge for the death of her son ; and the fourth
and last royal Kenneth was the grandfather of Lady Macbeth.
The two derivatives, as surnames, from Kenneth, are
Mackenzie in the Highlands, Kennedy in the Lowlands.
Caoin and Caomh are closely related, and both mean kind
or fair. Caoimghin was that Irish saint who is commonly
kno'wn as Kevin, and owns one of the seven churches of
Glendalough, as ¦well as the cave, whence a very modern legend,
versified by Moore, shows him rejecting Kathleen's visit by
hurling her into the lake.*
Section X. — Feidlim, S^c.
Feidlim was a very early Irish name, meaning the ever
good, and Feidhlim Reachtmar, or the lawgiver, gained him
self high reputation early in the second century, from which
time FeidUm flourished in Ireland as Felimy or Felim, imtil
a fashion arose of spelling it like a Greek word, Phelim, and
then one Sir Phelim O'Neill, who »was deeply implicated in
the great Popish massacre of 1641, changed his name to
Felix. He was seized by the English army and condemned,
but was offered his life by Cromwell if he would inculpate
King Charles, and on his gallant refusal, was executed. His
new name caused the Irish poet M'Gee to exclaim —
* O'Donovan; Macpherson; Maitland, History of Scotland; Cosmo
Innes; Scottish Surnames ; Saturday Review ; Butler; Highland Society's
Dictionary; Pugh; Crofton Croker; Irish Legends; Chalmers; Hayes,
Irish Ballads.

FEIDLIM, ETC. IO9
' Why when that hero age you deify,
Why do you pass infelix Felix by ? '
A later Phelim O'Neill, in the last century, who made the
same change, and called himself Felix Neele, was indignantly
addressed in a Latin epigram : —
' Poor paltry skulker from thy noble race,
Infelix Felix, blush for thy disgrace.'
Felim once had a feminine Fedlimi, now either forgotten
or transmuted into Felicia.
Tadhg is translated a poet, and was always a favourite in
Ireland, where it has degenerated into Teague, Teige, or
Thady, and then has been translated into Timothy, Thaddeus,
Theodore, Theodosius, according to the fancy of the owner,
though Tim is perhaps the most usual. But no one who has
read Mr. Britton's capital tale of the Election can forget the
indignation of the old gentlewoman on recognizing ' the
man that was called Thady,' in the full-blown dignity of the
candidate, Thaddeus 0' SuUivan Gaffrey, esquire.
Matthew is in like manner the Anglicism of Mathgham-
hain, pronounced Mahoone, or Mahon, and meaning a bear ;
whence the family of Mac Mahon have endeavoured to make
out that they are Norman Fitz Ursulas. According to
Macpherson, the foremost pointer in Ursa Major is Cean
Mathon, the bear's head.
Here again we meet with that universal Amal, as in the
Roman JEmilii and Teutonic Amaler, and probably like
them originally meaning work, though the direct meaning
of Amuil in Gaelic is now a hindrance, possibly as in
creasing labour. Amalgaid was a good deal in use in
the elder times. The seven sons of Amalgith are said by
Nennius to have been baptized by St. Patrick, and the
race formed a sept called the Ui Amalghaidh, who left
their designation to the barony of Tir Awlay, in Ireland ;

IIO GADHAELIC NAMES.
while their Scottish cousins became the memorable clan
Macaulay, the sons of labour. Awlay is the genuine Angli
cism, not entirely disused in Scotland ; but in Ireland, inter
course with the Danish conquerors led to the substitution of
Amlaidh, as the Erse spelt the Danish Anlaff, ancestor's
relic, the same name as Olaf, and now this is likewise called
Auley.'* Section XI. — Names of Majesty.
Foremost among these names of greatness must stand'
tighearn, a king, a word of most ancient lineage, recurring
in the Greek tyrannos.
Tighearnach was an Irish saint, who flourished at the end
of the fifth century, and whose dish is still preserved at
Rappa Castle, in Tirawley, by the name of Mior Tigearnan,
or the dish of St. Tiernan. Tigeamach became common
among Irish princes, and even appears in English history,
when Tigeamach O'Rourke was robbed of his wife. It was
long in dying out among the Erse population, and remains as
a sumame in the form of Tiernay.
Tigern was also used by the Cymry. Vortigern, as has
already been sho^wn, Gwrthigern, the excelling king, and his
far braver and better son was Kentigern, head chief ; whence'
he is sometimes called Categem, in modern Welsh, Cyn-
deyrn. Kentigern in the North, Cyndeym in Wales, was the name
of an early Pictish saint, who recaUed his countrymen from
Pelagianism, and is regarded as the apostle and patron of
Glasgow. Persecution obliged him to take refuge in Wales,'
where he founded the church of Llandwy, being guided,
as saith the legend, to the spot by a milk-white boar, which
ran before him, and on arriving at the ^pot began to stamp
* O'Donovan; Macpherson; Nennius; Munch; Highland Society'*,
Dictionary.

NAMES OF MAJESTY. 1 1 1
and root up the ground with his tusks. Returning to Glas
gow, he thence sent missionaries to Ireland, who no doubt
were the teachers of the few inhabitants whose descendants
were long after found there by the Norse settlers, and called
by them Papa, from the title of their priests, a title still
lingering in many a bay and islet of the Hebrides, attesting
that there the Culdee clergy had been owned as the fathers of
their flocks. After a custom that does not seem to have been
uncommon among the Keltic saints, Kentigern used every
night to sing through the whole Book of Psalms, standing up
to his neck in water. He obtained for himself the epithet,
Mwyngu, or Munghu, the amiable, by which he is best
kno'wn in his o'wn city, and which has named both it and a
large number of the inhabitants and of his other countrymen,
one of whom, namely, Mungo Park, has made it memorable.
Wales had a feminine St. Kentigern, perhaps named after
him; perhaps derived from the Irish Caintigem, or fair
lady. Cean, head, the first syUable of the saint's name, is found
in all the Keltic tongues, forming many geographical terms,
generally in the form of can or hen.
Either this or dan, vast, was the Irish name Cian or
Kean, hereditary in the O'Hara family, but often sup
posed to be short for Cornelius. So common was it once
that fifty Cians were killed in the battle of Magh Rath.
Ceannaich, head chief, or perhaps, a covenant or reward,
was an early Irish saint, the founder of Kilkenny, i.e.,
the cell of Ceannach, or Kenny ; thence we have O'Keene
and M'Kenny.
Tuathal, lordly, turned into Toole and O'Toole, are his
descendants, and the feminine, Tuathflaith, is entirely lost.
The ladies had various of these majestic names : Uallach,
the proud ; So-Domina, good lady, which must have had a
Latin origin; Dunflaith, lady of the fort; besides Mor,
which the Scots are pleased to translate by Sarah, and

112 GADHAELIC NAMES.
the Irish by Mary and Martha, though it reaUy means a
large woman. Morrigu had been the goddess of battle among
the Tuath de Danan, and she is described as inspiring Congal
Claen before the battle of Magh Rath :
' There is over his head shrieking,
A lean, nimble hag, hovering
Over the points of their weapons and shields ;
She is the grey-haired Morrigu.'
The ' grey Morag,' who expostulates with Edith of Lorn on
her wedding morning, must*have been called after this ami
able divinity.
Martha, Maud, and Mabel are employed to extinguish
Meadhbh, Meave, or Mab, one of the very oldest and most
famous of Irish names. It would be most satisfactory to
take it from meadhail, joy ; but this is far from certain, and
it may come from an old comparative of mor, great. But
Mirth is analogous with the meaning of Aine, the other
fairy queen; and mear, or merry, has furnished another
Irish name, namely, the masculine Meaghar or Meara.
Meadhbh was the daughter of Eochaid Freidhleach, king
of Erin, as it is said, a.m. 3922, and was so brilUant
a heroine of Irish romance, that Congal Claen bids the
men of Connaught, her husband's kingdom, to ' Remem
ber Meave in the battle.' Afterwards, like other favourite
Irish heroines, she became queen of the fairies ; and some
of the Irish settlers must have carried tidings of her to
England, when Shakespeare, Drayton, and Ben Jonson made
Queen Mab our own peculiar possession, if knowing how to
make the best use of her establishes a claim. Meave, or
Mab, has not entirely lost ground among the Irish peasantry,
though generally it has an equivalent.
Toirdelvach, taU as a tower, or, more properly, tower-Uke,
must have been taken from those riddles of Ireland, the mys
terious towers, scattered throughout the island, and generally

DEVOTIONAL NAMES. 1 13
supposed to have been erected in the earliest period of Chris
tian art, if art it may be called.
Toirdelvach was king of Connaught at the time that Der
mot M'Morough carried off Devorgoil, and as supreme king
of Ireland he punished the offender; nor was it till after
his death that the invitation to Earl Strongbow was given.
In English history, he is usually called Turlough, the later
form of the name, which is still in some use, though more
often turned into Terence, which has been oddly borrowed
from the Latin dramatist to translate the tall Irishman.
Sealbh, cattle or possessions (for in GaeUc they are the
same ; just like pecus and pecunia, vieh and fee, cattle and
chattels), is the origin of Sealbhach, pronounced Selvach,
owned by two kings of the Scots, and of the feminine
Sealbhflaith, lady of possessions, now become Sally.*

Section XH. — Bevotional Names.
The early Gadhaelic Christians were too reverent to call
themselves by the same name as the objects of their devotion,
whether divine or human. They were the servants, or at
most the friends of those to whom they thus looked up.
They used in this manner the prefixes, Ceile, the companion
or vassal; Cear, the friend; Cailleach, the handmaid; and
far more frequently Giolla and Maol.
Giolla is the very same word as the Scottish vernacular
gillie, a servant ; and in Ireland, the giolla eachaid, or horse
servant, resulted in the term gallowglass, which is so con
stantly used in English narratives of Irish wars.
The primary meaning of Maol, or Mael, is bald ; thus it
came to mean one who has received the tonsure, or a student
of theology, and was given in the sense of a disciple ; but to
* Diefenbach; O'Donovan; Davies; Jones, Welsh Sketches; Rees, Welsh
Saints. VOL. II. I

1 14 GADHAELIC NAMES.
the confusion of etymology, this same Maol, when followed by
an adjective, is synonymous with Mai, and signifies a chief.
CaUleach originaUy meant a devotee, and was once perhaps
a Druidess, but she afterwards was a female disciple, or nun,
and finally in Scotland has become only an old woman.
It will be endless work to go through all the list of ser
vants and disciples, and yet some of these present some of
the most whimsical facts in the history of names.
Gilla is sometimes used alone, and not only in the two
Gaelic languages, for we have it latinized as Gildas, the
doleful Welsh historian who rates all the contemporary
princes so soundly. Culdee, the term for the first mission
aries of Scotland, is also explained as Giolla De. This was
in use, with Cailleach De, the handmaid of God, but are
both now extinct ; but not so either the servant or disciple
of Jesus. Giolla losa was used in both countries, but
sank in Scotland into the homely sumame of Gillies, whUst
in Ireland it was wildly transformed, in the person of the
primate of Armagh, at the time of the Conquest, into the
Greek Gelasius, laughter; a curious specimen of the con
sequences of supposing that Greek must be better than their
natural tongue. Maol losa grew into the Scottish Christian
name of MaUse, by which we know the Earl of Strathem at,
the battle of the Standard, and again, the bearer of the
Fiery Cross in the Lady of the Lahe —
' Speed, Malise, speed ! '
Nor has it ever become disused in the Highlands. Giolla;
Christ was a Christian name in many Scottish famUies of
the old Keltic blood. In 1174, one Gilchrist was Eari of
Angus, and another. Earl of Mar ; it has not, even to the
present day, fallen into disuse at baptism, and is a not un
common surname. This may perhaps have been the origin'
of some of the Christians, and others may once have been
CaiUeach Christ.

DEVOTIONAL NAMES. 1 1 5
The Archangel, St. Michael, was the subject of much
devotion : Cara Michael has now become Carmichael ; but
Gilliemichael was more common, and turned into Gilmichal.
The infiuence of the great Keltic mission at Lindisfam, on
the North of England, is visible as late as the Norman Con
quest ; for Domesday Book shows four northern proprietors,
called respectively, GhUemicel, GhUander, Ghillepetair, and
Ghilebrid. Votaries of the Twelve Apostles are not, however, very
common. Ireland shows Ceile Petair, and also. Mail Eoin ;
but what is remarkable, it has no servant, male or female, to
the Blessed Virgin. In Scotland only was there Gilmory and
Gilmour; both masculine, and now sumames. Maolmhtdre
was the daughter of King Kenneth M' Alpin of Scotland,
and marrying into Ireland, was the mother of many kings.
Some persons were servants of all the saints, collectively ;
as GioUa-na-naomh, very frequent in Irish genealogies. In
the Highlands it becomes GUle-ne-ohm, and thence has oc
casioned the modern sumames Niven and Macniven. They
are, probably, all connected with the Welsh nen, sky.
This word, in Cymric, leads us to the name of Ninius,
prince of Cumberland, who there estabUshed Christianity,
and of Nennius the British historian ; though these are too
much disguised by the Latin to be easily recognized. St.
Ninidh, the pious, was one of the Twelve Apostles of
Ireland, and left a hand bell, which is still preserved in the
county of Fermanagh. Another bell, kept as a tenure of
land, is still extant in Galloway, and is said to have belonged
to St. Ninian, who is called by the Irish, Ringan, a prince
of Cumbrian birth, who became a monk, in 412 built the
first stone church between the Forth and Clyde, earned the
title of Apostle of the Picts, and died in 432 ; leaving
Ninian and Ringan both to be Christian names in Scot
land.. -The great object of Keltic veneration was, however, St..
12

Il6 GADHAELIC NAMES.
Patrick. Nobody ventured to be Patrick alone, but many
were Giolla Phadraig, or Mael Phadraig, and the descendants
were Mag GioUa Phadraig, whence arises the surname Fitz
patrick, translating the Mac, and omitting the GiUie. Others,
again, were Killpatrick ; but it is not easy to tell whether this
Kil is the contraction of GiUie, or territorial, from the Cell
or Church of St. Patrick. The first syUable of Cospatric,
or Gospatrick, the Christian name of the Earls of North
umberland in the tenth and eleventh centuries, is less easily
explained ; but I beUeve (on Mr. Lower's authority) it is the
Gossoon, the boy of St. Patrick.
St. Patrick's pupU, Bridget, had her votaries in large
numbers, Giolla Brighde, Gilbrid, Maelbridh, all now lost
but for the occasional sumames of Macbride and Kilbride,
which last is sometimes the Church of Bride. Possibly, too,
the Scottish Gilbert may have been taken up as an equi
valent to Gilbrid.
The great St. Columba, who established the centre of his
civilizing and Christianizing efforts at lona, had many a
grateful disciple, as Gillecolumb, or Maelcolum. The latter
form rose to the throne of Scotland in 936, when the father,
who had thus dedicated his son to the missionary saint, re
tired into a convent. The second Malcolm was the per
secutor of Lady Macbeth's family, the third was Duncan's
grandson, he of the Great Head, who, by the help of his
sweet wife, St. Margaret, was the first to lift Scotland out of
her barbarism, and begin that assimUation with the Enghsh
which was in full progress at the time of the death of his
great grandson, Malcolm the Maiden, and perhaps was the
reason why no more kings were called by this Keltic name,
so puzzling to Latinizers, that in utter oblivion of St. Columb,
they call it Milcolumbus. However, the people of Scotland
have kept it up, and many are stiU the disciples of Columb,
or the Servant of the Dove. It was a fine puzzle to
foreigners: — in 1385, Sir Malcolm Drummond received 400

DEVOTIONAL NAMES. 1 1 7
francs from France, and is designated in the conveyance as
Matorme Dromod ! Galium is considered in the Highlands
as the form of Malcolm, and Cailein of Colin.
Secundinus was another pupil of St. Patrick, whom the
Irish first made into Seachnall, and then termed their chil
dren Mael-seachlain, as his pupils. The great Irish king,
Malachy with the collar of gold, was thus rendered to suit
the weak Saxon capacity, when we are called on to believe
of his palmy days, when ' rich and rare were the gems she
wore,' as she walked unscathed the length and breadth of
Erin. CaiUeach- Coeimghin is the votaress of St. Kevin, a very
impromising object of hero-worship, if we were to believe the
legend with which Moore and other moderns have quite gra
tuitously favoured Glendalough.
GioUa Cheallaigh was common in honour of Ceallach, a
very local saint, of royal birth, who was educated by St.
Kieran. On his father's death, he was about to ascend the
throne, when his tutor interfered, probably considering this
an infraction of his vows, and on his persisting, laid him
under a curse, after the usual fashion of Irish saints. He
lost his kingdom, became a bishop, but resigned his see for
fear of his enemies, and retired to a hermitage on Lough
Con, where, however, he was murdered by four ecclesiastical
students, whose names all began with Maol. His corpse was
hidden in a tree, where for once it did not show the incor
ruptibility supposed to be the property of sanctity. The
murderers were all put to death on an eminence, called from
them Ardna-maol, or hill of the shavelings, and his admirers
have resulted in the surname O'KUly-kelly, or, for short,
Kelly. Ceallach is one of the many words meaning war.
St. Congal and St. Angus had likewise their Gilly an*d
Cailleach ; indeed, there could of course be as many of these
as there were of saints in the calendar. Gille Earch is ser
vant to him of the goose eggs ; and besides thege are GioUa-

1 1 8 GADHAELIC NAMES.
finn, Finn's servant, resulting in Gillifinns and GUfiUans,
GioUabuidhe, Boyd's servant, now the truculent Killboy ; in
fact, all the Macgilli, Gilli, and some of the Kills of Ireland
thus commenced.
Scotland had several instances of bishop's servant, Gil-
lescop, or Gillespiug, this last being the Keltic form of
episcopus. Gillespiug Campbell, already Scotticized enough
to have been christened by this Gaelic term, married Aioffe
O'Duinne, the daughter of the line of Diarmid ; and thence
forth Gillespiug, or Gillespie, was the hereditary Christian
name in the family, till, in the twelfth century, his fourth
descendant called himself Archibald, and thenceforth the
heads of the house of Campbell have been Archibald to the
Lowlands, to their own clan Gillespiug. It is a curious fact
that Gillespie Grumach and his son, the two Covenanting
Argyles, should thus have proclaimed themselves ' Bishop's
gillies.' Gillespie has become a frequent surname in Scotland.
The Mael, or Mai, a chief, is Ukewise frequent. Mael-
mordha, the majestic chief, is changed to Myles by the
O'ReUlys. Maelcluith was the youth of the game, and thus
descended to the O'Molcloighs ; but they fancied that their
patronymic came from cloth, and anglicized themselves into
Stones. Maeldearg is the red chief; Maeldubh, the black
chief ; Malduin, the Scotch king, was a brown chief ; and
hosts of Irishmen commencing in Mul or Mai owe their
origin to vassals or to chiefs, — the question which is decided
by whether the word is followed by an adjective or a proper
name. Mael or Mai, in the sense of chief, was used in the Cymric
countries. Brocmael, fierce or cruel chief, was prince of
Powysland, and a great foe of the invading Saxons, and has
left a name to Wales. Maelgwn, or Maelgwas, was his suc
cessor in Powys and Gwynned, and is desperately abused by
the indignant Gildas for all manner of crimes ; while even
Taliessin, who praises his beauty, rebukes his licentiousness.

DEVOTIONAL NAMES. 1 1 9
Three centuries later, a bard alleges that he hid himself in a
wood, waylaid and carried off the wife of King Arthur. In
the twelfth century, Caradoc, abbot of Llancarven, adds that
Arthur besieged him in his castle, and had challenged him to
single combat, when the sage Gildas and the abbot of Glas
tonbury interposed, and obtained the lady's restoration. Wal
ter of Oxford adds, that this Maelgwn reigned after King
Arthur, and finally died of terror in a convent, having seen
the Yellow Spectre, namely the plague, through the chinks
of the church door. Dr. Owen Pugh further tells us, that
Jack-in-the-Green, on May-day, was once a pageant repre
senting Melva, or Melvas, king of the country now called
Somersetshire, disguised in green boughs, as he lay in am
bush to steal King Arthur's wife, as she went out hunting.
From these coincidences, M. de ViUemarque argues, that
Mael, meaning both servant and chief, was translated into
old Romance French as the former, by the word Ancel, or
Ancelot, otherwise L'Ancelot ; and he quotes a mention of
the '¦fable Ancelot et Tristan^ from the romance of Ogier,
to show that in earlier days Mael, or Ancelot, was mentioned
without the article, which has since become incorporated with
it, so that Lancelot has gro'wn to be the accepted name, and
so universally supposed to mean a lance, that the Welsh
themselves, re-importing his history, called him Palladr, a
shivered lance. It is favourable to this supposition, that
Ancelot and Ancelin were certainly early chivalrous names,
the latter perhaps confused with the Ansir or .^sir of the
Teutons. Ancilee and Anselote are feminine names in the
register of Cambrai, of the dates of 11 69 and 1304; and as
there most of the feminines are changed from those of men,
it is evident that Ancil and Anselot must once have existed
there, either named from the hero of romance, or translated
from some Walloon Mael ; and thence no doubt the Asselin,
Ascelin of our old Norman barons, and the Atscelina Fossard,
mentioned in a curious old tract on female names, as having

1 20 GADHAELIC NAMES.
Uved in the North of England. It is curious that even ro
mance does not profess that Launcelot was the trae name of
the knight, thus formed from the Cambrian chieftain, though
Galahad is there said to have been his proper name, after
wards given to his worthier son. Launcelot was bestowed on
him by Vivian, the Lady of the Lake, who stole him in in
fancy from his father, King Ban, and brought him up under
her crystal waves, till he was eighteen, when, as Sir Lancelot
du Lac he appeared at King Arthur's court, and became the
principal figure there, foremost in every feat of chivalry, the
flower of knighthood ; but the noble severity of the English
romance withheld from counsels of perfection, by his guilty
love for Gwenever, and lying spell-bound in a dull trance
when the holy vision of the Sanc-greal past by. Finally he
broke with King Arthur, and opened the way to Mordred's
fatal rebellion by his defection, too late repenting at the
dying letter of Gawain, and after Arthur's fall became a
hermit and a penitent.
His story was told with deep warning in England, but in
Italy it was ' Lancilotto ' that Francesca di Rimini looked
back to as the tale that had been the spark to awaken fatal
passion. He has ever since been regarded as the type of penitence
for misdirected love and chivalrous prowess, and in conse
quence Lancelot, and its contraction Lance, have never been
entirely out of use in England, though not universal.
Maelgwn, or Mailcom, is however translated by Chalmers,
the origin of good.*
* O'Donovan; Ossianic Society; Cosmo Innes, Scotch Surnames;
Ellis, Domesday Book; Dr. Owen Pugh; ViUemarque.

121

CHAPTER IV.
NAMES OP CYMRIC ROMANCE.
Section I. — The Round Table.
It is a very remarkable fact, that the grand cycle of our
national romance and poetry, has been made to centre round
the hero of a people whom we have subdued, and were hold
ing in our power with difficulty, at the very time that min
strels were singing the adventures of the leader who had for
the longest time kept our forces in check.
Napoleon I. is said to have blamed the painter David for
representing Leonidas at Thermopylae, because he was the
loser. What good did it do to represent the man who died
defeated, and got nothing by it ?
He who had no inward ear to listen to what Scott called
* the roaring voice sent down to all posterity' by blood shed
in a noble cause, even apparently in vain, would have had
little sympathy with the feeling that has rendered the petty
chieftain of a semi-barbarous tribe, one of the most pro
minent figures in the imagination of Europe, because he was
the last hope of a losing cause.
Many a patriot has fought as boldly as Arthur, many a
nation has held out as bravely as the remains of the Bri
tons ; but as the ' battle is not to the strong,' so renown
is not to the most able ; and it was to a very peculiar
concatenation of circumstances that the Britons owed it, that
their struggles in Somerset, Cornwall, and Strathcluyd
should have been magnified into victories over Rome and half
Europe, and themselves metamorphosed from wild Cymry,

122 NAMES OF CYMRIC ROMANCE.
with a little Roman polish and discipline, into ideal models
of chivalry.
That they did fight there can be no doubt. If the dismal
groans of the Britons 'syere ever sent at all, it was but a
small number who groaned. As to the Anglo-Saxons, they
had been coming even before the Romans, and Carausius
and his fleet held them in check for awhile ; bnt there can
be no doubt that they came in much greater numbers, and
with more intent to settle, than in former times, in the
decay of the empire. Moreover, the resistance evidently
became more resolute and valid, as the tide flowed west
ward over the diagonally arranged strata of the island;
the alluvial lands to the East have no traditions of battles,
but at the chalk do'wns, the rounded hills have names and
dim legends of fights and of camps, and cities begin to
claim to be the scene of Arthur's court.
Westward again, with the sandstone hill and smiling
valley, the tales multiply spots where the court was held
in perplexing multitude, river upon river puts forth its old
Keltic name of Cam, the crooked, and calls itself the place
of the last decisive fight. And when the moorland and
mountain are actually reached, and the heather stretches
wide over the granite moor, with the igneous peak of stone
crowning the lofty crag: there the Briton is still free, and
points to his rocky summits as his hero's home.
To those fastnesses were the Cymry finally limited, if
they would enjoy their native government ; and though many
remained as serfs, and some as clergy, in the open country,
the national spirit was confined to those who dwelt in the
strongholds of the West. There did their bards sing and
teU tales, and compose Triads on the past glories of their
race, with a natural tendency to magnify the exploits of
their most able defender. At the same time, the Armori-
cans on the other side of the water, some of whom had,
probably, according to their tradition, migrated from Britam,

THE ROUND TABLE.

123

told their cwn legends, and sung their songs on the chief
who had maintained the cause of their countrymen.
When the Normans settled in Neustria, their lively fancy
caught up all that was imaginative among those around
them. It is from their arrival that the first dawn of French
literature dates, and it seems to have been they who first
listened to the Breton lays, and brought them forward in
the French tongue. At the central court of France, the
Norman trouvere met the Proven9al troubadour, and their
repertory of tales was exchanged, the one giving his native
Norse myths, tinctured with Keltic heroic tales, the other the
Greco-Roman and Arabic stories that had traveUed to him.
And there, both sets of stories were steeped in that mys
terious atmosphere of chivalry, which could dream of no
court that was not based on the model of feudal France,
no warrior without a horse and an esquire, a cone-shaped
helmet, and kite-shaped shield. Nay, our very word court
shows how deep ingrained is the chivalric system, since its
true meaning is the tilt-yard of the royal castle, where the
youth were trained in warlike exercises.
That true knights were all equal, was a maxim held,
though hardly carried out, in the eleventh century, and the
fioating notion of a table, where all were on an equality,
was ready to fix itself on the golden age of chivalry. And
when the Normans themselves became the owners of Britain,
and brought with them a fair sprinkling of Bretons, no
wonder they decided that the heroes, who, at least, were
not Saxon, should be their own property. Siegfried and
Brynhild had fallen into oblivion, and the British chiefs
did veritably flourish on their native soil. Geoffrey of
Monmouth pretended to hunt up their history in Wales
and Brittany; Marie of Bretagne more faithfully repro
duced her native lays in Norman-French ; and as fresh tales
were hunted up or invented, metrical romances spread them
far and wide, and began all to place their scene at the court

I 24 NAMES OF CYMRIC ROMANCE.
of Arthur. Most noted among these, was the story of the
Sanc-greal, the cup of healing and lance of wounding, that
may have been a shadow of a mighty truth, but which be
came myth in many countries, until, in the hands of the
Cymry, they assumed to be the veritable original cup of ^
blessing of the last supper, and the lance of the soldier at
the cross.
A relic-adoring age willingly believed, that to find these
treasures was the great task of the knights they had in
vented. Thenceforth, English imagination beheld the glo
rious past as a feudal court, where all the good Knights of
the Round Table, now an order of chivalry, had bound
themselves to seek the holy relics, that could only be re
vealed to the perfectly pure and worthy. Mallory's beau
tiful book preserves the main line of the allegory, though
it is full of episodes, and it is the veritable prose epic of the
Round Table.
France and Lombardy likewise believed in the Round
Table, but not with the same national faith. As was
natural, their poems centered about the great Frank em
peror, and what they wrote or told of the British knights
rather dealt in the less creditable adventures of individuals,
than in the ennobling religious drift of the main story.
However, it is these names that are the most widely
knofra and used of aU the Keltic nomenclature, with a re
putation almost entirely romantic, and very seldom saintly.
Among the Round Table names, there is not one that is
Teutonic, except, perhaps, Lancelot, an error of translation
and imitation; all the rest are either genuine Cymric, or
else such modifications of Latin nomina as citizenship was
sure to leave to the Britons.

ARTHUR. 125

Section H. — Arthur.
No Keltic name approaches in renown to that of the
central figure of the Round Table ; yet, in the very dazzle
of his brightness, his person has been so much lost, that,
as the author of Welsh Sketches observes, ' Whereas Peter
Schlemihl lost his shadow, Arthur has lost his substance.'
To begin with his name. Most people imagine it to be
a bear, and connect it with Arctus, ' Arthur's slow wain
rolling his course round the pole,' and Arcturus, the bear's-
tail, far behind him in Bootes. Arth does indeed mean a
bear in British ; but this seems to have been the Latin word
assimilated, since, as we have seen, Mahon is the Gaelic
form, both for the beast, the man, and the constellation.
On that ground, the theory that would make Arthur the
remains of an old astronomical myth breaks down.
There seems to have been a British deity called Arthur,
and Mr. Davies tries hard to prove that he is another form
of Noah and the Ark, in which he is not very successful.
The fact is, that Ard, the consonant, softening into th
in composition, means high or noble, in all the Keltic
tongues, and had been a name from time immemorial in
Ireland, as Scott knew when he made the Bertram family
tree bear fruit of Arths in fabulous ages. Art, a Milesian,
is said to have lived B.C. 233; Art Mac Cormac appears in
the Ossianic legends, ' Art Oge MacMome kept Dundorme;'
according to Hanmer's catalogue of Finn MacCoul's com
rades. Art and Arth recur for ever in Erse Highland pedi
grees ; and in the end of the fourteenth century. Art Mac
Morough was the great hero of Ireland, who slew Roger
Mortimer, and sorely puzzled Richard II. , reigned in Lein
ster for forty years, and cost the English treasury twelve
million marcs ; so that when he died.

126 NAMES OF CYMRIC ROMANCE.
' Since Brien's death in Erin
Such a mourning had not been.'
Arthmael, high chief, was a Welsh prince, but here, as in
Ireland, all the Arths are now merged in Arthur.
Ardghal, or Ardal, of high valour, is an Erse name, and
was long used, though it has now been suppressed by the
supposed Anglicism Arnold, eagle-power. It explains the
name of Arthgallo, who, in Geoffrey of Monmouth's Legen
dary History, is the persecuting brother, whom Elidure's
untiring love and generosity finally won from his cruel
courses to justice and mercy. Artegal and Elidure was one
of the best ante-Shakesperian dramas ; and Artegal was
selected by Spenser as one of the best and noblest of his
knights errant.
Ardrigh was an Erse term for the supreme monarch over
their five lesser realms, and is still applied by the native
Irish to the king of France, — much as the Greeks were
wont to style the Persian monarch the Great King. This
most probably accounts for the term Arviragus, which we
picked up from the Romans, and applied to that son of
Cymbeline who, as we have seen, was really the brave
Caradwg. However, this must have been an older form if
so used, for the Welsh call Arviragus, Gweirydd. Ardheer is
another form of this same title of the highest chief, and the
later critics tell us to consider this as the origin of our hero,
and bring a whole crowd of Arthurs into the field, all mean
ing chieftains, all fighting with the Saxons, and all finally
united into one, like the many Homers and many Herculeses,
which a like strain of interpretation would have us accept.
But the unity of Arthur is a thing not to be given up. He
is not, indeed, mentioned by Gildas, unless he be the ' dragon
of the island ;' but his omission from that letter is only to
his credit, and the individuality of Arthur stands on the
testimony of Welsh bards up to his o-wn date, and of uni
versal tradition.

ARTHUR. 1 27
Arthur, or Arthwys, seems to have been the son of Uthyr,
also called Meirig-ap-Tewdrig, and a relative of Gwgrtheym
and Emrys, whom he succeeded, bearing the title of Pen-
dragon in his O'wn tongue, and of Imperator in Latin, which
was the language of politics to the Britons. A SUurian like
Caradwg, his spirit was the same, and his hereditary posses
sions would seem to have been on the Welsh border, with
Caerleon on Uske for their capital ; but he was born at
Tintagel in Cornwall, and he was prompt in fiying to the
aid of the British cause in all quarters. The West Saxons
were his chief enemies, and his battles, twelve in number,
are almost aU in the kingdom of Wessex ; but he must also
have been acknowledged by the northern Britons of the old
province of Valentia, and have ruled over ' fair Strathcluyd
and Reged -wide ' from his fortress at Carlisle. After a brave
reign of forty years, he at length perished through the trea
chery of his nephew ; but whether his last fatal battle was
fought in Cornwall or in Somerset, it seems impossible to
determine, though the latter county appears the most pro
bable, since he was certainly carried away wounded to Glas
tonbury, and there died, and was buried, but with such secrecy,
that his return was long hoped for.
The Cymry mourned passionately. The Welsh bards made
Triads, and the Armoricans sang songs. ' The March of
Arthur,' which is still chanted with rapture by the Bretons,
is, M. de ViUemarque tells us, an evident importation from
Wales ; and in Brittany, a war is thought to be foretold by
visions of Arthur's army on the tops of the dark moors
before sunrise, while, in some parts of our own island, the
Northern Lights were Arthur's host. It is possible that
the original meaning of Arth may help to account for his
many possessions in the way of heights, — the magnificent old
couching Uon that bears his name at Edinburgh, his table at
Penrith, his stone at Cupar Angus, his fountain in Clydes
dale, his palace at Penrhyn, his oven on the Carron, also his

128 NAMES OF CYMRIC ROMANCE.
fold and his lee in Strathcluyd ; but he had gained full pos
session of the Keltic mind long before the Norman con
quest. In 720, a person called Eremita Britannus, or the British
hermit, is said to have 'written about King Arthur ; the
Welsh Mahinogion, or children's tales, were all centering
on him ; and when, in the early part of the twelfth century,
Geoffrey of Monmouth brought out his chronicle, it was
translated all over Europe, even into Greek, and furnished
myriads of romances, metrical and otherwise.
The outline of the Arthur of romance scarcely needs to
be here traced : the prince, brought up in concealment,
establishing his claim by pulling the sword out of the stone
that no one else could detach ; the Christian warrior, con
quering all around, and extending his victories to Rome;
the band of knights ; the vow and quest of the Holy Greal
that breaks the earthly league ; the fall and defection of the
two most accomplished knights through unhallowed love, the
death of one, and the rebellion of the other; the lover of
Arthur's own faithless wife, — all opening the way to the fatal
treason of the nephew; and the last battle, when the wounded
king causes his sword to be thrown into the river, as a signal
¦to the fairies, who bear him away to their hidden isle. All
this is our own peculiar insular heritage of romance, ennobled
as it has been by old Mallory's prose in the fifteenth century,
and in the nineteenth by Tennyson's poetry, the best of all
the interpretations of the import of Arthur himself.
These tales are little varied from elsewhere. Ireland
claims a visit from our Arthur, and declares he held a
chapter of the Round Table, where he received Kings Guil-
lomar and Anguish ; at least so says Dr. Hanmer. Spam
has heard of el Rey Artus, but thinks he was turned into a
crow. As to his name, it was not very common even in Wales.

ARTHUR. 1 29
It only came forth as matter of romance, and was given
occasionally either from fancy or policy.
Constance of Brittany gave her little son this popular
name, perhaps in the hope that m time British Arthur
would be restored to England, and thenceforth Arzur, as the
Bretons call it, was occasionaUy used in the duchy.
An old prophecy of Merlin was said to have declared that
Richmond should come from Brittany to conquer England,
and this prediction caused Henry V. to refuse all requests
to allow Arthur, Comte de Richemont, son of the Duke of
Brittany, to be ransomed when taken prisoner at Agincourt.
His name of Arthur no doubt added to the danger, and
Henry's keen eyesight might Ukewise have detected in him
the military skUl which made him so formidable an enemy to
the English on his own soil, not theirs.
When Richmond really came out of Brittany and con
quered England, he named his first son Arthur, but that son
never wore the British crown, nor did the infant Arthur of
Scotland, so named by James V., survive to be known
in history. Arthur, however, had become an occasional
name ; but it was reserved [for the great Arthur Wellesley,
whose name had perhaps more to do with the old Art of Erse
times than with the king of the Round Table, to make it, '
as it is at present, one of the most universally popular of
English names. Even the French use it, for its sound may be
presumed rather than for its recent distinction, and they
have ceased to spell it in the old form, Artus, and adopted
our own. The Italians know, but do not use Arturo ; how
ever, the name changes so little that Madame Schopenhauer's
husband was justified in choosing it for his son as a useful
name for a merchant, because it does not alter in being
translated. The English feminine Arthurine is occasionally used.
The name of Arthur's father, Uthyr Pendragon, would
VOL. II. K

130 NAMES OF CYMRIC ROMANCE.
mean the terrible chieftain, and may have been a designation
of Meirrig ap Tewdrig, or even, as some suggest, of Aurelius
Ambrosius. At any rate, Uthyr has become a Welsh name.*
Section HI. — Gwenever.
The staunchest supporters of Arthur's existence give him
three wives ; indeed, the Triads mention together —
' The three fair ladies of Arthur's court,
The three wives of Arthur.'
One of them was she who was stolen by Maelg'wn, the origin
of Lancelot, and she it is who is the dame of romance.
Gwen, the commencement of her name, is used in Welsh,
in the double sense of the colour, white, and of a woman,
perhaps for the same reason that ' the fair ' so often stands
for a lady in poetry. The word is closely related to the finn
and ban, both meaning white in the other branch of the
Keltic tongue, and but for the fulness of interest belonging
to both, all might have been treated of together. Gwen, the
feminine of Gwyn, white, becomes wen in composition, and
as such we have already met it at the end of words.
Gwen is considered as the British Venus. The planet is
Seren-Wener, as a morning star, Gweno as an evening star ;
nay, it is highly probable that Venus herself may be but a
Cymric Gwen, in a Latin dress or undress.
Gwendolen, or the lady of the bow, or, perhaps, from
gwendal, white browed, was, it seems, an ancient British
goddess, probably the moon, and to her Mr. Davies adds a
brother deity, Guendoleu, whom he calls the sun, and whose
eagles and apple trees had mystic meanings which lie m
debate between the supposed god and a veritable prince of
North Wales so called.
"= O'Donovan ; Hanmer, Chronicle ; Geoffrey of Monmouth ; ViUemarqiiS ;
Eoujoux, Bretagne ; Jones, Welsh Sketches ; Cambro-Briton ; Dunlop,
Hist, of Fiction; Chahners; Thstckerny, Ancient Britons ; Mahinogion;
Gildas; Nennius; Lappenburg; Sharon Turner; Davies.

GWENEVER. I3I
Guendolen is made by the Brut, and by Geoffrey of
Monmouth, the daughter of Cormeus, Duke of CornwaU,
and wife of Locrine, son of the original Brutus. He
deserted her for the sake of Estrild, a fair German captive,
and she made war upon him, in the course of which he was
killed, and EstrUd and her daughter Sabre, or Avern, made
prisoners; whereupon, the jealous and revengeful queen
caused both to be drowned in the river, thenceforth caUed
Sabrina or Severn, in Welsh, Havern, where we may hope
that the damsel became the lovely nymph who ' listened and
saved ' the lady from Comus and his crew.
The Welsh saints give us St. Gwendolen or Gwen as the
mother of Caradoc Vreichfras, the excellent Sir Cradocke of
the Round Table. In the Triads and the Mahinogion, Guen
dolen is a beauty of Arthur's court, and in the bardic enu
meration of the thirteen wonders of Britain appears the gold
chess-board of Guendolen, on which, when the silver men
were placed, they would play of themselves, rather a doubt
ful advantage one would think, but perhaps the remains of a
myth from Guendolen's goddess days, when her chess-men
may have been the stars. It was altogether an invention of
Sir Walter Scott to put Guendolen into the magic castle
of St. John, and on the whole it must be confessed that the
whole story of Triermain is an offence against the true scope
of the Morte d^ Arthur. However, Guendolen, Gwen, and
Gwyn have never been disused in Wales. The first was the
daughter of the last native prince, and hers is increasingly
in favour with the lovers of archaisms.
Gwenh'wyvar, the swelUng white wave, is in curious
correspondence with two other Welsh names, namely, Gwen
frewi, the white stream, and Dwynwen, the white wave. Mr.
Davies makes her the lady of the summit of the water, and
wants us to see in her another variety of the ark; but
setting this aside, the ocean names of the Britons are worth
noting, when we remember that they also had Llyr, with
Bronwen and CreirdydUdd, aU certainly mythical.
E2

132 NAMES OF CYMRIC ROMANCE.
Without consigning Queen G'wnhwyvar to the regions of
Regan, it is likely that hers was a hereditary name descended
from some part of the ancient faith. A Welsh couplet de
scribes her as —
' Gwenh'wyfar, daughter of Gogyrvan the Great,
Bad when little, worse when great.'
And the various early tales in the Mahinogion, as well as
the metrical romances, always give the same character of the
beautiful queen of light conduct. In the Morte d' Arthur,
guilty love for her paralyzes Lancelot's eyes when the Sanc-
greal passes before him, the same passion drives him to his
rebellion, and finally the repentant queen takes refuge in the
convent at Ambresbury, where Tennyson has described the
parting between her and Arthur in the most noble and'
beautiful of all his poetry.
Guenever was her full English name, contracted into
Ganivre, or Ganore, a form that occurs in old Welsh regis
ters. Jennifer, as they have it in CornwaU, is still frequent
there ; but nowhere else in our island has the name been fol
lowed. Scotland has a tradition of her crimes that calls
her Queen Wanders, or Vanora, and Boece actually imprisons
her in the great old fort on Barra Hill, in Perthshire ; but
abroad she met with more favour, as Genievre in France, and
in Italy as Ginevra, or Zinevra. The latter was usual at
Venice, and Boccaccio so caUs the slandered wife, whom we
best know as Imogen. Ariosto put a Gine'vra into Scotland,
and made her heroine of the adventure attributed to the
forefather of the Plantagenets, and related in the beautiful
ballad of Sir Aldingar.
Observing that the French call Gwenhwyvar, Genievre,
we can hardly doubt that either this, or Gwenfrewi, must
have been the origin of their own Genevieve, though the
German etymologists try to construe her as gan, magic, vaips,
a crown. But G6nevieve was a Gaul, born at Nanterre, in

GWENEVER. 1 33
422, and could hardly have borne anything but either a
Keltic or a Roman name ; and the whole family of Gwens
were, as has been sho-wn, dear to the Cymric race, whose
religion was the same in Gaul and Britain. A shepherd-
maid, like Joan of Arc, Genevieve anticipated her deeds of
patriotism, though she wore no armour and carried no sword.
When Paris was besieged by the Franks, she, unarmed, and
strong only in her pious confidence, walked forth as the
escort of the citizens in search of provisions, and when the
city was taken, her heroic holiness so impressed the heathen
Franks, Hlodwig and Hilderik, that her entreaties in behalf
of their prisoners were always granted. When she died, in
her 90th year, she was erected into the primary patron saint
of Paris, and has so continued ever since, leaving Genevieve
in high esteem among Parisiennes of all degrees down from
Anne Genevieve de Bourbon, the sister of Conde. The
numerous contractions testify to the popularity of the gentle
patriot, who feU on more believing times than those that
burnt, but never canonized, the Maid of Orleans. Some of
the German forms may, however, be ascribed to the apocry
phal saint Genovefa, of Brabant, to whom has attached the
story, of suspicious universality, of the wife who was driven
by malicious accusations to the woods, there to give birth to
an infant, and to be nourished by a white doe until the final
discovery of her innocence. From whatever cause, the name
is widely used on the Continent.

French.
Gen§vi6ve
Javotte Genevion

Breton.
JenovefaFa-ik

Italian.
.Genoveffa

German.
Genovefa VevayVefele

Russian.
Zenevieva

lUyrian.
Genovefa GenoveficaVeva

134 NAMES OF CYMRIC ROMANCE.
Gwenfrewi was the Welsh nun whose head was cut off
by a furious prince called Caradoc, because she refused his
addresses ; whereupon, in the usual fashion of Welsh saints,
she caused a well to spring up on the spot of her mar
tyrdom. But unlike other such weUsj it is intermittmg,
and sufficiently impregnated with mineral substances to sup
port its high character to miraculous powers, and, in addi
tion, the stones are marked with red veins, which represent
the blood of St. Wenefred, as our Anglo-Saxon tongues have
long since made her. Such undoubted wonders made Wini
fred a most flourishing name in Wales, and it is occasionally
found in England, though usually through a Welsh connection,
and so spelt as to confuse it with the true Saxon Winfrith,
or friend of peace. The Irish take Winny as the equivalent
of Una.
There are other Gwens among the Cymry, far too many to
enumerate. Gwenwynwyn is a man's name, and in the Triads
he was one of the three commanders of fleets of Britain.
Gwenwynwyn, otherwise Gwenwyn, the chieftain who besieged
the Garde Douleureuse, was really an historical personage, only
he lived under King John, instead of under Henry II. The
modem meaning of Gwenwyn is poison.
In Breton, Guennole, also called Wingallok, was a cele
brated saint, and was the counsellor who saved King Gradlon
in the inundation. Guennola is the feminine, and is used,
very correctly, to translate the French Candide, as is Guen-
n^an, the white spirit, for angel, both the being and the
name. Dwynwen, or the white wave, was invoked as the patroness
of lovers, and became a Welsh name. It is just possible
that an echo of this, on the other side of the water, may be
Damhnait, or Devnet, latinized as Dymphna, or Dympna,
though the more obvious likeness in sound is damhna, a reason.
An Irish princess, so called, was obliged, about the year 6oq,
to fly from the persecutions of her father, protected by a priest,

GWENEVER. 135
a jester, and his wife, untU near Antwerp her father over
took her and cut off her head. Hanmer adds, ' the Irish in
the county of Lowth do honour her ; belike her father dwelt
there : ' and Dympna, or Demmy, is not wholly extinct as a
name. This same wen, a woman, or fair, enters into the com
position of two other saintly Keltic names. The first, St.
Mawdwen, or Modwen, was one of St. Patrick's Irish nuns ;
and another later Modwen, also Irish, came to England in
840, educated Edith, daughter of King Ethelwolf, and
founded an abbey at Polsworth. She was rather a favourite
saint ; her name is traceable in vari6us places ; and Mod-
wenna continued in CornwaU. Perhaps it comes from mA)dh,
manners. Ceinwen is said to be Coin, the virgin. The first half
means splendid or beautiful, things or jewels. The Welsh
declare that she was of princely birth ; but being determined
to live a holy life, she travelled on foot beyond the Severn,
and there found a solitary place were no one had ever lived,
because it was infested with snakes and vipers, which she
forthwith, by her prayers, turned to stone, and they may
still be picked up in a petrified state in the fields. Keyn-
sham, in Somersetshire, is, in fact, famous for ammonites,
which thus have given rise to another legend like those of
St. Cuthbert and St. Hilda. Camden himself saw one of
these stones, and was somewhat perplexed thereby.
She afterwards repaired to St. Michael's Mount, in Corn
wall, where she met her nephew, St. Cador, and there her
name became attached to a well, in the parish of St. Neots,
arched over by four trees — oak, ash, elm, and withy, all ap
parently growing from one root. The water was further sup
posed to endow whichever of a married pair first tasted it
with the mastery for life. No one can forget that best
of all Southey's humourous baUads where the Comishman
confesses, —

136 NAMES OF CYMRIC ROMANCE.
' I hastened, as soon as the wedding was done,
And left my wife in the porch ;
But, i' faith, she had been wiser than I,
For she took a bottle to church.'
Comishmen, apparently, never forgave St. Keyne for the
properties of her weU ; for Carew, in his Survey of Cornwall,
terms her ' no over holy saint ; ' and Norden thus vituperates
her : ' this Kayne is sayde to be a woman saynte, of whom it
(the well) taketh name ; but it better resembleth Kayne, the
devil, who had the shape of a man, the name of an apostle,
the qualitie of a traitor, and the hands of a bribom.'
Gwyn also signifies blessed or happy, and this gwynnedd is
an epithet of some of the favourite kings. Gwynaeth, a
state of bliss, is a female name stiU in use, and often written
Gyneth, though it gets translated into Venetia, and, in the
latter form, named the lady whom Sir Kenelm Digby ren
dered famous. Gwynnedd, or Gwent, is also a district in
Wales, and answering to the district of Vannes, in Brittany,
both having been inhabited by the Veneti, whose name may
either come from their eating gwenith, wheat, or from their
fairness. It was called by the Romans, Venedotia.*
Section IV. — Gwalchmai, Sir Gawain, and Sir Owen.
No knight is more distinguished, either in the Triads or
in romance than Gwalchmai, the hawk of battle.
He, too, we venture to consider as a namesake of a more
remote hero, though we know we are here treading on doubt
ful ground, and running counter to high authority.
Among the patriots who withstood Roman prowess, none
merits higher fame than the Caledonian Galgacus, who so
gallantly stood at bay in the Grampians against Agricola.
* Mahinogion; Davies ; Cambro-Briton ; Geoffrey of Monmouth ; Owen
Pugh; Chalmers; Alban Butler; Jones, Welsh Sketches ; TitT^ Ch'ey&M&T,
Bretagne; Bees, Welsh Saints; "Williams, Ecclesiastical Antiquities of
Wales ; Camden ; Norden ; Carew ; Owen Pugh.

GWALCHMAI, SIR GAWAIN, AND SIR OWEN. 1 37
He is thus commemorated in the ancient rhymes of the good
town of Berwick-upon-Tweed :
' Sin the days of Gilligacus,
There's been fishers on the Tweed ;
Sin the Romans came to wrack us.
And consume our ancient seed,
A castle strong has been to back us,
On the top of yon brae head.'
M. de ViUemarque thinks that the name of this great
chieftain should be resolved into Gwall-gag, great stam
merer, from gwall, the Keltic much, and gag or ga gag, the
expressive term for a stammerer. It is not a flattering epi
thet ; but remembering that a thousand years later, a brave
French warrior always figures in courtly Froissart as le Begue
de Vilaines, the title does not seem improbable.
Yet I cannot help thinking it more likely to have been
more nearly related to gualg, a hawk. Gwallawg was a
Welsh name, and Gwallawg ap Lleenawg is celebrated in old
Welsh poems, and supposed to have been a champion who
fought against King Ida, in the sixth century. In the Triads,
he is one of the three pillars of battle of the Isle of Britain,
and the song in his honour declares, —
' In the assault, rising up in his armour.
Never was seen a better man than Gwallawg.'
Finally, he seems to have been slain by an arrow, for
there is a poem of six triple stanzas severally cursing the
shaft, — the black shaft, the white shaft, and the green shaft,
— that pierced the dark eye of Gwallawg ap Lleenawg.
Gwall does assuredly mean much or well, and the direct
meaning of gwallawg is defective ; but still it is highly pro
bable that these two heroes were hawks, like Gwalchmai,
the hawk of battle. In Welsh pedigrees, he is Arthur's
nephew, son of his sister Morganse and of Llew, king of
Lothian and Orkney. He probably had a real existence,
for the Triads celebrate him as one of the three golden-

138 ^ NAMES OF CYMRIC ROMANCE.
tongued knights of Britain, one of the three learned ones
of Britain, and one of the three most courteous men to
wards strangers. In a Welsh poem, he is represented as
using his courteous tongue in behalf of his friend Trystan ;
and in the Mahinogion, in the ' Lady of the Fountain,' he
takes such a prominent part, that the French romance is
called that of Sir Yvaine and Sir Gawaine. Walganus and
Walwyn had latinized the Hawk of Battle, and have
caused it to be confounded with the Teutonic Walwine,
slaughter-lover ; but the Gwalchmai of Wales can be iden
tified with the Gawain, or Wawyn, of romance by his friend
ship with Trystan, his relationship to Arthur, and his title
in the romances of the Flower of Courtesy.
It was Sir Gawaine who in the ballad boldly adventured
himself to wed the ' Loathly Lady,' and was rewarded by
breaking the spell, and discovering her loveliness. ¦ Gawaine
was the hero of the great battle with the giant Rhyence,
and, though unsuccessful, was one of the foremost in the
quest of the Sanc-greal, until warned by a dream how the
enterprise was to result. Finally, Sir Gawaine took his
uncle's side first in the war with Lancelot, then with Mor
dred, and died of the renewal of a wound received in battle
with the former, writing on his death-bed a letter that
brought Lancelot to repentance. Gawaine was buried at
Dover, where, says MaUory, his skull may yet be seen, with
the wound that Sir Lancelot gave him ; though WiUiam of
Malmesbury says, that in his time it was discovered on the
sea shore, in the province of Rhos, near Castell Gwalchmai
or Walwyn's Castle ; and in the Welsh poem of the graves
of the warriors, it is said —
' The grave of Gwalchmai is in Pyton,
Where the ninth wave flows.'
His ghost appeared to King Arthur, to warn him against
the unfortunate battle of Camelford ; and Chaucer seems to
have thought he had shared Arthur's fate, for the squire
says,—

GWALCHMAI, SIR GAWAIN, AND SIR OWEN. 139
' That Gawaine with all his olde curtesie.
Though he were come again out of faerie.'
Hanmer caUs him Garrett, the Irish Gerald, and brings
him to Arthur's Irish Round Table.
His name, whether as Walwyn, Gawain, or Gavin, was
popular in England and Scotland in the middle ages ; and
in the last-mentioned shape named the high-spirited bishop
of Dunkeld, the one son of old Bell the Cat, who could
' pen a line,' and who did so to such good purpose when ' he
gave rude Scotland VirgU's page,' in the translation, whose
broad Scottish was WilUam Lisle's stepping-stone to Anglo-
Saxon. Nor is Gavin by any means extinct in Scotland.
Sir Gawain is coupled in English romance with his inti
mate friend. Sir Ywaine, as in French with Sir Yvaine ; and
in the Welsh story, in the Mahinogion, he is Sir Owain.
He there sets forth from court in search of adventijres, and
faUs in with a knight in black armour, whom he conquers,
and thereupon is conducted to a castle, where he becomes
guardian of an enchanted fountain, and husband of a lady
in yellow satin, with long yellow hair, and a hundred maids
always embroidering satin. Of course, when Sir Gawain
came in quest of him, and he was allowed to go back to
King Arthur's court, he forgot the whole affair, until at the
end of three years, he was recaUed by his lady's confidential
handmaid, Luned, and proceeded to atone for his unfaithful
ness by another severe course of adventures, during which
he delivered a black lion from a serpent, thus binding the
faithful beast to his service for ever, and after a due slaugh
ter of giants, rejoined his wife, and lived happy ever after.
Other accounts make her faithless, and Penarwen, or silver
head, which was her name, is reckoned among the unchaste
matrons of Britain. The first version of the story, how
ever, has had wide fame. The French of the thirteenth
century knew him as Sir Yueins, le Chevalier du Lion ; and
even the Scandinavians had his story in their Ivent Saga.
In the Morte d' Arthur, he is Sir Gareth, and brother to

140 NAMES OF CYMRIC ROMANCE.
Gawain ; but he must have been his cousin, as he was the
son of Urien, and of Arthur's sister, Morgwen. In the
Morte d'' Arthur, Luned is Linet, and in the French romances
she is Lunette; but in the Welsh version she keeps her
name and fame for cleverness, especially as she had a ring,
the stone of which, when turned inwards on the finger, ren
dered the wearer invisible, and which was reckoned with
Guendolen's chessboard among the thirteen rarities of the
Isle of Britain. Her name seems to be derivable from Uun,
a shape or form, and if so, would mean the shapely ; but the
hagiologists identify it with that Elined, [the daughter of
Brychan, who suffered martyrdom on the hill of Penginger,
and was canonized as St. Almedha, a name still to be seen
on the sign of an inn at Knaresborough.
Owain, Oen in Brittany, continued popular in Wales,
though, .perhaps, rather more usual at a late than an early
period. The notable Owen Glendower, as Shakespeare has
taught us to call him, was really Owain ap Gruffyd of Glen-
dwyrdy, his estate in Merionethshire, where he kept a grand
household, combining in himself the ancient bard and druid
and the modem knight, till the death of Richard II. ; and
his quarrel with Lord Grey and Henry of Monmouth bring
ing on his alliance with the Percys — Hotspur's impatience of
his ' skimble skamble stuff,' and of Merlin's prophecies, and
the battle of Shrewsbury.
For many years, Glendwyr continued to assert himself as
Prince of Wales, and died a natural death in 141 6, when
Henry V., unable to conquer him in his mountains, was en
deavouring to treat with him. It was he who made Owen
the most common of Welsh names, in honour of the last
Welshman who lived and died free of the English yoke.
Owain is so like the word oen that in Welsh stands for a
sheep or lamb, that it is generally so translated ; but it is
most likely that this is a case of an adaptation of a deriva
tive from an obsolete word to a familiar one, and that Owen
ought to be carried much further back to the same source aa

GERAINT AND ENID. I4I
the Erse Eoghan, which comes from eoghunn, youth, from og,
young, and duine, man, and is translated, young warrior. It
has the feminine Eoghania, of course turned into Eugenia.
There were many Eoghans in Ireland. One of them, a
king of Connaught, when dying of his wounds, commanded
himself to be buried upright, with his red javelin in his
hand, and his face turned towards Ulster, as though still
fighting with his foes. As long as he thus remained, Con
naught prevailed and Ulster lost; but the Ultonians dis
covered the spell, and re-buried him in an opposite direction,
thereby changing the tide of success.
Eoghan, in Scotland, is pronounced Yo-han, and indis
criminately translated by Evan, Ewan, and Hugh. Several
of the early kings, who are all numbered together in Scotland
as Eugenius, were properly Eoghan, and Evan or Ewan is
certainly the right Anglicism, though Hugh is made to
do duty for these as well as for Aodh.
The same Eoghan seems in another form to have supplied
the Welsh Jevan or Evan. A certain Evan of Wales,
claiming the blood of the Welsh princes, who became a
mercenary under Charles V. of France, made a bold descent
upon Guernsey, and was killed at the siege of Mortain-sur-
mer, by what Froissart calls a short Spanish dagger, but his
Uluminator has made to look much more like a very large
arrow. Welsh history takes no cognizance of him, but he is
thought to be traceable in the national songs as Jevan Dovy.
Another translation of Owain is ' apt to serve.' A
British prince of Strathcluyd was called Uen or Hoen.*
Section V. — Geraint and Enid.
These are two of the characters whom Tennyson has
recently rescued from unmerited oblivion, and raised to their
* Mahinogion ; Morte d' Arthur ; Tracts on Antiquities of the Northern
Counties, by R. D. D.; Cambro-Briton; Jones, Welsh Sketches; Chalmers;
Percy, Relics; Rees, Welsh Saints; O'Donovan; Hy Fiachrach; Owen
Pugh ; Highland Society's Dictionary.

142 NAMES OF CYMRIC ROMANCE.
true dignity among the chivalry of the Round Table. Their'
story was indeed in the Mahinogion, and Chrestien de Troyes
had put them into French verse by the names of Erec and
Enide ; but they had not been admitted to the general cycle
of the romances, though a Triad mentioned Enid as one of
the three celebrated ladies of Arthur's court. She is as
beautiful a picture of wifely patience as Grisell herself, and
does not go to such doubtful lengths of endurance. Her
name is the Keltic form of animus, the soul ; and if Geraint
ever meant, as Davies explains it, a ship or vessel, it would be
tempting to see in the story an allegory of the scenes through
which the soul is dragged by its mate, the ship that bears it.
Geraint is relegated by Davies to the realms of myth ;
but there really was a naval commander whom the Romans
termed Gerontius, who, just at the time of the supposed
groans of the Britons, was murdering a sham imperator
raised by the soldiery, and defending the coast. He was
attacked by mutineers, and killed himself whUe his house
was burning around him. Some, in consideration of this
conclusion, identify him with Vortigern, but he seems to
have been a very different character. His name may be a
derivative from the Greek y^pwy (geron), an old man, elder,
or senator, which perfectly explains the Latin; but it would
be more agreeable, though less probable, to follow Mr. Davies,
and consider it as meaning a ship. Geraint ap Erbin,
Gwenwynwyn, and March, are the three naval champions
of Britain, and this same Geraint was the prince of Devon,
and husband of Enid.
' Thou, 0 Geraint, didst raise a shout before the South ;
on the shield didst thou strike a signal to repair to the white
water,' says the bard Aneurin, when praising the gallant
commander of Arthur's ships. He was canonized, and had
a church dedicated to him at Hereford. Llywarch-hen com
posed his elegy, and represented him as slain at the battle of
Llongborth. There seems to have been a second Geraint at

TRYSTAN AND YSEULTE. 1 43
Arthur's court, and there is a curious wild legend of a king
of Cornwall named Geraint or Gerennius, who was miracu
lously kept alive to receive his last communion from Saint
Telliaw of Llandaff.
Geraint continued in use in Wales, and was the home
name of the monk of St. David's, who is believed to have
been Alfred's friend, teacher, and historian, chiefly because
his adopted name of Asser is supposed to be meant for
Azure, and to translate the epithet of Geraint, Bardd Glas,
or the blue bard. The Guerin and Guarin of the middle
ages may have been forms of Geraint as well as of Gherwine.
They were chiefly used in France.*
Section VI. — Trystan and Yseulte,
The episode of Trystan is one of the most celebrated in
cidents of Arthur's court, and has not failed to be treated
by Davies as a magnificent emblematic myth.
The Triads begin by declaring that the three mighty
swineherds of the Isle of Britain were Prydheri, Coll, and
Trystan. Another adds, —
The third swineherd was Trystan, son of Tallwch, who
kept the swine of March, the son of Meircha'wn, while the
swineherd was conveying a message to Essylt, to appoint
an assignation with her.
Again, he is one of the three heralds of Britain, also one
of the three diademed chiefs, also one of the three knights
who had the conducting of mysteries.
Besides, the three unchaste matrons of Britain are Penar
wen, Bun, and Essylt Vingwen.
And the tale told by the Cymric race hi Cambria and
Armorica has resounded throughout southem Europe. There
* Mahinogion; ViUemarqu^ ; 'Williams; Cambro-Briton ; "Wright, CcZ(,
Eoman, and Saxon,

144 NAMES OF CYMRIC ROMANCE.
the mighty swineherd is the son of Roland, or Rohand and
Blanchefleur, sister of Mark, king of Cornwall. Almost at
the moment of his birth, she hears the tidings of his father's
death, and expires from the shock, calling her babe Tristan,
or the sad. He grows up to be an accomplished knight, and
after various adventures, is sent by his uncle. King Mark, to
Ireland, to bring home the promised bride Ysolt the fair.
The mother of Ysolt gives her maid, Brengwain, a magic
draught, which was to be administered to the pair on their
bridal day, to secure their mutual affection. A storm rises .
on the voyage, and, intending to refresh her lady and the
knight after his exertions and her alarm, Brengwain, in her
confusion, gives them the fatal draught, and their passion
for one another became the theme of the story-tellers who
preferred guilty love to high aspirations. Tristrem was
married to another Ysolt, called of the white hands, or of
Brittany ; he was dangerously wounded, and lay sick in her ,
castle in Brittany. Nothing could cure him but the pre
sence of Ysolt of Cornwall, and to her he sent his squire,
with his ring, entreating, like the father of Theseus, that
if she came to him the sails of the ship might be white, if
she refused, the squire should hoist a black sail.
She came, but the wife, Ysolt, of the white hands, falsely
told the sick man that the sails were black ; he sank back
in despair and died, and Ysolt died of grief beside him.
Such is the story told by Thomas of Ercildoune, in the
thirteenth century, as well as by hosts of romances. The
Book of Howth omits the love potion, but makes the passion
(as Hanmer says) ' begin and end with the harpe;' for his
music first caused her affection, and he was slain by Mark
while playing to Yseult, or Izod, as she is there called.,
Chappell Izod, near Dublin, is said to have been built by
her father, and named after her.
Davies thinks this story was an allegory of a new worship
which Trystan endeavoured to introduce from Ireland, •with

TRYSTAN AND YSEULTE. 1 45
fresh Druidical rites, in support of which he appeals to the
names of the actors in the romans. Esylt is, he says, a
sight or spectacle, and Dr. Owen Pugh's dictionary trans
lates it ' fair, open to view.' Thus the lawful wife is the true
spectacle of religion, her surname of Vyngwen being not white
hands but white mane. March certainly means the horse, and
Trystan was thus the priest of the horse, and his own name
meant the proclaimer. Ceridwen was often represented as
a mare, and the cup of Brengwain represented her cauldron.
However this may be, Trwst was really a Cymric name,
and was called among the Picts Drust, or Drest. The Pict
ish Pendragon, who was elected at the time the Romans
quitted Britain, was caUed by his countrymen Drust 'of the
Hundred Battles, and many of his successors bore the same
name, which means din, tumult, or loud noise, and thus may
poetically be translated as a proclaimer or herald. Trwst
ail Taran (tumult the son of thunder) was the poetical name
of another of the line. The influence of Latin upon Welsh,
however, made trist really mean sad, so that it was there ac
cepted as suited to the melancholy circumstances of the hero's
birth ; and Tristram, or sad face, became identified with the
notion of sorrow ; so that the child of St. Louis, born whUe
his father was in captivity on the Nile, and his mother in
danger at Damietta, was named Jean Tristan. Never would
the cheerful Greeks have accepted such a name as Tristrem,
Tristan, Tristano; but in Europe, it regularly entered the
ranks of the names of sorrow, and it was, no doubt, in al
lusion to it that Don Quixote accepted the soubriquet of the
Knight of the Rueful Countenance.
Esylt was the French Yseulte, or Ysonde, the ItaUan
Isolta, and English Ysolt, Isolda, or Izolta, and in all these
shapes was frequent in the famUies of the middle ages ; re
curring again and again in registers, down to the seventeenth
century : indeed, within the last fifty years a person was
aUve who bore this romantic name.
VOL. II. ^

1 46 NAMES OF CYMRIC ROMANCE.
Tallwch is explained as the torrent, and seems to have been
translated into Roland, from the sound of roUing, when the
Armorican bards laid claim to the great Paladin of Charle
magne's court, on the score of his having been Warden of the
Marches of Brittany, and wanted to make out that Roland
was a name of their own. They have thus caused Rowland
to be considered as a regular Cymric name.
King Mark himself was most probably a compromise be
tween the Roman Marcus and the native word march, which
belongs to all the Kelts — ^nay, Pausanias teUs us, meant a
horse, in the dialect of the tribe who tried to take Delphi.
Its fellow, mar, passed into Teutonic ; named MarshaUs, as
Marskalk, or horse servant ; and Uves among us as our m^ire,
in the feminine. Indeed, Marcus may itself be another
instance of the Keltic element in Latin.
The husband of Esylt may be the same with a King
Mark, of the island of Britain, who refused to St. Pol of
Leon one of the hand-beUs of which the Keltic clergy were
so fond. The saints went on to Batz, to Count Withun, and
were telling him of their disappointment, when some fisher
men brought a huge fish with a bell in its mouth.
This is believed, in Brittany, to be a very old beU pre
served in the cathedral of St. Pol de Leon, made of red
copper mixed with silver, and supposed to possess such mira
culous powers that it is put on deaf children's heads to restore
their hearing. Meircha'wn, or Marchun, was not a reputable
name, for a Strathcluyd king so called was said to have been
stmck dead for his sacrilege in raising his foot against St.
Kentigern. MarcheU was the daughter of Tewdrig, king of North Wales,
and, in 382, married Brychan, son of Cormac Mac Cairbre,
one of the kings of Ireland. Her name was, no doubt, a
mixture of the Keltic March and the Latin MarceUa ; and
it was she who must have rendered the name of MarceUa so
common in Ireland.

TRYSTAN AND YSEULTE. 1 47
There may possibly be a remnant of old horse-worship,
brought from the East, in the Welsh custom of carrying
about the skeleton of a horse's head, decked with ribbons and
the eyes lighted up, on Christmas eve. In some parts of
Wales, at houses where the young women had been unfavour
able to the youths who carried about the skull, it was nailed
up to an opposite wall to grin at them in the morning, and
was regarded with great horror. We shaU find warrant for
this custom among the Teutons.
The more common Gadhaelic word is, however, each, first
cousin to equus, aspa, and many another word for the gallant
animal. Each was the saint who spent his life in Boyne Water,
and was said to have uttered the curse that caused the battle
of Magh Rath, a libel disproved by his previous death.
Each, in combination, has formed sundry names, — Each-
marchach, a sort of reduplication; EachmiUdh, horse-warrior;
Eachaid, horseman, the most famous of them belonging to
many kings, and rendered into Latin — Eochodius, or Equitius,
the last not so incorrect. Auhy, or Atty, were the usual
ways of rendering it ; but these have been confounded with
Arthur, and the name is lost.
Several other Eochaids were kings of Scotland, but they
are grievously confused by Latinity, and, with the o'wners of
the following name, tumed into Eugenius ; Eochaidbuidhe,
or the fair-haired, appearing as Eugenius Flavus ; and
Eochoid Rinne Mhail as Eugenius Crooked Nose !
Another Eochaid has, by the capricious fancy of Scotland,
been transmitted to us as Achaius. He is said to have been
an ally of Charlemagne, and begun the custom of lending
auxiliaries to the French, numerous Scotsmen coming to
honour and dignity for their assistance in their conquest of
Saxony. Achaius is also said to have married the sister
of the king of the Picts, and formed an alliance with him
against the Anglo-Saxons. WhUe marching against the
L 2

148 NAMES OF CYMRIC ROMANCE.
EngUsh forces, the cross of St. Andrew suddenly appeared
in the sky, giving assurance of victory, and, in consequence,
was adopted as the ensign of the Picts, and afterwards of the
Scots. The ' double tressure, fiory and counterflory,' that sur
rounds the field where ' the ruddy lion ramps in gold,' is also
said to have been ' first by Achaius worn,' though he was
probably innocent of all armorial bearings, as he died in 819.
Eachan is the most usual form of the Highland name, and
has for many years been, by general consent, converted into
Hector. It was the true name of Scott's unhappy Conachar.
We have all heard of the Highlander who, at the woful
Carlisle assize of 1746, owed his life to his non-recognition
of his O'wn name of Eachan M'Bachan, in the pronunciation
of the clerk of the court as Hatchen MacHatchen.
The feminine Eacha is an old Irish name.*
Section VH. — Hoel and Ryence.
The romances of Arthur give him, among his many nephews,
one named Hoel, Duke of Brittany, whose niece Helena was
seized upon by the horrible giant Ritho, and devoured upon
the top of Tombelaine.
This Hoel does not seem to have been a real character.
His name, Hywel, the lordly or conspicuous, was a common
one in Wales and Brittany; and a prince so called seems
really to have fled to jirthur for aid against the Franks, and
to have returned with a fresh colony of Britons, by whose
aid he became king of Armorica, and is called in Brittany
Riowal Mor Mac Caw, King Hoel, great son of the chief
He reigned for thirty years, and died in 545. Other Hoels
reigned after him, the third of whom is said to have been
killed at RoncevaUes.
* Chalmers ; ViUemarqufi ; Mahinogion ; O'Donovan ; Pugh ; Pitre
Chevalier; Sir 'W. Scott, Ed. of Sir Trestram.

HOEL AND RYENCE. 1 49
In Wales, Hywel continued in favour, and Hywel-dha, or
the Good, who reigned in the tenth century, is famous for
having gone to Rome to study law, by which he so profited
as afterwards to draw up the famous code that has thrown so
much light on the manners of the Cambrian mountaineers,
the order of precedence in the king's household, and even the
price of animals.
Hywel was a name in frequent use among the Welsh
princes, and ' high Hoel's harp ' was frequently sounded, for
various bards were so called, especially one in the twelfth
century, who has puzzled critics by singing of Ceridwen.
-Another Hoel was that imfortunate relative of Owaia
Glendwyr whom he was said to have killed and hidden in
the blasted tree. The name is in use to this day, and has
furnished the English sumames of Powell and Hall. A
Welsh Hywel, among the adventurers who came with the
Earl of Pembroke, left behind him the famUy of Mac Hale,
or Hale.
The giant Ritho is evidently a relation of Rhitta Gawr,
who, in the Welsh stories, interfered to put a stop to a fu
rious battle between two kings named Nynniaw and Peibiaw,
who had quarrelled about the moon and stars. Rhitta
Gawr defeated them both, and cut off their beards, and after
wards the beards of seventy-eight more kings who collected
to avenge them. Of these eighty beards he made a mantle
that reached from his head to his heels, for he was the largest
man in Britain, and wore it as a warning to all to maintain
law and order.
The romances of Arthur turned Rhitta Ga'wr into a fierce
monarch called Rhyence, king of North Gales, an aggressor
instead of a defender of justice, who, however, had his scarlet
mantle- purfled with the moderate number of eleven royal
beards, and politely demanded that of King Arthur to com
plete the trimming, with what consequences no one acquainted
with King Arthur can doubt.

150 NAMES OF CYMRIC ROMANCE.
Whence come the names of Ryence and Rhittar ? They
connect themselves closely with the universal words for ruler,
the GadhaeUc righ, Teuton rih, Latin rex, and the rajah of
India. Rhys-wr is, in Welsh, a warrior, and most Ukely
comes from the same source ; and Rhesus, the chieftain,
slain by Ulysses and Diomed, on the night of his arrival be
fore Troy, probably was called from some extinct word of the
same origin.
At any rate Rhys has ever since been a Welsh name, some
times spelt in English according to its pronunciation as Reece,
and sometimes as Rice. It has furnished the surnames of
Rice, Rees, Rice.
In Brittany we meet a saint called by the diminutive of
Rhys, Riok, or Rieuk. His legend begins with one of the
allegories that arose from the prophecy, that the weaned child
should put his hand on the cockatrice's den, for when he was
almost an infant he was employed by the holy knight Derrien,
to lead away in a scarf a terrible basilisk, whom the saint
had tamed by making the sign of the cross over him. His
parents were heathens, but were convinced by this miracle ;
and he became, in after years, a great saint, living for forty-
one years on a rock on the sea coast, eating nothing but
herbs and little fish, and wearing a plain garment which,
when it wore out, was supplied by a certain ruddy moss
growing all over his body. His name has continued in use
in Brittany.* Section VHI. — Percival,
No name has had more derivations suggested for it than
this. The Norman family so called came from Perche-val,
the valley of the Perche ; but as to the knight of romance,
he was at first supposed to be Perce-val, pierce the valley, on
the principle on which Percy was hatched out of Pierce-eye,
* Mahinogion; Pitre Chevalier, Bretagne; MaUory, Morte d' Arthur;
Jones, Welsh Sketches<

PERCIVAL. 1 5 1
and the story invented of the Piercie who thrust his spear with
the keys dangUng on it into the eye of Malcolm Ceanmohr
at Alnwick Castle. The romance of Perceforest was even
named on the principle that it was as suitable to pierce the
forest as the vaUey.
Mr. Keightley derives the name from the Arabic Parse,
or Parschfal, poor dummling, who appears to have been the
hero of an Eastern tale of a wonderful cup, whence arose
the mysterious aUegory of the Holy Greal. A Proven9al
troubadom-, named Kyot, or Guiot, professes to have found
at Toledo a book written in heathen characters by a magician,
Saracen on the father's side, but descended by his mother
from Solomon. His book is lost, but two founded on it sur
vive, — the German romance of Parzifal, by Wolfram von
Eschenbach, and the Norman French, Sir Perceval, of Walter
Mapes, Archdeacon of Oxford under Henry II.
Equally old, however, is a Welsh legend of Peredur,
which M. de ViUemarque explains as Per-kedor, companion
of the bowl, and considers Per-keval, or cy-faill, also com
panion of the bowl, to be synonymous with it. Aneurin
speaks of Peredur as a real warrior. Chretien de Troyes has
a long poem on the story of Perceval, and his adventures are
almost identical with those of the Peredur of the Mahinogion.
The story of the orphan, stirred up to chivalry by the
sight of the knight whom he took for an angel, the same
as that of Mervyn les Breiz, here appears, and Perceval or
Peredur shows some kindred 'with the dummling of Persia
by his ignorance and dulness till he comes to the castle,
where he sees the wounded king, the bleeding lance, and the
Greal or bowl of pure gold that are the great features in
his history. Probably, the magic bowl was an Indo-European
idea, but there seems to have been Druidic traditions about a
magic bowl, which Bran the Blessed obtained from a great
black man in Ireland, and which cured mortal wounds and
raised the dead. It was one of the thirteen wonders of the Isle
of Britain, and disappeared with Merddhyn in his glass vessel.

152 NAMES OF CYMRIC ROMANCE.
However, in the twelfth century, the ideas of this vessel had
assumed a Christian form. It was the bowl used at the
institution of the Holy Eucharist, and the lance was that of
Longus the centurion, brought to Bran by Joseph of Ari
mathea, and thenceforth its quest became the emblem of the
Christian search for holiness through the world, only grati
fied by gleams here, but with full fruition hereafter. Per
ceval, once the companion and guard of the sacred Greal,
gradually descended from his high estate, and became only a
knight of the Round Table, high and pure of faith and spot
less of life, but only on the same terms as the rest, and
though not failing in the quest, stiU inferior to Galahad.
It is curious that his other name, Peredur, has by the
sound been turned into Peter. One Robert de Barron tells,
that from Bran, the Greal descended to Alan, and thence to
Petrus his nephew; and a story of the Breton peasantry
still gives the adventures of Perronik, like the original
Peredur, an idiot at first, but sent to the Castle of Caer-
glas to fetch a diamond lance and golden cup, which would
raise the dead by a touch. One of his adventures was
meeting my Lady Pestilence with a yellow face and black
satin dress — no doubt the Yellow Spectre that was the
death of Mael — but she proved a most useful auxiliary to
Perronik. The later French romances spoilt the nobleness and purity
of Perceval's character, but he is always one of the best of
the knights, and succeeds in finding the Sanc-greal. But
Galahad, the pure and virgin knight, son of Lancelot, and
predestined to occupy the Siege Perilous at the Round Table,
resist all temptation, conquer all peril, and finally, obtain
full fruition of the Greal, then, at his own desire, pass out of
the world of sin and care, has latterly taken the place once
the right of Peredur or Perceval. I suspect him, as before
said, to have been the separate produce of the story of Cattwg,
first warrior, and afterwards hermit and saint, and that Gala
had may have been an epithet from his starry purity.

PERCIVAL. I ^3
In the Mahinogion, Perceval has a ladye love, whom, how
ever, he only loves with distant chivalrous devotion, and who
answers to his sister, who in Mallory's beautiful story gave
the blood from her own veins to heal a lady who could only
be cured with the life-blood of a pure virgin.
In the Mahinogion her name is Angharawd Lan-eurawc,
or with the hand of gold, and Angharawd, or the free from
shame, the undisgraced (from angharz), was continued in
Wales, but it is now generally considered as the equivalent
of Anne, and thus accounts for Anna being universally called
in romance the sister of Arthur, and mother of the traitor
nephew Medrawd.
The Welsh Angharawd probably accounts for Ankaret,
which occurs in the family of Le Strange in 1344, as well
as in several others, and is generally supposed to mean an
anchorite ; but as it has no parallel on the Continent, it is
much more Ukely to be the Welsh Angharawd mispronounced,
and then with the spelling adapted. Annan was, however,
a separate name — for the three sprightly ladies of Britain
are Annan, Angharawd, and Perwyr.
Myvanwy is one of the unaccountable feminine Welsh
names, not yet extinct among families of strong national
feeling, though in general Fanny has been substituted for it.
The three primary bards of Britain were Plenydd, Ala'wn,
and G'wron, whom Mr. Davies explains as light, harmony,
and virtue. Plenydd, it is thought, is related to Belenus;
and Ala'wn is erected by ardent Cymrians into the mythic
Greek Olen, who is said to have been the first 'writer of
hymns in hexameter, and whom the Delphic poetess, Boeo,
calls a Hyperborean ; this name is said to mean the flute
player. .A.t any rate, I have found Alwn Aulerv in Welsh
genealogies as brother of Bran the Blessed, and this must be'
the real origin of the Breton Alan, although, very Ukely,
Elian and HUarius were both used as its Latinisms.*
?ViUemarque; Cambro-Briton; Mahinogion; MaUozy, Morte d'Arthur,

1 54 NAMES OF CYMRIC ROMANCE.
Section IX. — Merlin,
Prime magician of the Round Table, stands Merlin the
enchanter, well known to fame and tradition.
Child of a human mother and demon father, he was
brought, at seven years old, to Vortigern, that the death
of a fatherless boy might appease the troublesome stones
of a castle which the king in vain tried to build, as they
fell down as fast as they were set up. The child saved
his life by declaring, that the agitation of the stones was
merely caused by a couple of dragons fighting underground;
whereupon the king caused his men to disinter two horrid
monsters, one red and one white, who continued their wars
unconcernedly, while Merlin explained them to mean the
Welsh and the English. He became court magician to Vor
tigern, transplanted Stonehenge from Ireland to Salisbury
Plain in one night, saw Arthur inaugurated, gave him some
good advice, performed a great number of prophecies, and
finally was beguiled by Vyvyan into the fatal hawthorn ia
the forest of Brocelyande, where nothing remains of him but
his voice.
Merlin is the form in which we take the enchanter's name
from Norman French. In Welsh it is Merddhin, and the
Triads tell us of the three baptismal bards of Britain, —
Merddhin Emrys, Merddhinn ap Madawg Mororyn, and
Taliessin. There were also three disappearances from Bri
tain, those of Gavran, of Madawg, and of Merddhin Emrys,
who, in Welsh story, went off, not with Vyvyan, but with
nine bards in a ship of glass, to the happy islands of the
West. As to the poems and prophecies current in Merddhm's
name, they are beyond computation.
M. de ViUemarque has compUed the narration of which
the following is an outline. He thinks that the original'
idea is to be found, by going back to the Marsi, ancient
inhabitants of ApuUa, who were great physicians, and supr

MERLIN. 155
.posed to derive arts of magic from their god, Marsus ; and
thus, that among the Romans, Marsus came to be syno
nymous with a magician.
The Britons and Armoricans, in their Romanized state,
came, he thinks, to use the same term, only pronouncing
it Marzin and Marddhin. Leaving some of the Roman
deities, whose altars were multiplied aU over Britain, and
of these, more to the obscure and local deities who were
tutelary to individuals and nations, than to the great Olym
pian divinities ; the Armorican Cymry came to make of
Marzin a sort of god, "with three kingdoms of flowers, golden
fruits, and of laughing pygmies.
He further thinks that Emrys, or Ambrosius, was really
a yoimg bard, who grew up at the court of the great Am
brosius, and who was baptized by the same name, though
called Merddhin from his talents, and perhaps his relapse into
heathenism. With Gwrtheyrn, there may have been a sort
of revival of Druidism, of which Merddhin was probably the
leader; some fresh consecration of Stonehenge, and a re
newal of ancient rites, calling forth the vehement censure
of Gildas, for it seems that Gospels were torn, churches
burnt, and monasteries robbed. He is thought, however, to
have lived through Arthur's reign, and then, after the fatal
battle of Camelford, to have poured forth lamentations in
solitude, much like that of Ossian after the Feen, until he
was reconverted, the Scots say by St. Kentigern, the Irish
by St. Columbanus, the Bretons by St. Cadoc.
The person, however, who wrote the lamentations here
referred to, may have been the second Merlin in the Triad,
also called Merddhin the Caledonian, or Merdhinn Vardd,
or Merddhin ap Morvryn. According to Davies, Merddhinn
and Morvryn are the same name, and both mean hill in the
sea ; and he explains Merddhin Vardh, as bard or priest of
the sea-girt hUl.
Whether he is right or not in so explaining the origin of

156 NAMES OF CYMRIC ROMANCE.
the word, Merddhin is in sound Mervyn, and this, as well
as Marzin, is popularly used for the great magician in Brit
tany, instead of the Merlin of French and Latin romance,
or Merlino of Italian. And even if Marsus was a Roman
legacy, the Britons, without a doubt, assimUated the sound
to one of their many derivatives from the universal word
of the sea. To this very day, Mervyn is a Welsh Christian
name, though the letter «; is a substitute for so many others
in the Keltic languages, that it is not certain whether it
stands for Merlin or some other sea name.
Like mare in Latin, and meer in Teuton, the Gadhaelic
muir, Welsh mor, and Breton mor, are close kindred, and
watery names derived from them abound.
King Arthur's sister, Morgana, or Morgaine, Morgue la
Fee, or La Fata Morgana, as she is variously termed in dif
ferent tongues, was probably Morgwen, or the sea lady. Is
it from her, or from some lingering old Keltic notion in
ancient Italy, that the Sicilian fisherman connects the towers
and palaces painted on the Mediterranean surface, with La
Fata Morgana, the lady of the sea ?
Morgwn, the masculine, a dweller by the sea, was the
native name of the heresiarch, who called himself by the
Greek equivalent Pelagius, and thus named the Pelagian
heresy. Some writers say that sundry heretic names lin
gered about the Spanish Visigoths after their union with
the Church, and instance both Ario, a distinguished author,
and Pelayo, the Asturian Robert Bruce, as instances of
names so borne. However this may be, Morgan has con
tinued, even to the present day, to be very common in
Wales. Morvran, sea-raven, is now bestowed on the cormorant;
but the original Morvren figures as son of Ceridwen, and
nothing less, in Mr. Davies' opinion, than Noah's own
faithless raven.
Morvryn is sea-king, Morman is sea-hero, but is also pro-

MERLIN. 157
nounced Morven, and in this form has named one of the
most interesting heroes of Armorican tradition. Morven
was really viceroy or mactiern of Leon in the end of the
eighth century, and fought so fiercely with the Franks, as to
be called Lez Breiz, the support of Britain.
A series of old songs relate his history, beginning with the
Perceval of romance. The boy, carefully guarded from all
sight of warlike weapons, fatal once to his father, beholds by
chance a knight in full armour riding through the wood, and
takes him for the Archangel Michael ; then, on being unde
ceived, runs away from home, and enters on the career of
arms. In the Breton legends, Lez Breiz returns ten years
after, to find, to his sorrow, his mother dead, her cottage
ruined, his sister desolate. His wars are related, especially
the slaughter of a gigantic Moor, in the Frank king's ser
vice, after which he threw away his good sword, because it
was stained with infidel blood; and finally, when he was
surrounded, whilst alone, and treacherously beheaded by the
Franks, he brought his head in his hands to a hermit, who
joined it on again, that he might dree a seven years'
penance of fetching water every day, with a cloak of lead
chained round his neck. At the end of that time, his
mother, St. Anne of .Axmor, came and cut the chain with
her golden scissors, and dismissed him to rest.
' For seven years and a month his squire had sought him.
His squire spoke thus, as he rode through Hellian wood —
' Though I have slain thy slayer, yet I've lost my dear lord.'
At the end of a wood he heard a horse's neigh,
His horse raised his nose to the wind, and bounding
At the end of the wood, he knew Lez Breiz's black steed.
He was near the spring, his head was down, but neither to
drink nor graze ;
But he smelt the green turf, and he scratched with his hoofs.
He lifted his head, and again he mournfully neighed.
He mournfully neighed, some even say that he wept.
¦ ' Tell me, grave sire, who com'st to the spring, who sleeps
'neath this turf?'

158 NAMES OF CYMRIC ROMANCE.
' Lez Breiz sleeps there, as long as Bretagne stand lasts his
fame,
With a shout one day -will he wake, and give chase to the
Franks.' '
So ends this strange wild mixture of pathos and marvel,
leaving Morven a popular name in Brittany.
' Morolt with the iron mace,' as romance calls him, the
brother of Yseulte, who was killed by Sir Trystan, is caUed
Morogh by his own countrymen in Ireland. It is the con
traction of Muireadhach, or sea protector, a favourite Irish
name, though, after degenerating into Morogh, it was usually
rendered into Morgan, and so continues in modem Ireland.
It is the same with Meriadek, or Meiriadwg, the title of
Conan, the chieftain who is said to have colonized Brittany,,
and also with the Welsh Meredith, both as a Christian
and a surname. In Ireland, the sons of Morogh became
O'Muireadaig, and then contracted into Murray. They are
thus celebrated in an Erse quatrain :
' Mac Muireadhaigh with spirit,
O'Gormog, O'Tigearnach,
A generous mind is innate in this people,
Eule over the splendid uneven Ceara.'
In Scotland, Muireadhach named the earldom of Moray
and the great family of Murrays of Athol. Muredach is
said to have reigned over the Scots from 733 to 736, and is
transformed into Murdach, Murochat, Muirtec, Mordacus.
It must have become mixed with Muircheartach, from ceart
(a right), the sea warrior, which has produced Moriertagh,
Mortough, or Morty, as a Christian name in Ireland ; but it
is now made into Mortimer. It is Murdoch in Scotland,
once very common, and not yet extinct, and the North,
adopting it with other Keltic names, caUs it Kjartan.
Muirgis, once common in Ireland, is rendered by Maurice,
or Morris, and Murchada has become Murphy.
And there is a name, stiU very common in the North of

LLEW. 159
England, that I cannot help connecting with some of these,
namely Marmaduke, which appeared among the chivalry of
England about the thirteenth century, and has never become
extinct. It is most Ukely a corruption of one or other of
the sea names, in fact, it is not far from Muireadach ; or it
may be the offspring of the Scottish title, Maormar, from
maor, a steward or officer, and mar, great, thus meaning the
great officer of the crown, the term which prevailed before
the Saxon Thegn or Danish Earl displaced it.*
Section X. — Llew.
We find Llew, light, naming Lleurwg ab Coel ab Cyllyn,
also called Lle"wfer Ma'wr, the great light, and correctly
translated by the Latin Lucius, the king who is said to have
sent messengers to Rome to bring home Christianity, though
some think Lucius a mere figment of Roman writers ac
cepted by the bards who invented the translation, from their
own word, so closely analogous to the Latin lux.
Llew is the name given in Welsh genealogies to the king
of the Orkneys, who married King Arthur's sister, and was
the father of Gwalchmai. The French call him Loth, and
the Morte d^ Arthur Lot, not much to his improvement.
Llewel, lightning, formed Llywelyn, which is not very
early in Wales, unless the Sir Lionel of romance be intended
to represent it. A Welsh Llywelwyn seems to have come
over to Ireland with Richard Strongbow, and his descendants,
after passing through the stage of MacUighUins, are now
the Quillinans.
The English have broken it down into Leoline, and con
nect it with a lion, Lleiwel in Welsh ; but the other view
appears the most satisfactory. Llywelyn the Great of Wales
was a contemporary of King John, and from his time the
* ViUemarque; Davies; EUis; Cambro-Briton; Geoffrey of Monmouth ;
O'Donovan; Chalmers; Munch.

1 60 NAMES OF CYMRIC ROMANCE.
name has been much in use, partly from affection to the last
native prince, Llywelyn ap Gruffyd, who perished at Pierce-
field. It is now usually anglicized as Lewis for a Christian,
Lewin for a family name.
¦ Llywarch Hen, the famous bard, appears to be another
variety of this prefix.
It is tempting to unite with King Llew the Scottish Leod,
whence M'Leod ; but this is far too doubtful to be ventured
on, and might be as wild as the hypothesis that St. Mac-
Ion, or Malo, of Brittany was himself a Mac Leod !
It is more likely to come from the Irish Lughaid, usually
anglicized Lewy and Lewis, which, however, may be itself
from the root lew, light.*

Section XI. — Cymric Saints.
The old records of Brittany give a most graceful story of
the saint who made Herve a favourite in the duchy.
Hyvemion, a British bard, was warned by an angel in a
dream to come to Armorica in quest of his wife. Near the
fountain of Rivannon, he met a beautiful maiden drawing
water, who, when he accosted her, sang ' Though I am but
a poor flower by the wayside, men call me the little queen of
the fountain.' Perceiving that she was the damsel of his
vision, he married her, and they had one child, who was born
blind, and was named by his parents in their sorrow, Houerf,
or bitter. His worm-eaten oaken cradle is still shown in the
parish of Treflaouenan, as a relic, for the blind child became
both monk and poet, and according to his maxim, ' It is
better to instruct a child than to gather wealth for hnn.'
He composed numerous simple and religious poems, which
have been sung by the Breton peasantry through the twelve
hundred years that have passed since the death of the bhnd
* Chalmers.

CYMRIC SAINTS. l6l
bard: one of them, on the duties of a Christian chUd, is
exceedingly beautiful.
Houerv, or Herve, is not accepted by the Roman Calendar,
but he was enthusiastically beloved in the country for which
he had 'made ballads,' and Herve has been the name of
peer and peasant there ever since his time. Herve came
over to us among the many adventurers who ' came out of
Brittany,' two lando'wners so called are mentioned, and the
widely spread sumame of Harvey can hardly be taken from
anything else, though some derive it from Heriwig, army
war, a Teutonic word.
Here let us mention a Breton name, Tanneguy. There
was a saint so called who founded an abbey at Finisterre,
and who is claimed as a relation by the family of Du Chastel.
It is curious to find Sir Tanneguy Du Chastel figuring among
the heroes of Froissart, and making his old Christian name
renowned. But the local saints of the Kelts are far past enumeration,
such as St. Monacella, or MelangeU, whose Welsh name is
perhaps from melain, honey ; the Latin name means a little
nun, who saved a hare hunted by Brocmael, prince of Powys,
and is buried at Pennant Melangle ; or St. Sativola, or Sid-
well, as she is called at Exeter, whose head was cut off by a
mower with a scythe, and who had a weU marking the spot,
tiU the railway made away with it ; but at least she appears
in her own church, with her head in one hand and a scythe
in the other, and has a window in the cathedral. Once she
had namesakes, but they are all gone now.
Einiawn, or Einion, is said to signify a just man, in Welsh,
though the word most like it in Dr. Owen Pugh's dictionary
is einioes, life. St. Einia"wn was one of the early saints
of the Cymry, after whom is named a spring at Llanvareth,
in Radnorshire. Another Einia'wn was grandson of Howell
Dha. The name is sometimes rendered by .^neas.
VOL. II. M

l62

PAET VI.
TEUTONIC NAMES.
CHAPTER L
THE TEUTON RACE.
Section I. — Ground occupied by the Teutons.
The great mass of modem European nomenclature springs
from the class of language which it is convenient collectively
to caU Teutonic.
That title is by some confined to one main famUy, while
the whole race is termed Gothic ; but as this last is the dis
tinctive appellation of a single collection of tribes, confusion
will be best avoided by applying Teutonic to the class, Gothic
to the order, more especially as there is evidence that in all
the divisions of the race, the word which is the root of Teu
tonic was used much in the same manner, and Teutones was
appUed by the Romans to the first of the race with whom
they were concerned.
The Teutonic wave of population pursued the Keltic.
Scattered gleams of the Ught of history occasionaUy flash
upon the obscurity of their tossings to and fro, which are
even darker than the ' dark Cimmerian desert,' which they
inundated ; and we are enabled, not to trace their progress,
but occasionally to note their standing ground, as famUiar
names occur among the barbarians contemptuously mentioned
by Greeks or Romans.

GROUND OCCUPIED BY THE TEUTONS. 1 6^
For a long time the Scythians who fought with Darius
were supposed to have been the vanguard of the Teutons, but
more enlightened criticism has decided that the Scythians
were a separate people, since become extinct or fused into the
Kelts. The notices of Herodotus, as to the people sur
rounding him, have been subject of much speculation and
contest, but on the whole there is reason to think that the
Sakai, whom he mentions as living on the banks of the
Araxes, and the Getai on the Danube and the South of Rus
sia, may have been the first of the Teutons to appear in
history. The Getai are almost beyond a doubt Goths ; but
the identity of the Sakai with the Saxons is a much more
uncertain matter.
The Teutons were divided into large confederations of
tribes, owning one hero forefather, caUed by one general
name, and then parting into lesser tribes, each with its own
ancestor. The character of the race was less fiery, but more per
severing than that of the Kelt, with less of height of stature,
but with stronger muscles, and a nature of much greater
permanence combined with progress than belongs to any
other people. Eastern nations cannot improve beyond a
certain point, the classical nations were demoralized and
became degenerate under civilization, the Kelts either re
jected it or dwindled away under it, and only the Teutons
were able to accept and adopt it so as to increase instead of
destroying their mental energy and physical force.
Even as savages they were able to drive before them the
Kelt, whether wUd or polished, and were a match for the
disciplined Roman ; and the slightest training in warlike arts
rendered them invincible by any other race. They have
never permanently succumbed to any nation of other blood
than their own ; and among themselves, the conquering side
is always that which has the most of the northern high spirit
united to the endurance of the more central races.
M 2

164 THE TEUTON RACE.
Men thus constituted were sure to carry aU before them,
and fulfil their destiny of replenishing the earth and sub
duing it ; and thus long before history took distinct cogni
zance of them, they had won those dwellings in middle
Europe which have ever since been the Fatherland of the
Teuton. The foreinost in the westerly march seem, as has before
been said, to have become fused with the hindmost of the
Kelts, and to have formed that mixed race that left its
Teuton name of Welsh, or foreign, in one broad line across
Europe from Wallachia to Wales.
In the days of Tarquinius Prisons, this forest tribe was
struggling with the Gauls upon the Rhine; by those of Alex
ander, Teutons were on the borders of the Baltic; in the
great days of the Roman Republic, aU on the other side of
the Alps was an unknown wilderness of fair-haired bar
barians; and in the last century, before our era, Marius
fought his two desperate battles with that strange conjunc
tion of Cimbri* and Teutones, one at Aix, the other at
MUan. Forty years later, when Julius Caesar fought and wrote,
Belgae were in Great Britain, and Germans were already
showing their faces over the Rhine and through the Alpine
passes, in pursuit of their GaUic prey, but were turned
back for a time by Roman valour into their o'wn forests.
Under Augustus and Tiberius, Rome learnt that though
her legions could as yet keep the Teutons from conquering
the territory of the empire, yet that there was no subduing
the stern native courage. The old policy of borrowing and
educating young chiefs failed to enervate or attach them,
but only rendered them skiUed warriors, able to tum theu-
lessons against their instructors.
Wars raged with little interval between the Romans and
Teutons and between the different tribes till the great em-
* Some regard these Cimbri aa Teutons.

THE TRIBES OF TEUTONS. 165
pire finally succumbed ; and while one of its fragments con
tinued the name of Rome among the Greeks, the other half
was tinctured in every limb by the Teuton ; tUl most lands
of the great European commonwealth came to consist of a
subsoU of Kelt, a superstructure of Roman, and an upper
surface of Teuton— aU mixed in different proportions. The
stratum of Kelt pervaded the whole in France ; the Latin
was by far the strongest in Italy and Spain, though barely
appreciable in England, and only reaching the outskirts of
Germany. There, indeed, as in England and Scandinavia,
layer upon layer of Teuton has intensified the natural cha
racter, though m the easterly provinces the Slavonic races
have had some slight influence.
America, too, may be said to have her population likewise
Teutonic, though in the southern continent, the Latinized
Teuton prevaUs, while the northern is chiefly fiUed with
EngUsh and Germans, aU of the deep-dyed Teutonic
type.* Section II. — The Tribes of Teutons.
The Teuton stock had much in common, but also strong
individuality, and nothing can be more clearly marked than
are its great main divisions and their branches.
The two great stems of race and language are called the
Gothic and the Scandinavian.
To the Gothic belonged all the earlier races who were the
foes of Rome. Of them were the invaders whom Caesar drove
back from Gaul ; of them the mass of tribes who defeated
the legions of Quinctilius Varus; of them the Suevi, who
wandered far and wide, and occupied at different times Swe
den, Switzerland, and Swabia, where their descendants bear
their name ; while another part of the tribe settled in northern
* Kombst, in Johnston's Physical Atlas; Sharon Turner; Latham;
RawUnson, Herodotus.

1 66 THE TEUTON RACE.
Spain. Of them, too, were the Angek or Saxons on the
coast of the North Sea, and the great tribe of AUemanni
on the upper Rhine.
It would seem that a great migration took place of the
races called from their present locality Scandinavian, or
Northern, but who certainly came from the East, to occupy
the northern peninsulas. They were the purest and most
high spirited of the whole race, and carried victory with
them. If, which is very doubtful, the people whom they found in
Scandinavia were Goths, the main body of that tribe, as well
as the Slavonian race of Wends, were impelled to the South
again, and took up their abode in eastern Europe. Here it
was that these Goths took their historic titles of Visigoths,
Ostrogoths, and Msesogoths ; and the Gospels were translated
into the language now, by way of distinction, called Maeso-
gothic, or Gothic.
A Slavonic incursion from the East drove the Goths down
upon the Roman empire, whose exhausted forces no longer
availed to stem the tide ; the barrier was swept away, and
Ulyria, Italy, and northern Africa were mastered by the
Goths. Another tribe, the Windiler, or Vandals, whose
lineage is less clear, spread round the Alps and into Spain,
and were there conquered by the Goths, though they con
quered the Goths in Africa. In one last flash of Roman
valour, Belisarius recovered Africa from the Vandals, and
Italy from the Goths ; but more Vandals came on, by name
the Longbeards, straight from Jutland to northern Italy,
whence their merchant sons have carried the term. Lombard
into aU quarters of the world ; and other families settling
in the vaUeys of Switzerland and on the Rhine were known
as Burgunder, from living in burghs or towns. AU these
seem to have spoken the tongue represented by the Mseso-
gothic Bible of Ulfilas.
The Franks meanwhUe had overflowed Gaul, settling most

THE TRIBES OF TEUTONS. 1 67
thickly in the centre, leaving the Kelts unsubdued in Ar
morica, and only using the Roman settlements in Provence
as plundering ground for summer forays. They extended
far back into central Europe, as the name of Frankland, or
Franconia, testifies to the present day ; and they, as well as
the AUemanner and Schwaben, spoke a dialect that had
parted from the Maesogothic, and is now known to phUologists
as old High German.
The Frisians, or Angeln, occupied the country about the
Elbe and Weser, and were gradually peopling southern Bri
tain, known from them as England ; while individual coun
ties, both there and on the Continent, took their designation
from Seaxen, or Saxon, the name that other nations gave
to this people.* Their tongue was what is called old Low
German. The Franks were the first of these tribes to rise into emi
nence. While the Goths of Spain had grown demoralized,
and had been driven into their farthest corner by the Moors
of Africa, the Franks had learnt civiUzation from their Ro
manized subjects ; and under their great leader, Charle
magne, subdued the Lombards and many of the continental
Saxons, protected Rome, and established that Holy Roman
Empire that long continued the care of the whole European
system. The empire attached itself to the central focus of the
race, that region which called itself by the old national
name of Deutschland ; and when the Frank royal line became
effete, the imperial crowns passed to the Swabians, and in
turn to the Saxons, and to all the principalities held together
in that league which calls itself Deutsch, while we know it by
the old Latm title of the people — German. Their language
feU into'the modern German as we now know it.
• It is a controverted point whether these two names belonged to sepa
rate tribes. At any rate, the difference between their language and habits
cannot be detected from the remains in our hands.

1 68 THE TEUTON RACE.
England meantime formed her variety of Low German into
what is called Anglo-Saxon, whUe Frisian and Dutch repre
sented it on the Continent. The smaU English kmgdoms
had coalesced into one about the time of the establishment
of the Frank empire, and shortly afterwards began the
northern inroads, when hordes of pirates from Scandinavia
came sometimes to devastate, sometimes to settle on, the
whole western seaboard of Europe.
They seized all the isles north and west of Scotland ; dis
puted the soU of Ireland with the Kelts, rendering them
selves an appreciable element in the population ; they sup
plied the first princely dynasty to Slavonic Muscovy; and
filled the northern counties of England, and the province of
Neustria in France. There, joining themselves to the Gallic
population, they enabled it to gain the preponderance over
the worn-out Franks, and establish a national monarchy,
from which, however, they kept themselves distinct; and,
having acquired a tinge of Gallic civilization, went forth
again to be conquerors of Sicily and England ; and it was
owing to their influence that our language passed from its
Anglian to its English form.
The Scandinavian tongue, with few external influences, de
veloped into Norse, Danish, and Icelandic, of which the last
is the eldest and purest.
In this way it came to pass that though the population of
the southern lands of Europe was chiefly of the nations sub
dued by the Romans, and their speech broken Latin, yet
their royalty and nobility had in every case been once Teu
tonic, and their traditions and nomenclature were chiefly of
the Teuton class, so much so, that almost aU the royal lines
of Europe are fair ; and in the countries where the populatioin
is dark, fair hair is considered as the token of gentle blood.*
* Max MuUer, Lectures on Language ; Kombst; Latham, Handbook of
English Language ; Adams, Elemerits of English ; Prichard, History of
Man.

TEUTONIC NOMENCLATURE. 1 69
Section HI. — Teutonic Nomenclature.
Nothing shows the identity of the entire Teutonic race
more than the resemblance of the names in each of the
branches. Many are found in each of the stems — Gothic,
Scandinavian, and High and Low German — the same in
sense, and with mere dialectic changes in sound, proving
themselves to have sprung from a name, or from words,
current in the original tribe before the various famUies
parted from it. Others are found in some branches and
not in others ; but there are comparatively very few belong
ing to a single tongue, and the analyzation of one into its
component words is never safe till the sarae name has been
sought for in the cognate languages. All the more popular
of these personal names have gone on a little in the rear of
the spoken language of the country, undergoing changes,
though somewhat more slowly. Then, perhaps, some famous
character has, as it were, crystallized his name for ever in
the form in which he bore it, and it has been so continued,
ever after, in his o'wn country, as well as imitated by others,
who often have adopted it in addition to their own original
national form of the very same.
The Teutraic names were almost all compounds of two
words. Sometimes they used a smgle word, but this was
comparatively rare. For the most part, families were dis
tinguished by each person bearing the same first syllable,
with other words added to it to mark the individual, much in
the same way as we have seen was the custom of the Greeks.
Some families, like the royal line of Wessex, would altemate
between JEthel and Ead; others between Os and Sieg and
the Uke. The original compounds forming names were ex
pressive and well chosen ; but it seems as if when once cer
tain words had come into use as component parts of names,
they were apt to be put together without much heed to theii

170 THE TEUTON RACE.
appropriateness or signification, sometimes with rather dr(
results. Their names were individual, but every man w
also called the son, every woman the daughter of her fathe
a custom that has not passed away from some parts of Nc
way, the Hebrides, or even the remoter parts of Lancashii
where, practically the people use no surnames. A family w
further collectively spoken of by the ancestor's or fathe:
name, with the addition of ing, the diminutive ; as, in Franc
the sons of Meervig were the Meerwingen ; the sons of Ka
the Karlingen, not Merovingians and Carlovingians, as Lati
ism has barbarously made them. Remarkable features, or d
tinguished actions, often attached soubriquets to individua
and these passed on, marking off families in the genealogic
minds of the Scallds ; and from these derivations, as well
from the fertile source of territorial terms, have most of 0
modern surnames arisen.
The words whence names were compounded were usual
the names of deities and those of animals, together wi
epithets, or terms of office, generally conveying good aug
ries. They were usually connected with some great h(
belonging to the various cycles of myth, in which the Tent
imagination revelled, and which, for the most part, une
Christian influence, descended from the divine to the hero
and then to the fairy tale.
These Teutonic centres of legend may be considered
threefold. There is the great Scandinavian mythologi
system, as elaborate and poetical as that of the Greeks, a
which belonged in part, at least, to the Goths, Franks, a
Saxons, though their early conversion gave it five hundi
years less of development, and Louis le Debonnaire unfor
nately destroyed the poetry that would have sho'wn us wl
it had been among them.
Next, there is the cycle of Romance, represented in Se
dinavia by the latter part of the elder Edda and by
Volsunga Saga, in Denmark by the VUkina Saga, and in

TEUTONIC NOMENCLATURE. 1 7 1
centre of Europe by the Nibelungenlied, where old myths
have become heroic tales that have hung themselves round
the names of Attila the Hun and Theodoric of Verona, who
in Germany is the centre of a great number of ancient
legends, once doubtless of deified ancestors.
Thirdly, we have the grand poetical world, in which
Charlemagne has been adopted as the sovereign, and Roland
as the hero — the world of French romance, Spanish ballad,
and ItaUan poetry, which is to continental chivalry what the
Round Table is to our own.

172

CHAPTER n.
NAMES FROM TEUTON MYTHOLOGY.
Section I. — Guth.
It is hard to class this first class of names under those of
mythology, for they bear in them our cwn honoured word for
divinity ; and though some arose when the race were worship
pers of false deities, yet under the same head are included
many given in a Christian spirit.
Some phUologists tell us, though they are not unanimous
in the explanation, that this name is from the same source
as the Sanscrit Svadata, self-given or uncreate, and as the
Zend Quadata, Persian Khoda, and our o'wn Teuton term for
Deity — the Northern Gud and Gothic Guth, whence the
High German Cot and Low German God. Others explain it '
as the creating or all-pervading. Others, again, derive it
from od, possession, and in early Christian times there was
a distinction between God (mas.) and the neuter god, an
idol. It is equally doubtful whether this divine word be the
origin of the adjective guth, gut, cuot, gode. Whether they
are only cognate, or whether they are absolutely aUen, and
the adjective be related to the Greek ayaSos, wherever they
come from, the names derived from either God or good are so
much alike, as to be inextricably mixed, so that they must be
treated of together.
The great leading race seem to have called themselves the
good — Gutans in Gothic, Kuzun in high German, and Getai
in ancient Greece, when they were the near neighbours of
Thrace, and supplied so many slaves to Greece and Rome
that Geta is the stock name, for a slave in the comedies of
Terence. Whether these are the same race as the Gautsoc

GUTH. 173
Guttones, who once dwelt on the shores of the Baltic, who
named Gotha, and have descendants in Swedish Gothland, is
a knotty point on which the learned are at variance ; but what
is matter of certainty is their settlement on the Danube ;
their conversion to Arianism ; their translation of the Gos
pels, our standard for their language ; their conquest of Italy
and Spain ; their perishing from the one country, and long
trial beneath the Moorish yoke in the other, until at length
they triumphed as the dominant nobility, though with a
mixed popvdation under them. With the Romance nations,
Goths were almost synonymous with barbarians, and even
now gotico and gothique are Italian and French terms for the
rade and antiquated ; though of late Gothic architecture has
re-asserted itsclaim to be the good — nay, the divine form of
the art.
In the Anglo-Saxon genealogies, that are a sort of repre
sentation of the supposed connection of the tribes, Geat
stands seven above Seaxnot, where our own stem branches
off ; and his son is God'wulf, which is still a surviving name
in Norway as Gudolv, divine wolf.
The North is the great region of these names ; but they are
not very easy to distinguish from the very large class begin
ning with gund, war, as in pronunciation, and latterly in
speUing, the distinctive letters, n and u, get confounded or
dropped. It is probable, however, that among those from Gud we
may place Gudhr, which was o'wned by one of the Valkyre,
the battle maids of northem belief, and must, with her, have
meant the brave, or the goddess ; Guda was known in Scan-
dmavia ; and Germany used the name, till it was translated
into Bona and Bonne, and thus passed away.
In the northem version of the Nibelungen, the second
heroine is Gudruna. The last syUable means wisdom, or
counsel; it is the same as rune, the old northem writing,
and alludes to the wisdom that Odin won at so dear a rate.

174 NAMES FROM TEUTON MYTHOLOGY.
Gudruna may then be translated divine -wisdom, a name well
suited to the inspired priestesses, so highly regarded by the
Teutons. It was very common in the North ; eighteen ladies
so called appear in the Icelandic Landnama; and it was so
universal there, that Johann and Gudruna there stand for
man and woman, like our .ZV or M. In Norway, likewise,
Gudruna is common; and, near Trondjem, is contracted into
Guru ; about Bergen, into Gum or Gero. High German
tongues rendered it Kutrun.
The Landnama-bok, which gives all the pedigrees of the
free inhabitants of Iceland for about four hundred years,
namely, from the migration to the twelfth century, gives us
Gudbrand, divine staff, now commonly called Gulbrand;
Gudbiorg, divine protection; Gudiskalkr, God's servant, or
scholar, which is the very same as Godeskalk, the name
assumed by the first Christian prince of the Wends of
Mecklenburg, who was martyred by his heathen subjects,
and thus rendered Gottschalk a German Christian name ; in
Dlyrian, Go9alak ; and known even in Italy as Godiscalco,
just like Gildas or Theodoulos. Gudleif is feminine, Gudleifr
masculine for a divine relic ; and this last coming to England
with the Danes, turned into a surname as GuUeiv, then short
ened into GuUey, and lengthened into GuUiver — a veritable,
though quaint sumame for the Lemuel GuUiver whom Swift
conducts through Laputa and Brobdignag, with coolness
worthy of northern forefathers.
Gudleik, divine service, is, perhaps, repeated by our St.
Guthlac ; but both these may come from gund. Gudmund
contracts into Gulmund, divine protection. Five ladies called
Gudny appear, which latter termination is a common femi
nine form, and comes from the same word as our new. If an
adjective, it would mean young and pretty ; if a noun, it
stands for the new moon, a very graceful name for a woman.
Guni is the contraction used in the North.
Gudfinn and Gudfinna must be reminiscences of Finn,
whom we shall often meet in the North. Gudrid and Gud-

GUTH. 175
ridur mean the divine shock or passion, from the word hrid
or hrith, one that is constantly to be met with, as a termina
tion, in northem names, and which has sometimes been taken
for the same ssfrid, with the aspirate instead of the/. Guri
is the contraction.
Gudveig's latter syllable would naturally connect itself
with the wig, war, that is found in all the Gothic tongues ;
but Professor Munch translates it as liquid — divine liquor —
the same meaning as Gudlaug and the masculine Gudlaugr ;
lau^g, from la, liquor, or the sea. Divine sea, would be a noble
meaning for the GuUa or GoUaa to which Gudlaug is com
monly reduced in Norway.
Gudvar is divine prudence or caution, the last part being
our word ware ; in fact, every combination of the more
dignified words, was used with this prefix in the North, and
it was probably the Danes who introduced this commence
ment into England, for we do not find such in pedigrees
before the great irruption in Ethelred I.'s time.
In spite of the romantic story of Earl Godwine's rise into
honour from acting as a guide to a Danish chief, it is certain
that he was of an honourable family, of Danish connection, and
thus he probably obtained his name, which would mean God's
beloved, and thus translate TheophUos. Few are recorded in
history as bearing the same ; but there must have been some
to transmit the frequent sumame of Godwin and Goodwin,
the latter connected to our minds with the Goodwin sands,
which were really once the estate of the ambitious earl.
Godin is the remains of the same in French. It is found at
Cambrai, in 1065, belonging to the 'Echanson d'Ostrevant.'
The old French word godeau meant a cup, and, as Godin
soon became a sumame of a family which carried a cup in
their arms, there might have been a double allusion to the
office of the ancestor and to the sound of the name. Godine
and Godinette were also in use there, but were considered as
feminines to Goderic — a very old word, which, strange to say,
was, at Cambrai, equivalent to fainiant, or 'ne'er do weel,' it

176 NAMES FROM TEUTON MYTHOLOGY.
must be supposed in allusion to some particularly discredit
able Goderic, as everywhere else it signifies divine ruler.
Our own St. Goderic was an Anglo-Saxon abbot, and the
name, which means divine rule, grew so common among the
English, that the Norman nobles called Henry I. and his
Queen, Godric and Godiva, in derision of the lady's EngUsh
blood. Goderic does, indeed, swarm in Domesday Book, and
has left the sumame Goderich.
' The woman of a thousand summers back,
Godiva, wife to that grim Earl who ruled
At Coventry,'
really existed, and was probably Godgifu, the gift of God,
Uke Dorothea, as ive or eva was the Norman rendering of
gifu. Her namesakes are in multitudes in Domesday, and,
in 1070, one lived in Terouenne, a pious lady, tormented,
and at last murdered, by her husband, on which account she
was canonized as St. Godeleva.
The High Germans, however, made far more use of this
commencement, and won for it the chief honour. The elder
forms are according to the harsh old German sounds — Oota-
helm, divine helmet, Cotahramn, divine raven, Cotalint, divine
serpent! But the more universal spelling prevailed, as
Frankish or AUemannic saints came into honour. Gotthard,
bishop of Hildesheim, was one of these. His name, which
may be rendered divine resolution, or, perhaps, firm through
God, was also borne by Godard,' abbot of Rouen, and has
adhered to the great mountain pass of the Alps, as well as to
families of Godard in France, Goddard in England. In
Germany it is still used as a Christian name; and in
Lithuania is Gattinsch, Gedderts, or Kodders.
Gottfrid, divine peace, was abbot of St. Quentin early in
the eleventh century, and named two godsons, the canonized
bishop of Amiens, and the far more famous Gottfried of Lor- ;
raine, who might weU, as leader of the crusading camp, be-

GUTH.

177

queath his name to aU the nations whose representatives
fought under him, and thus we find it everywhere. In Flo
rence it has become Giotto, to distinguish the artist who gave
us Dante's face ; in Germany, cut down into Goetz, it dis
tinguished the terrible, though simple hearted, champion
with the iron hand, then, falling into a surname, belonged to
Goethe. We received our Godfrey from the conqueror of
Jerusalem, but previously the Gottfried had been taken up
by the French, and was much used by the Angevin counts in
the galUcized form of Geoffroi. Geoffroi Grise-gounelle, a
title fit for a wicked giant in sound, was, however, only so
caUed from his grey go'wn, and in alternation with Foulques,
the name continued among the Angevins till they came to the
English throne ; and then Jaffrez, as the Bretons called the
young husband of their duchess Constance, was excited to
rebellion by the Provencals as Jaffre. Geoffrey spread
among the EngUsh, and the Latinizers made it into Gald-
fridus, which misled Camden into translating it into Glad-
peace.

EngUsh.
Godfrey
Geoffrey Jeffrey
Jeff

Breton.
Jaffrez

French.
Godefroi
GodafreyGeoffroiJeoffroi

ItaUan.
Goffredo
Godofredo Giotto

Spanish.
Godofredo Gofredo

German.
Gottfried
Gotz Godel

PoUsh.
Godfrid

Lusatian.
Frido
Fridko

Dutch.
Govert

Besides these, Germany has Godegisel, divine pledge;
Godebert and Godeberta, divine brightness ; and Gottwald,
divine power : repeated in Provence by Jaubert, or JOubert.
Germany also has a Gottleip, the same with the old Anglo-
VOL. II. ^

178 NAMES FROM TEUTON MYTHOLOGY.
Saxon Guthlaf, meaning the leavings of God, or remains
of Divinity, but which has been made in modem German
into Gottlieb, or love, and contracted in Lower Lusatia into
Lipo; in Dantzic, into Lipp. There are several of these
modern devotional German names, such as Gottlob, the very
same in meaning as belonged to the Speaker of the Rump,
Praise God Barebones, but has been continued as Lopo, or
Lopko, in Lusatia. In fact, the Moravians use these appella
tions, and thus we have the modem coinage of Gottgetreu,
Gotthilf, and Gotthilfe, and even of Gottsei-mit-dir, much
like the Diotisalvi of Italy, but not without parallel among
the early Christians.
The Spanish Goths left behind them Guzman, once either
divine might (magen), or Man of God. Guzman el Bueno
was an admirable early Spaniard, who beheld his own son
beheaded rather than surrender the town committed to his
keeping. It became a sumame, and it may be remembered
how Queen Elizabeth played 'with that of PhiUp H. 's envoy,
when she declared that if the king of Spain had sent her a
gooseman, she had sent him a man-goose.
Another old form taken by this word was Geata, or Gautr.
It was used as an epithet of Odin, and has been explained by
some to mean the keeper, and be derived from geata, to keep;
but it is far more likely that it is only another pronunciation
of the same term for the AU-pervader or Creator.
Gautr is sometimes a forefather, sometimes a son of Odin ;
and there is a supposed name — father, Gaut, for the Goths of
Sweden, whether they are the same as the Goths of Italy and
Spain or not.
In this form, Gaut had its own brood of derivatives, chiefly
in Sweden, but with a few straying into Germany ; such as
Gosswin, divine friend, and Gossbert, in Provencal Joubert,
Gossfried, which may be the right source of Geoffrey.
The most noted of aU is, however, Gotzstaf, or Gozstaf,
meaning either the divine staff, or the staff of the Goths.

GUTH. 179
Twice has it been endeared to the Swedes; first, by the
brave man who delivered the country from the bondage of
the union of Calmar, and whose adventures in Dalecarlia,
Uke those of Bruce in Scotland, were more attaching than
even his success. Him the country caUs affectionately
' Gamle Kong Gosta,' and no less was its love and pride in
his noble descendant, ' the Lion of the North, the bulwark of
the Protestant faith,' who casts the only gleam of brightness
over the dull waste of the Thirty Years' War. Thus it is
no wonder that so many bear his name, Gustav, Gosta,
Gjosta, that it is considered in the North as the national
nickname of a Swede, and it has the feminine Gustava,
For our misfortune it grew eminent in the obtuse days of
classical taste, and so we murder it by putting a Latin tail
to it.

EngUsh.

French.

ItaUan.

Swedish.

Gustavus

Gustave

Gustavo

Gozstav
GuHtavGosta Gjosta

German.

Lett.

Esthonian.

GuBtaf

Gustavs

Kustav

Gusts

Kustas

After aU, it is no small testimony to a man's renown to
have his name bome to so many lips that cannot frame it
aright, and but for him would never have known it. Sweden
likewise had her Gauta, Gautrek, Gautulf, but with none of
them has language played any tricks.*
* Grimm; Turner; Dasent; Rawlinson; Munch; MaUet; Butler;
Pott; MichaeUs; lEOie, Domesday ; Landnama-bok.
I 8o NAMES FROM TEUTON MYTHOLOGY.

Section H. — The Aasir.
Tacitus tells us that the supreme god of the Germans was
called Esus or Hesus, and though some have thought he
meant the Keltic Hu, it is far more likely that he had heard
the word as or oes, the favourite Teutonic term for their
divinities. Old Etruria called a god cbs or ais, in the plural ized, and
isten is the Magyar term, so that it is plain that is or es
must originally have been a universal word meaning deity,
and not as some have supposed, solely Teutonic, and thus
indicating the migration from Asia. The word is known
in all the Teutonic languages : it is as, aasir, in the North, os,
es in Anglo-Saxon, and anseis or ensi in Gothic and High
German. Jomandes tells us that the Goths called their deified
ancestors anses, but it is only in the North that the pantheon
of the race was so developed that we can follow it out.
The Aasir are in northem myth a family like the
Olympian gods of Greece ; they inhabit Valhalla, and there
receive the spirits of the worthy dead, to feast and hunt with
them till the general battle and final ruin of all things, when
a new and perfect world shall arise.
Blended with this notion there is a grand allegory of the
contention between the seasons. The Aasir, or summer
gods, are always struggling with the Hrimthusir, or frost
powers, and winning the victory over them.
And further, the tradition of a migration from the warmer
East, and of the battles with the aborigines, is mixed up in
the legends, and the Aasir are a band of heroic settlers from
Asgard or Asia, who fix themselves in Europe, and become
the ancestors of all the various races of Teutons.
So speaks the Edda and the various sagas of the North ;
and though the poetry and legends of the other nations have
not come down to us, their use of the names formed from

THE AASIR. I 8 1
as, OS, ans, testifies to their regard for the term as conveying
the idea of deity.
To begin with the North, where the pronunciation is the
purest, the word in the singular is aas, in the plural, aasir or
cesir, and the older form of all these names began with the
aa, though usually spelt with a single a in Norsk and
Icelandic, with an e in Danish. And let it be remembered
throughout, that the Northern aa is pronounced like our o.
The Low Germans change the aas into os, and in this way
most of the Anglo-Saxon and continental German names
commence. Ans,the High German and Gothic form, occurs in the Frank,
Lombardic, and Gothic names. Asgaut or, as the Saxons call
it, Osgod, and Asgrim, are both reduplications of divinity.
Asa appears in the Landnama-boh, and Aasir, the collec
tive term for the gods, is used in Norway as a name, cor
rupted into Asser, or 0zer, perhaps the source of the name
Assur, assumed by Geraint Glas at Alfred's court, and like
wise suggesting the Azor used by the French for genu and
lap-dogs. It is probably the same with Esa, the ancestor of
the Bemician kings, who may have used ' Os ' in compliment
to him. Aasketyl is the divine kettle or cauldron, probably
connected with creation. It was usuaUy called in the North
Askjell, and has the feminine Askatla. Oscetyl, as the Anglo-
Saxons spelt it, was used by them in Danish times, when one
of the marauders terribly tormented them ; and it is given to
the 'bantling' said to have been found in the eagle's nest, as
in the Stanley and Latham crest ; but Frank pronunciation
so affected the Normans, that they brought in the name as
Ansketil; and a person so called was settled at Winchester in
1 148. Anquetil is still a French surname.
Aasbjom, divine bear, is a queer compound, and so is
Aasolfr, or divine wolf ; but as will be sho'wn when we come
to the beasts themselves, a certain divinity did hedge about
these formidable animals in the days of name-coining in the

102 NAMES FROM TEUTON MYTHOLOGY.
North. The first Asolfr with whom I have met was a Chris
tian, who, with twelve companions, was 'wrecked upon the
shores of Iceland in the interval between its settlement and
conversion. They erected buildings, resolutely refused all
commerce with the heathen, and lived solely on the produce
of their fishing. A church has since been built where they
settled. The name has fallen into Asulf in the North, and
was paralleled by Osulf in England. As to the divine bear, he
had a wider fame, for Asbiorn came among the Northmen to
Neustria, and was there Frenchified. An Osborn was the senes
chal who was murdered in the sleeping chamber of William
in the stormy days of the minority of the future conqueror ;
and his son, William Fitzosbom, was the chief friend and con
fident of the stern victor of Hastings. Osborn figures in
Domesday, and has now become a common English sumame,
which used to be translated house-born, before comparison with
the other tongues had sho'wn the true relations of the word.
Asbera is the northem feminine.
Esbern Snare, or the swift, the Danish noble, whose heart
and eyes were to have furnished Finn's child with amuse
ment, was really a powerful earl at the end of the twelfth
century, and his still more celebrated twin brother. Bishop
Absalom, was a great statesman and warrior, and prompted
Saxo Grammaticus to write his chronicle of Norway. Bishop
Absalom is believed to have, like his brother, received at
baptism one of the derivatives from the old gods of Den
mark, namely, Aslak, the divine sport or reward, a name
which in Denmark and Sweden is always called Axel, in
which shape it belonged to Oxenstjerna, the beloved minister
of Gustavus Adolphus, and has ever since been a favourite
national name. Aslak is in the North pronounced Atlak, and
sometimes taken for the original AtU in the Volsunga Saga ;
but this is far more probable the Tartar Attalik. We had a
Bemician Aslak of the like meaning. Never were there a more
noted pair of twins than these brothers, of the hear and the s'port.
Well might their birth be first announced to their absent father,

THE AASm. 183
on his return to the isle of Soro, by twin church steeples, built
by the mother to greet his eyes over the sea. His name was
Askar, or Ansgjerr, divine spear, was so common that six
teen appear in the Iceland roll, and the word Osgar gets con
fused with the Keltic Osgar, son of Ossian ; nay, it may
perhaps have been his proper name. A Frank Ansgar,
born in Picardy about the year 800, was the apostle of
Denmark, and afterwards bishop of Hamburgh and Bre
men ; he was canonized as Anscharius, and is popularly
called in his bishopric St. Scharies, by which title the col
legiate church of Bremen is called. It is curious to find
the Ansbrando of ancient Lombardy reflected by the As-
brandr, divine sword, of Iceland. Lombardy had likewise
Anshelm, the divine helmet, softened down into Anselmo or
-Antelmo, the name of that mild-natured Lombardic arch
bishop of ours, whose constancy cost him so dear in his con
tention with the furious Rufus and politic Beauclerc. That
firmness, however, together with his deep theological writings,
won him the honours of sanctity, though it is only on
the Continent that his name took root ; England had no
national love for her Anselm ; and he chiefly appears in Italy,
France, and Germany, where he has been cut short as Anso,
endeared as Ensilo, has a feminine .Ansa, and is called by
the Jews Anschel.
Of other terms which, like helm, give the idea of protec
tion, there are many ; the feminine Asbjorg or Asburg, divine
fort, is reflected by the .Anglo-Saxon Asburgha. Asgardr,
divine guard, may be most probably an allusion to the abode
of the gods, Asgard, the abode to which the rainbow-arch
Bifrost was the access, trod, according to the grand death
song of Eirikr Blodaxe, by the spirits of the courageous dead
on their way to feast in the hall of Odin. As men's names
appear the Norwegian Asgard and Ansgard, a Winchester
householder in Stephen's time ; but the Northern feminine
Asgerdur is the divine maiden, in honour of the goddess
Gerda. Asmundr is the northern form of a favourite name,

1 84 NAMES FROM TEUTON MYTHOLOGY.
giving the idea of protecting with the hand. It is caUed
Ansmunt in old German, Osmund in Anglo-Saxon and Nor
man-French, and in this form most popular, at first perhaps
from Osmond de Centeville, the brave Norman, who fled
from Laon with the young Richard Sans Peur, but afterwards
for a Norman Osmond, who was canonized as Bishop of SaUs
bury, whence this form in England and Osmont in France have
continued. Osmond Royal, the flowering fern, was Odin's
sacred plant, growing under his altars, a protective. AasvaUdr,
divine power, was in Germany Ansvalt, and has modernized as
Asvald ; but the Anglo-Saxon Oswald was the glory of the
name in the Northumbrian monarch, ' free of hand,' as even
his Welsh foes called him, who has left Oswald to be an
English name. Asvor and Asvora express divine prudence.
' Aslaug, dottur Sigurdur Fafnisbana,' is recorded in the
Landnama-boh in sober earnest as having married Ragnar
Lodbrog. It is very curious to see how legend attaches itself
to any well kno'wn name, for if Sigurd and Brynhild were
the contemporaries of AttUa the Hun, Aslaug must have
lived in the same magic sleep as her mother, if she was
to be a wife for the viking whose death was the ruin
of Ella of Northumbria, Alfred's contemporary. Northem
legend, however, makes her be carried from the last fatal
battle-field in a lute, and to have been brought up as a peasant-
maid, called Krake, to have won the heart of Ragnar, and
after several years of marriage, to have divulged her birth,
to be the wife of the heroic Ragnar, and thence Fouque
derived the idea of his wUd emblematic autumn tale of
Aslauga's Knight, and his devotion to the fair vision, whose
golden tresses were ever floating before him to draw him to
the things unseen. Aslaug has continued in use among
northem damsels.
Divme legacy, or relic, appears in Asleif, the EngUsh
Oslaf. Osney, near Oxford, must have been named from
the northem Aasny, which, with AshUdur, has always been

ODIN, OR GrImR. 185
a favourite. Osthryth, divine threatener, came out of the
house of Bernicia into Mercia, where she was murdered by
the Danes, and revered as St. Osyth with a priory in her
honour. St. Osyth's spring was the subject of some of the
most musical and poetical verses that Crabbe ever 'wrote.
Thoroughly English are likewise Osmod, divine mood or
'wrath, Osfrith, divine peace, Osred, divine council, Osgifu,
divine gift, Oswine, divine friend, the third of the admirable
but short-lived kings of Bernicia; Oswiu, who overthrew
him, was probably named from a word meaning sacred, of
which more in its place. Osbeorht we share with Germany,
which calls it Osbert, and has the feminine Osberta. In fact,
most of these names were in use there, beginning with os or
ans, according to the dialect in which they were used.
Ansgisel was one of the Frankish forms, that section of the
race always making much use of gisel, a pledge.*
Section HI. — Odin, or Grimr.
The head of the Aasir was Odin, as we have learned to call
him from the North, which worshipped him long after we had
forgotten our Wuotan, except in the title of his day of the
week. There are various opinions as to the meaning of his
name, some making it come from the word for rage ; in the
North, odhr ; in A. S., wod ; and still wuth in German ; and
the adjective wud in Scottish. Others make it from 0. G.,
watan, N., vatha, to pervade, the title of the Divinity, as
being through all things, in fact, the same as God.
However this may be, Odin, in the higher myths, is the
AU-father, standing at the head of Asgard, as Zeus does
of Olympus. He governs all things, and knows all things.
He obtained this mighty influence, says the Edda, by hang
ing for nine nights on the world-tree, YggdrasU, without food
* Grimm; Turner; Munch; Lappenberg; MaUet; Landnama-bok;
Domesday; MichaeUs; Hei-mann LUning, Edda; Hist, of Scandinavia;
Marryat, Jutland.

1 86 NAMES FROM TEUTON MYTHOLOGY.
or drink, transfixed with a spear, as a self-sacrifice. Then
he looked do'wn into the depth, and sank from the tree into
it ; but in the abyss beneath he drank the costly poet-mead, ;
and learnt powerful songs, obtaining the Runes, the beginning
of wisdom, by which he could compel to his will all nature :
wind, sea, and fire, hate and love ! A grand though dis
torted myth is this of the veritable sacrifice that gained
' all power in heaven and earth.'
A vulgarized version made the sun and moon his eyes,
and said that the latter was dim, because he had given its
sight for a drink, from Mimir, the weU of wisdom, under the
roots of YggdrasU.
The Runes (run, runar, in Gothic runa,) conie from a word
meaning trust or wisdom : they are the impress of wisdom,
and, as such, came to be applied to the independent northem
letters that were anciently used for cutting out on wood or
stone, before the European alphabet so entirely drove it out,
that in 1241, the great historian, Snorre Sturleson, lost his
life from not being able to read a warning sent to him in
Runic writing, that his sons-in-law meant to assassinate him.
The termination run, or runa, so common in the Scandina
vian names, is an allusion to the wisdom won by Odin,
and conveyed in writing. Odin and his brethren, Hoemir
and Lodur, found Ask and Embla, the first man and woman,
without sense or motion, formed the one from the ash,
the other from the elm ; perhaps, Odin gave them breath,
Hoemir, feeling, Lodur, blood and colour ; and Odin has ever
since ruled over their offspring, and received their courage
ous dead in his hall of Valhalla, there to hunt and banquet
till the outbreak of the powers of evil, when, in the general
destruction, he will be devoured by the wolf Fenris.
Coupled with this entirely divine Odin, there was the
abiding notion of ancestry beginning with a god ; and who
ever might be the chUdren of Ask and Embla, no one, of
any nobUity, was content without having Odin for his fore
father. Even when Christianity dethroned Odin from his

ODIN, OR Gr!mR. 187
place m Heaven, he was still retained as a heroic ancestor ;
and somewhat grotesquely, the old chroniclers, after carry
ing up their kings to him, brought him down from Noah,
and he became reduced to be the leader of the great migra
tion from Asia, while the gods were made his human sons.
The Ynglinga Saga, or history of the descendants of
Yngvar, is the chief of these nationalized legends of Odui,
and a colony from Asia; indeed it makes out such a
vraisemblahle account of settlement and conquest, that some
historians have tried to reconcile the two stories, by sup
posing that there was a real adventurer, who took the title
of the deity, in order to gain more infiuence with his fol
lowers. But a comparison of the course of fable and
history, in this and other nations, shows that these are
only the usual forms taken by popular belief descending
from the god to the hero.
Testimony of the amount of Odin-worship among the
Gothic and High German nations is wanting, but we know
that it prevailed, to a considerable degree, among the Scan
dinavians ; but though we go to them for legends of Odin,
it was the Saxon race who were specially devoted to him,
and considered themselves as under his tutelage. More
places than can here be enumerated, both in England,
Sweden, and Denmark, stiU bear his name, as Wednesbury,
Odensey, Fuhnen, &c., &c. The ' dawn and dusk of one
fair day' of the week, are his throughout the northern
nations, the Onsdag of the North, Woensdag of the Dutch,
Wednesday of the English, though the Germans are con
tent with Mittwoche, and the South of Europe calls the
day after Mercury, with whom Tacitus, and after him the
other early writers, had identified Odin. The shout of
'Wold, wold, wold!' at the beginning and end of a rude
rhyme, sung by the peasants of Saxon Germany after cutting
the last sheaf at harvest, is supposed to be the remnant of
some rite in honour of Wuotan, the wild huntsman, or Wuthen-
desheer, as his ghastly troop is called in Germany, is the last

I 88 NAMES FROM TEUTON MYTHOLOGY.
relic of faith in him, and many poetical terms, in old Norse
versification, were derived from him ; but in comparison with
other deities, the impressions of his name are but few ; the
only plant sacred to him is the Osmunda Regalis ; the only
bird, the' tiny Tringa Mimina, or least sandpiper, which in
the North is Odinsfugl, Odin's fowl.
Nor do we find Odin itself forming part of any personal
name ; it seems to have been avoided as Zeus was in Greece,
and, to a greater degree, Jupiter in Rome. But he had no
less than forty-nine epithets, all of which are rehearsed in
the prose Edda, and his votaries were called by one or other.
of these; moreover, some of them helped the genealogists
in arranging his descent from Noah.
Finn has been spoken of already as one of these; also
Gautr, as one of the forms of divinity. Grimr is another,
which appears to be obviously interpreted as grim, fierce, but
it does, in fact, come from the old Norse word grima, a
mask or helmet, and the accent marks that it was once
pronounced with a long i. Odin was probably caUed Grimr,
meaning the concealed, or possibly the helmeted ; and though
the accent has in general passed away, the names beginnmg
with Grim may generally be referred to the hidden god.
Grima is a term for night, because the sight was veiled.
Grimmr, Grimolfr, and Grimarr, are three brothers, one
of whom can command the storm ; and in Anglo-Saxon,
Grimhelm is the poetic name for clouds, which are thus
connected with the tarn-cap, or helmet of invisibUity, that
has curiously descended from a grand aUegory of a God who
hideth himself, first into a broad-brimmed hat worn by Odin,
and then into a mere magic gift to favoured champions; hke
the Giant-killer. In the Elder Edda, a poem represents
Odin as visiting the earth under the name of Grimner, to
judge of the character of a family under his protection.
The cap given by Mercury to Perseus had probably run
a like course before coming to the same use. ' '
n_J™i,;iJ „_ ;„ tj:„i, n  t;^ ¦ i -i i . • ii_

ODIN, OR GrImR. 189
one of the Valkyrier, or choosers of the slain, who was so
called, as being endowed with a helmet of terror. Hidden
battle-maid, or helmeted battle-maid, would be her fittest
translation. In the northern version of the Nibelungenlied,
Grimhild is the witch-mother of Sigurd's wife, Gudrun, and
performs a part like that of the Oda, or Uta, in the German
and Danish versions, in which the heroine herself is called
KriemhUd, or ChriemhUd, and does her fatal part in wreaking
revenge for the murder of her husband. In the ballad of
Lady Grimhild's 'wrack, in the Kampe Viser, she is starved to
death in the treasury. Grimhildur was somewhat used in
the North, but nothing was so fashionable as Grim, who
occurs twenty-nine times in the Landnama-bok, and with
equal frequency in Domesday ; besides that one of these Danish
settlers, named Grimsby, in Lincolnshire.
Grim has, of course, his kettle, in the North, Grimketyl,
or Grimkjell; in Domesday, Grimchel; an allusion, probably,
to creation, quaint as is the sound to our ears. Grimperaht,
or helmeted splendour, first was turned into Grimbert, then
into the common German surname of Grimmert. Grimar in
the North was Grimheri in -Germany. Grim was in greater
favour as a prefix in the High German dialects than in the
North, and chiefly in the Frankish regions.
Grimbald, helmeted prince, was a monk of St. Omer, trans
planted by King Alfred to Oxford, in the hope of promoting
learning, and he thus became a Saxon saint. Grimvald,
helmeted ruler, was a maire du palais in the Faineant times
of the Franks ; and in Spanish balled el Conde Grimaltos is
knight at the court of Charlemagne, who is slandered and
driven away with his wife to the mountains, where the lady
gives birth to a son, who was baptized Montesinos, from the
place of his birth, and educated in all chivalry till he was old
enough to go to Charlemagne's court, refute the slander by the
ordeal of battle, and restore his family to favour. Grimaldo
was bome by the Lombard kings, and left remains in the
great Grimaldi family of Genoa.

1 90 NAMES FROM TEUTON MYTHOLOGY.
Most of our English Grims were importations, and thei
are few of them, though we have Grimulf ui Domesda;
probably a Dane.
Odin was also called Wunsch, wish, probably as meanir
the supreme wiU, and thence came one of the mythic ai
cestry of our kings, Wuscfrea, or lord of the wish.
Beo, or harvest, is shown by Mr. Kemble to form anoth
title for the great god, namely, Beawa, who has been plax;(
among the ancestors of the Anglo-Saxon Woden. Beowul
the hero of the remarkable old Anglian poem, is thus thougl
to be another form of the old harvest god.
Odin is not wholly forgotten in the eastem land whem
the Teutons came. In Russ, Odin means the number on
or sole, alone. The tribes on the Black Sea long adored hin
and a heathen tribe on the Siberian border do so stiU. I
is the chief god of the Tungi ; and in Daghistan, where tl
blood is of the pure Circassian type, Odin means a remarl
able man.* Section IV. — Frey.
Every false religion preserves in some form or other tl
perception of a Divine Trinity, and the Teutonic Triad coi
sisted of Odin, Frey, and Thor, whose images always occ
pied the place of honour in their temples, and who own(
the three midmost days of the week.
The history of the word freyr is very curious. The ro
is found in pri, Skt. love or rejoice, the Zend fri, the Gre
</)iA.i7; but to be glad was also to free ; so fr eon orfrigonme:
to free and to love, and thence free in all its forms (N. fr.
Goth, frige; H. G./m; h. Q.freoh). Thus again, the G(
mans came hjfroh, and we hj fresh. Fro was both glad ai
* Grimm ; Munch ; BlackweU's Mallet, Northem Antiquities ; Liini
Edda; Landnama-bok; Laing, Sturleson's Heimskringla; Gricbtan, Sa
dinavia ; Rodd, Spanish Ballads ; MichaeUs ; Pott ; Chalmers ; Munt
Geschichte des Einfuhnmg des Ghristenthums in Danemarck und Norge
Kemble; Beowulf.

FREY. 151
dear ; and as in Qothic frowida, was joy, so is freude in modem
German ; and we exult in frolics and freaks. He who loved
was kno'wn by the present participle, frigonds, the friend of
modern English, the same in aU our Teutonic tongues ; and
as the effect of love is peace, the term vasfred or fried, our
Saxon frith, which we have lost in the French-Latin word.
To be free was to be noble, so the free noble was Frauja, the
name by which Ulfilas always translates Kvpios, in the New
Testament, by a beautiful analogy, showing, indeed, that our
Lord is our Friend and our Redeemer, loving us, and setting
us free.
Frauja, or free, was the lord and master, so his wife was
likewise frea, both the beloved and the free woman ; the
northem frue, German frau, and Dutch vrowe, all, as donna
had done in Italy, becoming the generic term for woman.
Out of aU the derivatives of this fertUe and beautiful
term, there were large contributions to mythology, and a
great number of names.
Freyr, lord, lover, was once a god of very high rank, lord
of sun and moon, hermaphrodite, and regulating the seasons,
blessing marriage, and guarding purity : and this was pro
bably a universal notion brought from Asia.
As old notions formed into mythic tales, and the gods
grew human, the wife of Odin was invented, and what could
she be but the frau, the lady of Asgard, Frigga ? Again,
Freyr was brought do'wn from his mysterious vagueness, and
tumed into a nephew of Odin, with the moon to take care
of, and, moreover, was disintegrated into a brother and sister,
called Freyr and Freya.
The sixth day of the week had probably originally be
longed to Freyr, but Frigga got possession of it; and, in
right of her presiding over love and marriage, she was con
sidered to be Venus; and in France and Italy it is still
Vendredi and Venerdi, while we have it as Friday, the Ger
mans as Freitag, the North as Fredag.

192 NAMES FROM TEUTON MYTHOLOGY.
Frigga is a good wife, for she knows the destinies of all
men, but never reveals them. She blesses marriage, and brings
plenty. Her most remarkable interference with earthly af
fairs was when the Vandals were going to start southwards
from Jutland, and their wives entreated her to give them the
victory. She bade them stand forth the next moming m
the rising sun, with their hair let down over their chins.
' Who are these longbeards ? ' asked Odin. ' Now thou hast
given them a name, thou must give them the victory,' said
Frigga. So the Lombards conquered, and named Lombardy,
acted as bankers to Europe, and entitled many a Lombard-
street, as weU as the term lumber for such articles as look
as if they were in pledge at a pawnbroker's shop.
Frigga has an odd partnership, on the one hand with our
Lady, on the other with Venus. Orion's belt was once her
distaff, Frigge-roch, but now it is the blessed Virgin's, Marien-
rock. Adiantium, the Uttle black stemmed fern, has been
Friggen-haar, then Venus-gras, then Marien-gras, and with
us Maiden-hair ; and the Satyrium Alhidum, used in love
potions, was in Iceland Frigg-jahr-gras, whilst its nearest
English resemblance is still ladies' tresses.
Freya is also a goddess of love, but she like"ffise drives
over every battle-field with her car dra'wn by cats (once,
perhaps, panthers, like those of Bacchus, whom her brother
is thought to resemble) , and chooses half the slain, whom
she marshals to their seats at the banquet of Valhalla. Her
husband, Othur or Odhr, curiously repeats Odin's name, as
she does Frigga's. She weeps continually drops of gold when
he is absent, and the metal is poetically called Freya's tears.
Her brother, Freyr, was always a chaste, dignified, bene
ficent personage, a sort of severe Bacchus, or grave Apollo.
In the great final battle, he is to be destroyed by Surti.
He is the tutelary god of Sweden, as was Odin of the
Saxons. There are hosts of names connected with these deities,

FREY. I g3
and the words sprung from their source. Frith in Saxon,
frey or freya in the North, /nee? in German, faUing in France
mto froi, was a favourite termination generally masculine,
and so probably in honour of Freyr, though it is safe to
translate it peace, it probably also meant freedom.
Old Spanish has FroUa, or Fruela, among the kings of the
Asturias, and this may be translated lord, and compared
with the Freavine, or Frowin, free darling, now become
Frewen. Franta, too, was a king of the Spanish Suevi.
Fritigem, king of the Visigoths, who first fixed himself
on the Danube, bore the name afterwards Frideger (spear of
peace) , in Germany, a compound much resembling that borne
by that Jezebel of the Meerwings, Fredegunt, or Fredegonde,
as she is called by French historians, Freygerdur of the
North, as found in the Landnama-boh, serving four men and
two women, is there explained either as freedom-preserver,
or peace-keeper.
But what is to be said of Fridthjof, or Frithjof, the re
nowned hero of the Frithjofsaga being no better than free
dom-thief, or peace-thief Northem pirates thought no
scorn of being thieves, and we shall fall on plenty more of
them ; but the compound is certainly startling.
Fridulf, or Fridolf, is nearly as bad ; but it seems to have
contracted into Friedel in Germany, and expanded into
Fridolin, probably in imitation of Fedlim, or some such
Erse name, since the saint thus recorded in the calendar is
one of the many Scottish missionaries of the fifth century,
who preached to the Burgundians. He is the titular patron
of the Swiss canton of Glaris, whose shield bears his figure
in the Benedictine dress he never wore. Thence SchUler
took the name of the youth in his baUad on the strange ad
venture of Isabel de la Paz of Portugal, which is best
known through Retzch's illustrations. The German Friedel
must be short for this, as Frider is for Fridheri, peace-
warrior. In fact, Germany is the great land of this com-
VOL. II. 0

194

NAMES FROM TEUTON MYTHOLOGY.

mencement, and has fostered the best known name of the
whole. There was indeed a Fridrikr in the Landnama-bok^
and a Fredreg, or Frederic in Domesday, but these would
have been forgotten but for an old Frisian bishop, Freod-
horic, who, in the time of Louis le Debonnaire, had been
murdered while praying in his chapel, and being canonized,
was a patron saint of the Swabian house. The attempts
of Friedrich with the red beard, to seize the slippery eel, as
he called Italy, by the head and taU, spread his Federigo
among the GhibeUines ; and when his NeapoUtan grandson's
claims to the kingdom of the Two Sicilies had been trans
mitted through Manfred's daughter to the Aragonese mon
archs, Fadrique was usual in Spain. Friedrich had grown
national in Germany, and not a king of Pmssia has reigned
without it, in comphment to their hero, who, while the sol
diers called him Old Fritz, thought it graceful to 'write him
self Federic, having with his French tastes taken a dislike
to the sound of his own name, even in the correct speUing
of his adopted language. It was from the father of this
monarch that the son of George H. was called Frederick,
a name we have twice had next in succession to the crown,
though, to use the expression of the Irishman at Culloden,
' Prince Frederick never has been King George.' The Danes
obtained the name from their German connections, and make
it alternate on the throne with Chris tiem. The feminine is
a late invention in Germany, very common there, but barely
recognized elsewhere.

English.
FrederickFred

French.
Fr6d6ric
Ferry

Breton.
PSidrik

Spanish.
Padrique

Portuguese.FredericoFederico

ItaUan.
Federigo

German.
Fridrich Fritz

Dutch.
Frederik
Freerik

FREY.

^9S

Frisian.
Frerk
FrekFriko

Swedish.
Fredrik

Danish.
Frederik

Swiss.
PredUFridli

Russian.
Fridrich

PoUsh.
PryderykFryc

Slovak.
Friderik

Bohemian.
Bedrich

Lusatian.
Fidrich
Bedrich

Lettish.
SprizzisPrizzisWrizzisWridriks
Pridriks

Lithuanian.
Pry das
Prydikis Priczua

Finn.
Rietu
WettrikkiWetuWetukka

Hungarian.
Pridrik

Greek.
4ipea8epiKo^

FEMININE.

EngUsh.
Frederica Freddie

French.
Fred6rigue

Portuguese.Frederica

Italian.
Federica
Feriga .

German.
FridrikeFritze
Fritzinn
Rika Rikchen

Swiss.
Predrika

PoUsh.
Frydryka

Bohemian.
Bedriska

Greek.
<j)peSepiicr]

Prbbably this popular Frederick has devoured all the other
forms with the same commencement ; for after the middle
ao-es had fairly begun, we hardly ever hear of the German
Fridrad, Fridrada, Fridhehn, Fridrun, Fridbald, Fridbert,
Fridburg, Fridgard, FridUind. ' Fridmund, peace protection,
also a northern namely has tumed into the well known Fre
mont of France and America ; but with these must not be
confounded Fremont, the designation of the devoted Abbe
Edgeworth de Fremont,, who attended Louis XVI. to the
scaffold, for he was caUed from Fairy-mount, a haunted hUl
02

1 96 NAMES FROM TEUTON MYTHOLOGY.
opposite to Edgeworthsto-wn. Fridwald, peace-power, has
been preserved in Friesland as Fredewolt, Fredo, or Freddo.
Fridleifr in the North has faUed into FriedUeb in Germany:
it is the same as the Frithlaf whom our Saxon chroniclers
bestowed on Wuotan by way of ancestor.
Our own Saxon saint, Frithswith, strong in peace, was the
daughter of the Lord of Oxford, in the eighth century. She
lived in a Uttle ceU at Thombury, had various legendary ad
ventures, which may be seen pourtrayed in a modern window
of the cathedral at Oxford, and became the saintly patroness
of the university and cathedral, where, by the name of St.
Fridiswid, she reigned over Alma Mater, till Wolsey laid
hold of the church and its chapter for his O'wn splendid
foundation of Christchurch. At the Reformation, her bones
were taken from their shrine and misused, but came back to
their honours in Mary's time, then in Elizabeth's were judi
ciously buried, mixed up with those of Martin Bucer's wife,
that in future neither Roman Catholic nor Protestant might
either adore or desecrate the remains in any certainty whe
ther he was dealing with Catholic or Calvinist, a very cu
rious case of ' strange bedfellows.' Frethesantha PayneU was
wife of Geoffrey Lutterell, about the fourteenth century ; and
Fridiswid is by no means uncommon in the old genealogies
of Essex and the northem counties. Alban Butler gives
Frewissa as the contraction; but in Ireland, according to
Mr. Britton's capital story of The Election, it is Fiddy^
From frei, free, modem Germany has taken Freimund, by
which they mean Freemouth, though it ought to be free pro-
' tection, Freimuth, free corn-age, Freidank, free thought.
But the older word for free plays a far more important part
in modern nomenclature, namely, Frang, the High German
form of free lord.
The nation called Cheruschi by Tacitus denominated them
selves Fraugen when they warred on northem Gaul, overspread
it, and termed it from themselves Frankreich. As their pri-

FREY. 1 97
under the Latinism of Franconia, became leagued with the
lands of the Swabjans, AUemanni, and Saxons, and thus became
part of Deutschland and of the Holy Roman Empire, while
Frankreich was leavened by the Gallo-Romans, who worked
up through their Frank lords, and made their clipped Latin,
ovLangue d'oui* (the tongue of aye), the national language,
and yet called themselves les Frangais, and the country
France. And as the most enthusiastic and versatile of the
European commonwealth, they so contrived to lead other
nations, and impress their fashions on them, that the Eastern
races regarded all Europeans as Franks, called their country
Franghistan, and the patois spoken by them in the Levant
became Lingua Franca.
Our old word, Franklin, meant a freeman of small property,
and has become a surname, as well as Freeman, famous as
Sarah of Marlborough's choice as a soubriquet which might
express her independence. Freimann is also common in Ger
many, and there are hosts of places recording either liberty or
Frankish possession. Franc, or Franco, was the archbishop of
Rouen, who made terms with RoUo ; and from this form may
be derived the German Frandsen and Italian Franchetti.
Long before the Emperor Charles V. had pronounced
French to be the language for men, an Italian merchant of
Assisi caused his son, Giovanni, to be instructed in it as a
preparation for commerce. The boy's proficiency caused
him to be called ' il Francesco,' the Frenchman, until the
baptismal Giovanni was absolutely forgotten ; and as Fran
cesco he lived his ascetic, enthusiastic life ; as Franciscus was
canonized ; and the mendicant order, humbly termed by him
fratres minores, lesser brethren, were known as Franciscans
throughout the Western Church.
Many a little Italian of either sex was christened by his
soubriquet, and though one of the first feminines on record
was the unhappy lady whose faU and its doom Dante made
* ' 'We-we ' is the name now given by the South Sea Islanders to the
French.

198 NAMES FROM TEUTON MYTHOLOGY.
famous, yet the sweet renown of the devout house^wife, San
Francesca di Roma, assisted its popularity; there was a
Fran9oise at Cambrai even in 1300, and CecareUa is the
peasant mother of a damsel in the Pentamerone.
San Francesco di Nola reformed the Franciscans into a
new order, caUed the Minimi, or least, as the former ones
were the Minores. It is to him that the spread of the name
beyond the Alps is chiefly owing, for Louise of Savoy was
so devoted to him, that she made him sponsor and name-
father to her passionately loved son, and sewed; his winding
sheet with her own hands.
The name was not absolutely new to France, for that of the
grandson of the first Montfort, Duke of Brittany, had been
Fransez, and so had been that of the father of the Duchess
Anne, who carried her old Keltic inheritance to the crown
of France ; but it was her daughter's husband, the godson
of the saint of Nola, who was the representative Frenchman,
the type of showy and degenerate chivalry ; and thus spread
Francois and Fran^oise universally among the French no
bility, where they held sway almost exclusively till the me
mories of the House of Valois had become detestable; but
by that time the populace were making great use of it, and at
the present time it is considered as so vulgar that a French
servant in England was scandalized that a child of the family
should be called Francis.
Franz von Sickingen is an instance that even in the fierce
days of war between the emperor and the king, the name
of the latter was bome in his rival's dominions ; but it did
not take root there at once. The grandchildren of Fran9ois
I., intermarrying with the house of Lorraine, rendered
his namesakes plentiful, both in the blood-stained younger
branch of Guise, and in the dull direct stem, the continuation
of the Karlingen, who at length, by the marriage with
Maria Theresa, were restored to the throne of Charlemagne,
in the person of him whom the classicalizing Germans

FREY. 199
but Franz is the real name in universal use in the German
parts of the Austrian Empire, though the Slavonic portions
generally use the other end, as Zesk.
It was the same gay French monarch who sent us our
forms of the name. Mary Tudor, either in gratitude for his
kindness, or in memory of her brief queenship of France,
christened her first child Frances — that Lady Frances Bran
don whose royal blood was so sore a misfortune to her daugh
ters, and who had numerous namesakes among the maidens of
the Tudor court ; but they do not seem to have then made
the distinction of letter that now marks the feminine, and
they used what is now the masculine contraction. ' Frank,
Frank, how long is it since thou wast married to Prannel,'
was the rebuke of the Duke of Richmond to his Howard lady
when he was pleased to take down her inordinate pride, by
reminding her of her youthful elopement with a vintner.
The modern Fanny is apparently of the days of Anne,
coming into notice with the beautiful Lady Fanny Shirley,
who made it a great favourite, and almost a proverb for
prettiness and simplicity, so that the wits of George II.'s
time called John, Lord Hervey, ' Lord Fanny,' for his effemi
nacy. Fanny, like Frank, is often given at baptism instead
of the full word ; and, by an odd caprice, it has lately been
adopted in both France and Germany mstead of their national
contractions. The masculine came in at the same time, and burst into
eminence in the Elizabethan cluster of worthies — Drake,
Walsingham, Bacon ; but it did not take a thorough hold of
the nation, and was much left to the Roman Catholics ;
probably being disliked from memories left by the Franciscan
friars, and the curious traditional parody of confession which,
by the title of ' Father Francis and Sister Cattern,' has lin
gered on as a child's game among the peasantry to the pre
sent day. It was not tiU Frank had been restricted to men
that it took hold of the popular mind, so as to become, as it
"is at present, exceedingly prevalent.

200

NAMES FROM TEUTON MYTHOLOGY.

The original saint of Assisi made devout Spaniards use
Francisco and Francisca, before the fresh honour won for the
first by the two early Jesuits — the Duke of Gandia, the
friend and guide of Charles V., and Xavier, the self-devoted
apostle of the Indies. His sumame has thrown out another
stock. It is in itself Moorish, coming from the Arabic
Ga'afar, splendid, the same as that of our old friend, the
Giaffar of the Arabian Nights, the Jaffier of old historians.
Wherever Jesuits have been there it is; Savero in Italy,
Xavier in France, Xaverie in Wallachia, Xavery in Poland,
Saverij in Ulyria ; even Xaveria for the feminine in Roman
Catholic Germany, marking the course of the counter-Re
formation. Even Ireland deals in Saverius, or Savy, though
when English saUors meet a Spanish negro called Xaver,
they call him Shaver! Savary de Bohnn, whom Dugdale
places under Henry I., was probably a form of Sigeheri, or
Saher, which may have been absorbed by Xaver in Roman
Catholic lands.

EngUsh.
Francis
Frank

Erse.
Fromsais

Breton.
Franse

French.
Frangois

Spanish.
Francisco
Francilo

Portuguese.
Francisco
Francisquinho

ItaUan.
Francesco
Franco
Cecco

¦WaUachian.Francisk

German.
FranciskusFranz Frank

Dutch.
Frenz

Scotch.
Francie

Swedish.
Frans

PoUsh.
FranciszekFranck

Bohemian.
Frantisek

Slovak.
Francisek
Franc
FranjoZesk

Lettish.
Spranzia

THOR.

20 1

Lithuanian.
Prancas

Finn.
Ranssu

Hungarian.
FerenczFerko

Greek.
(^payKio-Kos

FEMININE,

EngUsh.
FrancesFanny

Breton.
Franseza
Fantik

French.
Fran9oise
FrancisquePanchette
Fanchon

Span, and Port.
Francisca

ItaUan.
Francesca
Cecca
Ceccina
Ceccarella

German.
Pranziske Franze
Sprinzchen
(Lower German.)

Dutch.
Francyntje
Francina Fransje

PoUsh.
Franciszka Franulka
Franusia

Bohemian.
Frantiska

Slovak.
PranciskaFranika
Franja

Hungarian.
Francziska

Greek.
<f>payKUTKa*

Section V. — Thor.

The third in the Teutonic Triad is the mighty Thor,
whose image stood on the other side of that of Odin, in the
northern temples, whose day followed Odin's, and who was
the special deity of the Norsemen, as Wuotan was of the
Saxons, and Freyr of the Swedes.
The most awful phenomenon to which, in Northem Europe,
human ears are accustomed — the great electric voice from
heaven, could not fail to be connected with divinity, by
nature, as well as by the lingering reminiscence of the reve
lations, when it accompanied the Voice of the Most High.
• Grimm; Munch; Munter; MichaeUs; Alban Butler; Mrs. Busk>
German Empire ; Dugdale ; EUis, Domesday.

202 NAMES FROM TEUTON MYTHOLOGY.
If the classic nations knew the mighty roll as the bolts of
Zeus or Jupiter, they called it /Jpdvn; (hronte) and tonitru,
names corresponding to those of divinities wherewith thek
northern neighbours connected the sound — the Perun of the
Slavonians, the Taran of the Cymry, the Thunnr, Donnar,
or Thor of the Teuton. It is scarcely to be doubted that, in
aU these cases, the name of the sound was an imitation of its
deep rolUng note, and that the god was called after it. Thor
also meaiis courage in the North, as in the Danish tor, and
our own dare, but is probably derived from the god. It
must have been his thunders that caused his day to become
Dies Jovis, Giovedi, or Jeudi, in the Latinizing lands, while
the Germans kept their Donnersdag, and England yielded to
the influence of her northern conquerors so much as to
change her Thunursdag for Thursday, like the Thorsdoeg of
the North.
In Gothland the thunder is called Thorsacken, from acka,
from aha, to be carried, because the sound was thought to be
carried by the wheels of his chariot ; nay, in an old Swedish
chronicle, Ursa Major is the wagon of Thor. This car of his
is said, in the Edda, to be drawn by two he-goats, named
Tanngniost and Tanngrissir ; but Munter thinks that they
were once antelopes, and the similar word bocken dropped into
goats when the Asiatic animals were forgotten by the Scan
dinavians. Yet it is from the strange confusion between
Thor and Elijah, as both thunderers, that a black he-goat is
sacrificed to the prophet by the Caucasians, in order to ob
tain favourable weather.
In the northern myths Thor is the eldest son of Odin,
mightiest Of all the Aasir, partly in right of his belt of
strength, which doubles his force, and of the iron gauntlets
which he wields whenever he throws his mighty hammer —
Mjolner, the crusher (from the word that named Milo),
which, like a boomerang, always returns to him when he has
1  i„j ;i TT_ 1  1  n.j mi  ji__-__ mi i 

THOR. 203
the abode of courage, resting on five hundred and forty pillars,
which seems Uke a tradition of some many-columned Indian
edifice. It was he who was foremost in the fight with the
powers of evil ; he bound Lok, the destroyer, and banished
him to Utgard, where the famous visit was made that so
curiously reflects Indian and Persian myths, and has dwindled
into the tricks of our Giant-killer and the German schneider-
lein. He brought the giant Orvandil from Utgard in a basket,
on his back, but with the loss of one of the giant's toes,
which was left behind, frozen to the ground, tUl Thor tossed
it up to the sky, to become the constellation Orvandil's toe,
but, unluckily, no one now knows which it is. He has
more adventures than any other single deity in northem
story, and continues champion of the gods till the final con
summation, when, after having destroyed many of the enemies,
he is finally stifled by the flood of poison emitted by the Mid-
gard snake.
Thor has a long beard and red hair, whence in Fries-
land one of the many names of the fox is Wald-Thor;
but his sacred animal was the buU, as symbol of strength ;
and perhaps he was originally worshiped under this form,
for little bull-images are to be found in old graves. One,
which is in the royal museum at Copenhagen, has a winged
serpent on its back, biting his neck, as if in allusion to the
future fate of the god. His Runic sign -^ is also said to be
taken from the bull's horns: his hammer f-y was marked
on infant Scandinavians, in strange parody of baptism.
Coupled with this, the Latin name taurus, a buU, is, at least
a remarkable coincidence.
Some of the Kelts are said to have made oaths on a small
iron image of a bull, but which Kelts, or if in honour of
Taran, does not appear. - The same cross is found on Keltic
coins in honour of Taranis, and likewise on some figures
found at Albano and Castel Gandolfo, which Roman anti
quaries declare to be northern.

204 NAMES FROM TEUTON MYTHOLOGY.
Little iron axes are often found in Northmen's graves, and
are caUed by tradition, both in the North and in Scotland,
thunderbolts — they are thought to have been taUsmans, to
put the dead under Thor's keeping. Perhaps they were used
when out of reach of belemnites, which among other wonder
ful origins, such as elf-bolts in England, candles in Scotland,
petrified leeks of the Israelites in Egypt, are in the North
supposed to be Thor's darts, and to protect the house that
holds one from lightning.
Perhaps from the horns being like his bull's, the great
stag-beetles are in southern Germany, donner guge, but in
other places the poor insects are called burners, and accused
of carrying burning brands in their horns to insert in the
thatch of cottages ; and as Odin had the sandpiper by way
of bird, the snipe is bestowed on Thor by the name of Bon-
nerziege, or thunder-goat, or still more droUy, as Bonners-
tagspferd, Thursday-horse. In the vegetable world, the oak
belongs to Thor ; also a certain species of barley is in Nor
way Thor's barley, probably on account of the barley of the
realms below which brewed divine ale for the feasts of Valhal.
House-leek in Germany protects from thunder, and is donner-
hart, Thor's beard, just as it is jou-harhe, or Jove's beard, in
France ; sedum is donner-kraut, fumaria, donner-fiug, and
eryngium, donner-distel.
Li the German poem of Hildebrand and Hadubrand, poor
Thor has fallen from his high estate into a mere man, called
Thord, who is robbed of his golden hammer. But faith
in him lasted with the Northmen till their conversion ; and
even on the plains of Neustria, ' Thorhjolfe ' was the battle-
cry, till changed to ' Bieu aide.'
Thord seems to have been a contraction of the old Low
German Donarad, which has vanished; but in fact Thor,
though regnant in the North, was not very popular elsewhere,
and almost all the names he commences are Scandinavian ;
thoueh the old Snanish Goths had a kins Thorismundo,

THOR. 205
Thor's protection, the same as our Norman Tormund. They
had also an Asturian bishop, Toribio, who long after was fol
lowed by a sainted namesake in Spanish South America.
Every possible change that could be rung on Thor seems
to have been in use among the Northmen. The simplest
masculine, Thordr, comes seventy times in the Landnama-boh,
Thorer forty-seven times, after the early settler Thorer the
silent, and the feminine Thora twenty-two, and she stiU
flourishes in Iceland and Norway.
Thor had his elf, Thoralfr, his household spirit Thordis,
his bear and his wolf. His bear Thorbjorn is fifty-one times
in the Iceland roll, and was not without a she-bear, Thorbera ;
and the ' Torbern,' in Domesday, was doubtless the father of
the family of Thorbum. Indeed, though Thor's hammer was
not an artistic one, he has had other artist namesakes by
inheritance, namely, the Flemish Terburg, an offshoot from
the northem Thorbergr, with its feminine Thorbjorg, or
Thorberga, and the great Danish Thorwaldsen, the son of
Thorvalldr, Thor's power, or maybe of thunder-welder, the
Thorwald of Germany, and Thorold or Turold of the Nor
man Conquest. Readers of Andersen may remember his
story of the boy-sculptor mortified by the consequential little
girl declaring that no one whose name ended in sen was
worth speaking to. Thorwald, too, was one of the old
Icelandic discoverers of America.
As to Thor's wolf, Thorolf, it is contracted into Tolv in
Norway, and thus may be the origin of that curious Danish
superstition that at noon-day (twelve being tolv in Danish)
Kong Tolv, a terrific and mysterious personage, drives by in
his chariot, invisible except to maidens inadvertently left in
soUtude, when they are borne off by him to his domains for
seven years, which pass like a single day.
Forty-two Thorarinns, as well as a Thorama for a feminine,
assisted to people Iceland, and of course Thor's sword, spear,
and kettle were there too ; Thorbrandr six times over. The

2o6 NAMES FROM TEUTON MYTHOLOGY.
spear and kettle figure again in the story of Croyland Abbey,
as told by Ingulf Turgar, the little child who escaped the
destruction, is no doubt Thorgeir, and it may be feared thus
betrays a Norman invention; but Turcetyl, the good man
who re-built it, was really Ethelstane's chancellor, and no
doubt took his name from some of the invading Danes, who
called the Thorketyl or ThorkjeU of the North, ThurkU or
Trukill, of which we have some traces remaining in the sur
name Thurkell. Thorkatla was the Icelandic feminine.
It is an evidence how greatly our population was leavened
by the Danes, that though Thor-names are very rare in
.A.nglo-Saxon history, we have many among our surnames,
such as Thurlow from Thorleik, Thor's sport, Tunstall and
Tunstan from Thurstan, the Danish Thorstein, the proper
form of Thor's stone, who is thus the ' stainless Tunstall,'
whose ' banner white ' waves in Flodden Field, just as long
before Tostain the white had been the foremost knight at
Hastings, and left his name to the northern peasantry to be
confounded with Toussaint, the popular reading of AU
Saints' day, and thus to pass to the negro champion of
Hayti, Toussaint L'Ouverture.
ThorgUs, pledge, also runs into ThurkU or TrokU, and cuts
down to Troels ; but coming to the Western Isles has there
continued in the form of Torquil, and has been mixed up
with the idea of the Latin torques, a neck chain. The
Swedes caU it ThyrgUs, and the feminine is Thorgisla. It is
Torchil in Domesday.
White Thors were Thorfinn and Thorfinna; Thorvid, or
Thor's wood, is in Denmark Truvid, Truid, Trudt, probably
our Truefit. Besides these were used —
Thorbert, Thor's splendour (Torbertus in Domesday).
Thorgautr, Thor the good (or Goth).
Thorgerdur, Thor's protection (thirty-seven in Lard-
nama-boh). Thorgestur, Thor's guest.

BALDUR AND HODUR. 207

Thorgrim, Thor the helmeted.
Thorgunna, Thor's war.
ThorhUdr, Thor's battle-maid.
Thorleif, Thor's relic.
Thormod, Thor's mood.
ThorhaUa, Thor's stone.
Thorlaug, Thor's liquor.'*

Section VI. — Baldur and Hodur.
Most beautiful of all the gods was Baldur, the fair white
god, mUd, beautiful, and eloquent, — ^beloved, but fore-doomed
to death. His story is well known. His mother, Frigga,
vainly took an oath of aU created things not to be the instru
ment of his fate, — she omitted the misletoe ; and Lok, the
destroyer, having, in the guise of a sympathetic old woman,
beguiled her into betraying her omission, placed a shaft
of the magic plant in the hands of the blind god, Hodr,
when all the Aasir were in sport directing their harmless
weapons against the breast of their favourite. Baldur was
slain, and his beautiful wife, Nanna, died of grief for his
loss. Even then Hela would have relented, and have given
him back, provided every living thing would have wept for
him ; but one stern giantess among the rocks refused her
tears, and Baldur remains in the realms of death, until after
aU his brethren shall have perished in the last great conflict,
when with them he shall be revivified in the times of the
restitution of aU things, so remarkably promised in these
ancient myths. According to the Orvarod Saga, in Oehlen-
schlager's beautiful version, ' Baldur is not wholly dead ;' but
when the dwarfs are busied in the malignant tasks that they
describe thus :
* Landnama-bok; Thierry, ConquSte d'Angleterre; EUis, Domesday;
Munch; Mallet.

2o8 NAMES FROM TEUTON MYTHOLOGY.
' Or forge we armour for the knight,
The grey steel clasps his breast so tight,
That to life's joys his thouglits we chill,
Harden his heart and steel his -will,
To doubt or caution close his soul ; —
He rushes on a bloody goal.
Beakers of silver when we work,
Discords within the goblet lurk,
"Wrath fills the banquet hall, and rage
"With slaughter fills the friendly stage ;
Or when our golden rings go forth,
Pledges esteemed of plighted troth,
We mingle sulphur with the gold, —
The ring of faith will burst its hold.'
This pastime is, however, disconcerted by the white form oi
Baldur emerging from the abyss, and taking part in tht
work : ' In many a harness blue and fair
Doth Baldur set his jewel rare, —
Then in the fight the champion wild
In peace is faithful friend and mild ;
Or when the beaker's silver edge
Beareth the ruby, Baldur's pledge,
No discord doth the draught betray,
Peace blooms like flowers with rain in May.
The faithful heart may burst the frame,
But Baldur's ring is still the same.'
Baldur's heavenly kingdom was called BreidablUc, oi
broad shining ; on its pillars were written Runes that could
raise the dead ; nothing impure could enter there, and even
around his temples neither man nor beast might be slain.
He had princes for his priests, and he also had priestesses;
and his name is widely given to places :
'¦When Denmark's Raven roared on high
Triumphant through Northumbrian sky,
Beneath the shade the Northmen came.
Fixed on each vale a Eunic name, '•

BALDUR AND HODUR. 2O9
Eeared high their altar's rugged stone,
And gave their gods the lands they won ;
Then Balder, one bleak garth was thine,
And one S'weet brooklet's silver line :'
namely, Baldergarth, and the Balder, a tributary of the Tees,
as weU as Baldersby, also in Yorkshire ; and there are Balders-
brunnen and Baldersbrond in Denmark. In flowers, Baldur
owned our own deep blue gentian, which used to be called
Baldmoney; while in the North the camomile {Matricaria
or Anthemis) is Balsensbre, Ballensbra, Barbrogras, all cor
ruptions of Baldur's brow, in allusion no doubt to the open-
eyed glory of the golden eye and white circlet of rays of
this class of flowers.
The Ynglinga Saga made Baldur a mere human son of the
invading Odin, and appointed him viceroy over the Angeln
in the Cimbric Chersonese, in the district of Breidablik.
This must have been to agree with the Anglian genealogies,
which place Baldeag, the son of Woden, as the next forefather
in the descent.
As to his name, authorities are not agreed. Baldr is a
prince in several Teutonic languages, and the royal family of
the Visigoths were the Balten. Balths, bald, bold, is also a
word among them ; but Grimm deduces the god's title from
hjel, or haltas, the word that is the first syllable of the
Slavonic Belisarius, and thus would make the Anglian
Baldoeg mean white as day. It is the word that lies at the
root of bellus, pretty, whose derivations are now so universal in
Romanized Europe. Others turn the name over to the Bel,
or Beli, of the Kelts, or the Eastern Belus ; but on the whole,
the derivation Baldr, a prince, is the least unsatisfactory.
The legend seems to have been unkno'wn to the German
races, or, at least, no trace of it has been found, and the
names that constantly occur beginning and ending with bald
ov paid, are supposed merely to mean the prince and not the
god. As an end it is more common than as a beginning, and
VOL. II. P

2IO

NAMES FROM TEUTON MYTHOLOGY.

it is peculiar to the Anglian races, our o'wn Anglo-Saxons,
the inhabitants of the Low Countries, and continental Saxons.
The names that have become universal aU emanated from one
or other of these sources.
Baldric, or prince ruler, was Anglo-Saxon ; but the Swedes
learned it as Balderik, the Poles as Balderyk, the French as
Baudri. Baldred, an English-named saint, was bishop of
Glasgow; thence, too, the early French took Baldramn,
prince raven, which they made Baudrand, and confused with
Baldrand, prince of the house, also Baldemar, famous prince,
unless this is a confusion with Waldemar.
The most general of these was, however, Baldwine, prmcely
friend, who was very early a feudatory of the empire in
Flanders, and the name continued in his family, so as to take
strong hold of the population, and to spread into the adjoin
ing lands. Baldwin was the father of William the Con
queror's Matilda, and the one Baldwinus before the Conquest
has very considerably multipUed after it, so that to us Bald-
-win has all the associations of a Norman name. Its Euro
pean celebrity was o-wing to the two knights of Lorraine
and du Bourg, who reigned successively at Jerusalem after
the first Crusade, and left this to be considered as the appro
priate Christian name in their short-lived dynasty; and
again, it was bome by the unfortunate count who was thrust
into the old Byzantine throne only to be demolished by the
Bulgarians, or if indeed he ever returned, to be disowned as
an impostor by his daughter.

EngUsh.
Baldwin

French.
Baudouin Baudoin

German.
Balduin

Dutch.
Boudewijn

ItaUan.
Baldovino
Balduino

The Germans have Baldo, the French Baud, both contrac
tions from either Baldwin, or Balderich, and there are a

BALDUR AND HODUR. 211
good many sumames therefrom in England, France, and
Germany. Examples of Baldegisel, prince pledge, Baldbrecht, Balde-
mund, Baldeflede, Baldetrude, have also been found, but no
where are any such fc»rms prevalent.
Baldur's wife, Nanna, probably comes from nanthjan, in
Gothic, to be courageous. There are a few Frisians called
Nanno, Nanne, Nonne ; but it is very probable that this old
goddess may have contributed to furnish some of the ui-
herited names now all absorbed in Anne.
Baldur's unfortunate murderer has, strange to say, many
more namesakes. He was Nanna's brother, blind, and of
amazing strength, and is supposed to typify unheeding rash
ness and violence, in opposition to prudent valour. His name
is in Gothic Hathus, in old German Hadu, and in Anglo-
Saxon Headho, and is said to come from headho, an attack
or fight, so that the right way to translate it in the com
pounds, where it forms part of a name, would perhaps be
fierce. It has a great many different forms. The old northem
Hedinn is believed to be one, belonging first to a semi-fabulous
sea-king of the mythic ages, who tried to elope with the
Valkyr Hildur. From him the sea was poetically called, in
the strange affected versification of the North, the road of
Hedinn's horses. There were eight Hedinns in the Land
nama-boh, and it sometimes occurred at the end of the 'word,
as with Skarphedinn, the fierce but generous son of Njal,
who dies singing to the last in the flame, with his faithful
axe driven deep into the wall that the flre might not spoil its
edge. Tacitus mentions two chiefs whom he caUs Catumer and
Catualda, and who are supposed to be by interpretation
Hadumar, or fierce fame, and Hadupald, or Haduwald, each
of which would be fierce prince. Hadumar has lingered in
southem France, where it has become Azimar, or Adhemar,
P 2

212

NAMES FROM TEUTON MYTHOLOGY.

the last the weU known surname of the Grignan family.
Hadubrand, fierce sword, is one of the heroes of the most
ancient existing poem in Lower German. Heddo is to be
found as a name pf some Frisians, contracted either from
this, or from Hadubert, or one of the other compounds.
Even ladies were named by this affix, as Haduburg, war
protection; Hadulint, war serpent; Haduwig, which the old
German name-writer, Luther, makes war refuge.
This last is the only usual form, owing to the saintly fame
of a daughter of the Markgraf of Meranie. While one
daughter, Agnes, was the victim of PhUippe Auguste's ir
regular marriage, the happier Haduwig married a duke of
Silesia, and shared his elevation to the throne of Poland,
where she evinced such piety as to be canonized ; and the
name she left was borne by a Polish lady in the next century,
who converted her husband, the duke of Lithuania. Thus
doubly sainted, all eastern Germany delighted in it, and the
French sent it to us ; they calling it Hedvige ; we took it
as HaWoyse, and, descending into Avice, or Avis, it was at
one time very common here, and is to be found in almost
every old register.

English.
Havoise
Hawoyse Havoisia Avice AviciaAvis

French.
Hedvige

German.
HedwigHedda

PoUsh.
Jadviga

ItaUan.
Edvige

Lusatian.
Hada

Esth.
Eddo Edo

Lett.
Edde

Hungarian.
Hedviga

The Spanish Goths, too, had their compounds of Hadu.
The Lady Adosinda, whom Southey has placed coUecting the

TYR. 213
corpses of her family in Ijie ruins of the city destroyed by
the Moors, is Haduswinth, or fierce strength ; and the Por
tuguese Affonso is from Hadufuns, the last syllable of which
means vehemence, and is, in fact, no other than our own un
dignified fuss; Affonso, Afonso, thus mean fierce fuss, though
for more euphony, warlike impetuosity. Alfonso, Alonso, are
from Hildefuns, battle impetuosity, though now all are con
founded together, and one is used to translate the other.''*-
Section VH. — Tyr.
In Northem mythology Tyr is another son of Odin, and
god of strength and victory. When, in the great fight with
the powers of evil, the terrible Fenris, the wolf of the abyss,
was to be bound with a fetter, slender, but which no power
could break, he was only induced to stand still by Tyr volun
teering to put his right hand into the monster's mouth, as a
pledge of the good faith of Asgard. Finding himself chained,
the wolf at once closed his jaws and bit off Tyr's hand;
nevertheless, the Runic letter A (thorn, the sound of dh),
which was left-handed, like the god, and therefore his sign,
was esteemed the mark of truth and treaties. Two one-
handed images of Tyr have been found, one at Mecklenburg,
and it is thought that the stone knives sometimes found in
tombs are his emblems. His plants are, in the North, the
monkshood (aconitum) called tyrshjalm ; the violet, tyrsfiola ;
the mezerium, tyvida.
These last may be so called from their month being March,
since it was the fashion to consider Tyr as Mars, and his day
is dies Martis, or Mardi. In the North it is Tyrsday,
Dienstag in German, Ertag in Bavaria, and the Anglo-
Saxon Tiwersdag has become our Tuesday.
* Munch ; Grimm ; Munter ; Luuing ; Blaokwell, MaUet ; Laing,
Eeimskringla ; MichaeUs; OehleusQhlager ; Butler; Dasent, Burnt Njal;
Histoire des Croisades ; Landnama-hok.

214 NAMES FROM TEUTON MYTHOLOGY.
Tacitus has recorded him as the chief god of the Goths
and Germans, and the precedence of his day would lead to
the idea that he may once have been a greater god than Odin.
His name too leads to the same conclusion; it is cognate
with the Sanscrit Bjaus, Bivas, the Persian Beev, Greek
Zeu^, Bios, and Theos, the Roman Beus, and the Keltic
Bou, all the idea of godhead conveyed in day or open heaven.
This deity's names are Tins in Gothic, Zeu in AUemanic,
Tiv in Saxon, Tyr in the North, where the word also means
glory. It is quite a mistake to caU our Tuesday Tuisco's
day, for Tuisco is a mere invention, as name-father to the
Teutons. Thiodo was the old continental Saxon title of a priest;
thiota was the AUemanic priestess ; and dienst passed on
from divine worship to mean any sort of service. The ich
dien taken by our Princes of Wales from Germany may be
an allusion to some ancient priesthood, and it is tempting to
believe that this divine word may be the root of the national
term Teuton ; but our foot is not firm enough here to do
more than hint at some apparent connection.
Tyr has few namesakes. Tyre, in Norway, is the only
direct one ; but it sometimes finishes a word, as in the case
of Angantyr, favourite of Tyr, the warrior who obtained the
terrible sword, Tyrfing, forged by the dwarfs, which did,
indeed, always give victory, but which would never go
back into its scabbard till it had been fed with, at least,
one human life. The dio, or thius, of the old Gothic and
German names thus arose, such as Alathius, Halltyr, and the
like. Hermann Luning explains the last syUable of Angantyr's
name thus ; but Professor Munch connects it with tjene, to
serve, and with the theow that finishes some of our Anglo-
Saxon names in the genealogies.'*
* Grimm; Munter; Edda; BlaokweU, MaUet; Oehlenschlager.

NIORD, ETC. 215

Section VIH. — Niord, ^c.
Nidrd was god of the sea, almost equal in rank to Odin
himself. He was a very ancient deity, known to the German
nations as Nairthus, and probably, like Freyr, male and
female. The goddess Nerthus, mentioned by Tacitus, has
been supposed by Grimm to mean Niord; but Hermann
Luning makes it Tdrd, a wife of Odin, and one of the three
titles of the earth : at any rate, out of this mention has been
made a goddess — Hertha, who has not been without name-

The water orchis was niardiarvoth, or Niord's glove.
Many derivations have been suggested for his name.
Finn Magnusson thought it might be cognate with the Greek
vqp(K (neros), wet; Grimm, that it might be connected with
the North, though he declines to speak positively; and
Hermann Luning deduces it from nairan, to join, because
the sea joins the land together.
Niord's direct derivatives seem to be Nordhilda and Nord-
bert ; the last fashionable in Germany, from a youth of im
perial family, who was, at the end of the eleventh century,
brought to serious thoughts by having his horse struck by
Ughtning under him, when, like St. Paul, he cried out ' What
wouldst Thou have me to do ?' He became a monk, and was
afterwards archbishop of Magdeburg, and founder of the
Prsemonstratensian Order; and Norbert became known and
used after he was canonized.
Niord alone is used in the North ; and thence too, perhaps,
comes Norman, which was in use, both in France and England,
at the time of the Conquest. It may have been only from the
nation, but it is puzzling to find sixteen Normans before the
Conquest, and only eight after — one of whom, Norman
d'Arcie, at least, was a Norman bom. Afterwards, during the
friendly thirteenth century, English nobles carried Norman

2l6 NAMES FROM TEUTON MYTHOLOGY.
to Scotland, where it was adopted in the LesUe family, and,
like Nigel, became exclusively Scottish. The Highlanders
called it Tormaid, which is considered to be really its GaeUc
form, not an equivalent. The last Englishman I have found
so called was Norman de Verdun, under Edward I.
From nairan, too, Luning derives the title of the Scandi
navian fates — the Nornir, because they join together our
destiny. The three chief Nornir dwell in a beautiful abode
near the Ashyggchasil, and are called Urd, Verdandi, and
Skuld, literally, was, becoming, and shall — past, present,
and future ; the two first from the verb verda, the last from
skula. Urd has furnished our weird. There were many
other Nornir; every man had his O'wn attendant fate ; but, as
names, they were unused, except when assumed by Noma of
the Fitful Head, in The Pirate. Skuldr was also a Valkyr,
and now and then had a Danish namesake.
The story of Niord's marriage is one of the wild ones of
later Norse mythology. Iduna, the wife of Bragi, god of
poetry, kept the apples of gold which renewed the youth of
the gods. However, Loki, having faUen into the clutches of
the great frost giant, Thiassi, in the form of an eagle, only
affected his release by promising to bring Iduna and her
apples to Jotunheim. He beguiled her into a forest, under
pretence that he had found finer apples than her own,
and there Thiassi flew away with her. The gods began to
grow old without their apples, and insisted that Loki should
bring her back. He arrayed himself as a falcon, and, flying [
to Jotunheim, turned Iduna into a sparrow and flew home
with her, pursued by Thiassi. The Aasir, seeing her danger,
Ughted a fire with chips on the walls of Asgard, which flamed
up and singed Thiassi's wings, so that he fell down among
them and was slain. Afterwards, his daughter, Skadi, came
to avenge his death, but was mollified by being allowed to
choose a husband from the Aasir, but was only allowed the
sight of the feet to select from ; and thus, hoping she had

NIORD, ETC. 217
taken Baldur, she obtained Niord. Thiassi's eyes are said to
have become stars; but, as usual, the northern astronomy
has been ruined by the classical, and they are lost.
Bragi was followed as an Icelandic name. Its etymology
is uncertain; some make it cognate with Brahma; others
with braga, to shine ; others with brain. Braga was poetry,
and thence, unfortunately, comes to brag, and braggart ; and
from Braga's divine draught we may perhaps have brew,
troth, and brose ; but these last are highly doubtful.
Iduna, or, more properly, Idhuna, Ithuna, is a myth of
spring reft away by winter, who dies of the warmth of the
flame of the summer gods. Her name does not seem to have
been foUowed in the North ; but it is almost certainly the
origin of Idonea, which is very common in old pedigrees.
Idonea de CamviUe lived under Henry HI. ; Idonea de
Vetriponte, Vieuxpont, or Oldbridge, is cited in the curious
tracts on Northern curiosities, put forth some years back in
Durham, which say the name is very common ; and though it
might be the feminine of the Latin idoneus, fit, its absence
in the Romance countries may be taken as an indication that
it was a mere classicalizing of the northern goddess of the
apples of youth.
The word itself is translated by Luning in the most satis
factory manner as ' she who works incessantly,' and by Munch,
as ' she who renovates incessantly.' Idja is to work, unna,
love, so that others make her one who loves work. The
word unna, however, though derived from the verb an unna,
to love, has come to mean only a woman, and as such is
frequently used as a termination, as well as now and then
standing alone as a female name, Unna, of whom there are
three in the Landnama-hok, and several in the Saga of Burnt
Njal. Una is likewise used in both Ireland and the North;
but in the former it means famine, in the latter it is
the feminine of Uni; in the North it is most probably

21 8 NAMES FROM TEUTON MYTHOLOGY.
from that word vin, win, or wine, a friend, which we shall
often meet with again, and which lies most likely at the root
of imna.
The word idja, to work, the first syUable of Iduna's name,
formed deisi, activity, and thence the person who ought to he
active, the old German itis, and Anglo-Saxon ides, a woman,
in the North, deis or dis. The idea of the active sprite was
divided between womankind and certain household spirits,
like the Roman genU, only feminine, and possibly another
name for the Nornir, as each man had his O'wn, and they
were sometimes visible as animals suiting with the character
of their proteges : powerful chiefs had bears or bulls, crafty
ones foxes ; and even on the introduction of Christianity^'l
faith in the Disir was not abandoned, though there were no
more sacrifices at their Bisir salen, or temples. Sometimes
a family would have various disir at war with one another,
some for the old faith, some for the new. While Iceland
was still in suspense between heathenism and Christianity, a ,
young chieftain one night heard three knocks at his door, and
despite the warnings of a seerj went forth to see the cause.
He beheld nine women in black riding from the North, and
nine from the South, the disir of his family, the black for
heathendom, the white for Christianity. The black knowing
that they must vanish from the land, seized his life as their
last tribute, and wounded him, so that he returned a dying
man to tell his tale. Probably these disir are either the
cause or the effect of those strange phantoms which, whether
of doves, dogs, heads, children, or women, portend death
in certain families. They may Ukewise account for some of
the family bearings in the form of animals.
Disa is a Norwegian and Icelandic name, now nearly dis
used : it is also a very frequent termination, such as in
Thordis, Alfdis, Freydis, &c., and it may be most fitly' trans
lated as the sprite giving the idea of the guardian protecting

HEIMDALL.

219
pirit that woman should be. In the German names it appears
IS the termination itis or idis, as AdeUdis, one that appears
it first sight like a mere Latinism.'**'

Section IX. — HeimdaU,
The porter of ValhaU is HeimdaU, the son of nine
isters, who watches at the further end of the rainbow-bridge
Jifrost to guard the .^sir from the giants. He sleeps more
ightly than a bird, can see a hundred leagues by day or
light, and can hear the grass growing in the fields, and the
rool on the sheep's backs. He bears in one hand a sword,
n the other a trumpet, the sound of which resounds through-
ut the universe.
When the powers of evil break loose, HeimdaU will rouse
he gods to their last eonfiict by a blast of his trumpet, and
a the struggle wUl kUl and be killed by Loki.
His name is explained by heim, home, and dallr, powerful.
le latter half is in Anglo-Saxon dealt, in old High German
'Mo, and in the old Norse dallr, whence Dalla is found as a
ame in the Landnama-bok,
Heim is in Ulfhilas both a field and a village, and the
Lnglo-Saxon uses the word ham in a similar manner, as is
bill shown in the diminutive hamlet, for a small village, as
'eU as in the ham that concludes many local names. At the
ime time, the word sUghtly altered assumed with us that
loser, dearer, warmer sense which is expressed by the terms,
dm, hiemme, hjem, hame, and home, in all the faithful-
earted Teutonic race, yet which is so little comprehended by
iir southern relatives, that they absolutely have no power of
^pressing such an idea as ' It's hame, and it's hame, and it's
ame.' * Grimm ; Luning ; Munter ; Munch ; BlackweU, MaUet ; EUis,

220 NAMES FROM TEUTON MYTHOLOGY.
Even in their heathenism ' true to the kindred points of
heaven -and home,' the guardian of the dwelling of the brave
spirits of the dead was made by the Northmen no grun
Cerberus nor gloomy Charon, but the Home ruler.
And though Heimdaller nowhere occurs as a name, yet
the old German Heimirich is almost identical with it; though
it should be observed that heim is a commencement peculiar
to the Germans ; we never find one with this commencement
originating either with the Northmen or the English.
Where Heimirich first began does not appear, but it
sprung into fame with the Saxon emperor called the Fowler,
and his descendant won the honours of a saint, whence this
became a special favourite in Germany, where it was borne
by six emperors, princes innumerable, and by so many others
that the contraction Heintz had passed to cats even as early as
the writing of Reinecke Fuchs.
It is from this endearment, Heinz, that the handsome and
unfortunate son of Frederick II. , who, after his brief royalty
in Sardinia, spent the rest of his life in a Genoese prison,
was known to Italy as Enzio, and to history as Enzius.
From the kaisers, the third Capetian king of France was
christened Henri, a form always frequent there, though only
four times on the throne. Its popularity culminated during
the religious wars, when Henri de Valois, Henri de Bourbon,
and Henri de Guise were fighting the war of the three
Henris ; but in spite of the French love and pride in le grand
monarque, the growing devotion to St. Louis, from whom the
Bourbon rights to the throne were derived, set Henri aside
from being the royal name, until the birth of him whom
legitimists still call Henri V.
There are but three instances of ' Henricus,' even after the
Conquest, in Domesday; and it must have been from the
reigning French monarch that William the Conqueror took
Henry for his youngest son, from whom the first Plantagenet
received and transmitted it to his ungracious son, his feeble

HEIMDALL. 221
grandson, and through him to the elder House of Lancaster,
then to the younger, who for three generations wore it on the
throne, and for whose sake it was revived in the House
of Tudor. Its right native shape is Harry ; the other form
is only an imitation of French spelling. It was ' Harry of
Winchester ' who cried out for help at Evesham ; Harry of
Bolingbroke who rode triumphant into London, and who died
worn out in Jerusalem chamber ; Harry Hotspur whose spur
was cold at Shrewsbury ; Harry of Monmouth who was
Hal in his haunts at Eastcheap, and jested with Fluellen on
the eve of Agincourt; Harry of Windsor who foretold the
exaltation of Harry Tudor when ' Richmond was a Uttle
peevish boy;' and Harry VTH. who lives in the popular mind
as Blue Beard; perhaps connected m some cases with the
popular soubriquet of the devil.
An early Swedish bishop bore the name, and so did a
bishop of Iceland before the twelfth century ; but these must
have been foreigners, for there are no other instances in the
North in early times, though the general fusion of European
names brought in Hendrik, to the loss of their own Heidrick,
just as Heinrich seems to have in Germany destroyed an
independent Haginrich.
The founder of the Portuguese kingdom was a Henri from
Burgundy; but the name did not greatly flourish in the
Peninsula till Enrique of Trastamare climbed to the Castilian
throne, and his namesakes, alternating with Juan, threw out
the old national Alfonso and Fernando.
On the whole this is one of the most universal of Teutonic
names, and one of the most English in use, although not
Anglian in origin. The feminine seems to have been in
vented in the sixteenth century, probably in France, for
Henriet Stuart appears in the House of Stuart d'Aubigne in
1588, and there were some Henriettes to match the Henris
at the court of Catherine de Medicis. England received the
name from the daughter of Henri IV., Henriette Marie,

222

NAMES FROM TEUTON MYTHOLOGY.

whom the Prayer Book called Queen Mary, though her god
children were always Henrietta, so Latinized by their pedigrees,
though in real life they went by the queen's French appeUa
tion, as well as English lips could frame it, so that Hawyot
was formerly the universal pronunciation of Harriet, and is
still used by a few old-fashioned people.

EngUsh.
HenryHarry Hal
HalkinHawkin

French.
Henri
Henriot

Spanish.
Enrique

ItaUan.
Enrico Arrigo
EnzioArriguccioArrigozzo Guccio

Breton.
Hery

Portuguese.Enrique

German.
HeimirichHeinrichHein HeineHeinzHeineckeHenkeHenning

Dutch.
HendrikHendricusHeintje

Danish.
Hendrik

Frisian,
Enrik

Swedish.
Henrik

PoUsh.
Henryk

Bohemian.
Jindrich

Lett.
Indrikis IndesInduls

lithuanian.
EndrikisEndruttis

FEMININE.

EngUsh.
HenriettaHarriet HarriotHarty
Hatty Etta
Hetty

French.
Henriette

Spanish.
Enriqueta

Swedish.
Henrika

ItaUan.
Enrighetta

Portuguese.
Henriqueta

German.
HenrietteJette

¦WILL.

223

Dutch.
Hendrike Jetje

PoUsh.
Henryeta

Bohemian.
Jendiska

Slovak.
EnrikaHenrinka

Heimo, or Hamo, is another old German form, becoming in
French Hamon, Haymon, Aymon; and Amone in ItaUan.
Les Quatre Filz Aymon were notable freebooters in Karling
romance, and in Italy were i Quattro Figli d' Amone. Early
Norman times gave us Hamo, Hamelin, and Fitzaymon ; but
except for an occasional Hamlyn in an old pedigree, they have
disappeared. Gennany had Heimrod, Heimbert, and Heimfred; but
these are not easy to disentangle from the derivatives of the
word hun, which are much more in use.*
Section X. — Will.
This section has thus been headed because the Will was
one of ^he ideas most strongly expressed in various forms in
the religion of the high-spirited North.
The word to will is of all tongues; the Greek ^ovhq,
Latin velle or volo, Gothic viljan, Keltic iouli, all show a
common origin, and every Teuton language has the deriva
tives of will, just as the Romance have of volo.
But it is the Teuton who brings the Will into his mytho
logy. WTien the creation began, the cow Andumbla licked
out of the stones a man named Bur, who was the grandfather
of the three primeval gods, Odin, WiU, and Ve, the all-per
vading, the will, the holy, and it was these who together
animated the first human pair. We hear no more of ViU or
Hoemir, as he is also called after he thus infused feeling and

* MichaeUs; Pott; Edda.

224 NAMES FROM TEUTON MYTHOLOGY.
will into the first man ; but we meet the word will again
forming valjan, to choose, velja in the North.
Thence the home where Odin welcomed his brave descend
ants was ValhaU, the hall of the chosen; and the maidens
who chose the happy who were there to dwell, were the Val
kyrier, or Walcyrge, the last syllable from kjora, curen, to
choose, the word whence an electoral prince is called in Ger
man, Kiirfurst. But the passport to the hall of the chosen
was a glorious death on the battle-field ; and thus it was that
val, vali, wali, belonged to the carnage of the fight, since
slaughter did but seal the marks of the Valkyr upon the
brave, whose spirits were passing over the rainbow-arch,
while the comets marked the course of the chariot which
glanced across the sky with weapons forged for their sport
in battle and chase.
So the hall of the chosen became the hall of carnao-e, the
abode of the slain ; and it is remarkable that no Christian
writer transfers the term to paradise, although the epithet
Schildburg, the castle of shields, is once applied to heaven
as the home of the victors. Indeed, ValhaU was not atemal;
the warrior there admitted had yet to fight his last fight by
Odin's side, perish with him and his sons, and share with
them the renovation of the universe. So deeply interwoven
with the ideas of the North was a violent death with the
hope of bUss, that crags in Norway affording scope for a
desperate leap, were caUed the vestibule of ValhaU, and the
preference for a death on the battle-field lingered into Chris
tian days, so that not only did fierce Earl Siward bemoan
his fate in dying of sickness, albeit he rose upon his feet to
draw his last breath, but even the Chevalier Bayard mourned
angrUy over the fever that had nearly caused him to pass
away like a sick girl in his bed.
WeU then might the Valkyrier be the favoured messengers
of Odin, sent forth to select the champions who should
become the guests of their mighty forefather, himself called

WILL.

225

Valfreyr, or Slaughter Lord. They hovered over the camp
in armour with swan wings, marked those who were to fall,
and wove the web of slaughter ere the battle began. Their
number varies in different sagas, and so do their names,
although HUdur is always the chief. Their last appearance
was when the islander of Caithness beheld the twelve weaving
their grisly web in a loom of lances, the weights of men's
heads, on the eve of the Good Friday of the battle of Clon
tarf, between King Sigtrygg and Brian Boromhe, singing the
weird song that Gray translated long before Teutonic antiqui
ties were revived. ' Horror covers all the heath,
Clouds of carnage blot the sun ;
Sisters, weave the web of death,
Sisters, cease, the work is done.'
The work done, the web was torn in sunder, and divided be
tween the Valkyra, who flew off, half to the North, half to
the South, denoting the rending of the ancient faith.
In fact, in later sagas, the Valkyrier lose their wild mys
tery and divinity, and fall into mere magic maidens, some
times with extraordinary strength, sometimes with swan
wings, and at the very last gasp of the supernatural with
goose feet, which at their next step become merely large
feet. The mother of Charlemagne absolutely makes the
transition from Bertha the goose-footed, to Berthe aux grands
pieds. To this source probably may be referred Wala or wise
woman, the inspired priestess, also called in ancient German
the Velleda. Caesar teUs us that the matrons among the
Germans cast lots, and prophesied the issue of battle, and
thus wala may have been the wise or inspired woman and
the Voluspa: the great prophetic song of the fate of the
Aasir is Voluspa, either the wise woman's spae, or the in
spired spae or prophecy; for vola ov volur means inspired in
VOL. II. "i

226 NAMES FROM TEUTON MYTHOLOGY.
ancient German (no doubt from the wala or prophetess),
and by a very small transition, mad. Probably the Kelts
borrowed it, for/o? was inspired or mad ; and Folia of .Arin-
nium is mentioned by Horace as a magician. Our fool is
thus traceable to vola, inspired, but probably through the
Keltic and French medium.
VUi, though his myths have been forgotten, still stands as
a great ancestor. From him in Germany, either directly or
through a renewal of him as an ancestor, must have been
named the great race of the Billingen, the first dynasty of
the continental Sachsen, who gave emperors to Germany.
Billing is the son of Will, or Will ; and so again is, in the
North, Vilkin, the father of the famous smith Volundr,
whose name is probably from this original root, will or mind,
though its immediate source is thought to be vel, art or cun
ning, cognate with our own guile, and probably the participle
of a lost verb, to devise. Some connect it with Vulcan,
from the name and character of Volundr. He was the son
of a sea maiden, and of Vidja the Vilkin ; and he and his
two brothers each married a Valkyr, who at the end of a
stated period had to quit them for nine years, giving them
each magic gifts ^ and precious stones that dimmed when
disaster was about to befall them. Volundr was the fortu
nate brother of the three, and was the mighty smith to
whom all good weapons are ascribed. From him the early
part of the Norse poem ending with the slaying of Fafner
is called the Volsunga Saga, as from his father the Danish
version is the Wilkina Saga ; for the hero himself is his
descendant, a Waelsing, or Vilking, and fights with his
redobted weapons. Weland again makes the impenetrable
corslet of Beowulf, ' the twisted breastnet which pro
tected his life against point and edge;' he is the Wiolent,
Velint, or Wieland of Germany, and Galando of Italy,
the Galant of France, who forged their Joyeuse, the sword

WILL. 227
of Charlemagne, and Cortana that of Ogier. A skilful
Weland is mentioned in an old Anglo-Saxon MS. found at
Exeter, and in King Alfred's translation of Boethius, he
renders the line, ' IJbi nunc fldelis ossa Fabricii jacent?'
(meaning, of course, an artificer, the sense of the name,)
' Where are now the bones of the wise Weland ? the gold
smith who was most famed.' Workman is still called in
Iceland, Volundrinjam, and a labyrinth is Volundrhus. This
famous armourer took possession of a Druidical cromlech in
the midst of the battle-grounds between the Danes and Saxons
on the Berkshire downs, and there drove his shadowy trade
as Wayland Smith, close to King Alfred's own birth-place.
Wantage. He was spared from oblivion by being embalmed
in Kenilioorth, where the only blunder is in making Lancelot
Wayland the real name of the estimable mountebank, who
personated the mythical smith. Though Wieland is a Ger
man sumame, the coincidence of an English Wayland was
too much for probability ; and, in fact, Scott does not
seem to have known how very ancient Wayland Smith had
really been.
Names in Wal are chiefly Northem, those in Wil mostly
Sachsen. UUr, or UU, another Northem form, has been
much used in Iceland; and among the Northem isles of
Scotland, where it may be remembered that Ulla Troil was
the real name of Noma. UUr was the stepson of Thor, son
of Sif, and reno'wned as a great bow-bearer.
WU is almost always a commencement. The Frank queen
BiUchilde was, of course, WilUhilda, resolute battle. Our
earnest but turbulent Wilfrith, the Yorkshire bishop, hardly
deserved to be called resolute peace ; but as patron of Ripon,
his name has continued in the North, Wilfroy being very
frequent in older registers in the neighbourhood of Ripon,
Q2

228

NAMES FROM TEUTON MYTHOLOGY.

though of late fashion has adopted it in the form of
Wilfred. In the seventh century, we sent Germany two missionaries
with this prefix, WiUibrord who laboured at Utrecht, WUli-
hold at Utrecht ; also Willibald, resolute prince, went on
pilgrimage with his father, St. Richard of Wessex, in 721,
and finished his career as bishop of Aichstadt, leaving his
name to take root in various forms.

EngUsh.

French.

Portuguese.

Dutch.

Bavarian.

Willibald

GuiUibaud

Guilbaldo

Willebald

Willibald

Wibald

Vilibaldo

Waldl
Waltl

Native to Germany is Williburg, which has a northem
fac simile VUbjorg, and Vilgerd, the same in meaning, reso
lute protection ; WiUrich, resolute ruler ; Willehad, resolute
violence ; Willeram, resolute raven ; Willihard, reduplicating
firmness; Willigis, willing pledge, or pledge of the wiU;
Willimar, resolute fame, making our sumame Wilmer. Wil-
liheri, resolute warrior, is the source of the German WUler, the
English Weller, the French Villiers and ViUars, which with
their aristocratic sound, betray Uttle of their kindred to Sam
Weller. Where the most popular of all the Wills was invented it
is not easy to discover, but Germany is its most likely re
gion, since helm is a specially Germanic termination, and the
Billings favoured the commencement ; besides which the pro
nunciation in that language leaves the words their natural
meaning. Will-helm, resolute helmet, or, perhaps, helmet of
resolution. The native northern name would be Vilhjalm, but
this is never used, it being only imported bodily as Wilhehn
into Denmark from Germany, just as our Ethelbert is su
perseded by Albert.

VyiLL.

229

English.
William Will
WiUie Bill
Wilkin

Welsh.
Guillim

Breton.
Guillern
Guillarn

French.
Guillaume
GuiUemot

Old French.
WiUelme
Willeaulme

Spanish.
GuillermoGuiUen

Portuguese.
Guilbermo

ItaUan.
Guglielmo

German.
Wilhelm
WUm

Dutch.
Willem Wim

Swiss.
Wilhelm
Wille

Frisian.
WUlo

PoUsh.
Vilhelm

Bohemian.
Vilem

Lett.
Willums
WUle

Greek.
Goulielmos
Bilelmos

FEMININE.

EngUsh.
WilhelminaWilmett W^ilmotMina Minella

French.
GuillerumeGuillemette MinetteMimi Guillette

Spanish.
Guillemma

ItaUan.
Guglielma

Portuguese. Guilhermma

Swedish.
Vilhelmine

German.
Wilhelmine
Helmine Mine
Minchen Minna

Swiss.
Mimmoli MimmeU

Lithuanian.
Myne Mynette

Dutch.
Willemyn
Willempje

PoUsh.
Minka

The cause of its adoption in Normandy cannot be made
out of the eight saints who bear it in the Roman calendar

230 NAMES FROM TEUTON MYTHOLOGY.
not one is anterior to the son of RoUo, the second duke
of Normandy, from whom William descended to the Con
queror, and became one of the most national of EngUsh
names. Old Camden's account of it is too quaint not to be here
inserted : ' William, gerne. For sweeter sound drawn from
Wilhelm, which is interpreted by Luther much defence, or
defence to many ; as Wiliwald, ruling many ; Wildred, much
reverent fear, or awful ; Wilfred, much peace ; Wilibert, much
brightness. So the French, that cannot pronounce W, have
turned it into Philli, as Philibert for Wilibert, much bright-
nesse. Many names wherein we have Will seem translated
from the Greek names composed of ¦Ko'Kv'i ; as Polydamas,
Polybius, Polyxenes, &c. Helm yet remained with us, and
ViUi, Willi, and Billi yet with the German for many. Others
turn William, or willing defender, and so it answereth the
Roman Titus, if it come from tuendo, as some learned will
have it. The Italians that liked the name but could not
pronounce the W, if we may believe Gesner, turned it into
Galeazzo, retaining the sense in part for helm ; but the
Italians report that Galeazzo, the first viscount of Millain,
was so called for the many cocks that krew lustily at his
birth. This name hath been most common in England since
William the Conqueror, insomuch that on a festival day in
the court of King Henry H., when Sir William St. John and
Sir William Fitzhamon, especial officers, had commanded that
none but the name of William should dine -with them in the
great chamber with them, they were accompanied with one
hundred and twenty WiUiams, all knights, as Robert Mon-
tensis recordeth, anno 1173.'
Camden's authority is not Martin Luther, but one Mr.
Luther Dasopodius, by whom he sets great store, and whose
German VUli or Billi, much, must have been the word now
called viel. Verstegen's history of William is stiU droller.

¦WILL. 23 1
namely, that any German who killed a Roman assumed the
golden head-piece of the slain, and was thence caUed Gildhelm,
which would of course be inconsistent with the old German
form of Wilihelm. Be it observed that our surname Wilmot
descends from a name to be found in German Wilmod, reso
lute mood ; but the feminine Wilmott, which is to be found
continually in old Devon and Cornwall registers, is no doubt
the same as the old French Guillemette, and it is a pity it
has been discarded for the cumbrous German Wilhelmina, or
the Williamina that is of no language at all.
From whom Sweet WilUams were named does not appear,
but Stinking Williams were from the duke of Cumberland
of anti-Jacobite memory, on whom the Scots bestowed the
credit of filling their fields with the obnoxious rag-wort
(senecio). Hosts of surnames rise from William. Besides the more
obvious Bilson, Wickins, and Weeks are his remains, and
Germany and HoUand have their complement. As to Peter
Wilkins, the flying Dutchman, he may be the very last
remnant of the Nibelungen or Wilkingen, floating in their
uncertain mist.
Camden is probably right in taking Filiberto from WUi-
beraht, or Wilibert, resolute splendour, though Germans
refer it to viel, the same as our full and the Greek polys.
The founder of the name in the sixth century was a Frank
Willibert, who founded the abbey of Jumieges, which the
Normans first desolated and then- restored, their Frenchified
tongues bringing the patron's name to England as Fulbert,
which is still occasionally found in old families. The ninth
grand master of St. John meantime bore the French form,
which historians wrote as PhUibert ; and the old counts of
Savoy alternated FUiberto with Ame, untU they blossomed
out into double names, as Vittore Amadeo or Filiberto
Emanuele.

232 NAMES FROM TEUTON MYTHOLOGY.
The Val of choice, or slaughter, is not. Professor Munch
teUs us, to be confounded with another Val, taken from the
word waleh, or waalh, a stranger, which, as has been already
said, named Wales. Our own Waltheof, being spelt in his
native tongue Wealtheof, thus removes himself and an Ice
landic Valtheof from being slaughter-thieves to being foreign-
thieves ; a change not much for the better. There were
fierce Danish ancestors, however, to account for this preda
tory appellation lighting upon the earl whom the Conqueror
executed at Winchester and the English revered as a saint ;
then from him it descended to his grandson, Waltheof de
St. Lys, the stepson of St. David of Scotland, companion
of the excellent prince Henry, and, finally, abbot of MeUoss,
where he was canonized as St. Walthenius, or Walen, and
thus accounts for the sumame of Wathen.
Walmer is, in old German, Walahmar, and thus shows
itself to be foreign fame ; Walager is also foreign war, and
became Valgeir in the North, Gaucher in France ; and
thence, too, by corruption, Valgard, the evil genius of the
Njal Saga.
Walaraban, or Walram, seems appropriate as slaughter-
raven, but is uncertain. The French made it Gauteran;
and in the form of Waleran it was used in the House of
Luxembourg, Counts of St. Pol ; it is Galerano in Italy.
Walabert, a monk who died at Luxen, in 625, is the same
as the northern Valbjart ; and another Valbert, or Vaubert,
as he is called in France, had a daughter Valtrud, canonized
as St. Vautrude, or Vaudru. From Walheri we have Wal
ler ; from Walamund, the French take Valmont ; and Walar
rik, an Auvergne hermit, was Latinized as Valaricus, and
Frenchified into St. Valery, a territorial surname.
The Gothic king Wallia is left in possession of the battle
field; and so is the northem Valdis and Valbiorg, both
thorough Valkyr names, not yet disused.

HILDA. 233
Valasquita, an old name, found among the ladies of the
Asturias, Navarre, and Biscay, was probably from this

Section XL — Hilda. ; ,0 ;-_//' L
Chief among the Valkyrur was Hildur, HUd, or HUtia, who
is never wanting in any enumeration of these warUke spirits.
The word, in its original sense, means battle, and has thus
attached itself to the principal war-maiden; nay, it has
passed from her to be a poetical term for any maiden, and is
one of the "very commonest terminations to feminine names
throughout the Teutonic world, and is likewise often found at
the beginning of men's names, predominating perhaps in
Germany. Alone, it was only used in the North and in England,
where the Deiran princess Hildur became the holy abbess
Hilda of Whitby, succeeding St. Begga, and leaving a repu
tation for sanctity enhanced by the sight of
' The very form of Hilda fair
Hovering upon the sunny air,;'
a vision which, though Clara de Clare could not see it, is to
be beheld, under certain conditions of light, in the windows
of Whitby church to the present day ; as well as the ammo
nites, believed, as usual, to have been serpents turned to stone
at the prayer of the saint. In honour of her, Hilda is still
used as a name about Whitby.
The mother of Rolf Ganger, progenitress of our royalty, who
vainly besought Harald Harfagre not to banish her sons from
* Junius; Grimm; Luning; BlackweU, MaUet; Lappenburg; Dasent 5
Munter; Alban Butler; Camden; Verstegen; Pott; Koeppen; MichaeUs;
Howitt, Literature of the North.

234 NAMES FROM TEUTON MYTHOLOGY.
Norway, was named Hildr ; and it still survives in Scandi
navia and Iceland, where the Landnama-hok shows it to have
been very plentiful, seventeen ladies being recorded as bearing
it. There, too, occurs Hildiridur, battle hastener, a thorough
Valkyr name, but not very suitable to Fouque's sweet Lady
Minnetrost, of the moonlight brown eyes.
Hildelildis is a latinized form of an Anglo-Norman lady's
name. The true Frank form of the aspirate was, however, exceed
ingly harsh, amounting to the Greek x, a-nd therefore, usually
set down in its transitions through Latin and French as a ch.
So we meet, among the Meerwings, with Childebert, who by
translation is Hildebert, battle-splendour, and Childebrand,
or battle-sword.
These two last names, in their Low German form of HU-
tibrant and Hiltibraht, occur again in the old poem, already
referred to, of Hiltihrant and Hadubrant, both meaning battle-
swords, which goes through a dispute about Hadubrand's
father, and, finally, leaves them in the middle of a smgle
combat. Hildebrand is, as we know from old German and Danish
poems, the companion and friend of Dietrich of Bern. He
had, like some hero in every cycle of story, married and
deserted a young wife ; and after assisting his master in
many adventures, and much dragon killing, and being the
sole survivor of all Dietrich's men in the great massacre
of the Nibelung, he encountered, without knowing him, his
young son, Alebrand. In a single combat, where both do
their devoir, the old knight is wounded, the younger over
thrown. Then they discover each other, by the tokens that
Hildebrand had left with the mother, and
' Up rose the youthful Alebrand,
And into Bern they ride ;
¦What bears he on his helmet?

HILDA. 235
A little cross of gold.
And what on his right hand bears he ?
His dearest father old.'
So, recommended by fame, Hildebrand continued a knightly
name in England and Germany for many ages, and belonged
to that battle-sword of the Church, who, on his election to
the papacy, was called Gregory VII., though we still continue
to think of him as Pope Hildebrand ; and the eccentric Dr.
Wolffe tells us that one of the dreams of his youth was to
wear the tiara by the name of Hildebrand ! In Italy, pro
nunciation turned it into Aldobrando, then into Aldrovando,
and then Latin made .Aldrovandus.
Hildegunnr, battle-maid of war, was another northern
name, and is the same as the German Hildegund, which
was rather a favourite. It is Aldegonde in the Cambrai
register, and the territorial St. Aldegonde is memorable in
the revolt of the Low Countries. Hildegard, in honour of
an abbess in the Palatinate, who died in 1004, is still a very
common name among German ladies, and going to Denmark,
has been corrupted into OUegaard. It is exactly the same
in meaning with the northern Hildebjorg. So again are
HUdewig and HUdegar, and among the Gothic queens of
Spain is found Hilduara, or battle prudence.
St. Hiltrude of Liessies, revered in Poitou and Hainault,
unites two Valkyr titles — Hildur and Thrudr ; for Thrudr is
generally enumerated among the Valkyr. The word once
meant, in the North, fortitude, or firmness, and is possibly
connected with truth; but in aU the Teuton languages it
signifies maiden, or virgin. Perhaps, in connexion with the
Valkyrer, Hildur might have been the patroness of courage,
and Thrudr of fortitude ; but, unfortunately, perhaps from
the spells used by the women in soothsaying before a battle,
Thrudr sank down from its high estate, and drude, or drut,

236 NAMES FROM TEUTON MYTHOLOGY.
means a witch, and in German, also, an evil spirit. Thrud-
vangr, or the abode of constancy, was one of the names of
ValhaU. Thrud, trud, tru, is, in Scandinavia and Germany,
as favourite a feminine termination as Hilda, and, no doubt,
with the same meaning, though its owners would fain trans
late it by truth ; but it cannot be brought nearer than con
stancy, or fortitude. Sometimes it stands alone. Drot, as
it has become by pronunciation, figures in the Heimshringla ;
and the Danes must have brought it to England, for in
Bishop-Middleham, in the county of Durham, we meet, in
1683, with Troth Bradshau, who is again Trouth, or Troath,
in the old spelling. Trott also several times occurs ; and we
are thus led to the conclusion that the dear old Dame Trott
of the nursery bears the respected name of the Valkyr of
fortitude. Truth is, perhaps, the same, originally coaxed by
Puritan invention.
Cyndrida, or Quendrida, as the histories call her, the wife
of Offa, is suspected by Mr. Kemble to have been mixed up
with her namesake, Thrudr, the Valkyr. She was said to
be a Frankish princess, who came floating over the waters,
having been exposed in a boat for some unknown crime. Her
beauty fascinated Offa, king of Mercia ; he married her, and
she was the only queen who caused her image to be stamped
on her coins. She treacherously murdered her son-in-law,
and was put to death by being thrown down a well. Some
part of this is history ; other parts are thought to be taken
from the legend of an elder Offa, an Anglian myth, whose wife
was almost certainly a Valkyr, who, on her marriage, lost her
supematural strength. Cyne, or Cwen, a woman, only appears
again with Cwenburh, another Saxon queen, and may have
been only an affix.
Other German masculine forms are Hildeman, or Hilman';
Hildemund, or HUmund ; HUdewart — in Friesland, Hilwert ;
Hildefrid, or HUfrid; Hildebold; Hilding; Hildrad, the

HILDA. 237
HUdert, or HiUert, of Friesland; HUram, the contraction of
Hilda's raven.
Gothic Spain coined, however, the most noted form of the
name when Hildefuns, or battle eagerness, came on the Latin
lips of her people to be Udefonso, or lUefonso, as the great
bishop of Toledo, of the seventh century, was called. Then,
shortening into Alfonso, the same came to the second gallant
king of the Asturias, husband of Pelayo's daughter, and
became the most national of all the Peninsular names, belong
ing to eleven Castillian kings and nine Aragonese ; but never
passing beyond the Peninsula as a royal name, save to the
Aragonese dynasty in Sicily and Naples. Here we nearly
had it, for one of the sons of Edward I. and the CastUlian
Eleanor was so baptized, but his early death saved our lips
from the necessity of framing themselves to its southem flow.
Nor had Spain the good taste to renew it after her princes
had become Austrian and French ; but in spite of the Em-
perador Alonso, of Alonso el Sabio, and of many another
noble name, Alphonse is chiefly an ornamental French name.
The Portuguese Affonso, though often used as its equivalent,
is Hadufuns. The feminine is the Spanish Alfonsina, and
French Alphonsine.*

EngUsh.
Alphonso
Alonzo

German.
Alfons

French.
Alphonse

Spanish.
Udefonso Alfonso
Alonso

ItaUan.
Alfonso

* Grimm; Luning; Munter; BlackweU, MaUet; Munch; Landnama-
bok ; -White, Walking Tour ; Roscoe, Int. to Boiardo ; Thierry, B^cits
des Temps Merovingiens ; "Weber and Jamieson, Northern Romance; Mi-
ehaeUs ; Pott ; Surtees ; Butler.

238 NAMES FROM TEUTON MYTHOLOGY.

Section XH. — Ve.
The third deity who, with Odin and WUi, gave life to
man, was Ve, who bestowed blood and colour.
Ve is thought to be connected with the Persian word veh,
pure, and to lie at the root of veihan, to consecrate, in
Mgeso-Gothic ; weihan, in German; whence Christmas is
Weihnacht, holy night.
Ve was the god in ancient German, vear the plural for
gods; but, moreover, ve, as a plural, was sacred regions,
and these, among the Teutons, were groves ; wih, a grove
in old German, a temple in old Saxon. Thence the northern
vid, German wald, English loood, all passing from the sense
of the consecrated forest to be merely the trees, and, in our
language, the actual timber of which they are composed.
Ve appears no more ; but Vidar (Vithar), a son of Odin,
explained by Luning to signify the inexhaustible force of
nature, is in the final conflict to set his foot on the Fenris
wolf, and rend him asunder, and with Vali, the chosen, to pass
unscathed through fire and flood, and behold the renovation
of all things. This is a fine idea, only, imfortunately, the
prose Edda plunges into the bathos of informing us, that
Vidar's invincibility is owing to his wearing a pair of shoes
made from the parings of the soles of all that have ever
been made, and to request the believing, devoutly to throw
away all such fragments to add to the collection. Is this
connected with the superstitions about old shoes ?
Ve and Vid do their part in names. Vadi, Wade, or
Wato, is a giant ancestor in the Vilkinga Saga ; and the
father of Volundr is, in the North, Vidja or Vudga; in
Germany, Wittege or Wittich, a name mentioned by Jor-
nandes as Vidigoja. The son of Volundr also bears the
same name, Vedja or Wilken, and kUls the giant Etgeir,
called in the Danish ballad, Langbeen Riser', or long-legged

VE.

^39

giant. The grave and the oven of the giant are still shown
in Zealand.
It is the Vitiges whom the Byzantine writers mention
among their Gothic foes in Italy, and the Vitiza of the
latter Visigoths in Spain, and may fairly be rendered a
dweller in a wood, though, in effect, it conveyed the sense
of consecration.
Thence, too, the Widukind, or Witukind, of Saxony, the
fierce old chieftain subdued by Charlemagne, whose name
Scott gave to old ' Witikind, the waster,' but erroneously,
for a Dane would have begun his name with Ved. Before
comparison had cleared up the history of names, Witikind
used, however, to be translated white child.
Germany has many of such grove names, the forest wolf
and raven, as Witolf and Witram ; the forest prince, as
Witrich, and his fame as Witmar ; also Witpald, Witperaht,
and Witheri, the like of which last is found in Domesday
Book before the Conquest, as Wither, in company with
Witlac, Witgar, and Wit, and Witgils is high up in the
Anglo-Saxon genealogy.
It is tempting to refer such names as these to wit and
wise, from vidjan, to know, and to think of the vedas ; but
,the wood and its spirit of consecration is the real source
of all these, as of Vebiorn, Vebrandr, Vedis, Vedornn,
Vegeir, Velaug, Vemundr, Vedny, Vedhelm, Vedhild, Vestan,
all names of the North. Verena, the gentle mother of Sin-
tram, may, perhaps, be meant for Vedrun, which would mean
sacred wisdom, or for Vedrid, sacred eagerness ; just as
Sigrid has formed Siri and Serena.
The only cases where wise or vit has produced a name, were
Vitgeir of Iceland, who received that prefix for his magic
powers, and Robert d'Hauteville, surnamed Guiscard, or wise
heart, or wizard, the Norman conqueror of Apulia, from
whose soubriquet Guiscard was afterwards used as a name in
France, whence Sir Guiscard d' Angle appears in Froissart.

240 NAMES FROM TEUTON MYTHOLOGY.
Ve, or verr, is common at the end of northern names, as
in Raadve or Randverr, and stood as vih at the end of the
old Frankish names, where it is apt to get confused with
wig, war. Vid, the forest or tree, is also a favourite Norsk
termination, apt to be taken for hvit, white.'*
Section XHI. — Gerda.
Freyr's beautiful wife, whose loveliness was refiected by
land and sea, was Gerda, a word coming from gerdhi or
gerthi, to gird round, and thus denoting the enclosed corn
field, the emblem of peace and blessing.
And, on the other hand, gerd was sometimes poetically
used for the entire girding or harness of a warrior prepared
for battle, and in both these senses, as weU as of the dedi
cation to the goddess, Gerdur was a favourite feminine in
the North ; and Gerda has still continued in use in Norway
and Iceland, besides supplying a great many terminations,
chiefly to Germany, such as Ermengard, Hildegard, &c.
Its original source is exceedingly old, and conveys the
idea of turning round, as in yupos (gyros) , curvus, kc, and
all their derivatives in the classical languages.
In the northern tongues arose gjorde (Nor.), gyrden
(A. S.), whence all the varieties of girth and gird. Thence'
came the Danish Gyrthr, which, when borne by the best
and most faithful of the sons of Earl Godwin, was rendered
into modern English as Gurth, and thus was bestowed by
Scott upon the honest thrall of Cedric of Rotherwood. This
name, then, properly means the warrior girt for battle.
Again this word for an encircling, gyrdel, gyrdeland, or
girdling, formed gyrland, garland, originally a circlet or
crown, and has its analogies in the French guirlande, Span
ish guirnalda, and Italian ghirlanda ; and it is curious to
* BlackweU ; Grimm ; Munch ; Domesday Book; Landnama; Le Bean;
Mariane; 'Weher and Jamieson, Northem Bomanee.

(EGIR. 241
find our own English surname of Garland responded to by
the Italian Ghirlandajo. Thence, too, garter, jarreiiere,
while the French call the gartered part of the leg jarret.
The enclosed piece of ground was in Latin hortus, among
the Scandinavians and Anglo-Saxons gaard, or gyrd, whence
yard and garden were the double offspring, the latter being
likewise repeated in Holland, Germany, France, and even
Italy. Gaard is a farmstead in modern Norsk, but anciently
it had a far wider significance, and served for a dwelling-
place, and even for an entire country. Asgaard, the abode
of the Aasir, Midgard, the middle region, and, indeed, every
place visited by the Vikingr was caUed by them the gaard
of its inhabitants. In this sense, gard is part of a man's
name in the North; e.g., Gardar, who was the Swede who
first sailed round Iceland, came from Gardhar, house-warrior,
or perhaps patriot ; Gardmund and Gardbrand, sword of his
country, are also found ; but, in general, this is a termina
tion, as with Finngard, Thorgard, Valgard.
• Other names of men ending with gerd are generally cor
ruptions of words from geir.*
Section XIV. — (Egir,
When the Aasir took up their abode in Asgard, they there
found the Jotun, or giants, of whom the chief was Fornioti,
a word meaning the aged. He had three sons, Hler, Logi,
and Kari, ruling sea, flame, and wind. After a long contest
they seem to have been promoted to the privileges of Aasir,
and remained allies, if not friends, till the treason of Logi or
Loki brought about the death of Baldur, after which the
destroyer Loki and his chUdren, the Fenris wolf (the wolf of
the fen or abyss), Hel, or death, and the Midgard serpent,
were bound till the last outbreak shall take place.
? Luning; Munch; Giimm; Tooke; LiddeU and Scott ; Landnama-bok.
VOL. II. ^

242 NAMES FROM TEUTON MYTHOLOGY.
Jotunheim, the abode of these Jotun or giants, of whom
the Red Etin of Ireland was the last survivor, has by some
been turned into Jutland; without the least probabihty,
though it is possible that there may be in this myth some
aUusion to the conflict between the first settlers and their
predecessors, and likewise to the heathen perception of the
strife between good and evil.
Kari and Hler appear to have retained their privileges as
gods or demi-gods of wind and wave. Kari is called Fasolt
in Germany, but his name of Kaari or Kari has continued in
use in Norway and Iceland, and belonged to the generous
avenger of Burnt Njal and his sons.
Hler is evidently the Keltic Lyr, but on his promotion to
rank with the Aasir, he took the northern name of Agir,
Ygg, or QEgir. He was on very friendly terms with the Aasir,
gave them banquets, visited them at Asgard, and heard
Bragi tell stories of their deeds ; but his usual occupation
was to raise his hoary head above the water when he meant
evil to vessels; and when he raised storms, his wife Ran
(from roeina, to spoil,) sat fishing for sailors, whose spirits
she imprisoned like a water Hela, so that drowned men were
said to be gone to Ran, before Davy Jones superseded her in
nautical language. His daughter, Unna, was the wave rising
as in human shape. All these images evidently suggested by
the wild, heaped, confused, masses of waves in the North Sea,
which, instead of forming the even sweep of ridge and furrow
of the Atlantic, are in tumbling masses, suggesting the hu
man form. Unna is said to come from the same root as
wnM, the Latin wave; but the word also means love, and
thence a woman, and there is a curious simiUtude in it to
Aine, the granddaughter of Lyr, in Irish legend. Li Germany,
(Egir was Ecke, but was reduced to fresh water and rivers.
In the eighth and ninth centuries the Oder, or Eider, was,
however, called (Egisdora, or Egidora, the door to (Egir;
and to the present day, Ware (Egir, at the mouth of the Se-

(EGIR. 243
vera, Gare Aigre, at that of the Seine, are memories of how
(Egir was once thought to come riding in, on the tidal wave,
to submerge the boats in the river-mouth. And no doubt
the Ogre of fairy tales, the Oreo of the Italians, are varieties
of the terrible (Egir.
The root of his name is, in fact, og or uok, the same as our
awe. Thence Yggr is a title of Odin, and the great world
tree was called YggdrasU, from ygg, and drosall, a horse or
bearer, because of Odin's having hung upon it. Thence come
many words, such as the Frank ega, cunning; the Saxon ege,
fear ; also the verb eggan, to incite, still common in the North;
while we have to egg on.
It has been extremely fertile in names, in many different
forms, the simplest being the Frank Ega, a maire du palais.
Our own two kings, Ecgfrith and Ecgberht, are probably thus
derived, though some explain their first syllable by edge ; but
they are far more probably the same with the awe of the
North. Egbert continues in Friesland as Ebbert.
Aug is the oldest form in the North, as in Augmund,
which, however, was soon turned into 0gmund, Agmund, and
Amund, a shape in which it is common in the North, while
in the Low Countries it gave the title of Egmont to the vic
tim of Alva. 0gwald has run something the same course in
the North, and become Avald ; (Egunn and (Egulv are also
there; and in Germany Egiheri once existed, and gave us the
sumames of Agar and Eggar ; Eggerich makes the Frisian
Eggert, Iggerick, and Eggo.
The most famous German hero connected with the name is
der treue Echhardt, who, in Eisleben, appears as an old man
with a white staff on the evening of Maundy Thursday, and
drives every one into their houses, lest they should be harmed
by a terrible procession of dead men, headless bodies, and
two legged horses, that immediately after passes by. In
other legends faithful Eckhardt, well named awful firmness,
warns travellers from the tempting mountain of fatal delights,

244 NAMES FROM TEUTON MYTHOLOGY.
the Venusberg, once belonging to Hela herself, that mountain
where Ritter Tannhauser sinned so deeply that the Pope
deemed him past absolution, till the dry staff blossomed only
too late, as a token that he might yet be pardoned. In the
beautiful story founded by Tieck on the legend, Eckhardt is
the good servant who perishes to save his master's children
from the seducing fiends of the mountain. Eckhard is chiefly
Frisian in the present day, and there it forms into Eggo,
Ike, and Edzard.
It is identically the same name as Eginhard, the true
contemporary chronicler of Charlemagne, the hero of the
story with which tradition has invested Emma, the daughter
of Charlemagne, who was said to have carried him on her
back over the snow, that his footsteps might not betray his
stolen tryste with her. The n being used in declining the
leading noun, is retained in the pronunciation of the name.
Friesland, however, Separates the two, and shortens Eginhard
into Eino, Aynnert, Aynt.
Thus again is formed the original northern Aginhar, awful
warrior, who fell down into Agnar and Ague. Einar, of
which there were twenty-two in the Landnama-boh, looks
very much like another contraction of Aginhar ; but analogy
is against it; and Professor Munch decides that the first
syllable, both of Einar and Eindride, a rather popular old
Norsk feminine, is ein, one, in the sense of chief or superior ;
so that Einar would be chief warrior, Eindride, Endride, or
Indride, as it is also used, superior rider.
The dative form of Ag is Agli, whence EgUs, or EigUs,
has come to be a favou^-ite northern name, and in this shape
it is a very frequent prefix. Egilona was the unfortunate
wife of Rodrigo, the last of the Goths, and afterwards of
the Moorish prince, his conqueror, whom she forced to do
homage to the Cross, by having the door of her room oppo
site to it made so low that he could not enter without stoop
ing. Agile was a Frank nobleman, and in Domesday we

ING — SEAXNOT. 245
fall upon an undoubted Agilward and Egelmar, and on what
are probably their contractions, Aylward and Aylmer, after
wards Aymar; but both these are contractions of other
names, and cannot always be referred to the awful god of
the sea. Agilard, Agilulf, and Agilbert were Frank forms,
the last Eilbert in German ; Egilhart is Eilert, or Eilo, in
German; Eilert, Ayelt, or Ayldo, in Frisian. And the
Spanish Gothic Egica is another of the progeny of the old
sea giant. Oht is a word also meaning terror.*

Section XV. — Lng — Seaxnot.
• Leaving the comparatively clear and consistent regions of
Scandinavian mythology, we pass to the divinities and fore
fathers of whom we know far less, those of our own Anglian
ancestors ; some accepted by them in common with the High
Germans, others exclusively their own, and some apparently
known to the North, though not admitted into the system of
the Edda.
The northem cosmogony tells us of the first man, Buri,
whom the cow Audumbla licked out of the stone, and whose
grandson Odin was. It also tells us of the primeval man
and woman. Ask and Embla, whom Odin, Viii, and Ve,
animated. On the other hand, Tacitus, 'writing of the ancient Ger
mans, makes them start from an earth-born god, Tuisco,
whose son was Mannus ; and again, Mannus's three sons were
Ingus, Iscus, and Hermius, from whom descended the Ingae-
vones, Iscaevones, and Hermiones.
Tuisco is Tin, or, more properly, the divine word in an
other form. He represents the original stock of Teutonism,
and also the human sense of a divine origin, for Mannus,
* Grimm; Munch; BlackweU; Luning; MichaeUs.

246 NAMES FROM TEUTON MYTHOLOGY.
¦wno, of course, is man, a word of all languages — Itermon,
in this Anglo-Saxon genealogy, is supposed to be this same
man, with the epithet iter, famous. Some think it possible
that all the three words Ing, Isk, Er, may only be gram
matical terminations of the same, but this is scarcely possi
ble; they are far more likely to be representative name-
fathers of the nearly related tribes.
Of Esc, the ash tree, there is little to say. He seems to
be related to the northern idea of Ask, the man of wood,
and his supposed descendants were the Franks and AUe
manni ; but the only instance of his name occurring again
is as the soubriquet of the son of Hengist, from whom the
kings of Kent were called Escings.
Ing is far more interesting, but infinitely more inexph
cable. At the end of a man's name it means his son ; at the
end of that of a place, an inhabitant ; when in the name of
a place, a meadow. It is tempting to suppose it related to
young, but they are absolutely apart, and it probably con
veys the sense of the clearness and brightness of the
(fivinity. Ing, or Yngve, was looked on as the ancestor of the
Swedish kings, who thence were called the Ynglinga; and
the history which rationalizes Odin is thence termed the
Ynglinga Saga, as it makes Yngve his son, and deduces the
line from him. Ing, the son of Tuisco, is, however, a far
more universal forefather, being almost without a doubt the
name-father of that great race that we have called Angeln,
Anglo-Saxons, and English.
Seaxnot is a son of Woden in the Saxon genealogies, and
is very possibly the same as Ing. We have been taught to
imagine that our country was invaded by three separate races
of Jutes, Saxons, and Angles ; but there is no reliable evi
dence to show that there was any real difference between the
races ; their language is precisely the same, and there is
evidence to lead to the conclusion that Angeln was the title

ING — SEAXNOT. 247
by which they knew themselves, while their neighbours called
them Saxons, just as at the present moment we are Sasse
nach to the Gael, Saxon to the Welshman, Saozon to a
Breton. When our island was won by them, it was called
both Anglia and Saxonia Transmarina. This island, from
the Forth to the Channel, and on the continent, the basin of
the Weser, are filled with the race of Ing and Seaxnot ; the
English of our isle, the Angeln of Holstein, and their lands,
have on the one side of the water received the term of Sachs,
on the other the counties end with sex. The Saracens of the
romances of Charlemagne were no other than heathen Saxons
accommodated to crusading tastes ; and our old title of Saxon
still marks at Rome the Strada Sassonica, where King Offa
built the pilgrim hospice, which the Popes used as a plea for
extracting Peter pence.
Sismondi has devised the notable hypothesis that the
Saxons were called so because they sassen, sat, while the
Schwaben sailed ; but it was far less unlikely that they were
caUed from their knives, the seaxes, with which Hengist's
men were said to have done execution upon the Britons at
Stonehenge. This is according to the theory that names
the Franks from their axes, as the Germans from their
spears. But on the other hand, the seax was at first saihs,
a stone ; it was a stone knife, hammer, or plough coulter,
and saihs was thus applied in England long after the iron
age had begun. Sahsnot, the ancestor, means stone com
rade ; and though, perhaps, named from his supposed de
scendants with the stone knives, may also be' so called be
cause of the stony origin of the whole race. In Lorraine
there have been found inscriptions to a Hercules Saxoni-
cus, to account for which, a legend was produced, that
Hercules, when driving home the oxen of Geryon, was
attacked by the Ligurians, and distressed for want of wea
pons, which Jupiter supplied to him by a shower of stones,
the remains of which continue only too plentiful in the

248 NAMES FROM TEUTON MYTHOLOGY.
plains of southem France. This story must have risen from
some old attempt to reconcile the ancestral Saxnot with the
Greek Hercules.
Seaxnot has not numerous namesakes. In tbe East Saxon
pedigree, we find Seaxbeohrt and Seaxbald, and in the East
Anglian Seaxburh or Sexburga ; and in Scandinavia Sakse
remained as a name ; and the historian of the twelfth century,
who enlightened us so much on Danish history, is latinized
as Saxo Grammaticus.
Ing was a great deal more popular, though not among the
Angles, either insular or continental. The only trace of hun
in Germany is in the old name of Hinkmar or Hinko ; and
our Anglo-Saxon kings enumerated Ingvi, Ingebrand, and
Ingegeat as connecting links between themselves and Wuo
tan. The Goths, Burgundians, and Vandals also claimed
descent from Ingvja, and their princes were called Ing-
vineones. Ingve, or Ingvar, was a royal name in Scandinavia, and
so travelled with the sons of Rurik to Russia ; where Igor,
as he was there called, led an army to strike terror into
Constantinople, and the name has since become confused
with Egor, or George. Ingulf was the secretary of William
the Conqueror, and we would fain believe in the history
of Croyland that goes by his name. Ingebjbrg found her
way into an old Saga as a demi-goddess directing wind
and rain ; but her historical interest is connected with the
unfortimate Danish princess, whom Philippe Auguste mar
ried only to repudiate, and whom French historians translate
into Ingeberge, English ones into Ingoberga. Hers is the
most common female name in Norway.
The North has likewise Ingegerdur, Ingeleif, Ingemundr,
Ingeridur, Ingiallur, Ingvilldur, Ingjard, and Ingrim. Ing-
vethild has become Engelke, or Engel, and is, in fact, now
merged in the idea of the Greek angel. The same fate has
befallen other names in Germany and France, where that

ING — SEAXNOT. 249
best of all puns, as far as results were concemed, that of
St. Gregory between Angeli and Angli, has been constantly
repeated in nomenclature. The Eng, Ing, or Engel, already
by a forgotten tradition from Ing, was well pleased to be
dedicated to an angel; Ingram, once Ing's raven, became
Engelram, and thought he was of angelic purity, in name
if not in nature; and either he or Engelhard passed into
France as Enguerraud, the chief Christian name of the brave
house whose proud saying was —
' Je suis ni roi, ni comte aussi,
Je suis le Sire de Coucy ;'
and the English called it Ingeltram, when Isabel, the
daughter of Edward IIL, made her love match with the
brave Lord de Coucy, whose loyalty was so sorely perplexed
by his connection with her family.
Engelfrid, Engelschalk, Engelberga, and Engelbert, are
probably originally German angels in connection with peace,
discipleship, protection, and splendour ; and Professor Munch
thinks the northern Ingobert an instinctive attempt to na
tionalize the last. On the other hand, he leaves to Ing,
Angilbald, AngUtrud, Angelrich ; as, in fact, may be always
done with every name of the kind that can be traced to an
owner prior to the time when angels were popular ideas
among our northern ancestors.
Ingvar was a terrible name to our Saxon ancestors, when
the Danish viking, so called, carried terror to our coasts ;
but Ivar is not the short for it, but is from yr ; German,
eihe ; Dutch, ihe ; English, yew ; and har, a warrior, so that
Ivar is the Yew warrior, the bow bearer, or archer. He is
Iver in Danish, and in Scotland and Ireland Mac Ivor has
been adopted as a rendering of one of the old hereditary
Keltic names. Ivbald and Ivbert have also been used and
cut down to Ibald and Ibert. Ireland had a St. Ivor, or

250 NAMES FROM TEUTON MYTHOLOGY.
Ivory, who was considered to have prayed away from Feme-
genall the mures maiores qui vulgariter Rati vocantur so com
pletely that none ever survived there again ; but whether he
was named by Dane or Kelt does not appear. At any rate,
St. Ivory was deemed good to invoke against rats. Was it
he who berhymed Rosalind before she could remember ?
It is probable that Ivhar is the real .origin of Ives, the
saint who named the to'wn in Huntingdonshire ; but legend
strangely makes him a Persian bishop, who chose that lo
cality for a hermitage, in the seventh century, and whose
body was discovered uncorrupt in the year looi, thus pro
viding a patron for many an Ivar of Danish or Norman
extraction, who became Yvon, or Ivone, in France ; and Ivo
in the chroniclers. Ivo de Taillebois is the vUlain of the
story of Hereward and his camp of refuge; and the name
is common with the Normans and Bretons, aU the more for
the sake of St. Ivo de Chartres, who was imprisoned for his
resistance to the adultery of Philip I. and Bertrade of
Anjou, and St. Ives of Brittany, the good lawyer, caUed the
-advocate of the poor. These Breton Ivons may, however, be
from Sir Ywain, or Owen, the same as Eoghan.*

Section XVI. — Eormen,
The third son of Mannus was said to be Er, a word, per
haps, connected with Tyr on one side, and Ares on the other;
for Ertag is the Tuesday of southem Germany, and Eres-
burg, now Mersburg, was the centre of the worship of the
continental Saxons. The day was, however, also called, in
Bavaria and Austria, Ermintag, or Irminstag ; and the deity
worshipped at Eresburg was Irman, or Ermin ; and it is not
quite plain whether the word should be considered as
Er-man in conjunction. From him the Herminiones of
» Grimm; Munch; Luning; Kemble; O'Donovan; Butler.

EORMEN. 251
tCacitus are said to be descended, being chiefly the old Ger
mans and the Franks.
At Eresburg, even up to the eighth century, there stood a
great central temple, containing a marble column on which
stood an armed warrior, holding, in one hand, a banner
bearing a rose, in the other a balance. The crest on the
helmet was a cock, on the breast-plate was a bear, on the
shield that hung from the shoulders was a lion in a field of
flowers. Around lived a college of priests, who exercised
judgment and made biennial offerings. Before going out to
war, the host, in full armour, galloped round the figure,
brandishing their spears and praying for victory. Lesser
images were carried with the army, and, on its return,
captives and cowards were slain, as offerings to the great
idol. This temple was destroyed by Charlemagne, who buried
the idol where afterwards stood the abbey of Corbye. In his
son's reign it was dug up, and carried off by the French as a
trophy, when the Saxons rose to rescue it and a battle took
place, after which it was thrown into the river Innen, but
was fished out, exorcised, purified, and made to serve as a
candelabrum in the church of Hillesheim. A rhyme current
in Hesse seems a reminiscence of this struggle for the idol :
' Herman sla dermen,
Sla piper, sla triimmen,
De kaisar 'will kummen,
Met hammer und stangen,
Will Herman uphangen.'
The battle was called Armansula, and the image Irmansul ;
whence many have fancied that Irmansul was the chief Ger
man god, and the opera of Norma has bestowed him upon the
Druids. Irmin is invoked by Hiltibrand in the poem of
Hiltibrand and Hadubrand,
Sui, or saul, is, however, a pillar ; and it is a very curious
fact that two sacred columns were the penates of every Teu-

252 NAMES FROM TEUTON MYTHOLOGY.
ton's hearth and city. When a migration was decided on by
the Scandinavians, a solemn feast was held, the master of
the house seated between his two sulur, or columns, which he
uprooted and carried with him, and, on his approach to his
intended home, threw them overboard, and followed them
with his ship, landing wherever they were cast up. It was
thus that the situation of Reijkjavik, in Iceland, was deter
mined. Such columns, down to a very late period, stood at
the gates of the elder towns in Germany, called Ermensaulen,
or, sometimes, one the Rolandsaul, the other the Ermensaul.
Eormon, in the Anglian of Beowulf, means universal;
eormoncyn, the whole of mankind; in old Norse, jormiin is
the world, and Jormungandr is another name of the Midgard
snake which encircles the world. Most likely, the Irmansul
thus signified the universal column, the pillar adored by all
men ; just as the Anglo-Saxons called the great Roman road
Eormenstreot, or Ermingstreet, the public road. Er, then,
would be the divinity, man the human word, and Erman
would thus express something revered by all ; and thence,
the name of the tribes of the Hermiones and Hermunduri,
both meaning all the people. Later, the vori jormiin, oveor-
man, came to mean only very large ; and, probably, the
Saxons of Thuringia had forgotten the original signification
of their columns when they gave the single one of Irmansul
such an exclusive prominence. Some have tried to explain
one pillar as Heermansaul, pillar of the army man, and the
other as Raginholdsaul, pillar of firm judgment, as em
blems of military and civil po'^\'er ; but though this meaning
may have later been bestowed on them, the signification of
Eormon is decidedly adverse to this explanation, and it is
safest to translate it, when it occurs in names, as public, or
general. It probably named the great Herminian gens at Rome,
though its origin had there been forgotten; nor is it impossi
ble that Hermes may likewise be related to it : but this is dan-

EORMEN.

^53

gerous ground ; nor are we even quite safe when emerging on
the Teutonic ground, where the Cheruschi, themselves Her
miniones, broke the heart of Augustus by cutting off the
legions of Quinctilius Varus. Their leader was Arminius,
a name probably Irman as he bore it, but which, by after
generations, was mixed up with Herman, or warrior man, so
that the hosts of Hermans, named when national feeling was
roused by French invasion, are in his honour; just as, pre
viously, the Dutch Jacob Hermannsen had rendered himself
into Latin as Arminius, the term he left for the doctrine
that was long rampant in Holland. From Holland the
Norfolk name of Armyn must have been imported.

EngUsh.
Armyn Armine

French.
Armand

Spanish.
Armando

ItaUan.
Arminio Armanno

German.
Hermann

Swedish.
Hermann

Dutch.
Hermanns
Herman Manus

Swiss.
HermaHermeli

Slovak.
Jerman

Lettish.
Ermannis

Esth.
Herm

Lithuanian.
ErmasErmonas

The Germans use, as the feminine, Hermine and Herminie,
which properly belong to the Latin Herminius ; and the
French have made their o'wn form of Armand into Armantine.
A Burgundian hermit, Ermin, too, gave St. Ermo to Italy, a
name now inextricably mixed with Elmo, and the contraction
of Erasmus ; it is the St. Erme of France.
Very early, so as to be almost mythical, was the Thurin
gian Irmanfrit, or Iruvrit, who hardly conduced to ' public
peace ' by calling in the Saxons ; but Hermanfred continued in
use in Germany, and was kno'wn to the French as Hermanfroi.

254 NAMES FROM TEUTON MYTHOLOGY.
The Burgundian version of the great world-girding snake
was Ermelind, a name that came to a saintly virgin of the
sixth century, from whom Ermelinda flourished as an Italian
name, being probably common to both Lombards and Bur
gundians, as both Vandals.
But these Irmins are most frequent in ancient Spain.
The Suevi had Hermanrik, or Hermanarico, public ruler,
and the Goths, Hermanegar and Hermanegildo ; the last
being the prince who is revered as having been converted
from Arianism by his orthodox Frank wife, and whose death,
by his father's persecution, sealed the triumph of Catholicism
in Spain. Hermenburga was a princess, offered to, but re
fused by, a Frank king ; and Ermesinda, or, as Southey's
poem calls her, Hermesind, the daughter of Pelayo, carried
the blue blood of the Balten to the line of Alfonso. Her
name meant public dignity.
Parallel to these the Anglo-Saxons enumerate Eormenric,
Eormenburh, Eormenburg, Eormengyth, Eormengild; and
after the Conquest there still continue the forms of Erem-
burga, Ermentrude, and Ermengarde; the last by far the
most frequent, and not yet disused in Germany.

Section XVII. — Erce.
The Anglo-Saxons were accustomed to perform an incan
tation to restore the fruitfulness of their fields. It began by
the cry Erce, Erce, Erce, Eordhan Moder, as if it were not
earth itself, but her mother that was called upon.
The same word erce is used for, like its produce, ark, chest,
or ship, in the Anglo-Saxon New Testament. It may thus
point to the primeval recollection of the Ark as the origin
of all. And Erce does not seem to have been entirely for
gotten ; for Erche, or Herkja, is a famous lady in old Ger
man hero songs.

ERCE.

^55

From thence, too, may have sprung the Old German ad
jective erchan, meaning holy, genuine, or simple, which is
thought to have named the famous Hercynian forest of an
cient Germany, which would thus be the sacred wood.
It is remarkable that the founder of the East Saxon king
dom in England is called both Escwine and Ercenwine, the
darUng of Ese, or of Erce, as if there were some connection
in the Saxon mind between the sacred Ash, or Ask, the fa
ther of all, and the Ark, whence aU living things issued, and
likewise ' the wood whence salvation cometh.' In the Kentish
genealogy we find Eorconberht, sacred brightness, answering
to the liombardo-ltalic Erchimperto; and also Eorcongot,
sacred divinity.
St. Eorconwald, holy power, was a bishop of London,
about 678, and may almost be reckoned as the second
founder of St. Paul's, where his shrine was greatly revered ;
and about the same time Erkenoald was a maire du palais
in France; and Erchenold, or Herchenhold, was an old
German name, meaning probably firm in truth.
In old knightly times, we find the German Erchanbald,
meaning a sacred prince, from which the French took many
a Sire Archambault, and the Italians Arcibaldo.
The Scots, by some strange fancy, adopted Archibald as
the Lowland equivalent of GUliespiug, or Gillespie, the
bishop's servant. So frequent was it in the houses of Camp-
beU and Douglas, that, with its contractions of Archie and
Baldie, it has become one of the most commonly used in
Scotland, recalling many a fierce worthy from old Archibald
BeU-the-Cat downwards, and always translating the Gil
lespiug of the CampbeUs to Lowland ears.*
* Grimm, &c.

256 NAMES FROM TEUTON MYTHOLOGY.

Section XVHI. — Amal.
Amal is a very remarkable word. We have had it in
Greek, as At/xvXos ; in Latin, as .^milius ; in the Kymric,
Amaethon; in the Erse, Amalgaidh; and in all it would
seem as if one notion could be detected — that of work.
Even in Hebrew Amal means to work ; ami is work in old
Norse ; and we have still our verb to moil, taken therefrom.
Mahl, be it remembered, is in German a time; mahl, a
stroke ; mahlen, to paint or make strokes ; and so in the
North, maal is a measure or an end, a goal. Probably there
is a notion of repetition of marks, stroke upon stroke, in aU
cases, and the Sanscrit meaning of Amal, or spotless, with
out mark, is in favour of the meaning. Could the floating
ancestral Amal have been a dim idea of a spotless ancestor
left in the East ?
It is safest, however, to translate Amal by work, the
thought most familiar to the sturdy northern nations who
used it, and loved work for its own sake. It is very curious
to find that in the name of Gaut, or Gapt, the form of
divinity that has come to be regarded as the exclusive an
cestor of the Goths, the word originally meaning pervading,
has come to mean pouring or measuring, so that Gaut was
regarded as the patron of pouring and measuring. Amal,
his son or grandson, then, is the working or measuring ; and
by Jomandes is called Halmal, the ancestor of the Ame-
lungen, or royal tribe of the Ostrogoths : indeed, the Ostro-
gothic kingdom was called in the North Omlungar.
I do not find any traces of worship being paid to Amal;
but he is one of the Anses of Jomandes, and can only be
reckoned as a semi-divine mythic forefather.
In the VUkina Saga, the mighty smith Velint's first great
trial of skill was with AmUias, an armourer at the court of
King Nielung. Velint struck him with his sword Mimung ;

AMAL. 257
he said he felt as if a drop of water had flowed down him.
' Shake yourself,' said Velint, and the unfortunate smith fell
down cloven painlessly from head to heel, an example of
labour versus skill.
Aumlung the strong, is mentioned in the Booh of Heroes
as feasting at the Nibelung court ; and it was at Duke Ame-
lung's court that, according to -the Danish ballad, old Sir
Hildibrand had been staying for twenty-two years, before
going back to Bern, he met his unknown son Alebrand.
Amala was rather a favourite Lombardic commencement,
and was not ill chosen by Fouque as the heroine of his
curious story of Wild Love. Amala was likewise much in
favour with German ladies ; it became first Amalie, and then,
when Italy and France had taken up the Latin .Emilia, this
old Teuton was mixed up with it ; and Amelia in England,
Amelie in France, are scarcely considered to differ from it ;
and though historically Emily is the descendant of the JEmUii,
Amelia of the .Ajnaler, yet both alike may come from some
Amal of old.
Amalaswinth, which would bear the translation, dignity of
labour, though probably it was only given in the sense of
dignity of the Amaler, was the unfortunate Lombardic
queen, whom the Romans could not protect from the
treachery of her favourites. Amalasontha is what his
torians call her; but on Burgundian lips it came to be
Melisenda, Melicerte, Melusuie.
Melisenda is in Spanish ballad lore the wife of Don Gay-
feros, and, being taken captive by the Moors, was the occa
sion of the feats that were represented by the puppet show
in which Don Quixote took an unfortunately lively interest.
Melisende again was the princess who carried the uneasy
crown of Jerusalem to the House of Anjou ; and, perhaps,
from the Proven9al connections of the English court. Lady
Melisent Stafford bore the name in the time of Henry H.,
whence MeUcent has become known in England, and never
VOL. II. S

258 NAMES FROM TEUTON MYTHOLOGY.
quite disused, though often confounded with Melissa, a bee,
and sometimes spelt Millicent.
Melusine was a nymph who became the wife of the Lord
de Leezignan, or Lusignan, on condition that he should never
intrude upon her on a Saturday ; of course, after a long time,
his curiosity was excited, and stealing a glance at his lady in
her solitude, he beheld her a serpent from the waist dovra-
ward ! With a terrible shriek, she was lost to him for ever ;
but she left three sons, all bearing some deformity, of whom
Geoffroi au grand dent was the most remarkable. Prose
makes this gentleman the son of Eustachie Chabot, heiress of
Vouvant ; but the Melusine tradition lingers round his castle
of Lusignan, near Poictiers ; and, to this day, at the fairs of
that city, gingerbread cakes are sold, with human head and
serpent tail, and called melusines. A cri de Merlusine is,
likewise, a proverbial expression for a sudden scream, recalling
that with which the unfortunate fairy discovered the indis
cretion of her lord.
The story is a frequent one : it occurs in Brittany, where
the spell was broken by the husband speaking the word death
before his fairy wife, and in Wales, where the lady is called
a pellen. Melusina continued in use in the south of France, HoUand,
and Germany, and is occasionally used in England. We
find Melicerte in old French chronicles.
The very ancient queens of Navarre and the Asturias have
a wonderful set of aliases, and one, the oddest, is ' Amelina,
or Simena, or Ximena,' the sister of Sancho I., of Navarre,
who married Alfonso the Great. Could the Spaniards, by
any possibility, have contracted the soft Amal into the harsh
guttural Xi, which sounds as if it came from a Moorish
throat. Yet, Goths as they were, they show no Amal,
though their Ximen and Ximena reach up to 700, and
Ximena survived long as a name among their ladies, and

AMAL.

259

was the wife of the Cid, whence the French turned her into
Chimene. Emmeline, as it is now generally spelt, came
from France as Emeline, and is frequent in old ballad poetry,
and in northern registers as Emlyn. It is probably another
form of this same Amaline, or lind, Amal's serpent.
The northern races have the one much reduced name of Mal-
frid, from Amalafrida, fair-work, or Amal's fair one ; and
Malfrid is the heroine of a wonderful story : having been left
for security in an underground abode during the absence of
her father, an old viking, but, as he was lost at sea, her burial
was forgotten ; she exhausted her provisions ; saw her maiden
die of hunger ; and, at last, was saved by dextrously laying
hold of the tail of a wolf which had penetrated to her retreat,
and she thus forced it to di-ag her to the Ught, fortunately,
just in time to prevent her lover from marrying another !
The ladies have certainly been the chief owners of Amal,
as a commencement ; but it has had a brilliant part to play
in the form of Amalrich, Almerich, or Emmerich, on the
German side ; Almerigo in Spain ; Amabic, or Amaury, in
France ; Almerick in England. Amaury was an Angevin
king of Jerusalem ; and our own Sir Almerick St. Lawrence
was brother-in-arms to Sir John de Courcy, and founded the
House of Howth in Ireland. The House of Lusignan,
Melusina's descendants, caUed it Aymar ; and in this form it
came to England with Henry IH.'s half-brother, whom he
promoted to the see of Winchester, but who episcopally called
himself Ethelmarus ; though his nephew, Aymar de Valence
kept his proper name. Emmery is a surviving English sur
name, and Merica occurs in old Yorkshire genealogies.
But it is the ItaUan form, Amerigo, which was destined
to the most noted use, — when the adventurer, Amerigo Ves
pucci, gave his name to the tract of land that Columbus saw
for the first time in his company ; little knowing that it was
no island, but a mighty continent, which should hold fast
S2

26 O NAMES FROM TEUTON MYTHOLOGY.
that almost fortuitous title, whence thousands of miles, and
millions of men, bear the appellation of the forgotten fore
father of a tribe of the Goths — Amalrich, the work ruler ; a
curiously appropriate title for the new world of labour and
of progress, on the other side the Atlantic.
Amalberge is an old Cambrai name; Malburg a Danish
one ; Amalgund, Amalbert, Amalbertine, and Amalhild,
have also been known. The French Amelot must be the
contraction of one of the masculine forms.*

Section XIX. — Forefathers.
The deification of forefathers, or the claim to divine origin,
whichever it might be, led to the employment, as a prefix, of
the very word that expressed them — that word which we use
still at the beginning of ancestors, and that the Germans caU
ahnen. In old German the singular was ano, and it signified
a remote forefather. The Rigsmaal, an old Icelandic poem
which explains the origin of the various castes which the
northern races acknowledged, represents HeimdaU, the por
ter of heaven, as wandering to the earth, and being enter
tained by Ai and Edda, or great-grandfather and great-grand
mother, who lived in a lowly hut ; then by Avi and Amma
(Lat. Avus) , or grandfather and grandmother, who had a com
fortable dwelling house ; and lastly by Fadher and Modher,
whose abode was a splendid mansion. The son of Edda was
Thrall ; the son of Amma was Karl ; the son of Modher was
Jarl; and from these descended the three castes of the
North — the thralls, or slaves, the churls; bondr, or farmers;
and the jarls, or nobles.
This is an absolute mythic allegory by way of explanation
of existing circumstances ; but the names therewith connected
* Grimm; MichaeUs; Kemble; Int. to Beowulf ; 'Weber; Dugdale.

FOREFATHERS. 26 1
mostly survived, though they refer to these mere embodi
ments of abstract ideas.
Ai, or ani, enters into the composition of the Icelandic
Anar, ancestral warrior, and thus, no doubt, contributed to
form our sumame of Anson, which, like almost all our great
naval names, thus traces back to some ancient viking, who
has done us at least as much good as evil, by leaving us his
sons to keep all other invaders from our shores.
The old Saxon histories call some of these enemies by the
name of Anlaff, in particular the chief who visited King
.Sjthelstan's tent in a minstrel's disguise, and betrayed him
self by burying the guerdon that he was too proud to keep.
The same persons whom England called Anlaff, and Ireland
Amlaidh, were, in the North, Alafr, or Olafr, according to the
custom of pronouncing the diphthong a like an 0, and then so
spelling it, e.g., Aasbiorn, Osbiorn. The latter syllable is
laf or leif, from the verb lev, the Anglo-Saxon leaf an, our
own leave. It is a word that never is used as a commence
ment, and but rarely stands alone, though the North some
times has a Leifr, and it is used in the sense of what is
remaining. Anlaff, or Olaf, is thus what is left of his fore
fathers, his ancestor's relic, and a very notable relic was the
gallant king Olaf Trygveson, the prime hero of the Heims
hringla, whose last battle is so nobly described there.
Scarcely less noble is his relative, Olaf the saint, the ally
of England, who fought her battles near London-bridge, and
has left his name to the church of St. Olave, near the site of
the battle, though, unluckily, English tongues made him St.
Toly. St. Olaf was over harsh in his endeavours to introduce
Christianity to his subjects, and perished in a war with the
rebels, assisted by Knut of Denmark and England ; but his
name continued glorious, and another royal St. Olaf, in
Sweden, assisted to make it one of the most national of
Scandinavian names, even to the present day.
Its Latinism is Olaus, and its contraction Ole, or, rather,

262 NAMES FROM T EUTON MYTHOLOGY.
this answers to the very old Aale, which, in its tum, answers
to the Analo, Anilo, Anelo, of the old Germans.
Leif, or laf, we shall often meet as a termination, both in
the North and in Germany, where it generally becomes leib
or lip, and then the modern Germans take it for love, and
thus have changed the old Gottleip into Gottleib. In the
North it has scarcely fared better, especially in the case of
Thorleif, or Thor's relic, who changed from ThoUeiv to Thod-
deiv, or Tadeiv, on the one hand, and on the other, to Tellev,
which, thanks to some classically disposed clergyman, has been
written Teleph, and referred to the Greek Telephus.
Of the other names connected with the Rigsmaal, we find
Edda, the great-grandmother, giving title to the ancient
poem on cosmogony and mythology that may be regarded as
the parent of all the northem songs. Thrall was likewise,
in spite of its meaning, used as a name.
The next generation, Avi, Amma, and the son Karl, are
the prominent ones. The equivalent of Karl, Bondr, a
farmer, is now and then a northern name ; but it is the great
Frank line whose names so curiously answer to these.
Were they of the middle class of landholders, and were
they proud of it, and anxious to trace their connection back
to the grandfather, grandmother, and churl ? Whether there
were a Frank version of the Rigsmaal we do not know, as
Louis le Debonnaire destroyed all the old poetry collected by
his father ; but the leading name of the family was Karl, the
churl (of which more in its relation to the cycle of Romance),
and it is found in constant company with Amma, or Emma,
and alternates with one that almost certainly represented
Avi, or grandfather.
Charles, Pepin I'Heristal, Charles Martel, Pepin le Bref,
Charles the Great, is the succession till the alternation was
broken by the death of Pepin, the eldest son of Charles the
Great. Now this most undignified Pepin is traced by the
best authorities to be one of the many forms of the primitive

FOREFATHERS. 263
and universal abba, father, papa, and to answer to the old
German names of Bobo, Bobbo, and Poppo. And is it not,
therefore, probable that Pepin and Emma stood for the
northern Avi and Amma, both alike with the son Karl ?
And from the free but middle station they rose through the
prime ministry, to dislodge the worn-out Salic line of the
jarl, or noble blood.
Amme, or Emma, no doubt formed by the first lispings of
a child, is amme, a nurse, in Germany, and ama, a house
keeper, in Spain. As a name, it was at first exclusively
Frank, and used by the Karling daughters. The first Emma
mentioned by popular rumour was a daughter of Charlemagne,
who was said to have carried her lover, Eginhard the chroni
cler, on her back, over the snow, that his footmarks might
not betray his visits ; a story which, of course, neither Egin
hard himself, nor any rational historian, records. At any rate,
Emma was very early used by the French maidens ; and the
sister of Hugh Capet, who married Richard the Fearless, of
Normandy, was so called. Her granddaughter was the wife,
first of Ethelred the Unready, then of Knut, and the sup
posed heroine of the ordeal of the ploughshares. Hence
Emma took hold of the popular mind as a ' Saxon ' name,
and has been profusely bestowed upon Saxon ladies in stories,
though, in fact, before the Conquest, it was considered as so
un-English, that Emma of Normandy was translated into
.ffilfgifu. However, it is the Norman names that chiefly
took root amongst us, and we find ' Emme ' among the
daughters of Dru de Baladon, who came over with the Con
queror, and thus ' Emm ' and ' Emr ' are by no means un
common in the registers of Yorkshire and Durham, even
down to the seventeenth century. Then Prior, when mo
dernizing and sentimentalizing the beautiful ballad of the
Nut Browne Maid, supposed to be on the history of the
shepherd Lord Clifford, caUed it Henry and Emma, whence
it became rather a favourite romantic name of literature.

264 NAMES FROM TEUTON MYTHOLOGY.
Clergymen were apt to use it, in Latin registers, as a trans
lation of Amy, as well as of its own Em ; and, indeed, a
tombstone exists where the name is carved as Emr, while the
granddaughter namesakes have been christened, the one
Amy, the other Emma. It is also confounded with Emily,
and at the present day recurs extremely often in England,
while it is almost disused in France, its native home. The
Welsh use it as a translation of Ermin, probably a legacy of
the Roman Herminii. Emmott is another old name of
northern England, probably amplified from Em; but Eme
line, as has been already said, is far more probably AmaUne
than any relation to Emma.
Jarl, as might be expected, was a very favourite eponym ;
but not in the same pronunciation ; for it first became Iri,
then Erl, in nomenclature. Erling, a name much used by
the Norsemen, and often corrupted into Filing, is the son of
the earl ; and the Swedish once had a Jarlar, or earl-warrior,
who changed into Erlher ; Erlo, Erlebald, Erlebrecht, Erlhild,
have all been used by the Germans, though the title with
them has always been Graff, properly Gerefa, from rufen to
summon, expressing the judicial power, and perhaps better
answering to our Reeve and Shire-reeve than to the miUtary
northern Earl, who, however, so absorbed the English imagi
nation, at the time of the Danish invasions, that he supplanted
the ancient thegn, or servant, and married, instead of yielding,
to the child of the Latin comes, or companion.*
* Pott; Munch; Mallet; Sir Cuthbert Sharpe; Sismondi; Lappen-
burg; Sharon Turner; Laing, Heimskringla ; ^0-m.tt, Northern Antiqui
ties.

265
CHAPTER IH.
NAMES FEOM OBJECTS CONNECTED WITH MYTHOLOGT.
Section I. — Bay.
The rich imagination of the North could not fail to connect
natural appearances and animals with their myths, and these
ideas are as usual refiected in the names of the race.
In the Edda, Nott, or night, the dark, one of the Jotun,
is the wife of Dellingr, the brilliant and beautiful, one of
the iBsir, and their son is Dag or Day. Mother and son
each have a chariot in which they career round the sky, in
pursuit of one another. The horse of Day is Skinfaxi, of
shining mane ; the horse of Night is Hrimfaxi, rime or frost
mane. Dag is the Teutonic version of the old Indo-European
word, connected with the free or open heaven, the same div
that came into all the divine names so often mentioned ; and
again, the Sanscrit calls the period of light dju, in close
relation with the dies of the Romans, and the dceg or dag of
the Teutons, the deis of the Kelts. So while in the South
of Europe our time is counted by giorni, dias, jours, aU
sprang from dies, in the North we have day, tag, day.
Day had many namesakes, though more often at the end
than the beginning of a word.
Dago, Tago, or Tajo, was a Gothic bishop of Zaragoza,
whom King Chindaswintha sent to Rome about 640, to bring
home a copy of St. Gregory's Comment on the Booh of Job,
which had been dedicated to a king of Spain, one of the
Suevi, but had been lost in the irruption of the Arian Goths.
The Roman clergy had been equally careless. Pope Theo-

266 NAMES CONNECTED WITH MYTHOLOGY.
dorus could not lay his hand upon the manuscript ; and the
search became so tedious, that finally Bishop Tajo betook
himself to prayer, and obtained a special vision of the holy
Pope Gregory himself, who directed him to the depository of
the manuscript.
This same Dagr figures in the Landnama-boh; and the
North has Dagfinn, perhaps once an allusion to the resplen
dent glory of Odin, but usually translated white as day.
Dagulf, or Daulf, day-wolf, was no doubt in allusion to the
wolf SkoU, who hunts the sun daily round the sky, and will
eat her up at last ; whence to this day a parhelion is caUed
in Sweden a sun-wolf, Sololf. Eclipses are caused when the
wolf gains on the sun, who has no namesakes in Teuton
nomenclature, the few that sound like it being from another
source. Salv or siilv, anointing or healing, and the feminine
ny, though meaning the new moon when standing alone, is
only the adjective new, and means fresh and fair, so that the
northern Dagny is fair as day. The Norse ladies also have
Dagheid or Dageid, cheerful as day.
Dagobert, or bright as day, was that long-haired king who,
next to Clovis, impressed the French imagination. He was
the employer of the great goldsmith St. Eloi, and the throne
or chair of King Dagobert, ascribed to that great artificer, is
still in existence. A successor in the faineant times was
canonized, and together the two Dagoberts, making one, have
become the theme first of heroic and then of burlesque in
France. It was Takaperaht in Old German ; and there, too,
Tagarat, or Dagrad, is to be found; but in general, dag
or tac comes at the end of words.
Dagmar — the favourite queen of the Danes, whose only
fault was lacing her sleeves on a Sunday — is called only by
her epithet, Danes' joy. Her true name was Margaret of
Bohemia.* * BlackweU, MaUet; Munch; Butler; Grimm; Thierry; MichaeUs. '

THE WOLF. 267

Section 11.— The Wolf.
It is for the place that he occupies in the Teutonic
imagination, rather than for his own merits, that the wolf
stands foremost among the creatures that have supplied
Teutonic names.
He is also the most universal. Zeeb, Lycos, and Lupus,
have been already mentioned ; and the midnight prowler, as
the most terrible animal of Europe, held his place in imagina
tions, whence the lion and tiger faded for want of experience.
The French have no less than forty-nine proverbs about
wolves, many no doubt remains of the beast epic.
Wolves called Geri and Freki sat on either side of Odin's
throne, and devoured his share of the bears' fiesh of Valhalla,
a banquet he was too ethereal to require. Wolves chase the
sun and moon round their daily courses ; and a terrible wolf
called Mangarmr, or moon-gorger, is to devour the moon at
the coming of the wolf-age, which, in the Voluspa, shadows
the last days of the world. Fenris, the wolf of the abyss,
is the son of Loki ; and though bound by the .^sir at the
cost of Tyr's right hand, will finally break loose, destroy
Odin himself, and only be rent asunder by Vidur in his
resistless shoes. The wolf, in the tale of Reinecke Fuchs, is
rather a duU, easily-outwitted animal.
Nevertheless, ulf, vulf, wolf, was highly popular as a name
sake ; perhaps more common at the end than the beginning
of a word, but often standing alone. It was the diminutive
Vulfila that was the right name of that good bishop- whose
Maeso-Gothic version of the Gospels goes by his Latinism of
Ulphilas. Ulf was twenty- three times in the Landnama-boh; and ulf in
every possible form ravaged the coasts of Europe. Wolf was

268 NAMES CONNECTED WITH MYTHOLOGY.
again the hereditary prefix in the House of Bavaria, where
the dukes varied between Wolf and Wolfart, tiU Wolfen
became the designation of the family, and a legend was
invented to account for it. An ancestress had, it was said,
given birth to twelve infants all at once, and in the spirit of
the child who, being sho'wn his twin brothers, asked ' Which
shall we keep,' sent her maid to dispose of the eleven unne
cessary ones in the river. The father met her, and asked
what she had in her apron. ' Only whelps,' she answered ;
but he was not to be thus put off, made an inspection, saved
the children's lives, and called them the Wolfen, or wolf-
whelps ! The Booh of Heroes, however, makes the Wolfings
descend from the brave Sir Hildebrand, and be so called
from a wolf on their shield granted them by the Emperor
Wolfdietrich, in remembrance of an adventure of his own
infancy, when he had been carried off by a she-wolf to her
den, and remained there unhurt — whence his name of Wolf
dietrich. The male line of the Wolfen, however, in time
became extinct, and the heiress married one of the Italian
House of Este, which adopted the German Wolf in the
Italianized form of Guelfo, and constantly used it as a name.
Thence when the popes set up Otho d'Este, one of the Wolfen
of Bavaria, as anti-emperor in opposition to the House of
Hohenstaufen, his partisans were called Welfen ; those of
the Fredericks, Waiblingen, from the Swabian castle of
Waibling. The Italian cities rang with the fierce cries of
Guelfo and Zibelino, for the pope or the emperor, and Europe
learnt to identify the Guelph with the cause of the Church ;
the Ghibelline with that of the State, when the origin of the
words had long been forgotten.
One of the Bavarian Wolfen d'Este became Duke ol
Brunswick Luneburg, and from him are descended the Hano
verian line of English sovereigns, who — in the time of Revo-
lution — thence were said to be properly surnamed Guelf, oi

THE "WOLF. • 269
even Whelps, with about as much correctness as when
Louis XVI. was styled Louis Capet.
We had a wolf among our sovereigns in the days of the
Heptarchy, in Vulf here, king of Mercia, the same as the
northem Ulfar, and German Wolfer, meaning wolf-warrior.
Also Vulfhilda was a sainted abbess in England, while Ulv-
hildur colonized Iceland. We had also Vulfred, Vulfnoth,
Vulfstein, better known as St. Wulstan, the admirable bishop
of Worcester, whom Lancfranc forebore to displace. These
English wolves of ours have a great inclination to lapse into
sheep's clothing and become wool, in which form we use
them in the harmless surnames of Woolgar, Woolstone,
Woolmer, Wolsey.
Ulfketill, or Ulfkjell, as odd a compound as can well be
found, was one of the pirates wh-o invested England, but is
a peaceable inhabitant in Domesday, where Ulf swarms, as
Ulfac, Ulfeg, Ulfert, Ulfener, Ulfric ; just as he does in the
Iceland Domesday, as Ulfhedinn, Ulfherdur, Ufliotr.
In Germany, Wolfgang, perhaps best rendered as Wolf-
progress, was a sainted bishop of Ratisbon, in the tenth cen
tury, whence this strange name flourished, and coming to
Goethe, became prized by all his admirers. There, too, is
Wolfram, the wolf-raven, Wolfrad, and Wolfert.
Some have translated ulf, or wolf, at the end of a word
by help ; but this is impossible, as though hulf is help in
German, the /is the property of that language alone.
Wolf enters into many names of places. Our English
Wolvesey at Winchester is Wolves' Isle, from the tribute of
wolves' heads there received from the Welsh ; and wolf sf eld,
dorf, hagen, f els, &c., swarm in Germany, forming territorial
titles for Freiherren and Graffen.
Ulvstand was a soubriquet assumed by Harald Ulv of
Denmark in his rage at an attempt of one Trotte to carry
off his bride, for which he vowed that the traitor should

270 NAMES CONNECTED WITH MYTHOLOGY.
find him an ulvstand, or wolf's tooth, and he kept
word. To the faithful and affectionate relative of the wolf, 1
dog, something of the eastem dislike to the unclean anii
must have remained, for in the northern myth, he only 1
pears as the hell-hound Garmr, who is to be the destro;
of Tyr in the twUight of the gods, and the spectre horn
who accompany the wild huntsman in Germany, or '
yelping pack whose voices terrify the northem peasa
* The Manthe Doggie,' or spectre hound of man, though
name seems to be the Keltic madadh, was most likely
queathed to the isle as one of the fancies of its north
masters. So while Cu was both dog and chieftain in Ireland, he i
at a discount among the northern races, until a few of
Danes seem to have learnt to respect the qualities of the mi
nificent Irish wolf-hound, whose qualities are highly prai,
in the Heimshringla. Then they took to calling themsel
Hunde ; and a son of Sigurd, Earl of Orkney, is called h
Hvalp or Hund. The name of Hundolf is, however, si
posed to be either hardened from Hun, or else to be fron
word meaning booty or plunder, so as to mean the wolf
plunder.* Section HI. — Eber, the Boar.
The boar, whom we found so popular in Roman nom
clature, is quite equally so among the southern Teub
among whom the tusky boar was one of the prime bei
of chase. The Romans apparently viewed him and
* Grimm; Turner, Anglo-Saxons ; BlackweU, Mallet; Dictionn
des Proverbes Frangais; Sismondi, E^publiques Italianes; Andei
Genealogies; Lappenburg, Anglo-Saxons ; Alban Butler; Marryat,
land; Pott.

EBER, THE BOAR. 27 1
titles in their domestic aspect ; but the Teutons honoured
the fierce Eber of their forests as their highest and most
dangerous prey, and gave him a place among their my
thology. Freyr had a boar with golden bristles, called GuUenborsti,
and when the corn waved in the wind, the saying was, ' Freyr's
boar is passing by.' The same golden bristled boar is repeated
among the Tscherkessen, who have a god called Mesitch riding
on such an animal, and no doubt he is of kin to the swine whose
worship has been traced among the Kelts. The appropriate
sacrifice to Freyr was a boar, and as Yule was his feast, the
boar's head, on which vows were made, as in the case of the
fatal vow in the opening of Sintram, was in his honour;
and the ' boar's head,' once an essential part of Christmas
festivities, but now dwindled down to a mere piece-" of brawn,
is a remnant of Freyr's worship. In Gueldres the boar and
his master are thought to go about on Christmas night, but
there Freyr has turned to the more German hero, Dietrich.
From his connection with the beneficent Freyr, the boar be
came a holy symbol, supposed to protect those who wore it.
Jewels were fashioned in its shape, and worn as talismans
even in Christian times ; and it was very common to shape
hehnets like the head and tusks of the boar, whence this be
comes so common a bearing in heraldry, and may perhaps
have suggested the title of the ' Wild Boar of Ardennes.'
Epurhelm, an old German name, was thus an appeal to the
protection of Freyr.
The boar Sehrimnar was likewise the future feast of the
brave in ValhaU, daily hunted and eaten, and as often re
suscitated for the next day's sport and banquet. Scandinavia
lay too far north for his porcine majesty ; and the Norsemen
had no personal acquaintance with him in their daily life,
whatever they might look forward to ; and thus ' de grand
Eber' does not figure in their nomenclature, and scarcely

272 NAMES CONNECTED "WITH MYTHOLOGY.
among our own insular Saxons, though he is said to have
ranged our forests.
But turning to the Goths, we fall at once upon Ebroinus,
an evident classicalism of Eberwine, not so much the boar's
friend, as Freyr's friend. Ebrimuth, another early Goth, is
wUd boar's mood or wrath, and in Visigothic Spain we find
Eborico, namely, Eberik, boar ruler.
Frankland produced the formidable compound of boar-
wolf, Eberulf ; but its two O'wners grew -up monastic saints
in the sixth and seventh centuries, and were honoured by the
French as SS. Evrault, Evrols, Evrou, or Evraud. The
second of these saints was a native of Normandy, and is
patron of the abbey of Fontevraud, the burial place of
Henry II. and Richard Coeur de Lion, and the noblest nun
nery in France. The abbess ruled the men of her order as
weU as the women ; and by the old law, was to be a person
who had begun Ufe in the secular world, although in later
times this rule was evaded, when this magnificent station
was regarded as a resource for superfluous daughters of the
blood royal.
It is difficult, however, to distinguish between the forms
of the French Eberulf, and the German Eberhard, who
was abbot of Einsiedlen in 934 ; indeed, it is highly
probable that the Norman St. Evrhault, though derived
from a saint latinized as Eberulfus, and in German called
Eralf, was supposed to be the same as Eberhard, and
that this accounts for the English form of Everard, which
sprung up from the four Evrards of the Domesday roll
after the Conquest. Eberhard hardly reaches the rank of
saint in the Roman calendar ; but his exertions in a great
famine that ravaged Alsace, Burgundy, and Upper Germany,
in 942, account for the nationaUty of his name in aU that '
region.

EBER, THE BOAR.

V3

English.

ItaUan.

Frisian.

German.

Everard

Everardo

Evart

Eberhard

' Ewart

Eberardo

Evert

Ebert

Ebbo

Ewart EppoEbbo

French.
Dutch.
Lett.
Ebo
• Evraud
Everhard
Ewarts
Ebilo
EbinEtto
Ebles
Evert
Uffo
Uppo
Appo
The Germans likewise have a feminine from this ' boar-
firm ' word Eberhardine, contracted into Ebertine, or Ebba,
and in Frisian, Ebbe or Jebbe. I am afraid these German
forms do not certamly account for the Saxon Ebba, or .^bbe,
sister of St. Oswald, and foundress of the famous priory of
Coldingham. However, England had one St. Eberhilda, who
was a pupil of St. Wilfrid, and foundress of a monastery
caUed Everidisham, the locaUty of which cannot be dis
covered ; but it must have left an impression on the ladies
of the North, to judge by the frequency of the occurrence
of EverUda, which, with its Anglicisms of AveriUa and
Averil, is not yet extinct.
' Offa, the Low German legendary hero — was very probably
a contraction of the wild boar. His name is repeated by the
king of Mercia, who seems to have boiTOwed somewhat of
the legend in his story, and Offa was not extinct even in
Domesday. Ebermund, a Neustrian Frank of Meerwing days, was
founder of Fontenoy Abbey, and was honoured as St. Evre-
mond, whence the territorial sumame familiar to readers df
French memoirs.
St. Evre, who is frankly latinized into Sanctus Aper, was
VOL. II. ^
274 NAMES CONNECTED V^/'ITH MYTHOLOGY.
the seventh bishop of Toul, where the register of bishops
presents a curious succession of wild beasts, and some of the
Ebbos and Affos of Germany may be his rightful property,
though they are now aU turned over to the charitable Eber
hard of Einsiedlen. Eburbero, or Boar-bear, seems to have
been a German invention. We have the sumames Everard,
Everett, Everest, Every, from this animal ; and the Germans
have hosts, chiefly from places — Ebermeier, Ebenhalm, or
Eppenhagen, Ebbecke, Abbendorf, Eppendorf, Iphofen,
Ebelbach, &c. &c.*

Section IV. — The Bear.
The bear does not enter into the legends of the Edda, but
he enjoyed immense regard in the North, and was looked on
as a sort of ancestor, to whom, when he was killed, pohte
apologies were always made, and who is still called by the
pet name of the Wise Man, rather than by his own proper
term. Even in France he was mysteriously alluded to as le
vieux or le grand pere ; and probably the Swiss veneratioif'!
for the bears of Berne originated in the general devotion to
the deliberate and almost human looking plantigrade.
The Anglo-Saxons made Beorn the great grandson of
Wuotan, and the ancestors of the kings of Beomland; in
Latin Bernicia, or Beomia, afterwards the earldom that gave
title to Richard, son of William I. Legend again declare(|,
that the stout old Earl Siward Biorn was actually the ofl^.
spring of a bear, and that the ears of his parent might have
been found concealed beneath his matted locks.
Norway and Iceland are, as in duty bound, the land of
bears, but the Pyrenees had their share likewise ; and if
the North has Bjomulf, the same bear-wolf reigned over
* Mimter, Histoire de Normandie ; MaUet; Butler; Pott; Miohaelifil
Surtees. j

THE BEAR. 275
Gothic Spain in the form of Vemulfo ; and in the Asturias
and Navarre, the bear's mood was dreaded as Bermudo, or
Vermudo, and his protecting hand sought as Veremundo.
In the Pyrenees, too, flourished the bear-spear, the same
with the northern Bjomgjer, though southem tongues made
Berenger and Berengario, in which forms it was owned by
many a mountain king of Navarre and count of RoussUlon,
Barcelona, or Toulouse. There, too, it formed the feminine
Berenguela, and this, as princesses' names always do, tra
velled farther ; for Berenguela was queen of Castillo, and
mother of St. Fernando ; another Berenguela, or Berangere,
as French tongues caUed her, is familiar to us under that
most incorrect historical title of Berengaria, the bride of the
king of England, that was married at Cypras, and, rather
undeservedly, always made by noveUsts a foolish and frivo
lous woman, instead of the devout and meek one she really
was. Another Berenguela, who from Portugal married the
king of Denmark, so misconducted herself that Bjomgard
or Bemgard, the Danish version of her name, stands for
an abandoned woman.
Biorn of the fiery eyes was appropriately named by Fouque ;
for the Landnama-boh shows forty- two Biorns, and the name is
stUl common in Norway and Iceland, where also are found
stUl, as man's names, Bersi and Besse, also titles of the bear,
- and Bera by way of feminine. Bjomhedinn is also northern,
and there are numerous varieties of compounds, one of them
rather of late date being Bjomstem, bear-star, probably in
reference to the Pole-star. One of the present authors in
Norway bears the fierce name of Bjomstem Bjomsen.
The most famous of all the bears is, however, of Frank
growth. Some have tried to resolve it into Bairn-heart,
¦child-hearted; but though barn is of most ancient Uneage,
found even in Ulfilas's Bible, all* analogy is against the in
terpretation ; and there can be no doubt that when the first
^historical Biomhard was named, his parents would much have
T 2

276

NAMES CONNECTED ¦WITH MYTHOLOGY.

preferred his having the resolution of a bear rather than the
heart of a chUd.
That first was an uncle of Charlemagne, and from him it
was that the mountain, erst of Jupiter, was termed of Ber
nard, even before a second Bernard, surnamed De Menthon,
fled from his home for love of a monastic life, and erected
his noble hospice for the reception of traveUers. Then came
further glory to the name through the Cistercian monk,
whose pure character was revered by aU in the thirteenth
century, untU his became a universal name throughout
Europe ; in Ireland absorbing the native Bryan. In Spain,
too, Bernardo del Carpio is a great legendary champion^
nephew to King Alfonso H. of Leon, and who, in the battle of
RoncevaUes, was said to have squeezed Roland the paladin
to death in his arms. Bernal Diaz is the simple-hearted
chronicler of Cortes.

EngUsh.
Bernard Barnard

French.
Bernard
Bernadin

ItaUan.
Bernardo Bernadino

Spanish.
Bernardo
Bernal

Portuguese.
Bernaldo Bernadim

WaUachian.
Bernardu

German.
Bemhard
Berend Benno

Dutch.
Bernhart Barend Barndt

Frisian.
Bernd

Lusatian.
Bernat

Lettish.
Berents Berns

Esth.
PeroPerent

Slovak.
Bernardek

Hungarian.Bernat

It has the German feminine Bemhardine.
Other less celebrated German forms are Bemwald ; the
French, Berault ; and ItaUan, Bernaldo. Berwart, abbot of
HUdesheim ; Bemclo, the Bavarian bear's claw; Bemer, and
many others where bern or pern ends the word.

THE HORSE. 277
Bahrend, Berndt, Behr, Behring, aU are surnames from
the bear in Germany, and the last very appropriately named
Behring's Straits. It is the same that came to England as
Baring.*

Section V. — The Horse.
No sacred animal was in more request than the horse.
The gods had their wonderful horses. Sleipner (the slippery)
was the eight-footed steed of Odin ; GuUfaxi, or gold mane,
belonged to the giant Hrimgrim ; and the shining-maned
and hoary-maned coursers of day and night have been already
mentioned. The eastem origin of the Teutons was never more sho'wn
than by their homage to horses. Beautiful and choice white
steeds were reserved for the gods, drawing the waggons that
conveyed the images, when the army went out to battle, or a
colony migrated, and omens were derived from their neigh-
ings when alive, and from their heads when kiUed in sacrifice.
Indeed, many fairy tales preserve relics of this power of
divination, as in the instance of the wise steed of Fortunatus,
whose ear produced whatever his mistress needed, and the
faithful horse Falada, whose head, after he had been kUled,
and it had been hung up to the wall, continued the counsellor
of the oppressed princess.
There was some universal notion connected with the horse's
head on a pole. Pliny considered it as a charm to protect
gardens from caterpillars ; we have already seen that young
Welshmen used to use one as a manifestation of spite against
hard-hearted damsels; and in the North such a pole was
called a nithing-post, and brought injuries upon the persons
against whom its face was directed.
* Munch; Lappenburg; Pott; MichaeUs; Butler.

278 NAMES CONNECTED "WITH MYTHOLOGY.
Great sacrifices of horses were made on solemn occasions,
and feasts were made upon their flesh as a religious rite, so
that the abstaining from horse-flesh became absolutely a test
of Christianity. The converted Germans were forbidden m
the eighth century, by Pope Gregory IIL, to eat vultures,
ravens, or horses ; and afterwards we find Hakon, first Chris
tian king of Norway, who had been bred up in the truth by
his foster-father, our own .^thelstan, was earnestly entreated
by his friends to conform so far as to hold his mouth over
the kettle and inhale the smoke of the seething horse-flesh
to gratify his heathen subjects. It is probable that it is to
this sacred character of the flesh, and its being employed
as a mark of severance between Christian and heathen, that
the universal European disgust to it is owing.
The horse was the national emblem of the Saxons; and
Henghist and Horsa are both old Teuton names for the
animal, the first surviving in the German hengst and northem
hest, the last in our ordinary word horse; while the High
German hross has faUen into the modern ross. White horses
cut out in the chalky hill sides of southern England from
time immemorial, attest the antiquity of the symbol stiU
claimed by the county of Kent, and by the Anglian-conti
nental kingdom of Hanover.
In the old poem of Beowulf, however, Hengist is a Dane,
invading and oppressing Finn of Friesland, and afterwards
slain. It is possible, then, that Hengist may after all be a
mere mythic name erected into an ancestor by the Kentish
monarchs, and serving as a nucleus for the tales of Vortigern
and Rowena, the grant of Thanet, and the treachery at
Stonehenge, which was even supposed to mean the stones of
Hengist. Some have tried to derive hross from horen, to
hear or obey, in honour of the noble creature's obedience ; but
it is in fact only another form of the ashva of India, to which
iTTTTos, equus, and each have been traced ; and it is curious to
find that Brittany preserves the word ronse, as does Spam

THE HORSE. 279
ronzin, the term that Don Quixote magnified into the mag
nificent designation of Rosinante.
The nation that sat round their cauldrons and feasted
solemnly on horse-flesh might well call their sons Rossketyl,
or Rosskjell. Three are to be found in the Landnama-boh,
and Roskil is not extinct in Denmark. The agreeable title
of Hrossbiorn, or horse-bear, is there to be found likewise,
and Saxo-Grammaticus dignifies as Rostiophus, a gentleman
who was properly called by the term of Hrossthiof, or horse-
thief, one that would not be pleasant to be christened by
in the present day, when horse-stealing is anything but a
glory ! Most of these names are Danish; and it is a Danish
ballad that tells how the merman Rosmer Hafmand kept
Ellen Lyle at the bottom of the sea till her lover Roland
came and carried her off, turning poor Rosmer into stone.
Mer generally means great, but here it is probably the sea,
and he may be a Triton, or horse of the sea, the creature
magnified by Mediterranean imaginations out of the quaint
Uttle horny hippocampus.
Hrossbert formed into Rospert, Hroshelm into Roselm,
Hrosmod into Rosmund, Hrosswald, or horse power, into
Roswal, who was the hero of a poem called Roswal and
Lillian, an exceeding favourite in Scotland; but Roswal
seems only to have suggested the faithful dog of the Talis
man. He is the disinherited heir of Naples ; and, after a
series of troubles, fights his way back to honour and the
hand of LUlian, the fair princess of Bealn.
The feminines Hrossmund, Hroswith, Hroshild, Hrosa,
have by general consent been changed .from horses to roses,
and giving up the old idea of the Valkyr on her tall shadowy
horse weaving her web of victory, are only Rosamond,
Roswitha, RosUde, Roesia, or Rose, and as such have been
treated of under the head of flowers.
The surnames Ross and Rowse are horses ; and many con
tinental ones follow them, such as Rossi, Rossmi, Rosetti, in

28o NAMES CONNECTED "WITH MYTHOLOGY.
Italy ; Rossel, Rosselt, Rosshurt, in Germany. Many places,
too, in Germany are thence called, such as Rossbach, notable
for one of the victories of Frederick the Great.
Hengst seems to have been used for the male, horse for the
female; but jor in the North, ehu in Old German, ehvus m
Gothic, for both horse and mare; and this jor, or sometimes
only the jo, is not uncommon in Norsk names, as Jogeir,
Jofred, Jogrim, Jostein, or flower of chivalry, Johar or
Joar, horse warrior, Joketyll, or Jokell. The women were,
Jora, Jodis, Jofrid, Joreid, Jorunna, all, be it remembered,
being pronounced as with a y.
Afterwards Justin devoured Jostein, and George probably
consumed some of the others ; indeed, some of the early
specimens of Jordan among the Normans, probably accom
modated their names to the river in their crusading fervour;
but, en revanche, the great Gothic historian, Jomandes, is
supposed to have been so called by corruption from his state
name of Jordanes.
Jorund, which looks very like one of this race, is referable
to another source.
Probably in honour of Thor's he-goats we find the goat
figuring in names, as Geitwald, Geithilt, and the wife of
Robert Guiscard, Sichelgaita.*

Section VI. — The Eagle.
There is an eagle sitting on the ash YggdrasU who knows
many things.
He is, in the North, oar, in Germany ar, in Scotland erne;
though we and the modem Germans use, in eagle and adler,
mere contractions of the Latin aquila. Places named from

* Grimm ; Munter ; Munch ; Dasent ; Cambro-Briton ; BlackweU,
MaUet; Weber and Jamieson, Northem Romance; Sturleson, Heims
kringla ; Kemble, Beowulf; EUis, Specimens of Early English Poetry.;
Pott, Personen Namen,

THE EAGLE.

281

the king of birds are found wherever there are mountains, and,
besides the many Arnheims and Amstadts, the bird is thought
to have his rivers — the Eme, the Aar, the Arno.
His influence on nomenclature was exercised from the
Dovrefeld and from the Alps, for the eagle-names are chiefly
either Scandinavian, or High German; we do not seem to
have any native English ones.
The most noted of these southern ones are Arnwald, eagle
power, and Amulf, or eagle-wolf, and it is very difficult to
distmguish their derivatives from one another. The saint
of the Roman calendar was certainly Amulf, a prince of the
long-haired line, who in 6 14 retired into a convent at Metz,
and became its bishop, when alive, and its patron, when dead.
Another previous Amulf, after whom he was probably chris
tened, for their day is the same, was martyred by the heathen
Franks, about the time of the conversion of Clovis ; and a
subsequent one was bishop of Soissons, under Pope Hildebrand.
Amoul was common as a name among the Burgundian kings,
and was kno'wn in Italy as Amolfo ; but it has been swal
lowed up by Arnwald, or Amvalldr, as he is in the North,
perhaps because this latter was made famous in Provence by
Amaldo di Maraviglia, the troubadour ; in Italy by the un
fortunate Amoldo of Brescia, and later in Switzerland by the
patriot Arnold von Melchthal, and thus it has become popu
lar enough to have the feminines Amolde and Amoldine.

EngUsh.

French.

ItaUan.

Spanish.

Arnold

Arnaud
Arnaut

Amoldo

Amaldo

German.

Dutch.

North.

Arnold

Arnoldus

Arnvalld

Arno

Arnoud

Arnalldr

Ahrent

Arend

Ahrens
Arold
282 NAMES CONNECTED WITH MYTHOLOGY.
The Arnolds and Amoldines keep their feast upon St.
-Aj-nulf's day, thus confessmg that they have no patron of
their own. Ernulf is an old form found in Domesday Book,
and not yet quite extinct.
The northem eagles are much confused by arin, a hearth,
the same which is found at the end of Thorarin. It con
tracts into am at the beginning of a word, so that, except
when we meet with it in full, as in the case of the brave old
sea-king, Arinbiom, the hearth-bear, it is difficult to tell to
which to send the owner, to the eyrie or thefire-side. And fur
ther, am and arin both contract indiscriminately into ar and
an, so that the list of Northern names is given rather in
the dark. They are both masculine and feminine, for Arna
was both used standing alone and as a termination.
Arnridur or Arneidur, eagle haste, one of these eagle ladies,
had a curious history told in the Landnama-boh, She was
the daughter of Asbiorn, a jarl in the Hebrides, and was
taken captive by Holmfast Vedormson, who sold her to an
Icelander named Ketell Thrymr. He was . so much smitten
with her as to pay for her twice the sum demanded by old
Vedorm ; but before the departure for Iceland she found a
quantity of silver beneath the roots of a tree, sufficient for
her ransom. Instead of claiming it, her new master gener
ously gave her the choice of purchasing her freedom or re
maining his wife ; she chose the latter alternative, and stands,
as honourable women do in the Landnama-boh, as the mother
of a house in Iceland.
Arnthor, and his feminine Amthora, contract into. Amor
and Arnora, and this latter explains Annora, to be found in
Norman pedigrees. Annora was wife of Bernard de St.
Valery; and was carried into the family of Braose by king
John's victim, Maude de St. Valery, who caUed one of her
daughters Annora.
Ari was an adventurer who sailed to Greenland in fourteen

THE EAGLE. 283
days, fifteen years before the preaching of Christianity in
Iceland. This -Aji, be he eagle or hearth, seems to conduct us to the
source of the first syllable of jirabella. The first lady so
called, whom -I can detect, was Arabella, the grand-daughter
of William the Lion, of Scotland, who married Robert de
Quinci. Another ArabeUa, with her husband John de Mont-
pyn^on, held the manor of Magdalen Laver in the thirty-
ninth of Henry HI., and thus it was evidently a Norman
name. The Normans made wild work with all that did not
sound like French, and their Latin secretaries made the
matter worse, so that I am much tempted to believe that both
Arabella and that other perplexing name, AnnabeUa, may
once have been Amhilda, cut down into Arbell, or Anable,
and then amplified. ' My Lady Arbell ' was certainly what
the lady was called, in her O'wn time, whose misfortunes are
so well known to us, under the name of Arabella Stuart, and
from whom Arabella has been adopted in various families,
and is usually contracted by Belle. Some have made it
Arabella, or fair altar, others the diminutive of Arab, both
equally improbable.
The most common form of Am at present used in Scandi
navia is Arnvid, the eagle of the wood, often contracted into
Arve, as in the instance of Emilie Carlen's honest hero in
her Rose of Tistelon,
The other old Icelandic and Norsk forms are : —
Ambiorg, eagle defence;
Amdis, eagle sprite ;
Arnfihn, white eagle ;
Arnfridur, eagle fair one ;
Arngeir, eagle war ;

Arngrimm, } or Angrim,
Arngrimur, ) eagle mask ;
Amkatla,) , , ,
. 1 . 1, r' eagle cauldron ;
ArnkjeU, J ° '

Arnlaug, eagle liquor ;
Arnleif, eagle relic ;
Arnliotr, eagle wanderer ;
Ammodur, ) , ^,
. 1 \ eagle wrath ;
or Armodr, } °
Arnstein, eagle stone ;
Arnthrudr, eagle maiden.

284

NAMES CONNECTED 'WITH MYTHOLOGY.

With much doubt I question whether the name of Ernest
should not be added to this catalogue. It is so obvious to
take its native German form, Ernst, from ernst, earnest,
grave, or serious, that this is quite unlike the usual analogy
of such names. Arnust was the older German form of the
name, and some even think that this was the proper name of
Ariovistus, the German chief who fought with Caesar, though
others consider this to be Caesar's version of Heerfurst, or
general, and others think they detect the universal root ar,
husbandry. The more certain form of the name begins in Lombardy,
where Ernesto, lord of Este, was killed in battle by king
Astolfo, in 752. Is not Ernesto just what Italy would make
of Arnstein, after fancying that Arnstino was a diminutive ?
Then, over the mountains, comes Arnust I., duke of Swabia,
in right of his wife, in 10 12, and Arnust the Strenuous,
markgraff of Austria, from whom Ernst spread all over Ger
many, especially after the Reformation, when Ernst, Duke of
Brunswick, had striven so hard to spread Lutheranism'
among his subjects that Protestants called him the Confessor.
This is now one of the most national of German nameSj
and it is working its way into England, though not yet with
a naturalized sound. Its German feminine, Ernestine, is one
of the many contracted by stine and tine, Bohemian has
Amostinka.

EngUsh.
Ernest

French.
Erneste

ItaUan.
Ernesto

German.
Ernst

Dutch.
Ernestus

Bohemian.
Arnost

Lettish.
Ernests

Hungarian.
Erneszt

One or two instances of Hank occur. Hauk Habrok waa
a noted pirate ; and there are two Haukrs in the Landnama-
hok. The bird is now called h^g in Denmark, and most of

THE RAVEN. 285
our families named Hogg are supposed to rejoice in Hawk as
an ancestor.
As to Folco and his kin, though it is often attributed to
the falcon, it has, as we shaU see, quite another source.*

Section VH. — The Raven.
Ferocious and predatory nations love and admire even the
raven that scents slaughter from afar, and is the comrade
and emblem of the battle-field. So as Oreb and Zeeb were
among the Bedouin desolators of Israel, Hraben and Ulf
were among the wasters of Christendom.
Perhaps, too, the raven of Noah had some share in the
homage paid to the bird, which has some connection with a
message and inteUigence, perhaps from its power of imi
tating words, and its conversational notes among its own
kind. The raven's feathers were by the Greeks said to have
been turned to black from white for her officiousness in in
forming Apollo of the infidelity of Coronis. A raven, again,
is said to have given great assistance to Marcus Valerius in
his single combat 'with a gigantic Gaul ; and, at any rate,
Corvus and Corvinus were Valerian cognomina. Bran and
Morvren, as we have seen, are closely interwoven with Keltic
fancies ; and the North had its ovm notions of the bird of
sable plumage of evil augury to the peaceful.
Two ravens. Mind and Memory, go forth throughout the
world, then returning and perching on Odin's shoulders, re
veal to him all that passes on the earth. Kaulbach has
made grand use of these two ravens in his grand figure of
' Saga ' in the Pinacotheh. She, the spirit of poetry, is
seated among Druid stones, with a rapt and awful gaze, and
a raven on each shoulder whispers to her of past and future.
* Grimm; Munch; Pott; MichaeUs; Butler; Landnama-hok; Chal
mers; Essex Pedigrees ; Dugdale; Anderson, Genealogies.

286 NAMES CONNECTED 'WITH MYTHOLOGY.
Descending to bathos, we ask if these are the Uttle birds
that tell all that children do.
The raven seems to have the special mark of Odin, and
sometimes used for Thor ; for amulets have been found in
Sweden and Denmark, where a raven flies before the mounted
figure of Odin, and again is seen in company with the hammer
of Thor. And who does not know the raven banner of the
sons of Ragnar, denoting probably their family dis, which
flapped its wings before victory and drooped them before
defeat ?
No wonder, then, that the raven has left traces in the
nomenclature of Teutonic Europe, though it is not always
easy to distinguish its progeny from those of ragn, judg
ment, and rand, a house.
The raven, in his harshest croak, entitled the Frank
sovereign Chramne, who is hard to recognize as the near
kinsman of the- sixteen Rafns of the Landnama-boh, and
Rabanus Maurus, the Latinism of the learned archbishop of
Mainz of the ninth century.
HrafenhiUdur, a suitable title for a Valkyr, and Hrafen-
kell also figure among the Landnama, and in Domesday
stand Ravengar and Ravenswar, showing the transition from
the gj'er, or spear, down to our word war.
Rafnulf is northem, but has been mixed up with the
derivatives of Randolf. Rambert, successor of St. Ansgar,
in Holstein, was a bright raven, Rampold a raven prince, and
the Italian form Ramusio may be another variety ; but in
general the raven comes at the end of words, as in Wolfram,
Valdraban, Bertram, &c.
It is common in the names of places and in surnames, as
Raap, Ramberg, Ramspergen ; and with us, Ravenspur;
Ravensworth, &c.*
* Munter; Munch; Grimm; Edda; Landnama.bok.

THE SWAN, 287

Section VTH. — The Swan,
The swan might weU figure prominently in the northem
mythology, familiar as she was, as the fair creature of the
autumn, when huge squadrons of the whistling swan, ' like
flocks of flying lambs,' according to Fouque's graceful de
scription, fly southwards, athwart the darkened heavens and
pine forests, making the air resound with the solemn beat of
their heavy wings, and their deep peculiar cry.
Two swans, parents of all those who dwell on earth, had
their home in the holy spring of Urd, beneath the world-
tree, YggdrasU ; and the power and fierceness of these mag
nificent, pure, calm-looking birds connected them with the
Valkyrer, who were supposed to have swan wings, and to be
able to change themselves into swans. When the Valkyrier
began to pass into mere magic ladies, they preserved their
power of changing into swans, and by-and-bye had swan
garments, which they put off when they wished to assume
human shapes, and which were now and then captured by
some happy mortal, who thus won the owner for his bride.
Swanhvit, or Swan white, was thus the suitable name of
one of the three Valkyrer who married the sons of Vidja in
the VUkina Saga ; and in the Orvarod Saga, another Swanh
vit is the companion of the self-willed Hervor, and the
first victim of the deadly sword, Tyrfing, when the maiden
recovered it from the fire-encircled tomb of her father, and
imprudently drew it, without heed to the wamings from his
grave, on that terrible property,
' That Tyrfing must with blood be fed !'
The swan transformations appear again in the beautiful
tale common to all Teutonic countries of the twelve princes
transformed into swans, and of the faithful sister who re-

'288 NAMES CONNECTED WITH MYTHOLOGY.
deemed them by the nettle shirts that she wove, ever in
silence, through every vicissitude of life even to the verge
of death.
Svana is an Icelandic name, also Svanlaug, a swan ocean,
which has contracted to SvaUaug. Svanhild was used both
by Norway and Germany, being Swanahilda in the latter,
and Svanaburg and Swangarde were also there; but it is
strange that so pretty a word for a white skinned maiden
should not have been more frequent. The Erse Gelges
imitates the sense, but we have no English swan ladies, for
Swanhals was only the epithet of the often commemorated
lady, who is said to have discovered the corpse of Harold at
Hastings. For the most part, the swans were left to womankind;
but the Germans had a Swanbrecht and Swanahold.
As has been before said, the goose feet of witches or magic
ladies are the last remains of the swan element of the
Valkyr.*

Section IX. — The Serpent,
Either from terror, or from a shadowy remembrance of the
original temptation, the implanted enmity between the serpent
aind man has often resulted in a species of worship.
The North believed in the Jormungandr, or Midgards^
orm, the serpent that encircled the world and was one of the
monstrous progeny of Loki. It appeared as a cat to Thor m
his visit to Utgard, when he was challenged to Uft it off the
ground, and only by the utmost exertion succeeded in raising
a single paw, to the universal consternation of the Joten, at
the strength that could accomplish such a feat. Another
time he fished for it, with a bull's head for a bait, and had a
* Grimm; Munch; Orvarod Saga ; Landnama-bok,

THE SERPENT. 289
rhost tremendous struggle with it, only ended by the giant
Hymer cutting his line in two; and finally it is to die by
Thor's hand, but will suffocate him by its venom. Also, the
permanent abode of the perjured, is lined with the carcases
of snakes. Meanwhile, a serpent hangs over Loki, dropping
venom upon him as he lies bound, like Prometheus, on the
rock; but his faithful wife, Sigtuna, is always beside him,
holding a bowl to catch the poison, and he never feels it save
when she turns aside to empty the vessel. Then, however,
such are his agonies, that his writhings produce earthquakes.
Another serpent, named Svafnir, lies coiled round the root
of the world-tree, as if he were the serpent around the tree
of knowledge.
Even till late in the seventh century the Lombards had a
golden image of an enormous viper to which they sacrificed,
until St. Barbatus recovered them from the heathenism into
which they had relapsed.
In general, however, in Teutonic legends, dragons are the
guardians of treasures and the victims of heroes ; either
being actual reverberations of the Greek myths of Python
slain by Apollo, and the Hydra by Hercules, or else being inde
pendent legends, suggested by the innate perception of the strife
between the Seed of the woman and the serpent, or by the fossil
remains of gigantic saurians, or even by some remaining scion
of the monstrous serpent brood. Sigurd, Theodoric, Beo
wulf, are aU serpent slayers. St. George's legend took up
the aUegory in a Christian aspect ; and even the maiden and
the chUd are found in saintly imagery, destroying and lead
ing away the conquered monster. Local names, connected
with his destruction, are to be found everywhere. Wurms,
caUed after Fafner, the Drachenfels where a dragon was
queUed by a holy maiden, the dragon's hUl in Berkshire, and
many an Ormsby and Worm's head testify to the general
beUef that the serpent was everywhere being slaughtered, as
verUy he is stiU.
VOL. II. u

290 NAMES CONNECTED WITH MYTHOLOGY.
One species of ships among the Northmen were called
serpents. They were long and low, with the gilded head
of a dragon at the prow, a long taU raised and curling over
the stern, while with coloured shields ranged along the sides,
and thirty oars on either side propelling it, besides the winged
sails, it must have been more like a water-dragon than any
creature that has ploughed the waves since the Ichthyosaurus,
and this probably accounts for the prevalence of the name of
Orm among the northem nations.
Twenty-two Ormrs appear in the Landnama-boh ; Orm
and Ormar (Ger, Wurmhar) are both in Domesday. Orm
was the founder of the Scottish house of Abemethy; and the
sumame of Orme is far more probably from one of these
northern worms, than from the French elm tree, as generally
supposed. Homer was considered, by the Danes of the mid
dle ages, as the translation into Latin of the name of Orm.
Ormildais likewise a northern name, and it is not quite
impossible that Ophelia may have been a translation of one of
these serpent-names, with the Greek o<^is (ophis) ; at any rate
the fair Ophelia shows no precedents for her name, and no
other derivation for it occurs. The gentle maiden, with her
most touching fate is altogether an invention of Shakespeare,
for though a woman appears in the old story of Amleth, she is
of far other mould, and Ophelia may have been merely devised
by himself. If so, it is curious that he should have placed
her in the only land of serpentine names. A few lovers of
its sound have used it in England and America.
Lind is another term for a serpent. The German dragons
are always called lindwurmer, and the word is, in fact, the
same as that which we still use as lithe, expressing supple
grace; the adjective linths becoming, on the one side, lind, on
the other lithe. The Spaniards use Undo, Unda, for pretty,
with about the same difference of sense, in the masculine or
feminine, as we do when we speak of a pretty woman or
a pretty man. The linden, or lime tree, so dear to German

KETTLE. 291
imaginations, is probably called from the same source.
Norse poetry considered it a compliment to compare a gaily
dressed lady to a glistening serpent, and thus the idea seems
to have passed from the reptile to the woman, so that, though
the German Lintrude is the only instance of a commencing
lind, the word is one of the most common of all terminations
among German and Italian names, and dropping its d, so as to
become linn, was made to serve as a favourite feminine dimi
nutive, its relation to the Spanish Unda keeping up its repu
tation. Thus we have Rosalind, or Rosaline, Ethelind, and
many more of the same kind.*
Section X. — Kettle,
Among mythological objects the kettle or cauldron can
hardly be omitted ; certainly the very quaintest of human
names, but perhaps referring originally to the cauldron of
creation, and afterwards to the sacrificial cauldrons that
boiled the flesh of the victims at the great blots or sacri
fices. In the North, the vessel is ketil: in old German, chezil;
in English, cytel; but the names from it seem to be almost
entirely northem, though the cauldron is almost certainly
the olla, so common a bearing in Spanish heraldry, and there
at present regarded as the token of a large following, bene
ficently fed, somewhat in the same spirit as that in which
the Janissaries used a camp kettle as their ensign.
Ketyl was the Norwegian conqueror of the Hebrides, and
founder of the line of Jarls of the Western Isles ; and the
family of Ketyl was very famous in Iceland, holding in
honour an ancestor called Ketyl Haeng, from hmng, a buU
trout; because when his father asked what he had been
doing, he answered, ' I am not going to make a long story
* Munch; Mallet; Grimm; Chalmers; Laing.
U 2

292 NAMES CONNECTED WITH MYTHOLOGY.
of every fish I see leap ; but true it is, that I chopped a buU
trout asunder in the middle,' which trout turned out .to be
a great dragon.
Katla was Ketyl's feminine, and not uncommon. The
Eyrbiggia Saga tells wonderful stories of a sorceress so
called, who, when her son was in danger from his enemies,
made him appear first like a distaff, then like a tame kid,
and, lastly, like a hog, but all in vain, for her spells were
disconcerted by a rival sorceress, and she herself stoned to
death. Ketel does not often stand at the beginning of a word ;
but Ketelbiom and Ketelridur are both Iceland names, and
both the masculine and feminine are very common termina
tions ; the masculine being, however, generally contracted into
Kjel, and then into kill or kel.*

Section XI. — Weapon Names.
Weapons were so nearly divine, so full of the warlike
temper of their owners, and so often endowed with powers
of their o-wn, that it seemed as if they themselves were
living agents in the deeds -wrought with them.
The sword forged by supernatural smiths, the terrific
helmet, the heavenly shield, are dreams of every warUke
nation, either endowing the Deity with the symbols of pro
tection or wrath or of might, or carrying on the tradition
of some weapon which, either its own intrinsic superiority
or the pro-wess of its o-wner, had made an . object of enthu
siasm or of terror.
Some of these tales of magic weapons are perhaps, as
Mr. Campbell suggests, remnants of the .days when the iron
age was coming in, and the mass of arms being of brass,
* Grimm; Munch; Dasent; Int. to Nial Saga ; Weber and Jamieson ;
Spanish Heraldry {Quarterly Review).

WEAPON NAMES.

^93

one iron sword, ' a sword of light,' as Gaelic tales caU it,
would have given irresistible superiority to its wielder, and
even, perhaps, earned the worship that was paid by AttUa's
Huns to the naked sword.
It accords with this theory that Iron appears as a com
ponent part of numerous names in Germany, and probably
likewise in Scandinavia, though there the simUarity of the
sound to lis, ice, occasions a doubt whether the word was
mtended for ice, or for iron. The North has, indeed, the
cold but not inappropriate Snaeulf and Snsebiom, Snaefrid,
snow fair, and even the uncomfortable Snaelaug ; and when
their language had dropped the form eisarn for the metal, and
called it jern, as we do iron, they probably transferred to ice
the meaning of the names that once meant iron.
Isa is an old German feminine, revived by a poetess of
our day. Isambart, or iron splendour, is the best known of
aU the varieties, having been used in France as Ysambar,
and travelled to England as the suitable baptismal name of
the two engineers, to whom so much of our ' iron splendour '
is due. Its German contractions are Isabert and Isbert.
The wolf's name in Reinecke Fuchs is Isengrim, perhaps
from his having a mask, or else in the modem sense of iron
grey ; and it has left this to be the title of the wolf.

Nor. Isgeir ; Ger. Isegar, Isgar — Iron spear
Nor. Isbrand ; Ger. Isebrand — Iron sword
Ger. Isebald ; Fr. Isambaus — Iron prince
Nor. larngard; Ger. Isengard — Iron defence
Ger. leenhard — Iron strong
Nor. Isrid — Iron vehemence
Nor. Isulf— Iron -wolf
Nor. Ising — Son of iron

Steel or Staale, likewise had one name from it in the
North, and, perhaps, Ukewise named even the historical

294

NAMES CONNECTED WITH MYTHOLOGY.

StUicho of barbarous birth, but the sole hope of Rome in
her final fall.
But the stone of the elder age was not forgotten; the
stone that at all times is the readiest weapon, and often the
mark of the place honoured by conflict. To say nothing of
the Seax, whether stone or stone knife of our ancestral
Seaxnot, we find the North using the word Stein, both alone
and as a prefix and sufi&x ; while in England, though it is not
very frequent, we have it in the honoured names of Athel-
stan and Wulstan.

stone.

Norwegian.
Stein, , -1
Sten (Ban.)]'
Steinama, stone eagle.
Steiobjorn, stone bear.
Steinfinn, white stone.
Steingrimm, stone helmet.

Norwegian.
Steinhar, ]
Steinar, J
Steinthor, )
Steindor, J
Steinulf, stone wolf.
Steinvar, stone prudence.

stone warrior.

stone of Thor.

Another old word for stone is hall, much used in the North ;
and in a few cases, such as that of the Scottish Halbert, or
Hobble, creeping to our island with its Danish invaders, but
except in this, and a few sumames, unknovm away from the
North, save for the Haller, or stone warrior of Germany.
The northem varieties, however, had much reputation in
their own country. Hallgerda is in the Njal Saga the
haughty wife of Gunnar, of Lithend, the dame whose viru
lence is the cause of aU the vengeance and counter vengeance
of the story.

Hallbiorg, stone protection.
Halldis, stone spirit.
Hallfrid, stone fair.
Hallgerd, stone fence.
Hallgeir, stone spear.
Hallgrim, "1
Hallgrima, J

stone helmet.

Hallkell, ) , ,
Halkatla, | '^""^ ^^"^«-
Hallmund, stone protection.
Hallthor, \
Haldor, [ stone of Thor.
Haldora, J
Hallvard, ) ,
Halvor, | ^tone guard.

WEAPON NAMES. 295
Grjot, in German gries, is another word for a stone. It
was not so common as the others ; but there was both a
masculine and feminine Grjotgard, who in Denmark were
rendered, the one into Gregorius, the other into Margarethe ;
and I am afraid that this gries, a stone, must be the true
origin of Griselda, and that nothing is left me to do but to
apologize for my golden theory of the name in the first
volume. The EngUsh lady, Graesia de Bruere (temp.
Henry HI.) could only be this word gries, a stone.
Though in general Borg, or Bjorg, is used to mean pro
tection, yet Bergstein is most probably a mountain stone,
and it curiously answers to two names of noted ecclesiastics
from Somersetshire, whose first syllable Dun is a hill ; the
same with our present word down, and the dunes on the other
side of the Channel, where Dunkirk answers to our Dun-
church. The word is probably the Keltic don, dark brown,
grey, or dun, used as the epithet of a hill, and lasting on like
other Keltic local titles in the dunum of the Romans and the
dun of the Teutons.
The two Somerset Duns are the hill wolf, Dunulf, who is
said by one of the traditions that ought to be true, to have
been the swineherd whose cakes King Alfred burnt, and to
have been afterwards made by him bishop of Winchester,
which a Dunulf certainly was. The other was Dunstan, the
mighty ascetic abbot of Glastonbury and archbishop of
Canterbury, whose career, between wisdom and devotion,
frenzy and sternness, is one of the least explicable studies of
history. He figures strangely in a song of the fishermen's
wives at Croisie, having been adopted as a patron saint of
Breton sailors from a tradition that he was once stolen by
pirates, and placed in Rhuys Abbey, near Morbihan.
' St. Gonstan, notre ami,
Eamfene nos maris ;
St. Gonstan, notre amaut,
Bam^ne nos parens.'

296 NAMES CONNECTED WITH MYTHOLOGY.
His place in the calendar has given this mgged mountain
stone a few namesakes.
There is a race of names, chiefly German, begmning with
hun, that it would seem natural to ascribe to the Huns of
AttUa ; but the original term for this race seems to have been
in their o-wn language Hiognu, and was retained in the pro
nunciation by other nations before writing and Latin had
made the word Hun. In old Germanic poems, the Huns
figure as giants or Titg-ns, so that some translate hwii, or
hiune, as a giant. The word hun, however, also means a
stake, and it is most according to the ordinary analogy of
nomenclature to suppose the names thus commencing were
used in the sense of a stake, meaning either the weapon or
that the bearer was strong and straight as a stake or a sup
port, like the staff in Gustav.
The names of this commencement are Huno, Hunnerich,
latterly lost in Heinrich, Hunold, the French Hunold, Huni-
bert, which was corrupted in France into Humbert, and be
longed to various counts of Savoy and dauphins of Auvergne,
Hunigar, in Hungeir, and Hunifred, which the French iriuch
affected in the form of Onfroi, which belonged to one of the
short-lived kings of Jerusalem, and was latinized as Onu-
phrius. In the form of Humfrey it was much used by the
great house of Bohun ; and through his mother, their heiress,
descended to the ill-fated son of Henry IV., who has left it
an open question whether dining with Duke Humfrey alludes
to the report that he was starved to death, or to the Eliza
bethan habit for poor gentUity to beguile the dinner hour by
a promenade near his tomb in old St. Paul's. From being a
noble and knightly name, Humphrey, as we barbarously speU
it, came to be a peasant's appellation, and now is almost
disused.

WEAPON NAMES.

197

English.
HumfreyHumphrey HumpsNuraps

French.
Onfroi

ItaUan.
Onufrio
Onofredo

Ger.
Humfrid

The northern Hundolf, or Hunnolf, and Hungerdur, are
in some doubt between the dog and the stake.
The helmet is the most popular piece of armour in Ger
many. It comes from the word meaning to cover, the very
same that furnished hoi, whole, hale, and holy. To heal
a wound is to cover it, and health is wholeness. The Teu
tonic languages teem with derivatives from hulyan and helan,
of which all that shall be here mentioned are our own; heel,
the covered part of the foot, the hold of a ship, its hull, and
the provincial hulls (chaff) , and hillier (a slater) .
Even the terrible Hela herself, and her realm helja, were
from this term to cover or conceal. She ruled over the
ignoble dead, who were hidden from sight, in a dull and
dreary region, not exactly of suffering, the term for which
was transferred to the Christian region of the intermediate
state, and also to that of the condemned.
By an old Danish idea, Hela was thought to range through
the land on a three-legged horse scattering famine and death ;
and perhaps there is here some connection with Frau Hulda,
the muffied lady, who is akin to Bertha.
The Latin galea was nearly related to the helm of the
German, and may be from the same source. Indeed, it is,
as has been said before, doubtful whether Galeazzo Visconti
was the offspring of a classical or of a Gothic helmet.
The only popular northern helmet is Hjalmar, the helmed
warrior, apparently in honour of one of the heroes of the
Orvarod Saga; but Germany has Helmar, Helmerich, in Fries
land Elmark, the helmed king, Helmund, or helmet protec
tion, HeUnbold, Helmut, Helmich, Helmtac ; besides numer-

298 NAMES CONNECTED WITH MYTHOLOGY.
OUS helms at the end of words, of which Wilhelm is the moi
notable. The sword figures in northern and German nomenclatm
as Brand ; but not from the verb to burn, but from hrandi
an elastic staff, transferred to the blade of a sword. ]
would also mean the staff of a bow, and a short straigh
stripe of colour, whence a cow so marked is brandet in th
North, branded with us. The Brands are many, with Gei
man and Frank commencements, such as Hildeprani
Liutprant, &c., but seldom common ; though Brand some
times stands alone in the North, and Brandolf, or swon
wolf, is an old name. Perhaps the Zetland Brenda may b
the feminine.
Degen, a blade, is another sword name of rarer use, am
exclusively German. It also is compounded into Degenhard
then contracted into Deinhard ; but the primary meaning i
the hero, as it comes from the same word as tugend, virtue o
valour. Another very old term for a sword was hj0ru, or hiru, h
the North ; hairu, heru, in the Gothic ; heoru, in Anglo-Saxon
Here we see that the Heruli and Cheruschi, as the Romani
called them, were both sword men. Heoruvard, or Here
ward the Saxon, was the sword guardian ; Heorugar answerec
to the northern Hj0rgeir ; there was a Gothic Hairuwolf, 0:
Hemwulf ; in the North, Hi0rulf, Hi0rleif, and Hi0rdis als(
occur ; but the syUable gets contracted into Her, and th
names are not easily distinguished from those beginning witl
her, a warrior. Hjaraande is another northern form.
Boge, the bow, is sparsely found alone, and as Bauggise
in Iceland, and now and then in Norway at the end of i
name. Bogo was Old German, and the surnames in Denmarl
Bugge, in England Bogue. But its EngUsh fame rests upor
a champion caUed Bogo, who was supposed by our ancestori
to have been Earl of Southampton at the time of the Normal
Conquest; to have fought a battle with the invaders at Car

WEAPON NAMES.

299

diff, and to have left his sword as a relic at -Arundel Castle.
Whether this ever occurred or not, Boge was rendered by
Norman tongues into Bevis, or Beavois, and was the subject
of an old metrical romance, where his great exploit is kilUng
the tremendous giant Ascapart, who had carried off his wife,
the converted Saracen princess Josyan. He lives to a good
old age, sees his twin sons kings, and dies happily on the
same day as his wife and his good horse Arundel, once
doubtless Hirondelle, or the swaUow. The old metrical ro
mance ends with invoking pity on the souls of knight and
lady. ' And on Arundel his good steed,
Giff men for horse shoulders sing or read :
Thus endeth Sir Bevis of Hamptonn, "
That was so noble a baronn.'
Bevis and Ascapart, painted in dusky oUs, still stand on
either side of the bar gate of Southampton, and his fame
traveUed to Italy, where Buovo d'Antona is accepted as one
of the heroes of romance, though he stands alone, not fitting
into any of the cycles. The etymologists of Elizabeth's
time were led by the form Beavois, in which they spelt the
word, to imagine that it was Bellovisus, beautiful to behold.
But if ' Bevis of Hampton ' was anybody, he was an Anglo-
Danish ' Bow,' or Boge, a word which, like bay, bough, and
boughsome or buxom, comes from hygan, to bend.
The spear and ihe breastplate, Geir and Brune, will be
mentioned in the next chapter. The shield is now and then
found in the North, as Skialde, Skioldbjom, Skiolulf, and
Skioldvar, shield bear, wolf, and, more appropriately, shield
caution. The shield wolf is capable of being contracted into
ScheUuf. Saro, saru, searu, is the entire equipment or suit of
armour ; S0rle is a Norwegian name from it, contracted
into SoUe ; and among the Normans was called Serlo, and
considered to be the same with Saher.

300 NAMES CONNECTED WITH MYTHOLOGY.
If there were plenty of weapons, there was also balsam to
heal their wounds ; that is, if the northern names beginning
with Siilv are rightly referred to salve, the same word in the
North as with us. The v has for the most part been left
out by pronunciation, but the dotted o remains to testify that
Sdlmund, or Saamund, has no connection with Sol, the sun,
as little as with Solomon, by which the Danish bishops ren
dered it. Solveig, healing drink, is now Solva, and Solvar
is Sdlvi.*

Section XII. — Thought.
Mind or thought amounts to a mythical character in
northern fancy. The word is hugr, the same with hu, stiU
the Scandinavian word for thought, as heuge is in Holland,
all coming from old verbs represented by the Maeso-Gothic
gahugan, and Anglo-Saxon gehygan.
The two ravens who sat on Odin's shoulders, and revealed
to him all that passed in the world, were Huginn and Mun-
ninn, thought and memory ; and when Thor made his fa
mous visit to Utgard, it was Hugi, or thought, alone that
was swift enough to outstrip him in the race. At Tours, the
Northern Lights are le carrosse du roi Hugues, perhaps origi
nally from some connection with the speed of thought, though
latterly mixed up with Hugues Capet.
The name has been much used by all the Teutons, and it
was not inappropriately chosen by Fouque, as that of the
old knight in the Magic ring, whose character he has sacri
ficed for the sake of making him the representative parent
of all the chivalry of Europe, except the English, which he
considers as independently typified by Richard Coeur de
Lion. This roving knight appears at home as Hugo ; Hugur
* Munch; MichaeUs; EUis; CampbeU; Montalemhert.

THOUGHT.

301

in the North ; Hugues, in France ; Uguccione, in Italy ; and
even as Hygies, in Greece, which last is, however, only a re
semblance, not a translation.

EngUsh.

Scottish.

GaeUc.

French.

HughHugo Hutchin

Hugh
Hughie Hutcheon

Uisdean

HuguesHuesHuon
Huet Hugolin
HugueninUgues

Provencal.

ItaUan.

German.

Norwegian.

Oo

Ugo UgolinoUgone Ugotto
Uguccione

Hugo

Hugr Hugi

Part of the popularity of the name was, no doubt, owing to
the Cymric countries having adopted it as the nearest resem
blance to the mighty Hu Gadam, from whom the national Hugh
of Wales almost certainly sprung. A Frank saint. Archbishop
of Rouen, and one of the many canonized cousins of Pepin, first
made Hugo current among his own race ; but the only person
who wore it on the throne was the Galilean Count of Paris,
who may have had it as a compromise between the Cymric
Hu and Frank Hugr ; at any rate, it was long spelt without
the g in France, and declined as Hues, Huon. The old Cam
brai form was Huet, with the feminine Huette.
Hugo is very frequent in Domesday Book, and the name
was much more common in earlier times than at present. In
Scotland and Ireland it has been pressed into the service of
anglicizing the native Aodh, or fire ; but the Gaelic name
Uisdean, pronounced something like ocean, is most likely in
tended as a rendering of Hutcheon, the form in which the

302 NAMES CONNECTED WITH MYTHOLOGY.
Scots caught the Hugon of their Anglo-Norman neighbours,
who revered the name doubly for the sake of the good bishop
of Lincoln, and for another St. Hugh of Lincoln, i.e. the
child murdered by the Jews, as in the Prioress's Tale in
Chaucer. St. Hugh of Lincoln is revered in the north of
Italy as well as at home ; and Ugo is common there in all
manner of varieties, the most memorable, perhaps, being
that of the terrible Genoese, Ugolino de Gherardesca, whose
fearful fate has been rendered famous by Dante. In Dutch,
it is Huig. Huig Groot was the home name of the author
whom the world hailed as Hugo Grotius, and the Walloons
use the contraction Hosch.
Hyge was the Low German form, and Hygelac is the sea-
king of the Geats, the friend and lord in the poem of Beowulf,
The latter syllable lac is the northem leik, and Gothic lailes,
signifying both reward and sport, the same word that in
some parts of England has become lake, meaning to play or
to be idle, and in slang, to lark. It is rather a favourite
termination, but only a commencement in the Norse feminine
Leikny, fresh sport.
Hygelac is thus the sport of thought, or it may be, the
reward of thought. Hugoleik was thus not an inappropriate
name for an old Frank chronicler, who has had the misfor
tune to descend to the world by the horrible Latmism of
Chochilaicus. Hugleik was current in Norway, was trans
formed by the Danes into Hauleik and Hovleik, and in Ire
land seems to have tumed into Ulick, a favourite name, but
latterly transmogrified into Ulysses.
Hugibert, or bright mind, belonged to the bishop of
Liege, to whom attached the Teutonic story of the hunter's
conversion by the cross-bearing stag, making him the patron
of hunters, and his name very popular in France, Flanders,
northern Italy, and probably once in England, since it has
left us the two surnames of Hubbard and Hobart.

THOUGHT.

303

EngUsh.
Hubert

French.
Hubert

ItaUan.
Uberto

Portuguese. Huberto

German.
Hucpraht
HugibertHubert

It used to be wrongly translated bright of hue.
Hugibald became the German Hugbold and the Italian
Ubaldo, the prince of thought ; Hugihard, or firm in mind,
is the French Huard, and thence, perhaps, our Howards,
though far more certainly Hogarth.
The old English Uchtred is, perhaps, a form of mind-
council.*

» Munch; MaUet; Kemble, Beoumlf ; Pott; MichaeUs.

J04

CHAPTER rv.
HEROIC NAMES OF THB NIBELUNG.
Section I. — The Nibelung,
As the Greeks believed in the exploits of semi-divine heroes,
a sort of borderers between Olympus and the human race, so
the Teutonic race had its grand universal legends of beings
rising above human nature, and often embodying beliefs that
once had attached to the gods themselves.
The great Teutonic legend, holding the same place as the
deeds of Hercules, Theseus, and the Argonauts did in Greece,
or those of Fionn with the Gael, is the story of the Nibelung-
How old it may be is past computation, but it was apparently
common to the whole Gothic race, since names connected
with it come from Spain, Lombardy, and France ; fragments
of the story are traceable in England and the Faroe Islands,
and the whole is told at length in Germany, Norway, and
Denmark. Each of these three latter countries claim ve
hemently to have originated the romance, but there is Uttle
doubt that it was one of the original imaginations of the
entire race, and that each division moulded the framework
their own way, though with a general likeness.
Names of historical personages, probably called from its
heroes, have led many to suppose it exaggerated history ; but
each attempt to fit it on to a real person has resulted in con
fusion, and led to the perception that the actors are really
mythical, and the localities, which chiefly lie in Burgundian
Germany, were only connected with it by that general law
that always finds a home for every heroic adventure.

THE NIBELUNG. 305
The tale is begun by the Norwegian Volsunga Saga, and,
about half way through, it is taken up by the Danish VUkina
and Niflung Saga, and by the German Nibelungenlied, and it
is finished by numerous Danish ballads and German tales,
songs, and poems, with the sort of inconsistencies always to
be found in popular versions of ancient myths, but with the
same main incidents.
Nifelheim, the supposed abode of these heroes, is inter
preted to be nebelwelt, the world of mist, or cloud land, and
there can be Uttle doubt that the heroes said to be descended
from the mythic ViU, Vidga, and Velint, are, in fact, fallen
deities. Germany, however, turned Nifelheim into the
Netherlands, and placed the realm of Brynhild in Iceland,
and the scene of Aldrian's and Gunter's court at Wurms, the
centre of the Burgundians.
It is highly probable that the story is another form of the
original myth, with the same idea, carried through, of the
early death of the glorious victor, and of the revenge for his
death, but only through a universal slaughter in which all
perish. But the whole has become humanized, and the ac
tors are men and not deities ; the aUegory is far less trace
able. The story, as it begins in the Volsunga Saga, relates that
there were three brothers, Fafner, Reginn, and Andvar, or
Ottur, whose name is from the same source as <^g, awe,
so that he may be another form of (Egir. Transforming
himself into the beast that bears his name, for the
convenience of catching himself a fish dinner, Ottur was
kiUed, in this shape, by Loki. The father and the other
brothers insisted that, by way of compensation, in the
Teutonic fashion, Loki should fiU the dead otter's skin
with treasure, which he accomplished, but laid the treasure
under the curse, that it should do no good to its o-wner.
Accordingly, the amount excited the avarice of Fafner, and
after murdering his father, he transformed himself into a
VOL. II. ^

306 HEROIC NAMES OP THE NIBELUNG.
dragon, and kept watch over the treasure, to prevent Reginn
from obtaining it.*

Section H. — Sigurd.
Sig, or siga, means, in aU Teutonic tongues, conquest;
and the Victor seems to have been a very old epithet for the
divinity. St. Augustin speaks of a Gothic exclamation si-
hora armen, which he translates as Kvpie eXerj^ov, and the first
word of which evidently answers to Ceadmon's epithets for
the Almighty, Sigorafrea, Sigoragod, Sigoracyning. If sira,
sire, are not from senior, they are from this word.
Odin was called Sigfadir, or conquering father, and this
accounts for the later notion that the adventurer was called
Sigge, and assumed the divine appellation of Odin.
Thence the victorious god, conquering the serpent, yet
afterwards dying, whether he were originally meant for Odin
himself, or for another form of Baldur, sank into a human
serpent slayer, bearing the name of victory — Sigward, per
haps, originally, but varied into Sigufrit, Siegfried, and
Sigurd. The main points in Siegfried's story are that he was the
son of Siegmund the Volsung, and of Queen Sigelind ; born,
according to the Book of Heroes, under the same circum
stances as Perdita, in the Winter's Tale ; put, by way of
cradle, into a drinking-glass, and accidentally thrown into the
river, where he was picked up by the smith Mimir, and
educated by him. Other versions, however, make him be
royally bred up in his father's realm of the Netherlands, and
go out to seek his adventures from thence. In the Book of
Heroes he is so strong that he caught the lions in the woods
and hung them over his castle wall by their tails. Reginn in-
* Lettsom, Niehelung ; Weber and Jamieson; Eoepper; Hoifitti
Northern Romance ; Grimm, Deutsche Reldensagen:

SIGUED. 307
cited him to fight with and slay the dragon, Fafner, and obtain
the treasure, including the tarn-cap of invisibility. Also, on
roasting and eating the heart of Fafner, he became able to
understand the language of the birds. His first experience
of the speech of birds was the discovery that Reginn in
tended to murder him, so as to seize the whole of the treasure ;
but by this means he brought on himself the curse that Loki
had laid on the hoard. And by a bath in Fafner's blood he
was made iu'vulnerable, except where a leaf had unfortunately
adhered to his skin, between his shoulders, and given him,
like Achilles and Diarmaid, a mortal spot. From the song
of a Uttle bird, he learnt that Reginn meant to murder him
at once ; he therefore killed^^ Reginn, and took possession of
the fatal gift. The Book of Heroes calls him Siegfried the
homy, and introduces him at the court of the German favourite,
Theodoric, and the Nibelungenlied separates the dragon from
the treasure, and reduces most of the marvellous in the ob
taining it.
His next exploit was the rescue and awakening of Brynhild;
but he fell into a magic state of oblivion as to all that had
passed vrith her, when he presented himself at the court of
Wurms, and became the husband of Gudrun, or ChriemhUd, as
a recompense for having, by means of his tarn-cap, enabled
Gunnar to overcome the resistance of Brynhilda herself, and
obUged her to become his submissive bride. Revelations made
by the two ladies, when in a passion, led to vengeance being
treacherously wreaked upon Siegfried, who was pierced in
his vulnerable spot while he was lying down on his face to
drink from a fountain during a hunting party in the forest.
The remainder of the history is the vengeance taken for his
death ; and the North further holds that his chUd, Aslaug,
was left the sole survivor of the race, and finally married
Ragnar Ladbrog, whence her descendants always began their
pedigree with Sigurdr Fafner's bane.
His namesakes are weU-nigh innumerable. There are
X 2

3o8

HEROIC NAMES OF THE NIBELUNG.

nineteen in the Landnama-boh ; and Sigurdr swarms in the
earlier Scandinavian royal Unes, being, perhaps, most re
markable in the person of King Sigurd the Crasader of
Norway, whose dream of the early death of his brothers, and
his own old age of madness, is recorded in the Heimshringla,
and who likewise sanctioned the assumption of the crown of
SicUy by the Norman Robert de HauteviUe, who still clung
to the North as the cradle of his race.
At the instance of the king of Sweden, our Edred had sent
a missionary named Sigefried, who is esteemed the apostle of
Sweden, and gave a Christian sanction to the serpent slayer's
name, whence it has continued extremely common there.
The stout old Danish Earl Siwasd, the conqueror of Macbeth,
the same who had the bear's ears and would only die upon
his feet, is an English version of the northem Sigurdr, and
bore the name that is now Seaward. Indeed Saeward is
found among the kings of Essex in 6x6, and, in fact, that
line have so many prefixes of Sige, that it is Ukely that they
thought themselves connected with Fafner's bane. There is
a Sigefugel, or Sigewlf, in their descent from Odin, who may
be another form of Sigurd. Germany has made the femmine
Sigfrida.

EngUsh.
Sigefrid Siward
SeawardSeaforthSeyferth

French.
SigefroiSiffroi

German.
SigefridSiegfried
Sigfrid SeifridSikkoSicco
Sigo

Bavarian.
Sigl

Norwegian.
Sigvard
Sigurdhr Siurd
Sjurd
SjulSyvert SyverSiewers

ItaUan.
Sigefredo Siffredo

PoUsh.
Sygfryd

Some have considered the story to be chiefly Burgundian;

SIGUED. 309
and Sigmund, conquering protection, the name of Sigurdr's
father, was that of the first CathoUc king of Burgundy, who
was canonized both for the recovery of his kingdom from
Arianism, and for the severity of his penance, after having
killed his son, Sigeric, on a false stepdame's calumny. His
reUcs were carried to Prague in the fourteenth century, and
the effect of the translation appeared at once in the name of
the Bohemian-born Emperor Sigismund, from whom this
became European, and formed the feminine Sigismunda,
which appears in Cervantes' novel, and in the dismal tragedy
of Tancred and Sigismunda. Gismonda is thus an old
Lombardic feminine.

EngUsh.
SigismundSsemund

French.
Sigismond

ItaUan.
Sigismondo Sismondo

German.
Sigmund Sigismund

Portuguese. Sigismundo

Norwegian.
Sigmund
Ssemund

PoUsh.
Zygmunt

lUyrian.
Sisman

Hungarian.
Zsigmond Zsiga

Bohemian.
Zikmund

Some have imagined that the curious correspondence of
names, when Sigebert, the Frank, married BrynhUd, the
Goth, is a sign that the Nibelung referred to the Austrasian
court ; but the Frank Sigebert would have been a very poor
serpent slayer, and, no doubt, only bore the name as a re
membrance of him, as did our East Saxon monarch Ssebert,
and the Spanish bishop Siseberto. It has lasted on in Ger
many and Friesland, to be called Sizo, Sitto, Sibert, and
Sidde, and is the English surname Sebright. Sigelind, con
quering snake, now and then used by German ladies, has
the Eastern looking abbreviation Zelinde. It may, perhaps,
have contributed to Selina.

3iP

HEEOIC NAMES OF THE NIBELUNG.

Sigridur, or conquering impulse, was a favourite among
northern ladies. Sigrid the haughty of Sweden, was wooed
by King Olaff, Trygoesson, and had accepted him ; but on
her refusal to be baptized, he struck her on the face with his
glove, and said, ' Why should I have thee, an old faded jade,
and a heathen to boot.' She remembered his discourtesy
against him, and stirred up the war, which ended in his fatal
battle with Earl Sigvalddr. Sigrid is Sired in Domesday ; in
the North, she is shortened into Siri, and then latinized as
Serena. Sigvalldur, conquering power, curiously ran into Sjovald,
from whence we take our sumame Shovel, one of the many
by which our naval commanders are traceable to the
vikings. Sigeheri, Sigehere, Sighar, conquering warrior, is what
on Norman lips was Sagar, and then Saher, the hereditary
name of the De Quincys, and as a surname spelt Sayers.*
The other forms are.

North.
Sigbi0rgSiborg V Conquering protection
Siber J

I

Ger. Sigburg

German.
Sigebald

English.
Sibbald

Frisian.
Sibold
Sibel

ItaUan.
Sibaldo

} Conquering prince

North. Sigbiorn ; Eng. Siborne — Conquering bear

German.
Sigbod

Frisian.
Sibot
SiboSibbe

Spanish
Sisebuto

> Messenger of victory

* Nibelung ; "Weber and Jamieson ; Kemble, Beowulf; MichaeUs ; Pott;
Butler; Heimskringla.

BRYNHILD. 3 II

Nor. German. Frisian.

Sigbrand I Sigbrand | SiW J Conquering sword
Nor. Sigfus — Conquering impetuosity
German. EngUsh. Frisian. French.

SighardSiegert

Sigehard

SiardSiade

Sicard ) Conquering
f firmness

Ger. Sighelm — Conquering helmet
Nor. Sighvatr — Conquering swiftness
Nor. Sigmar ; Ger. Sigmar — Conquering greatness
Nor. Signy — Conquering freshness
Ger. Sigrad — Conquering advice
Ger. Sigrich — Conquering ruler
Sigtrud — Conquering maid
Nor. Sigtrygge — Conquering security
Nor. Sigulf, Siulf ; Eng. Sigewolf— Conquering wolf

Section LH. — Brynhild.
A thorough Valkyr was Brynhilda, the maiden whom Odin
had touched with his sleep-thorn, so that she lay in a deep
slumber in the midst of a circle of flame, through which
Sigurd made his way, aroused her, and won her for his ovm ;
but became utterly and magicaUy oblivious of aU that had
passed as soon as he had returned to common life. This is
the northern version, the evident origin of our fairy tale of
the Sleeping Beauty, pricked not by the thom of Odin, but
by the distaff, perhaps, of one of the Nornir. The Booh of
Heroes reduces the circle of flame to a mere strong castle,
' with seven gates ; and the Nibelungenlied only takes up the
story at the time of Sigfried's appearance at the court of
Burgundy, and courtship of Brynhild's rival, ChriemhUd.

312 HEEOIC NAMES OF THE NffiELUNG.
Brynhild had retained her matchless strength, and, like
the Greek Atalanta, was only to be won by a champion who
could excel her in games of strength, and her conquered
suitors were all put to death. Gunther, the brother of
ChriemhUd, being willing to obtain her on these conditions,
Siegfried, by means of his tarn cap, invisibly vanquished the
Valkyr, while Gunter appeared to be her conqueror; and
when she thus had been compelled to give her hand, it was
Siegfried who again unseen, broke down her violent resist
ance, and compelled her to become a submissive wife, on
which she lost all her supematural strength. Siegfried was
rewarded by the hand of ChriemhUd, Gunther's sister.
By-and-bye the two sisters-in-law had a desperate quarrel
about precedence ; in the old northem version, which should
wade farthest into the Rhine when bathing ; in the half-
civilized German song, which should first enter the cathedral
of Wurms ; and in the course of it, Brynhild was roundly
informed that she had not given way to her husband, but
to Siegfried. Valkyr nature could not stand such an affront,
so Brynhild set on Hagen to assassinate Siegfried. The
northern story makes her slay herself, and be burnt with his
corpse on a funeral pUe, in Suttee fashion ; the German tames
her into being merely brought to repentance too late by the
death of her husband.
No doubt from her was called the Gothic princess, daughter
of King Athanagild, who, for her misfortune, was married to
the Frank Sigebert, and through the whole of her long Ufe
continued a fierce and dauntless resistance to her savage
rival Fredegund, until when both were aged women, Bren-
hilda fell into her rival's power, and was implacably sen
tenced to be dragged to death by wild horses. Her high
spirit and generous habits left a strong impression, for she
has had the traditionary credit of most of the great works
unaccounted for in her kingdom. Near Bourges was a
Chsiteau de Brunehault, a Tour de Brunehault at Etampes,

BEYNHILD. 313
and in Belgium are roads, apparently Roman, but called
Chaussees de Brunehault. French historians aver that her
name was at first only Bruna, and that hilda was added to
make it royal ; but this is very unlikely, since Spanish his
torians call her Brenhilda. The Latinism is Brunechildis,
but the name has not been followed, except by the northem
race, whose existence was hardly developed at the time of
the misfortunes of the Austrasian queen, and who therefore
take it from her original. Among these it has been con
tracted to Brunilla and Brynil.
The meaning is the Valkyr of the Breastplate, the byrni
of old Scottish, bryne of the North, hruniga of the German,
broigne in Old French, bronha in Proven9al. A near con
nection of this name is the northem Bryngerd, placing the
gentle Gerda in this cuirass ; and the North has likewise
Brynjar, properly hari, the Cuirassier, and Brynjolfr, which
wolf in a breastplate was a great Icelandic ancestor, and has
been cut short into Brynjuv and Brynjo.
The ChriemhUd, or helmeted Valkyr of the Nibelung, is
the Gudrun of the northem version; and Gudrun, as before
said, would be either good 'wisdom, or, far more probably,
war wisdom. In the Nibelungenlied, the action of the story
begins with ChriemhUd telling her mother her dream of her
favourite falcon being torn to pieces by two eagles; and
when it is explained to mean her future husband, vowing
that she will never marry. However, Siegfried's arrival, and
his successful exertions in winning Brunhild for Gunther,
caused all the lady's scruples to be overpowered. In the
German Book of Heroes she has a garden full of roses,
seven miles round, fenced with a silken thread, guarded by
twelve champions, aU of whom are overcome by Dietrich
of Bern and his men.
She had lived happily ten years io the Netherlands with
Siegfried before, on a visit to Wurms, she was so ill-advised
as to reproach Brynhild with his victory over her ; and after-

314 HEROIC NAMES OF THE NIBELUNG.
wards was deluded into sevring a mark upon his garments to
show where his vulnerable spot was ; just as Frigga was de
ceived into teUing what alone could injure Baldur. After
his death, she found out the murderer by the ordeal of
touch, and treasured up a deadly and enduring spirit of
revenge ; perhaps the most terrible of all the many forms in
which legend has proclaimed the old rule of blood for blood.
The horrors of the House of Atreus hardly stand a compari
son with the vengeance of ChriemhUd.
She was left the heiress of all Siegfried's treasure, and
his Nibelungen or Netherlandian troops, but it was taken
from her by her husband's murderer, and sunk beneath
the Rhine. After thirteen years of widowhood, she was
induced to marry Etzel, or AtU, king of the Huns, by the
promise that he would avenge all her injuries ; but stUl
she bided her time for thirteen more years, at the end of
which space she invited her brothers and all their champions
to visit her in Hungary at Etzelenburg. They had not long
been there before she stirred up a most tremendous battle, in
which mutual destruction took place, as is minutely related
in the ancient lays. Finally her brother Gunther was cap
tured and slain at her savage command, and she herself slew
the murderer Hagen with Siegfried's own sword. Immedi
ately after, however, she was put to death as an act of justice
by old Sir Hildebrand; at least so says the Nibelungenlied ;
but in the Krnmpe Viser, there is a still further revenge, for
the secret of the deposit of the treasury is left with the son
of Hagen, who beguiled Grimhild into the cave with the hope
of its restoration, and there locked her in and starved her to
death. In the words of Jamieson's translation —
' Ranke hight that kemp that
Revenged his father dead ;
Grimhild in the treasury,
She quailed for want of bread.'
The historical Attila is really said to have tad a German

GUNTHER. 3 1 5
wife named Kremheilch. The Gudrun of the North is a far
more amiable personage. She forgives her brother, and is
with difficulty persuaded to marry AtU, who is, in this ver
sion, BrynhUd's brother, and lays the plot against Gunther,
m order to avenge his sister's death. She does all in her
power to warn them, but in vain ; and when all had been
slain, her senses failed her, and in her frenzy she slew her
two children by Atli, and made him drink their blood ; he
died of horror, and she cast herself into the sea, but was
carried alive to the land of King Jonakr, whom she married,
and then underwent other misfortunes which extinguished
the last remains of her family. Her name of Gudrun has
already been treated of.*
Section IV. — Gunther.
Gunth {(joth.) , guth (A.G.S.), gunnr (North), gond or gonz.
High German, all meant war or battle, and have an immense
number of derivative names, inextricably mixed up with
those from God and Gut ; and it is even thought that there
may be a close connection between them, so much did the
Teutons believe their deities to be gods of battle, and good
ness to be courage. The word gunth has lived on even in
Lombardy in the Gonfalon, the war banner, solemnly carried
out to battle in a car as the images of the gods had formerly
been, in charge of the official known as the gonfaloniere in
the republics of northem Italy. Gundahari, warrior, was
reaUy an old name among the kings of Burgundy, who were,
no doubt, called in honour of Gunther or Gunnar, the eldest
brother of Kriemhild, and husband of Brynhild. He seems
to have been brave but weak, led first by Sigurd, then by
Hagen, but at last fighting with great spirit.
Gunthar, or Gunnar, at full length Gimdahari, continued
* Nibelungenlied ; "Weber and Jamieson ; Thierry ; Mariana ; Munch.

3 1 6 HEROIC NAMES OF THE NIBELUNG.
in favour with the Burgundians ; and an abbot in Brittany
being canonized, left Gonthier to France, and Gontiere to Italy.
This mascuUne Gunnar was very common in the North,
and so was likewise the feminine Gunnr, war, or Gundvar,
war prudence, both confounded in Gunnar, which historians
generally render as Gunnora.
Gunnhildur was in high favour in the North. One most
celebrated owner was the wicked queen of Eric Blodaxe. She
was said to be a native of the Orkneys, and to have fiUed
Scandinavia with her crimes, upon the details of which, how
ever, Norse and Danish histories are not quite agreed. One of
the very finest poems in old Norse is said to have been com
posed by her desire as a lament for her husband ; and Danish
tradition finishes her story by declaring that the punishment
of her deeds of violence was that she was drowned in a bog.
The spot was thence called Gunhild's moss, and in curious
response to the story, in a place answering to the description,
a female corpse, like a black statue, in a surcoat of calfskin
and a shirt of Scottish tartan, is pegged down by wooden
hooks. The punishment of sinking in a morass was not un
common ; but it is the plaid that especially connects the
corpse with the wicked queen.
Gunhild again was the Danish princess whose murder on
St. Brice's night brought her brother Sweyn dovm in fury
upon England ; and her nephew Knud likewise had a daughter
so called, but who was anglicized into .^thelthryth ; and
each generation of the Godwine family records a lady Gun
hild. After the Conquest, however, Gunhild died away in
England ; but it has never been discarded in the North,
where it is now caUed Gunnilda, or Gunula.
That daughter of WilUam the Conqueror, or sister of
Gherbod, the Fleming, whichever she was, who was the
ancestress of the Warrennes, and is buried at Lewes, has a
name so much disguised as to be as doubtful as her birth.
It may be Gundtrud, a Valkyr title, or Gundridur, war haste.

GUNTHEE. 317
or Gundrada, war council, the same as the Spanish Gontrado;
at any rate it has had few foUowers.
Gunnr and Gondol were both Valkyr titles, and the
Valkyr Gondol's most noted namesake was a maiden of
the Karling race, who was bred up by St. Gertrude, at
Nivelle ; and on her return to her father's castle at Morzelle,
used to go to her early devotions at a church half a league
distant from home. On winter mornings she was lighted by
a lantern, which the legend avers to have been blown out by
the wind, but rekindled by her prayers. Thence comes the
name of St. Gundula's lamp, applied to the Tremella, an
orange-coloured jelly-like fungus that grows on dead branches
of trees in the vrinter. She is the patroness of Brussels,
where the church of St. Gudule is the place used for corona
tions ; but her common title in Flanders is Ste. Goelan, while
the convent built in her honour at MorzeUe, in Brabant, is
Ste. Goule.
War could not fail to have her wolf, the Gundulf of Norman
England, the Gunnolfr of Iceland, the Gundolf of Germany,
and, far more notable than either, the Gonsalvo or Gonzalo
of Spain, always frequent among the Visigothic families, and
becoming especially glorious in the person of the great cap
tain, the brave and honourable conqueror of Naples, and
the trainer of the infantry that gave the predominance to Spain
for a hundred years, untU they feU as one man at Rocroy.

French.
Gonsalve
Gonzalve

Provencal.
Guossalvo

Spanish.
Gonzalo

Portuguese. Gonpalo

ItaUan.
Consalvo

The war raven, Gunthram, figures in French history as
Gontran, and the war serpent is the German Gundlin, or
Gondoline, when a lady ; when a man, the terrible Guthorm,
whom, as King Alfred's foe, godson, and tributary, our
histories caU Guthrum. In Denmark, the name was very

3l8 HEROIC NAMES OF THE NIBELUNG.
early contracted into Gorm ; but it has been so often spelt
Gudthorm, that a doubt has arisen whether the latter half of
the word may not be thorm or thyrma.
It is very difficult to distinguish between the derivatives of
God and Gund, both being very apt to eliminate the distinc
tive letters. On the whole, however, it seems as if these
warlike names had been some of the most universal through
out the continent, though in England they were very scarce,
and do not occur in royal pedigree, nor in hagiology, except
in the case of St. Guthlac, the first founder of the origmal
Croyland Abbey, whose name in the North would be Gudleik
or Gulleik, war sport.
Hosts of northem Frankish and Visigothic names thus
commence, and many feminines end with this word. The
other varieties thus beginning are : —

Nor. Gunbjorg ; Ger. Gondaberge ; Goth Sp. — War protection
Nor. Gunbjorn — War bear
German. French.
Gondebert Gondobert "i
Gondeberta Gombert > War splendour
Gumpert Jombert J
Ger. Gondebald; Fr. Gondebaud ; Sp. Gondebaldo — Warprince
Nor. Gudbrand, 'Guldbrand, Gulbrand — War sword
Ger. Gundekar — War spear
Nor. Gunlaug, GuUaug — War liquor
Nor. Gunleif, (Eng. Cunliffe) — War love
Nor. German. Spanish.
Gudmar I Gundemar

Gulmar | Gutmar
Nor.
Gudmund
Gulmund

^°°^°'^^'^°]. War greatness
Gondomar J °

Nor. German,
Gudmund

Gundemund i tx- i i
r, ¦ J 1- v\ ar hand
(iunimund

}
Ger. Gunderich; Fr. Gonderic; Sp. Gonderico — ^War ruler
Sp. Gondesinda — War strength
Nor. Gunnstein — War jewel.

HAGEN. 3 1 9
Gunthe was the old German feminine contraction for any
of these warUke damsels, and being further endeared into
Jutte, or Jutta, was probably the source, under the hands of
chroniclers, of the Judiths, who make their appearance among
the Franks so long before the days of Scripture or saintly

Section V. — Hagen.
Haghen, Hagano, or Hogni, may be considered as the
viUain of the Nibelungen. In the Danish version he is the
half-brother of Grimhild and Gunther, with an elf-father ; in
the German, he is their wise and far-traveUed uncle, who first
related the adventures ofthe newly arrived stranger, Siegfried,
but always seems to have disliked him, and readUy undertook
to revenge BrynhUd's injuries upon him. As Loki deceived
Frigga, he persuaded his niece to mark where was the mortal
spot on her husband's skin, and contrived that no wine should
be taken into the forest, so that Siegfried might be reduced to
Ue dovm to drink at the stream, and thus expose the fatal place.
The body bled at his touch, and he was the chief object
of Chriemhilt's vengeance, more especially after he had taken
the treasure away from her, placed it in a cave beneath the
Rhine, and jealously guarded the secret of the spot. When
she invited the brothers to Hungary he was much averse to
the journey, tiU he found that his disinclination was imputed
to fear, when he became vehemently set upon going, in spite of
the omens against it. Taunts and injuries passed between
him and ChriemhUt, and the next day the fierce and furious
battle began, which raged tUl Gunther and Haghen alone
were left. After Gunther had been kiUed, ChriemhUt offered
Haghen his life, on condition that he would disclose the place
where the treasure was, but he refused, and died by her hand.
* Munch ; MichaeUs ; Nibelung ; Weher and Jamieson ; Mariana ;
Thierry; Garland for the Year ; Alban Butler; Fleischner, Onomalatologie;
Lappenburg ; Dasent, Burnt Njai ; Marryat, Jutland.

320 HEROIC NAMES OF THE NIBELUNG.
There is a curious poem, called the Buke of Aquitaine,
which is evidently another version of the same notion of
Haghen. Hagano, a descendant of the Trojans, is there sent
to deprecate the invasion of Attila, and afterwards assists the
Burgundian king Gunther of Wurms in an attack on Duke
Walther of Aquitaine, and Hildegunna, sister to Gunther, in
order to recover a treasure that they had carried off from
Attila's court, where they had been hostages. After this
fallen version of the great central story of Europe was named
Hagen, count of Aquitaine, the uncle of Charles the Bald ;
but the North has used it more, in the form of Hogen.
The name is either from hagr, deft, or handy, or else from
hagi, a hook ; most probably the latter, perhaps in connection
with the other meaning, a thom or prickle, so that here
we may find a personification of the thom destroying the
victor. The word hag is seldom found in names, and is
probably imitated from Hagen, without much regard to the
meaning. It occurs only in the Danish as Hagbrand, Hagbart,
contracted as Habaar, or Habor ; Hagthor, which is incorrectly
modernized as Hector and Hagny. The more usual form in
Denmark is Hogne, probably from the German Hagano.
But there has been a confusion between this Hagan, or
Hogni, and Haagan, properly Haakvin, from haa, high, and
kyn, meaning of high kin, the weU-knovvn Norwegian ahd
Danish name of many a fierce viking ; sometimes Latinized
as Haquinus, Frenchified as Haquin, and called in the North
Haaken, or Hakon. Domesday has it as Haco, Hacon,
Hacun, and Hakena, and Hacon still lingers among the fish
ermen of the Orkneys. Other northern names, with the
same opening, haa, (pronounced ho,) are Haamund, no doubt
the parent of our Hammond, and Haavard, whence our
Hayward, both alike meaning high protection.*
• LettBom ; Nibekmgenlied ; Weber and Jamieson; Munch; Anderson,
Royal and Noble Genealogies.

GHISELER. 321
Section VI. — Ghiseler.
Ghiseler is one of the brothers of Gimther, an inoffensive
personage, and the only one of the party of whom ChriemhUd
took any civU notice, when she had decoyed them to her court
to their destruction. Nevertheless he did not escape, but
died in combat with Wolfhart, of Bern, when the champions
of Dietrich could not be withheld from the fray.
His name is tolerably clear — Giselhare, the pledged warrior.
The first syllable is from gildan, geldan, keltan, to owe, or to
pay what was due. The terms ran through all the Gothic
tongues, and caused the Anglo-Saxons to call all the offerings
due to the gods gield and ghelstar. Thence money is das geld
in Germany, and gelten to cost ; gult, a provincial word for
rent or impost ; and, in England, fraternities of tradesmen
bound together by common obligations, are guilds, meeting in
their Guildhall, as in Germany they are gilden, and have
their gildhaus.
The word gild appears curiously in the old baptismal form
of renunciation drawn up by St. Boniface : — ' Frosachistu
Biabola? A. Ecforsache Biabolum. End allum BiaholgeldeP
End allum Biaholas wercumP End ecforsach allum Biaholes
wercum end werdum. Thunaer ende Saxnot, ende allum them
vnholdenem the hire genobas sint.'
A pledge of mutual obligation was, in Anglo-Saxon, gisel,
and is stiU gidsel in the North; in the German, geissel.
Thence, far more probably than from the older word geisli, a
beam, or nimbus, was derived the Frank Gisel, as a maiden's
name. A daughter of Pepin, so called, was offered to Leo X.
of Constantinople ; and afterwards the daughter of Charles
the Simple, who became the pledge of amity between the
Karlingen and Northmen, by her marriage with RoUo. She
was called by the French Gisele, by the Normans Gisla, in
which same form it has lived on in Friesland and in Norway.
The commenceihent is not, however, a very common one in
VOL. n. T

322

HEROIC NAMES OF THE NIBELUNG.

the North, though Giselher is repeated in Gissur Isleifson,
bishop of Iceland, in the eleventh century. Gislaug, the
pledge drink, is likewise northern, but though gils is an ex
tremely common termination, almost aU the names where it
is a commencement are Frankish, or German, and thus
probably Giselfrid came to the North as Gisrod.
Giselhilda, and Giselberge, were German, also Gisalhart,
and Giselof ; and GisaUico is found among the Spanish Goths.
Geltfried and Giltimir are also German forms, and the lat
ter explains Gelimer, the Vandal king in Africa, conquered
by BeUsarius.
Gils is a common Norwegian name, and no doubt contri
buted to the English Giles, French GiUes, and Spanish Gil,
though all these look to the Greek hermit in France, Aigidios,
as their patron. In the North .Sgidius is rendered by lUan,
Yljan, Yrjan, Orjan, but not by Giles : and it would seem as
if Julius had been confounded with the name, as weU as,
perhaps, Giolla, a servant.
Giolla Brigde, or Bridget's disciple, is thought to have
contributed the Scottish examples of Gilbert, which is incor
rectly explained by some as Gelb-bert, or yellow bright ; but
is clearly traceable to the old Frank Giselbert. There were
four saints so called, namely, an abbot of FonteneUe, a great
friend of William the Conqueror, an Auvergnat knight in the
second Crusade, the English founder of the order of Gilber-
tine monks, and a bishop of Caithness ; and it has been a
prevalent name in England, Scotland, and the Low Countries,
with many contractions, especially in the latter.*

EngUsh.
GilbertGUpinGil
Gibbon
Gipp

French.
GuilbertGisebertGileber
GUbertGhiUber

ItaUan.
Gilberto

German.
GiselbertGilbertGisbertGispert
Giseprecht

Dutch.
Gysbert

Flemish.
GiUi

* Munter; Munch; MichaeUs; Grimm; Took.

GHEENOT. 3 23

Section VH. — Ghernot.
Ghemot was Gunther's second brother, free of the guilt
of the murder of Siegfried, and greatly displeased with
Haghen for depriving ChriemhUt of the treasure, but he
shared the fate of his brothers, being kiUed early in the
encounter by the Markgraf Rudiger.
Perhaps, necessity of war, or spear compulsion, would be
the best sounding translations of this remarkable name.
Ghere, the same as the northern Gejr and German Kero,
is the messenger sent to invite Siegfried and Chriem
hUd to Wurms, when they paid the visit that had such fatal
consequences ; and gher or gjer is one of the most frequent
of the component parts of names. Its right and original
meaning is a spear, the same as that of the Latin quiris and
Keltic coir. Thence the Anglo-Saxons called all other
weapons waren, and the battle war, a word we stUl use as
war, just as the French do guerre, and the Spaniards
gu^rra. One great section of the Teutons were knovm as the
spearmen, Germanner, whence we call the inhabitants of
their country Germans, though they themselves adhere to
the more universal Deutsch, and the rest of Europe mostly
calls them and their country by the other tribe-title of
Alemanner. Gar is quite in modem German, and gher has dropt out
of the language, and thus most of the German names com
mencing with it have been misinterpreted to mean all, but it
is impossible to compare them with their northern cousins
without tracing the same spear in both.
St. Germanns, though from this root, has been treated of
among Roman names taken from nations, as it was not a
native Teutonic form.
The chief favourite amongst these spear titles seems to
Y 2

32;^ HEEOIC NAMES OF THE NIBELUNG.
have been once a Valkyr name GerdrM, or Geirthrud, the
spear maid; for alas! the pretty interpretation that has
caused so many damsels of late to bear it, as all truth, is
utterly untenable, unless they will regard themselves as
allegorically constant battle-maids, armed with the spear of
Ithuriel. The ancient popularity of this name was owing to a
daughter of one of the great Pepins, in their maire du
palais days. She founded the abbey of Nivelle, and was
intensely revered by the Franks and Germans, chiefly on
account of the miracles imputed to her. At old heathen
feasts, the cups quaffed in honour of gods or demi-gods were
prefaced by the words ' Wuotansminne, Thorsminne,' meaning
in Woden's or Thor's memory ; but the Christian teachers
changed these toasts to be in the memory of the saints, such
as Michelsminne for the guardian angel. Johainnisminne
was the special favourite, and was supposed to be a charm
against poison, because the Evangelist was thought to have
experienced the fulfilment of the promise, ' If ye drink any
deadly thing it shall not hurt you,' as typified by the dragon
in his cup. The royal nun, Gertrude, was almost as great a
favourite as the Apostle with the Germans, and the regular
toasts at their banquets came to be Johannisminne and Ger-
drutsminne, tUl drinking to St. John and St. Gertrude were
almost a proverb for revelry.
Let us observe, en passant, that minne, lately in honour of
Minna TroU erected into a lady's name, is from the Gothic
munan, to remember, from the Saxon form of which we take
our mind. It is the northern relative of memory ; the skalds,
who in the North commemorated the departed, were minne
singers in Germany, whence the French menestriers, and our
own minstrels ; and as their poems became amorous, minne was
transferred to love or affection, whence the mignon, or darling,
of the French, used in a despicable sense, as our minion.
Munnin, or memory, is one of Odin's ravens.

GHEENOT. 325
¦ A second St. Gertrude, of noble blood in Saxony, was
abbess of Heldelfs, had an exceedingly high reputation for
sanctity, and died in 1334, leaving her name doubly popular.
In Norway, the woodpecker, with black and white plumage
and a red head, is called the Jartrudfugl, or Gertrude bird,
possibly from the original Valkyr sense of Gertrud, just as
the red and black war-bird of America obtained its name
from its colours. Northern tradition, however, makes
Gertrude the name of a woman, who was baking when our
Lord passed by, and asked her for a morsel. On her pro
mising it, the dough began to grow beneath her hands ; but
an access of covetousness made her repent, and refuse her
gift, whereupon she was transformed into the bird, and con
demned to seek her living between the bark and the wood,
and never go home till the red should fall from her head,
and accordingly she migrates from Norway when she begins
to moult. In England, the same story seems to have been told
of the owl, as Hamlet says, ' They say the owl was a baker's
daughter.'

EngUsh.
Gertrude
Gatty

French.
Gertrude

ItaUan.
GertrudeGeltruda

Portuguese.
Gertrudes

German.
Gertraud
Trudchen

Bavarian.
Traudl Traul

Netherlands. Drutje
TrudjeTrudel

Danish.
Gertrud
Jartrud

Slovak.
JeraJ erica
Jedert
Jra

Lettish.
Ggrde GerteGedde

Esth.
Kert
Truto
Truta

Polish.
Giertruda

Lithuanian.
Trude

Hungarian.
Gertrud

326 HEROIC NAMES OF THE NIBELUNG.
There is great confusion between Gerwald and Gerhard ;
the one meaning spear power, the other firm spear.
Though gar was not a common English prefix, the first
Saint Gerhold was Anglo-Saxon. He migrated to Ireland,
received the cowl in the monastery of Mayo, founded that
of Tempul Gerald, died in 732, and became the subject of
one of the Irish legends of saints. It declared that the wife
of Caomhan, king of Connaught, turned him out of the fort
of Cathair Mhor, with his 300 saints, who thereupon joined
him in one of the peculiar prayers of Erse saints, that there
never should be another king of the same race for ever.
However, he afterwards relented, and only cut off from the
throne the offspring of the lady herself, while to those of the
king's former wife he granted the right of sitting first in the
drinking house and of arraying the battle. The Irish call
him Garalt, and have confused his name with the Keltic
Gareth, one of the knights of the Round Table, so that
Garrett and Gerald are regarded as identical.
The great prevalence of the name in Ireland is, however,
chiefly owing to the Normans. There had been two Frank
saints thus called in the twelfth century, Gerard of Toul,
and Girroald of FonteneUe ; but it was also a Lombardic
name, and the old Florentine family of the Gherardi claims
the parentage of one of the many Gerolds who accompanied
William the Conqueror, the same whose descendant, Maurice
Fitzgerald, was one of the companions of Earl Strongbow,
and parent of the Fitzgeralds, or Geraldins, of Kildare, the
turbulent race, who disputed with the Butlers of Ormond
the supremacy of the island. Lady EUzabeth Fitzgerald,
a daughter of this house, was the lady who, in imitation of
Beatrice and of Laura, was erected by Surrey into the herome
of his poetry, under the title of the Fair Geraldine, thus lead
ing to the adoption of this latter as one of the class of romantic
Christian names. Gerald Barry, whom the Welsh chronicler
latinizes himself as Giraldus Cambrensis,may have been rightly

GHERNOT. 327
Gareth, and the provincial form Jarrett, stiU common in the
North, is probably rather a remnant of the Gareth of Strath
cluyd, than a version of the Norman Gerald.
Another St. Gerald, bishop of Namur, left his name to be
very common in the Low Countries, where we have already
shown how curiously the transformation was effected of Ger
hard Gerhardson into Desiderius Erasmus. Lastly, a St.
Gerhard went on a mission to convert the Hungarians, and
the name, or rather the two names, for there is no dis
tinguishing between them, have become universal.

EngUsh.
GerardGarrettJarett

French.
Gerard
Giraud Girairs

Proven9al.
Girart
Guerart

ItaUan.
GherardoGerardo

German.
Gerhard

Netherlands. GerardGerritGeert

Dutch.
Gerhardus
Gerrit

Frisian.
Geerd

Danish.
Gerhard Geert

Polish.
Gieraud

Lettish.
Gerkis Gerts

Hungarian.
Geller

English.
Gerald

French.
GiraudGuirauldGirault

ItaUan.
Giraldo

German.
Gerold

Frisian.
GeroldGereltGerel

Gerhardine in German, and Giralda in Italian, are the
feminines, besides our ovm Geraldine. Possibly Giralda
may once have been the Valkyr name Geirhilda, which has
survived in the North in the form of JeriUa, jer being the
Northern corruption of geir. Jerlau is thus Geirlaug, and
Jeruf, or Jerul, Geirolf.
In Uke manner, though with different pronunciation, we

328 HEROIC NAMES OF THE. NIBELUNG.
make Jervis out of the old Norman Gervus, which was pro
bably Geirfuss, or warlike eagerness. It used to be explained
as gerfast, all firm, but this is, of course, wrong ; though, as
I have not found Geirfuss in the roll of northern names, and
it would have been Gerfuns in Germany, where Gerwas "is
common, as is Gervais in France, and Gervaso in Italy, this
must be doubtful.
The Gerberge of French history, the queen of Louis
I'Outremer, was the same as the Geirbjorg of the North :
Gerwin, or spear friend, made the Guarin of France, whence
the Waryn of a few English famiUes, and Guarino of Italy.
The old Spanish-Gothic feminine Garsendis was certainly
Garswinth, or spear strength, and the equaUy ancient Garsias,
or Garcia, so common in Galicia and Navarre, must have its
first syllable from the same source, though the last has lost
its individuality on the soft Spanish tongues. It was long a
royal name, but was dropped about the thirteenth century,
and makes its last public appearance in the person of the
good knight GarcUasso de la Vega.
The spear raven, Gerramn, is the old EngUsh Jerram, that
lias become lost in Jerome ; and the spear prince, Gerhold,
has furnished the family name of Garibaldi. Gar is very
rare in native Anglo-Saxon names, whether as a beginning
or end, but most frequent in all the other branches of the
Teuton stock ; and its other form, gais, is the most reasonable
explanation of the beginning of the name of Geisserich, the
king of the Vandals, who has been made into Genserieh, and
then translated into the gander king ! The remaining forms
are: —

Ger. Gerbert ; It. Gerberto— Bright spear

Ger. Gerfrid — Spear peace

Nor. German. Neth. Frisian.

Gierlac Gerlach

Garlef Spear sport

GerUb

Gariaf Garleff Spear relio

FOLKER. 329

Nor. Geirmund, Garmund — Spear hand
Nor. Geirny — Spear fresh ; Gierrandur — Spear house
Nor. Geirridur — Spear impulse : Gierstein — Spear stone
Nor. Geirthiofr — Spear thief
Geirvor — Spear prudence
Nor. Geirvart ; Fris. Gerber — Spear guard

Section VHI. — Folker.
Of all the champions of Burgundy, none is more full of
gallantry and bonhommie than Folker, the mighty fiddler of
Alsace, a true knight, always equally ready for music or for
fighting. If the Nibelungenlied be really another form of the
Eddaic myth, Folker may answer to Bragi, the god of poetry,
but he has his own individual character of blithe undaunted
courage. Even when the terrible battle has begun, and the
heroes find themselves hemmed in by Chriemhild's warriors,
Folker fiddles on, and
' King Etzel cried, " Alas and woe
That to this feast they came,
For there a fearful champion fights,
Folker is his name.
' " Raging like a savage boar,
A fiddler mad is he ;
Praised be my luck, that from the fiend
I could in safety flee.
' " Foully his lays resound ;
His fiddlestick is red ;
And ah ! the dreadful tones
Strike many a champion dead." '
However, when Theodoric at last interfered, the brave
Folker at length died by the hand of old Sir Hildebrand.

330

HEROIC NAMES OF THE NIBELUNG.

In the Danish baUad he is called Folkvard or Folqvar, and
is Hogen's brother. He retains his fiddlestick.
' The first straik flfteen kempis,
Laigh to the floor did straik ;
Ha! ha! Folkqvar Spillemand,
Well wags thy fiddlestick.'
But what could avaU when, by Grimhild's treachery, the
floor was spread with wet hides and scattered with pease !
Folker's name is from our own word folk, the near relation
of the Latin vulgus, whose progeny are found all over Europe
in vulgar, vulgo, foule, &c. Most likely Folkvard is really the
right version, and would mean people's guard, and that
Folker is rather its corruption than independently the peo
ple's warrior, and the same with Folko ; they are, therefore,
all thrown together in the following table.

EngUsh.
Fulk

German,
Volquard
Volkvart
Folkward FolquhardFolkhard
Folker Folko
Pulko

Frisian.
Folkert Poke
Pokko

Nor.
FolkvardFolke Fokke

French.
Fulcher
FeuquiersFoulquesFouques

In the Foulques stage, this name was borne, alternately
with Geoffroi, by the counts of Anjou, and with the strange
soubriquets of Nerra and Richin. One of these counts, the
grandfather of our Henry H., became king of Jerusalem ;
but our English Angevins made no use of it ; and though six
Fulcos are recorded in Domesday, Fulk never took root in
England, and is chiefly remembered because it belonged to
Fulk Greville, the friend of Sydney. It was, in fact, vfith
aU its varieties, chiefly Burgundian, and La Motte Fouque's

DANK'WART. 23 ^
ancestors brought the form that he bore in his surname to
Prussia, when they were expelled from France by the revo
cation of the Edict of Nantes. Therefore he called his
favourite mirror of chivalry Folko de Montfaucon, but he
seems to have imagined that it meant a falcon, an idea into
which the sound /a/co had betrayed the few who, at that time,
had tried to understand Christian names.
Germany shows a few other forms : Folkwin, or Volquin,
which exactly answers to Demophilos, or Publicola ; Folkrad,
Folkrich, and Folkmar ; also Folkbert, which some prefer to
Wilibert, as the origin of the Savoyard Filiberto, and our
Fulbert.*

Section IX. — Banhwart.
In the Nibelungenlied the father of ChriemhUt, who dwelt
at Wurms, was 'bight Dankrat,' and the marshal at the
court was Dankwart the swift, Hagen's brother. Innocent
as he was of a share in his brother's crime, he was the first
to be assailed while he was dining with Etzel's knights, and
he had to fight his way through Chriemhild's warriors before
he could return to his comrades in the hall, when he kept
the door until, like all the rest, he perished in the massacre.
The first syllable of the name is really the same as our
word thanh, and the name means thankful or grateful. The
father of ChriemhUd was thus Thank-rede, or grateful speech,
and from him the Northmen seem to have taken their Thak-
raad, which in Normandy "fcecame Tancred, the knight of
HauteviUe, whose twelve gallant sons chased the Saracens
from Apulia, and were the founders of the only brave dynasty
that ever ruled in the enervating realms of the Two Sicilies.
The son of one of these gaUant knights, Tancredi di Puglia,
was the foremost in the first crusade, and the favourite hero
• NiheUmgenlied ; 'Weber and Jamieson ; Munch; MichaeUs.

33'^ HEROIC NAMES OF THE NIBELUNG.
of Tasso, in whose epic he is a Christian Achilles ; and Tan
credi again was the last Sicilian king of the true Norman
line, the same whose bickerings with Coeur de Lion make so
unpleasant an episode in the third Crusade. Though appear
ing in the tragedy of Tancred and Sigismunda, the name has
never again been popular.
Dankwart, thankful guardian, lingered in Germany ; and in
1668, a Yorkshire register records the baptism of Tankard,
the son of a ' Turkey merchant,' who had probably learnt the
name from some of his foreign connections. Dankheri,
thankful warrior, was in Normandy Tancar, whence the city
of Tancarville, and the English sumame of Tankerville.
Dankker is the German surname, and has even come to
Tanzen ; so that our sumame Dance may have the same
origin. Thangbrand was the German priest whom King Olaf
Tryggvesen of Norway sent to convert Iceland, but whose
severity led to his expulsion; and Germany also mentions
Dankmar ; but the prefix is almost exclusively German.'*

Section X. — Theodoric.
Theodoric of Bern is hardly a genuine hero of the
Nibelung, being really the main figure in a cycle of Germanic
romances of his own ; but as he, under the abbreviation
Dietrich, is brought in to play a considerable part in the
final action of the tale, this seems the fittest place for treat
ing of him and the names in connection with him.
He seems to have been brought into the Nibelungenlied
because the Germanic mind could conceive of nothing consi
derable passing without him. He is represented as one of the
four- and- twenty princes in King Etzel's train, and as anxious
to prevent mischief to the visitors from Burgundy, warning
them of Chriemhilt's enmity, and refusing to attack them at
* Nibelungenlied; Munch; Pott.

THEODORIC. 233
her request. When the great slaughter began, it was
Dietrich who conveyed the king and queen safely out of the
mil^e, and withheld his men from engaging in it, until almost
at the end, when they could no longer be restrained, and
rushing into the fray were all slain but old Sir Hildebrand,
though on the other hand, Gunther and Haghen alone re
mained alive of the Burgundians. Dietrich then armed
himself, and after a fierce combat, made them both prisoners,
and deUvered them up to ChriemhUt, fully intending that
she should spare their lives ; but when her relentless fury had
fallen on them, he assisted King Etzel to bury the dead, and
to return the horses and armour of their fallen champions to
their respective countries.
Other German romances, however, elevate this prince to a
much higher rank. The Book of Heroes, written by Wolfram
of Eschenbach, and Heinrich of Ofterdingen, begins with
his ancestor, Hughdietrich, son of the Greek emperor, who
gained the hand and heart of the princess of Salneck in a
^female disguise, and whose son Wolfdietrich, as already men
tioned, was carried off by a she-wolf, and thence derived his
name, given to him when St. George stood godfather to him !
Wolfdietrich's dragon-killing exploits and other victories are
described at length; and after his wife's death he became
a monk. On an invasion of the Pagans, he came forth in
fuU. fury, and gained a great victory ; but he paid dearly for
.breaking his rule, for as he watched all night in church he
was beset by the ghosts of all the warriors he had slain.
' Half the night against the ghosts
He waged the battle fierce ;
But the empty air he struck
¦When he weened their breasts to pierce.
' Little recked they for his blows.
With his terror and his woe;
Ere half the night was past,
His hair was white as snow.'

334 'HEROIC NAMES OF THE NIBELUNG.
The great-grandson of this hero was Dietrich of Bem, in
Lombardy, son of King Dietmar. Hearing of Chriemhilt's
rose garden, which measured seven miles round, and was
guarded by twelve champions, he was seized with a desire
to do battle with them, for love of battle, not of ladies,
though the victor was to receive a chaplet of roses and a
kiss from the young lady. The wise old Sir Hildebrand, of
the Wolfing line, conducted him and his eleven companion
champions to Wurms, where the single combats took place,
Dietrich's knights were successful, and for the most part took
the chaplets, but refused the kisses, because they disdained
ChriemhUd as a faithless maiden.
Even the horny Siegfried himself, who is here reduced
to a mere defender of the rose garden, had his hawberk and
horny skin cut through by Dietrich, and was forced to hide
under Chriemhilt's veil, and her father, here called Ghibich,
was obliged to swear fealty to the king of Bern.
Another section of the Booh of Heroes describes the feats
of Dietrich, in company with his friend Dietlieb and Wittich,
the son of Wieland, to rescue Similt, the sister of Dietlieb,
who had been carried away by Laurin, king of the dwarfs, to
a fairy land in the heart of the Tyrol. The Danish WUkina
Saga further tells of Thidrek, son of King Thietmar, of
Bern, in Aumlungaland, or Italy, the land of the Amaler;
teUs how he was brought up with HUdebrand, and how he
was the head of a society of heroes, including Vidga and
Sigurd. Then comes the Niflung Saga, much as we have
before related from the Nibelungen-noth ; and it was when
Thidrek and Hildebrand were returning alone together after
the slaughter, that Hildebrand had his battle with his un
known son Alebrand. Thiderik was afterwards crovmed
emperor of Rome, and embraced the Christian faith, living
to the age of i8o or 200 years. A Danish ballad de
scribes 'Kong Tidrich's' tremendous battle with a Lind-
wurm, the progeny of one that had escaped his great-grand-

THEODORIC. 235
father Wolfdietrich. He was led to enter on the battle by
the entreaties for help of a lion whom the dragon had
seized; but at flrst he came by the worst, for his sword
broke, and ' The Lindwarm took him on her back,
His steed beneath her tongue,
Bore them into the hollow hill
To her eleven young.'
She bade them eat the horse to pass away the time while
she rested, promising that on her awakening they should
devour the knight. In the cave, however, Tidrich found
the magic sword of Siegfried and two knives ; and in spite
of the threats of the young dragons, and the promises of
the old one, he killed them all; but the old worm fell
so as to choke the mouth of the cave, whereupon the
friendly lion dug him out, and supplied the place of the
slain steed by carrying him to Bern on his back. It is
further said that Dietrich, with all the other chief heroes,
were summoned by a spell to gratify the desire of Charle
magne, to see the great men of old. They came in three
rows on their war horses ; Dietrich leapt from his horse,
and, all following his example, they seated themselves round
the throne of Charlemagne. A still wilder tale makes
Dietrich of Bem the son of a spirit, removed from earth at
the summons of a dwarf.
So much for romance. History mentions a real Theodoric,
son of Theudemir, and king of the Ostrogoths in Italy, from
475 to 527. He had been sent as a hostage to Constantinople,
and there educated ; and though he could not write his name,
and had a stamp perforated with the letters Theod to enable
him to sign his letters, he was exceeding able, wise, and skil
ful, and Arian as he was, conciliated the love of the Catho
lics. Verona was his chief city, and evidently the Bern of
the romances. He lived too late for the historical AttUa,

33^ HEEOIC NAMES OF THE NIBELUNG.
who had died in 453 ; and though there is a report of
a previous Theodoric, who meddled in a dissension be
tween Attila's sons, and took part in a great slaughter that
lasted fifteen days, it is most likely that the original Theu-
derik was a mythical personage, after whom these historical
princes were called, and who afterwards received the credit of
some of their deeds, and was localized in the places of their
dominion. It is in favour of this notion that Dietrich of
Berne is one of the many titles of the wild huntsman,
though the Lusatians corrupt him into Dietrich Bemhard,
and the Low Countries into Dirk-mit-den-Beer, or with the
beard. Indeed, Dirk, the Dutch form of Theodoric, was
a half mythical king of HoUand.
My own idea is that Theodorik is connected with the very
roots of the Teuton race. The word's direct signification is
ruler of the Teutons, that is, of the people. The term for
people was the German, teutes; Saxon, theow; Frank, theata;
Gothic, theada ; Northern, thjod ; the same word from
which Deutsch, Dutch, Teutones all come. But this word
thiuda is almost the same with the thiodo that among
the continental Saxons meant a priest, as thiota did among
the AUemanni ; and dienst, or service, no doubt came from
thence. But Diensttag is the German Tyr's-day ; and Tyr,
as was before shown, is the same word as Beus. May it
not, then, be that the national term conveyed the divine
origin of man ?
It is true, that the Teutons invented an ancestor Tuisco,
earth-born, and parent of the Goths and Germans, as Odin is
of the Saxons and Northmen. This is the name given him by
Tacitus ; but in Gothic, he was Thiudiska ; in High German,
Diutisco ; in Frank, Thyois. Some think the term means
the double or twin of Odin, but it is more likely to have
been a creation backwards from the national title. And may
not the dim idea of a great Theodoric have been that of a
great divine ruler, it may be of Tyr himself? It was a most

THEODOEIC.

337

universal name, Anglo-Saxon and Visigothic, as well as
Frank and German ; and two saints made it everywhere
popular in the middle ages, though the Dutch at present
chiefly use it.

EngUsh.
TheodricTheodoric Derrick
Terry Tedric (Domesday)

French.
TheodoricThierry Thian Thean

ItaUan.
TeodoricoDieterico

Span, and Port.
Theodorico

German.
Dietrich Dietrich
Diez Diether

Bavarian.
Dietl

Frisian.
TiaderikTiarik
TiarkTiado Tiaddo
TodoTadeTidoTide
Dudde

Danish.
Tjodrokr Didhrilcr
TheodrckrTidrich Didrik

Dutch.
Diederik
Dierk
Dirk

Slovak.
Todorik

' PoUsh.
Dytrych

Bohemian.
Detrich

Lettish.
DiriksDidschis
Tiz

Hungarian.
Ditrik

The name of Dietmar, the father of Theodoric, is to be
found in many forms; in Theudemir, a Frank, who faith
fully served Constantius ; in an Ostrogothic Theodomir ;
Spanish, Theodomiro; and the modern Frisian, Thiadmar,
Tiedmer, Tyeddemer, Tidmer. It means people's greatness.
Dietleib, his friend, is rightly Ditlev ; and in the North,
Thjodleif, the people's relic, or what is left to them. He,
too, survives m constant Friesland, as Teallef, Taedlef,
Tiadelef. VOL. II. 2

33^

HEEOIC NAMES OF THE NIBELUNG.

Our own Tidemann and Tidy are importations from some
Netherlandish Thiad, as our Todd and Dodd are from some
Danish Thjod. The German Dieto conducts us to the deri
vation of their word Diet, for the convocation of the princes
of the empire ; and Theudis is the dignified form in whioh
this name, when belonging to a Spanish king, has come to
us. The chief favourite of this class is, however, the people's
prince, occurring both among the Frank and early Anglian
kings, and belonging to two French hermits and one EngUsh
archbishop. It took firm root in Provence, and has an aroma
of crusades and courts of love surrounding it ; and though it
is not in Domesday, it and its contractions survive as English
surnames ; and in a Gloucestershire parish register of the
eighteenth century, the feminine form occurs frequently in
every variety of spelling ; Tibelda, Tiballa, Tibotta; Tybal.
In Reynard the Fox, Tibald is the name of the cat, thus ex
plaining the Tib, by which pussey is so often called, and
which may, perhaps, when the clouded tabby^silks came m
from Italy, have been confused with them, and accounted for
the term tabby.

EngUsh.

French.

Spanish.

Portuguese.

Theodebald

Theudobald

Theudebaldo

Theobaldo

Theobald

Thiebault

Tybalt

Thiebaud

Tibbie
Tibaut
Dibble
Italian.
German.
Dutch.
Netherlands.
Teobaldo
Dietbold
Tibout
Dippolt
Tebaldo
Diephold
The people's wolf was canonized as a Frank hermit, who
gets called St. Thiou. Our friend Theodolf, the Icelander,
as Fouque caUs him, would have been in his own land Thjo-
UTA, ORTWIN, 239
dolf, and the contraction is there Kjold, or Kjol, as KjoU,
or Kjoille, is for ThjodhUd, the same as the DiuthUt of the
Germans, and TheudhUda, a nun-sister of Clovis. St. Au-
dard has undergone a still greater change ; he was once
archbishop of Narbonne, and called Theodhard, or ward, the
Tiard of Friesland, and Thjodvar, or Kjovar, in the North.
The remaining forms are.

Dietgar Theodokar — People's spear

Ger. Dietbert ; Frank. Theudebert — People's brightness
Ger. Dietbrand — People's sword
Ger. Dietburg — People's protection
Nor. German. Frank.
Thjodgjer ^
Toger
KiogjeirKygeir Kyer Ger. Dietfrid ; Prank. Theodofrid — People's peace
Ger. Theodegisel ; It. Teodisclo — People's pledge
Ger. Diether — People's warrior
Nor. Thjodhjalm ; Ger. Diethelm — People's helmet
Ger. Dietlind ; Lomb. Theudelinda — People's snake
Ger. Dietman — People's man
Ger. Diutrat ; Frank. Theodorada — People's council
Ger. Dietram — People's raven
Nor. Thjodvald, Kjodvald, Kjoval — People's power.*

Section XI. — Uta, Ortwin.
Frau Uote was the mother of Kriemhild, who interpreted
her dream and predicted the early death of her bridegroom.
OrtwiUj of Metz, was truchsess, or carver, and was the nephew
of Hagan and Dankwart, sharing, of course, their fate.
* Weber and Jamieson; Munch; Grimm; Butler; Nihelimg.
Z 2

34° HEEOIC NAMES OF THE NIBELUNG.
They are not very interesting personages, but it is curious
that they bear the only names, among aU the Nibelungen,
which have any genuine Anglo-Saxon likenesses ; that is, if
Uote is, indeed, from the word, in Anglo-Saxon, ead, in the
North aud, in Maeso-Gothic audr, in High German od, every
where meaning wealth. Some ascribe it to the same root as
good and as Woden, including them with adel, noble ; but its
derivatives are more easy to follow than its forefathers.
In the North, odel is the term for property to which an
entire family retains an equal right, all-od, or allodial property.
But when the warriors made incursions on their neighbours,
they obtained, in addition, their share of spoil, originally
cattle, /eA, or feo, i.e., their /ee. So feh-od came to be the
word for possessions gained by the individual by personal
service to his lord, and thus passed from cattle to land itself,
when held of the chief on condition of following him in war ;
and thus we have the feudal system, with its feoffs and, too
often, its feuds.
The feminioe of this word probably named Uta. It was
popular everywhere. Audur-diupaudga, or Audur the deeply
rich, was a female viking, one of the first Icelandic settlers,
who called a promontory Kambness, because she dropped her
comb upon it ; nor has her name passed from her ovm country,
whUe, in Norman-England, it appears first as Auda and then
as Alda, answering to Alda, the wife of Orlando the Paladin,
and Alda queen of Italy in 926, also to another Alda, a lady
of the house of Este, in 1393. These are from the Gothic
and Scandinavian aud ; but the High German form was also
represented by Oda and the Low German by the old Saxon
Ead, which was soon translated into Ide, the most common of
all the early feminines in the Cambrai register, together with
its diminutive Idette. Ida was the name of king Stephen's
granddaughter, the countess of Boulogne, was always used in
Germany, and has of 'late been revived in England, from its
sounding like the poetical mountain of the Troad.

UTA, OETWIN.

341

It is not quite clear whether Othilie, the Alsatian virgin
ofthe seventh century, who was said to have been bom blind,
but to have obtained sight at her baptism, is a form of Odel,
noble, or a diminutive of Oda; or whether she is Otthild, an
swering to our Eadhild, one of the many sisters of J3thelstane:
and there is the same doubt with Odilo and Odilon, the mas
culines. The masculine form of aud was extremely common. We
had it in the person of Ida, king of Bernicia ; the North
owned many an Audr; the Germans used Odde, Orto, and
Otto, and when the gallant Saxon counts won the impe
rial crovm, they took the old Latin Otho for the rendering of
their name. France, meantime, had called her Burgundian
prince Eudon, but when a relay of Norman Audrs appeared,
they were Odons ; and in the needlework with which Queen
Matilda adorned Bayeux cathedral, her husband's doughty
episcopal half-brother is always labelled ' Odo Eps,' when he
appears in his patchwork wadded suit, saying grace, exhorting
the youths, or laying about him with a club. But though we
had previously had a grim Danish archbishop Odo, and
though Domesday shows plenty of Eudos and Odos, neither
form took root, and both are entirely continental.

French.
Odon
Eudon
Eudes Othes

Provencjal.
Orzil

Italian.
OttoOttoneOttorino

German.
OdoOttoOrto Otho

Nor.
Audr OdoOddr

Lettish.
Atte Attin.scb

Ortvin the truchsess, had his namesake in the Lombard
Audoin, father to Alboin, also, in the Frank Audwine,
blessed by St. Columbanus, beloved by St. Eligius, and bishop
of Rouen, whose loveliest church is that of St. Audoenus,
now transformed by French lips into St. Ouen. And, at
home, we hail the same ' rich friend ' in Eadwine, the first

34^^ HEEOIC NAMES OF THE NIBELUNG.
Christian king of Northumbria, whose conversion is the most
striking portion of Bede's history. His dominion extended
over the Lothians, and he disputes with Aodh and the Mim
the naniing of Edinburgh. Beloved as he was, his name of
Edvrin never entirely died away, and became in modem times
diffused by the popularity of Goldsmith's ballad, and of
Beattie's minstrel. It is just knovm upon the Continent.
Ortwin, or Audoenius, is very possibly the Don Ordono of
the early Spanish kingdoms ; but Germany has chiefly
dealt in the independent Odvin. Edwin, in spite of Mr.
Taylor's tragedy of Edwin the Fair, is not the same as Edwy,
namely Eadwig, rich war, a name weU remembered for the
unhappy fate of the ovmer.
Odoacer, as the Romans called him, who was put to death
by Theodoric, was properly Audvakr, treasure watcher ; not
quite the same as the Germanic Ottokar, or Ortgar, happy
spear, which is identical with our familiar Eadgar, or Edgar.
This name, after being laid to rest with the Anglo-Saxon
monarchy, came to life again with the taste for antiques ; and
Edgar Ravenswood, in his operatic character, has brought
Edgar and Edgardo.
Eadmund, or happy protection, is one of our most English
names, belonging to the king of East Anglia, who, as the
first victim of the Danes, became the patron saint of Bury
St. Edmund's, and the subject of various legends. The sud
den deaths of Sweyn, and afterwards of Eustace de Blois,
when engaged in ravaging his shrine, made him be regarded
as an efficient protector ; and Henry IIL, when he had the
good taste to make his sons Englishmen, christened the second
after this national saint, so that Edmunds were always to be
found in the House of Plantagenet, and thence among the
nobility and the whole nation. The Irish called it Emmon,
the Danes adopted it as Jatmund, in addition to their own
Oddmund, the French occasionaUy use it as Edmond, and
Italy knows it as Edmondo.

UTA, ORTWIN.

343

The most really noted of all our own genuine appellations
is, however, Eadvard, the rich guardian. It comes to light
in our royal line with the son of Alfred, and won the popular
love for the sake of the young king whom St. Dunstan and
the English called the martyr, in their pity for his untimely
fate. And again, Uttle as ' the Confessor had been loved in
his feeble Ufetime, enthusiastic affection attached to him as
the last native sovereign ; while, on the one hand, it was the
policy of the Norman kings to regard him as their natural
predecessor, and of the barons to appeal to the laws that had
prevailed in his time. All parties thus were ready to elect
St. Edward to be the patron saint of England, and, in the
ardour of embellishing his foundation of Westminster Abbey,
it was natural to give his name to the heir of the crovm,
afterwards ' the greatest of the Plantagenets.' The deaths of
his three children bearing Norman or Spanish names confirmed
this as the royal name, and the third so called spread it far
and wide. It was carried by his granddaughter to Portugal,
and there had its honour so well sustained by her noble son,
as there to find another home ; and with us it has recurred
continually in every rank, though since the yoimg Tudor,
of beloved memory, it has never, as yet, again reached the
throne. The Irish use it to render Diarmaid, but they have
the Erse form, Eudbaird.
The contraction Neddy, common to all of these, is one of
the titles of a donkey.

EngUsh.

Welsh.

French.

ItaUan.

Edward

Jorwarth

Edouard

Odoardo

Neddy

Erse.

Teddy

Eudbaird

Portuguese.
German.
Nor.
Netherlands.
Duarte
Ednard
Jaward
Ede
Oddward
Audvard
344 HEROIC NAMES OF THE NIBELUNG.
The other less celebrated parallel varieties are :

Eng. Eadbald- Rich prince
Eng. Eadburh — .Rich pledge
Eng. Eadburge ; Nor. Oddbjorg ; Ger. Edburge —
Rich protection
Eng. Eadbryht — Rich splendour
Eng. Eadfrith ; Ger. Otfrid ; Prov. Audafrei — Rich peace
Eng. Eadfled ; Fr. Audofled — Rich increase
Nor. German.
Oddgrim I Ortgrim | Riet helmet
Audgrim | J
Nor. Odgisl — Rich pledge
Nor. German. French.

Audgunnr Ougunna
Augunna

Oddgund

Augen Rich war

}

Nor. Odkel, Odkatla— Rich kettle
Fr. Authaire — Rich warrior
Oddlaug — Rich liquor
Nor. Oddleif; Ger. Ortleip, Ortleib— Rich relic
Eng. Eadmar; Nor. Odmar; Ger. Otmar— Rich greatness
Nor. Oddny — Rich freshness
Eng. Eadred — Rich council
Eng. Eadric, Edric ; Ital. Odorico — Rich kiog
EngUsh. Nor. German.
Eadulf I Odulf I Oddulf } ^. , ,,
I Gulf I Ortwulf I I'lc'i^olf
EngUsh. German.

EadwaldEdwald

Edvald •) ^. ,
Odvald f Rich power.

UTA, ORTWIN. 345
Eadswith, Eadgifu, and Eadgyth, aU once separate names,
together with Adelgifu and -^Ifgifu, seem to have been all
mixed up together by the Normans. Eadgyth was un
doubtedly the name of Earl Godwin's daughter, of whom
Ingulf said, ' Sicut spina rosam, genuit Godwinus Egitham;'
but in the roll of her lands in Domesday, she is Eddeva,
Eddid, and Edeva, and for some little time Edeva seems to
'have been used among the Normans, though the queen of
Henry I. was not allowed to retain anything so Saxon.
Aline and Edith were used in a few families, but Edith
survived the others ; it belonged to Pope's mother, and to
Southey's wife ; was bestowed by Scott on the Maid of Lom,
and on the heroine of Old Mortality, and has become at pre
sent the reigning English favourite.
Giav or give is not a very common commencement ; but in
the VUkina Saga, King Gjuko is the father of Gunnar and
Gudrun, and the whole family are called Giukungr. In
German, in the Book of Heroes, he is Gibicho, and there was
reaUy a historical Burgundian King Gibica, mentioned as a
law-giver ; but in the Nihelungen-not, Gibich is only a vassal
king of Etzel's. The North had Gjaflaug, liquor giver,
no doubt the Hebe of the Norse banquets, Gjavvald, in Ger
man, Gevald, and perhaps Gabilo and Gavele, the Gebelius
of Latinists. Germany had likewise Gebahard, a firm or
perhaps a strong giver, which stiU survives under the un
promising sound of Gebhard.
Gyda, or Gytha, that most difficult northern name, some
times sounds like Gith, the contraction of Eadgyth ; but it
was evidently northern, having belonged to the proud damsel
of Hordaland, who refused to marry Harald Harfagre, unless
he was sole king of all Norway. Afterwards it was bome by
the semi-Danish ladies of Earl Godwine's family, and melted
into Gjutha, then became confounded with Jutta, which was
considered as short for Juditha. It is also possible that

346 HEROIC NAMES OF THB NIBELUNG.
Gyda has been formed from the German Ida (like geong, jong,
vng, young), whether we consider Ida to be ead, happy, or
itis, a woman.'*

Section XH. — Sintram.
Sindolt was the schenke, or butler, at the court of Wurms, in
the Nibelungenlied ; and in the VUkina Saga, Sintram is one of
the heroes of Thidrek's following. The derivation of the
first syllable is uncertain. MichaeUs takes it from the old
High German sinths, a journey. Professor Munch refers
Sindre to a word meaning sparkUng or spark, and mentions a
mythological dwarf who was a famous smith, and was yclept
Sindre ; also a poet in Harald Harfagre's time, whose appel
lation was Guthorm Sindre, or the sparkling. Sundre, pr
Sondre is, the same authority tells us, more used in the TheU-
marken in Norway than elsewhere ; and another possible
derivation for it is', from ' sondra' to sunder. The forms
Sunrir and Sunris are there found ; and Germany had a few
others, such as Sindwald, or Sindolt, Sindbald, the Sinibaldo
of Italy, Sindbert, Sindolf, and the above-mentioned Sindh-
ram, chiefly interesting to us as chosen by Fouque for the
name of his masterpiece, the wonderful allegory spun out of
Albert Durer's more wonderful engraving.

Section XIH. — Elberich.
The elf king Elberich here brings in his ovm fairy kindred.
In the Nibelung, he is watching over the fatal treasure when
Siegfried comes to claim it, and, dwarf as he is, does such
fierce battle over it that Siegfried was 'in bitter jeopardy;'
but he is at length overcome, sworn to Siegfried's service,
• Lappenburg; Sharon Turner; Alban Butler.

ELBERICH. 347
and brought by him to Wurms, where he has no more to do
but to lament when Haghen makes away with the treasure.
He is called very ancient, and well he may be, for he had
appeared in the Booh of Heroes long before the time of even
Hughdietrich, when King Otnit of Lombardy had set forth
to win the daughter of the king of Syria, and Elberich
showed himself under a linden tree in the guise of a beautiful
chUd. Otnit was about to pick him up, but received from
him a tremendous blow, and after a sharp fight came to terms,
and thenceforth assisted him in his enterprise, gave him
magic armour, and assisted him to gain the lady. Much of
this story is repeated in the French romance of Huon de
Bourdeaux, where Auberon, as he is there called, gives the
knight an ivory horn wherewith to summon him to his aid in
any emergency, and thus arose the EngUsh Oberon, the elf-
rik or king, the graceful but petulant fairy whom Drayton
marries to the Irish Mab, and Shakespeare to the Greek
Titania. He had his human namesakes, too ; Alberich was
in fashion as a Frank name, as .^Ifric was as a Saxon ; and
the Domesday Book shows that while we had plenty of the
latter native form, Edward the Confessor had already im
ported two specimens of ' Albericus comes,' and these or
their sons contracted into Aubrey, which was known to fame
as almost hereditary among the De Veres, earls of Oxford.
France, too, had her Aubri ; and Alberico was used in Lom
bardy, where Ukewise the notable and terrible monarch Alboin,
whose name as Alboino is still common among the peasantry,
bore the name that Anglo-Saxons called Mlhiine, or elf-
friend, perhaps likevrise an allusion to the aid and friendship
of ' Oberon the faery,' whose first protege was a Lombard.
Alwine is the feminine used in Germany, and perhaps may
be our Albinia.
The elf of England and Germany, the alfr of the North
was a being dear to the imagination of the people. Thei;
title is the white, the same word already mentioned as forming

348 HEROIC NAMES OF THE NIBELUNG.
the Latin alhus, and designating the Elbe and the Alps, as
weU as appearing in the Elphin of Cymric legend. The
elves, or white spirits, were supposed to be beautiful shadowy
gifted beings, often strangely influencing the life of mortals,
so that in old Germany the Alfr were the genii of man's life,
like the Disir of the North ; and Elberich probably origin
ally attended Otnit in this capacity. Christianity did not
destroy the faith in the elf-world, but the existence of these
beings was accounted for by supposing them children of Eve,
whom she had hidden from the fac'e of her Maker, and He
had therefore condemned to be hidden from the face of man.
They were thought to mourn for their exclusion from Redemp
tion, and to seek baptism for their infants ; but in process of
time their higher attributes dropped off from them, and they
were mixed up with the malicious black dwarfs. They took
to stealing young maidens, as the Scottish Burd Ellen, and to
exchanging infants in the cradle; and Scotland created an
Elfinland, which was a striking element of worldly vanity.
In England, the traditions" of the Keltic spirits, pucks and
pixies, were mixed up with them, and our Elizabethan poets
treated them as the males of the French fairies ; and what
comes to us so recommended, surely we must accept.
These elves, in their more dignified days, played a con
siderable part in our native nomenclature; nay, the most
honoured of all our English sovereigns wrote himself upon his
jewel .Alfred, i.e., Elf in council, wise as a supematural
being. Some have tried to read the word Alfried, all peace;
but there is no doubt that the Elf is the right prefix. The
English loved to continue his name, but it was latinized as
Aluredus, and thus Alured is the form in which it is bome
by many persons recorded in Domesday, and is stUl kept up
and regarded as a separate name, though Alfred has been
within the last century resumed in England ; it is much used
about the good king's birth-place at Wantage, in Berkshire,
and has of late been adopted in France and Germany. i

ELBERICH. 349
Mlfhseg was as high as an elf; whether given to a very
small infant, or supposed to refer to a being of unearthly
stffture, does not appear. It was the very inappropriate
name of the archbishop who, under Ethelred the Unready,
was pelted to death at a Danish banquet because he would
not oppress his fiock to obtain a ransom. The offence given
by Lanfranc in refusing to regard him as a true martyr may
be judged by the large numbers called after him in Domesday.
In Sussex they are set down as ^Ifech ; in Hants as .^Ifec ;
in Nottingham as iElfag ; and thanks to the Latinism of
Alphegius, our calendar calls him Alphege.
.Slfgifu, or the elf gift, was the unfortunate Elgiva of
history, a not unsuitable name for one whose beauty was like
a fatal fairy gift, bringing ruin on her and on her husband ;
but it was also used to translate into Saxon that of the
Norman Emma, which was regarded as too foreign for the
Saxons. Knut's first vrife, .^Ifwine (elf darling), the
daughter of .^Ifhelm, earl of Southampton, is recorded by
Dugdale as Ailive ; and Aileve, iElveva, or Alveva, is very
common in Domesday. Aileve indeed continued in use for
many years.
In fact, it was England that made by far the most use of
elf names. The North was perhaps the next in the use of
them, having an immense number of instances of Alfr in the
Landnama-hok, but there the elf at the end of a word has
such an unfortunate tendency to transform himself into a
wolf, that it is impossible to tell which was the original, the
same person being sometimes written Thoralf; and sometimes
Thorulf. There are few instances preserved from the othef
Teutonic branches, except as we have seen the two Lombardic
names, that seem direct from Elberich.
English names in Mthel often contract into El, and when
followed by an/, appear to be elves; but they must be pur
sued to their original form before being so rendered.

25° HEROIC NAMES OF THE NIBELUNG.

Nor. Alfdis — Household fairy
Nor. Alfgejr; Eng. .iElfgar — Elf spear
Nor. Alfgerdur — Elf woman
Nor. Alfheidur, Alfeidur — Elf cheerfulness
Eng. iElfhelm— Elf helmet
Nor. AlfhUd— Elf battle maid
Nor. Alfliotr — Elf terror
Eng. Ulfric— Elf king
Eng. ^Ifthryth, Elfrida— Threatening elf
Eng. iElfwold— Elf power

A bishop of Lichfield, whose name was iElfwine, was
always called .^Ua, and thus there is reason to suppose that
elves named both the Mile of Deira, whose name caused
Gregory the Great to say that AUeluja should be sung in
those regions, and also the later .^lla, who put Ragnar Lod
brog to death. Otherwise these would be referred to the
word in Gothic, aljan, meaning battle, found in the Old Ger
man EUanheri and Ellanperaht.
Some of our commencing els are no doubt from the fairy
source ; but there are others very difficult to account for,
beginning in Anglo-Saxon with ealh, which is either a hall,
or vrithout the final h, the adjective all, by which in fact
they are generally translated. The most noted of them is
Ealhwine, the tutor of Charlemagne's sons, generally called
Alcuin, though his name has remained at home as Aylwin.
Some Aylwins, are, however, certainly from .^gilwine, or
awful friend; Ealhfrith, Ealhmund, and Ealhred, are also
found, and one of these must have formed the modern Edred.
Among ladies are Ealhfled, and Ealhswyth, or Alswitha.
On the whole it seems to us that the hall is the more
probable derivation; the h so carefuUy used in the Saxon
Chronicle is unlike a contraction.*
* Munch; Weber and Jamieson; St. Pelaye, Huon de Bourdeaux;
Grimm; Keightley; Lappenburg; Landnama-bok; Domesday; Scott,
Minstrelsy of Scottish Border; Sharon Turner; Kemble, Names of the
Anglo-Saxons.

35^

CHAPTER V.
THE KAELINO ROMANCES.
Section I. — The Paladins.
Another remarkable cycle of romantic fable connected it
self with a prince, not lost in the dim light of heroic legend,
but described by a contemporary chronicler, and revealed in
the full light of history. However, in reaUty, the records
of Eginhard were, no doubt, as unread and unknown as if
they had never existed, and with the notion that a magnifi
cent prince had reigned over half Europe, there was ample
scope for tradition to connect with him and his followers all
the floating adventures that Teutonic, Keltic, or Latin in
vention had framed; and, by-and-bye, literature recorded
them, using them as her ovm world of beauty and of wonder,
until nothing but the names were left in common with their
originals. The dynasty — for though the romances refer to but one
emperor, they have heaped together the traditions of three
princes in one — was one eminently fitted to be the centre of
universal homage. UncivUized man can never exist for many
generations upon the throne ; and the Latin civilization of
Gaul had proved fatal to the vigour of the Frankish chiefs of
the line of Meerveh, when the new family, trained for several
generations in government as prime ministers or maires du
palais, came into full view and ousted them from the throne.
True, this new line was in its tum to become effete, and to give
way to the native lords of the soil ; but in its first rise, it ovmed
an unusual succession of great men, uniting the fresh vigour

352 THE KARLING ROMANCES.
of the barbarian to the thought and culture of the civUized
man. Moreover, this was a. period when all the neighbour
ing continental Teutons had become even more demoralized
than the Franks, so that men of ability were able to unite
them under one head, ahd commence that central European
system which remained the theory of statesmen for nearly
twelve centuries, and was only overthrovra by another union
of Italian, Frank, and Gallic civilization.
It was the great Saracen outburst that first made the
Franks not mere petty plunderers, but the champions of
Europe, and rendered the Kar lings the leading men of the
western world. The battle of Tours, in 752, was, indeed,
one of the most decisive battles of the world, for it stemmed
the inundation of Mahometanism, and forced back the
Moors within the barrier of the Pyrenees. Another gene
ration brought the Karlingen to the Frank monarchy, and
commenced their connection with Italy, as protectors of the
Pope from the Lombards, who, with the savage instincts of
their origin, were losing energy in the Italian atmosphere.
In the next sovereign the glory of the Une culminated. On
tbe one hand, he overthrew the tottering Lombardic kingdom,
and received from them the sacred titles of Caesar and Em
peror ; on the other hand, he subdued and forcibly converted
the fierce continental Saxons, and he mastered Northem
Spain, though not without' the hatred and treachery of the
Basque and Gothic nations in his rear. The Elbe, the Ebro,
the Adriatic, the Atlantic were his frontiers, and the theory
of a Holy Roman Empire, where one Csesar, crowned by the
Pope, both as representative of the SPQR, and as head of
the church, should be the temporal chief of Christian Europe,
took its rise from his dominion. After him, the star of his
race began to wane ; and after the turbulent reign of his son,
his grandson sustained an attack from the terrible Northmen,
who absolutely besieged him in Paris, then one of his capitals.
After this, France feU away from the central confederacy of

THE PALADINS. 253
prmces, became more and more galUcized, and, finally, de
throned the last Karling in favour of a native noble ; but all
the time she continued to hold to the great Franks as her
ovm exclusive property, and to think of the German empire
as if it had been a revolted conquest.
Thus it was that France, Germany, Lombardy, and Spain,
aU looked back to the same emperor, and hung their tra
ditions around him, with a far more national sentiment than
it was possible for them to possess for the British Arthur.
In the one who bore the surname of the Great, all the legends
centered. He was at once emperor, and, like his grandfather,
champion of Europe against the Saracens, with whom in
popular fancy, both his ovm Saxons and his grandson's
Northmen were fused together; he was besieged, like his
grandson, in Paris, and lost all his best followers in the pass
of Roncesvalles, by the treachery of the Navarrese.
These were the materials that fancy had to work upon.
The existing feudal system supplied the machinery, and not
with utter incorrectness, since it had actually then existed
in its infancy, and the chiefs of the Frank court were veri
tably obliged to pay martial service to their head for the
lands that they had received from him on the conquest of
the country. Pfalz, the same word which we now call
palace, the central court, furnished the title for the feuda
tories employed at the court Pfalzen, a word that continued
in use in its proper region Germany, naming the Pfalzgraf
of the Rhine, whence we have learnt to speak of the Count
Palatine and the Palatinate. The two old counties palatine
of England, Durham and Chester, were so termed because their
holders, the bishop and the earl, held the same privileges as
those of the continental pfalzen, as speedy executive power
was required in these counties, the one serving as a curb to
the Scots, the other to the Welsh.
Pfalzen, then, on French tongues, became Paladins, and
Paladins were supposed to have been not so much poUtical
VOL. II. ¦* ^

354 THE KARLING ROMANCES.
as mUitary, so that we regard the term as meaning a cham
pion of high prowess. There was an idea likewise of a coun-
cU of these Paladins as the twelve peers of France in the
golden age of her constitution ; and the Docipairs, as the
Douzepairs were sometimes run together, stood on a level
in romantic imaginations with the Seven Champions of
Christendom, or the Knights of the Round Table.
Spanish ballad, German lays, and Proven9al songs, had
been working up the stories of the Paladins, when some
where about the year i loo, there came forth a French trans
lation of the supposed chronicle of Turpin, who had really
been archbishop of Rheims in the reign of Charlemagne.
The chronicle was confirmed in 1122 by the infallible au
thority of the Pope, and was translated again and again,
amplified and referred to by everyone who wrote or sung of the
Paladins, for the events they celebrated, whether it contained
them or not. Everybody read it, and every writer improved
on it, till a host of prose and metrical romances arose, which
came to their chief glorification under the hands of the
Italian poets, beginning with Luigi Pulci, about 1480, and
then carried on by Bernardo Tasso, father of Torquato, by
the romantic Count Bojardo, and by Ludovico Ariosto,
who, between allegory, satire, and poetry, raised his long
poem to the foremost ranks of literature. It is worthy of
remark, that the true knight errant temper of love, to the
spiritual in heaven and beautiful on earth, is chiefly the
heritage of the Round Table knights, the produce of cru
sading hearts and the memory of patriots. Dressed up as
the Paladins are by corrupt Italy, they are, indeed, said
to fight with Saracensj but they are rather lovers in search
of adventures, than Christian men with a high purpose before
them. The influence of the Karlingen upon our subject has been
great. First, some of the genuine historical characters left
hereditary Christian names; next, several were adopted in

THE PALADINS. 355
romantic and chivalrous famUies, and in the poetical ages of
literary Italy, they became absolutely frequent.
Moreover Paladins connect themselves with hardly any
genuine female names of the same period. The Feen have
their wives and beloved maidens, the knights of the Round
Table bring with them ladies of Cymric title, like their own,
and evidently as traditionary as themselves ; the dames of
the Nibelungenlied are intimately connected with the whole
stmcture of the legend ; but the knights of Charlemagne have
brought with them no ladye loves. Orlando once had a wife,
the Alda, or Belinda, of the old traditions, and probably
genuine ; but even the Clarice of Renaud in the Quatre Fits
Aymon, betrays a late French or rather Romanesque influ
ence ; and far more do the Dona Clara, Belerma, and Sebilla
of the Spanish ballads, show how late they must have arisen ;
whilst Angelica, Marfisa, Bradamante, Fiordespioa, and Fior-
diUgi, and the like, are absolute Italian invention, just as
Spenser afterwards made the knights of Arthur's date meet
with Britomart, Belphoebe, and Amoret.
The Frankish ladies seem, in fact, to have been held in
Uttle estimation. Chivalry had not blossomed into respect
for womanhood, and they had probably been left behind for a
time by their lords in the march of civilization. The mar
riages and divorces of Charlemagne are the one flaw in his
character ; and the female names from time to time cast up in
the surging tide of affairs only appear for disgrace or misfor
tune, so that we come to the conclusion that womanhood in the
Frank empire was seldom happy or honourable except in the
cloister. Thus, no traditional names of woman came dovm
with the Paladins ; and when love became an essential part
of the machinery of the Italian poets, they had to invent and
entitle the heroines for themselves, making them, with a few
exceptions, by no means models for imitation.*
* ^scoe, Italian Poetry ; DnjiloTp,Romamtic Fiction; Sismondi; Histoir*
de I ranee; Clarke, Spanish BaUads. A A 2

25^ THE KARLING ROMANCES.

Section II. — Charles.
Most heroes gain by becoming the subjects of romance,
but this has been by no means the case with the great Karl
of the Franks, for though ' il Re Carlo' be three rolled into
one, he has lost the heroism of him of the hammer, and the
large minded statesmanship of the first emperor, obtainmg
instead the dulness and weak credulity of him who was caUed
the Bald.
The three Charleses are matter of history, and the Carlo
Magno of romance and ballad is little more than a lay figure,
always persuaded to believe traitorous stories of his best
friends, and meeting with undignified adventures, as in the
case of the enchanted ring that bound his affections to lady,
bishop, and lake. We therefore pass on at once to this name,
which a foolish old story thus accounts for. As an infant he
was put out to nurse, and when brought home, much grovm,
his mother exclaimed, ' What great carle is this?' whence
he continued to be so called, instead of by his baptismal name
of David. This tale may have been suggested by the fact,
that the veritable Charles the Great, when laying aside his
state he became a scholar in his palace hall, under the
teaching of the EngUsh Alcuin, assumed the appropriate
title of David.
Karl was in fact, as we have shovm in the chapter on
ancestral names, the regular family name of the line, used in
regular alternation from its first appearance with the grand
father of the hammering Charles, who perhaps took his
soubriquet from Thor, and gradually acquiring more and more
ignominious epithets till it sunk into obscurity in Lorraine,
whence it only emerged again when the KarUngs intermarried
with Philippe Auguste, and brought the old imperial name
into the French royal family, where five more kings bore it.
They sent it to Naples with Charles of Anjou ; and his son.

CHARLES. 357
Charles Robert, or Caroberto, being elected to Hungary, had
so many namesakes that Camden was led to suppose that aU
Hungarian kings were called Carl. It went to Germany when
the son of the blind king of Bohemia received it from his
father's connection with the French court, and afterwards
reigned as the 4th Karl of Germany, taking up his reckoning
from the old Karlingen. Again, the second ducal house of
Burgundy was an off-shoot .from the line of Valois, and it was
from Charles the Bold that the name was transmitted to his
great grandson of Ghent, soon known to Europe as Carlos I.
of Spain, Karl V. of Germany, Carolus Quintus of the Holy
Roman Empire. He was the real name spreader from whom
this became national in Spain, Denmark, and even in Britain,
for his renown impressed James I. with the idea that this
must be a fortunate name ; when, in the hope of averting the
unhappy doom that had pursued five James Stuarts in suc
cession, he called his sons Henry and Charles. The destiny
of the Stuart was not averted, but ' the fate of the royal
martyr' made his the most popular of all appellations among
the loyalists, and afterwards with the Jacobites, in both Eng
land and Scotland, so that rare as it formerly was, it now
disputes the ground with John, George, and William, as the
most common of English names. Cathal and Cormac, in
Ireland, have both been merged into it, and there is hardly a
famUy that has not a Charlie.

EngUsh.
Charles
Charlie

Keltic. GAEL.
Tearlach EBSE.
Searlus

French.
Charles Chariot

Span, and Port.
Carlos

German.
Karl

ItaUan.
Cario Oarolo

Swedish.
Kari Kalle

Danish.
Kari
Karel

Dutch.
Carolus Carel
Karel

35^

THE KARLING ROMANCES.

PoUsh.
KarolKarolek

Bohemian.
Karel

Hlyrian.
KarioKarlicaKarlic

Lusatian.
Karlo
Kariko

Slovak.
Karol

Lettish.
Karis

Esthonian.
Karl
Karel

Hungarian.
Karoly

Dantzig.
Kasch

Another namesake of Charlemagne must not be forgotten,
namely, the son of St. Olaf, of Norway, whom his followers,
intending an agreeable surprise to the father, baptized after
the great emperor by the name of Magnus, whence the very
frequent Magnus of Scandinavia, and Manus of Ireland.
The two feminines are of late invention. The first I have
been able to find was Carlota or Charlotte, of Savoy, who
married Louis XL, and thus introduced this form to French
royalty. Charlotte d'Albret had the misfortune to be given
in marriage to Cesare Borgia, and had one daughter, who
married into the house of La Tremouille, whence the brave
Lady Derby carried it into England, and our registers of the
seventeenth century first acknowledge Charlet. The Hugue-
notism of the house of La Tremouille connected it with that
of Bouillon, where the heiress Carola, or Charlotte was
married in 1588. The house of Orange probably thence
derived it, and it became knovm in Germany, whence it
was brought to us in full popularity by the good queen of
George IH. A sentimental fame was also bestowed on it, as
the name of Goethe's heroine in Werther. Carolina, the
other form, seems to have been at first Italian, and thence
to have spread to Southern Germany, and aU over that
country, whence we received it with the wife of George H.,
by whom it was much spread among the nobUity, and is
now very common among the peasantry, having often. Miss
Mitford thinks, been given by mistake for the much older

CHARLES. 259
Katharine. Both are clumsy feminines of an essentiaUy
masculine name.

EngUsh.
Charlotte Lotty Chatty
Caroline Carry

French.
Charlotte Lolotte
Caroline

Spanish.
CarlotaLola

ItaUan.
Carlotta Carlota
Carolina

German.
CharlotteLottchen
CarolineLina

Swedish.
Lotta

Slovak.
KarolinaKarolinkaKaria

Lettish.
Latte

Dant2dg.
Linuschca

The two Carolinas of America were so called by a colony
of Huguenots, who still preserved their loyalty, even to their
enemy Charles IX. The CaroUne Isles of the South Sea
were from the great Charles V. coios, as our gold carolus,
and the Carolina of Naples take their title from the monarch
whose head they bear. And lastly the carUne thistle is said
to derive that appeUation from having been pointed out to
Charlemagne by an angel as the remedy for a disease from
which his army was suffering.
The word kari was in Old German charal, in Anglo-Saxon
ceorl, in Scottish carl, in English churl, aU primarUy used
like vir to denote man in his manhood. Thus in Scotland a
man-chUd would be called a carle-baUn, and in Anglo-Saxon
times sturdy strength made Ceorl, the title of the free
husbandman, though after the Conquest his stem and sullen
spirit of defiance led to the use of churl in its present signi
fication, whUe kerl is in Germany a homely peasant. Yet
the churl has given a name to one of the few consteUations
that bear any titles besides the classical ones. Ursa Major,
and Thor's Waggon is the Churl's, or Charles's Wain, and
no doubt Bootes was once the herd. The title of the Great

360 THE KARLING EOMANCES.
Bear is said to be from a mistranslation of the Arabic dubah,
cattle, and that the old astronomers here saw a fold guarded
by Bootes, the herdsman, and never intended to invent any
thing so preposterous as a pair of long tailed bears. The
Christian Arabs prettily call it the funeral of Lazarus, and
make the four stars the bier, the three, Martha, Mary, and
their handmaid.
Ceorl was the name of an early king of Mercia, and of a
thane of Alfred's, who defeated the Danes, and Carloman
was almost as common as Carl in the old Karling family.'*

Section III. — Roland, S^c.
When the army of Charles the Great was marching back
from Spain, the Gascons, Navarrese, and Goths, who were
afraid of being swallowed up by his empire, if they exchanged
his protection for that of the Arabs, plotted together, feU
on the rear of his columns as they were passing through
the defile of Roncesvalles, close to the little town of Fuente
Arabia, and slaughtered the whole division that were guarding
the baggage. ' There was slain Rotlandus, prefect of the
Armorican border.'
So says Eginhard, the contemporary chronicler, and as he
mentions only two other nobles as having been killed, it is
natural to conclude that he was a man of mark. Who was
he ? Certainly Warden of the Marches of Brittany, but
was he a Frank Hruodland (the country's glory), the re
presser of the Kelts, or was he a Breton in the Frankish
service ? The Cymry have laid claim to him ; they say that
the rolling word is intended to render TaUwch, a rolling or
overwhelming torrent, the name of the father of Tristrem;
and in the later romances, this knight has actually been
* Sismondi; Roscoe; MichaeUs; Pott; Anderson, Genealogies. -"

ROLAND. 361
turned into Rowland, which thus has become a favourite
national Welsh name.
It is far more likely that ' Rotlandus' was Frank, but the
next question is, what were the deeds that made his birth
worth contending for, and the war song of Ron be the chant
of the gallant minstrel Taillefer, to cheer the Normans on to
their victory at Hastings ?
Eginhard is utterly silent. Turpin tells us that Rolandus
was the emperor's nephew, the son of his sister Bertha, and of
MUo de Anglars. With Turpin, the expedition to Spain is the
prominent feature of the reign, and he gives us an account
of a mingled battle and controversy between Roland and
Ferragus, a giant of the race of Goliath, and only vulnerable
in one point, where, however, Roland managed to pierce him.
Very soon after follows the ambush of Roncesvalles, the
enemy being Saracens, not Christians, but conducted by the
traitor Ganelon. After a terrible battle, Roland sorely
wounded, lay down under a tree, and apostrophizing his good
sword Durenda, in the most tender manner, thrice struck it
upon a block of marble, and shattered it in twain, lest it
should fall into Saracen hands. Then he blew upon his horn,
which had such wondrous tones that all other horns split at
the sound, and this blast was with such effort that he burst
all the veins in his neck, and the sound reached the king,
eight miles off ! He then commended his soul to heaven, and
made a most pious and beautiful end.
That block of marble is magnified by popular fame into
the mountain itself, and la Breche de Roland is supposed to
be the cleft made by his sword ! The Northem Lights, too,
are said to be King Charles riding by, and Roland bearing the
banner. The Spaniards, as they were Christians and Teutons,
felt with the Franks ; as they were Celtiberians, against them,
and the result was a collection of admirable popular baUads,
all prime authorities with Bon Quixote, in which il rey Carlos-
and his peers are treated as national heroes. Nevertheless they

362 THE KARLING ROMANCES.
are proud of his defeat at Roncesvalles, declare that the
emperor broke his word to Don Alfonso, of Leon, and that
the attack was therefore made in which Don Alfonso's
nephew, Bernardo de Carpio was leader, and demolished the
invulnerable Conde Roldan, by squeezing him to death ia his
arms, an end rather inconsistent with
'The blast of that dread horn,
On Pontarabian echoes borne,
That to King Charles did come ;
When Roland brave, and Olivier,
And every paladin and peer,
On Koncesvalles died.'
It is the Spaniards alone who have transferred to Roldan
the invulnerability of Achilles, Siegfried, and Diarmaid ; the
French and Italians bestow it only on Ferragus, who is, as
already mentioned, an evident Keltic importation through the
Breton poets, being either the Irish Fergus, or the Welsh
Vreichfras, though he has since become a Moorish giant.
The English, having their own Arthur to engage their
attention, did little more than versify Turpin, but allowed
Roland's sword to be carried away by his friend Sir Bald
win, and took vengeance for his death.
' Here endeth Otnel, Roland, and Olyvere,
And of the twelve dussypere,
That dieden in the batayle of Kuncy Vale.'
But it was the Italians who did the most for their Orlando.
Some floating Valkyr notion had attached itself in German
fancy to his mother, who was at first Bertha the goose-footed,
and then the large footed, and romance further related that
she was the emperor's sister, who had secretly married the
knight Milone di Anglante, and therefore was driven out of
the court, and forced to take refuge in a cave, where the hero
was born, and was caUed Rotolando, from his rolling himself

ROLAND. 2^3
on the ground. His father went to the wars, and Berta be
came the diligent spinner before alluded to, but was stUl so
poor that his young companions each gave him a square of
cloth to cover him, two white, and two red, whence he always
bore those colours quartered on his shield. There is a pretty
German ballad, describing how the brave boy attracted his
uncle's attention by carrying off a dish of meat from the
emperor's own table to supply his mother's needs. After
wards he was taken into favour, and became the chief
Paladin. Here Luigi Pulci took him up, and made him the hero of
a poem called the Morgante Maggiore, from a giant whom
Orlando converted, and who followed him faithfully about
through all his adventures. Orlando is here a high spirited
Christian knight, brave, pious, and faithfully attached to his
wife Alda. When slain at Roncesvalles, he mentions her in
his last and very beautiful prayer, and his sorrow for his
comrades, and parting with his horse and sword, are very
touching. It was Bojardo who deprived Orlando of his old traditional
character of the high minded champion, that crusading days
had dwelt upon. Led, perhaps, by the idea of the frenzy of
Amadis de Gaul, he made Orlando fall desperately in love
with the fair and false Angelica, princess of Catay, and leave
the court and all his duties just as the Saracen king Gradasso
was invading France, to obtain possession of Durindana,
Orlando's sword. The action of the poem is taken up with
the adventures imposed upon Orlando by the mischievous
beauty, and the pursuit of him by the other Paladins, and
finally it leaves off with the whole chivalry of Charlemagne
besieged in Paris by the Saracens.
Orlando was only innamorato in Bojardo's hands ; Ariosto
took him up and made him furioso. Continuing the poem
where it had dropped from Bojardo's hands, Ariosto made
Angelica fall in love with an obscure youth, and marry him,

364 THE KARLING EOMANCES.
whereupon Orlando, after the example of Amadis de Gaul,
went into the state of frenzy that Don Quixote tried to imi
tate, and the Christians suffered as much as the Greeks did
without Achilles, tiU his senses were brought back from the
moon, when he returned to his duty, restored fortune to the
Christians, and saved France from becoming tributary to the
infidel. It would be idle to speak of the merits or demerits of
Ariosto's poem, but it is worthy of observation how the frivo
lous fancy of Italy degraded the model of Christian constancy
into the mere love-sick swain — brave and victorious, but
denuded of aU the patriotism and principle that had made his
name a glorious sound — so current in Italy that it is a com
mon proverb, — ' Molti parlan di Orlando
Chi non videro mai suo brando.'
Charles VHI. of France, in his romantic youth, named
one of his short-lived children, Charles Roland, by way of
imion of the two heroes.

EngUsh.

French.

ItaUan.

Spanish.

Roland

Roland

Orlando

Roldan

Rowland

Portuguese.

German.

Netherlands.

Rolando
Roland
Roeland
Roldao
Ruland
Rudland
The derivation of the first syllable is the word hruod in
Frank, hrothr in the North, and in modern German ruhm,
meaning fame or glory, the very same which we before
mentioned as perhaps lying at the root of the title of the
city of seven hills herself.
Be this as it may, hru,od is a most prolific word. As Hruod- •¦
ROGER. 2^5
gar, famous spear, it figures in the Nibelungenlied, where the
Markgraf Rudiger is the special friend of Dietrich, and for
a long time, like him, refrains from the fray, but at length
plunging into it, and being killed, is the immediate cause
that first Dietrich's nephew and then himself, were drawn
into the conflict.
But on its ovm account, as well as that of its commence
ment, does Hruodgar stand in the Karling cycle. Ruggiero
is the hero preferred by Ariosto to all the rest. There seems
to have been a veritable Hruodgar living in the time of Pepin,
who married a lady whose father's name was Hector, whence
it was taken for granted that she descended from Hector of
Troy, and thence the House of Este were said to bear the
white eagle in their coat of arms, because he of Troy had a
shield azure with a silver eagle ! Roger, Olivier, and Roland
are mentioned together as subjects of minstrel songs, and
some of the Nibelung may have attached to him. In the old
romances there is a Ruggieri de Risa, or Reggio, who marries
an Amazon, called Galaciella, but is soon after murdered, and
she is carried off by sea by her enemies, whom, however, she
manages to overpower and destroy on the voyage, but only to
be driven to a desert island, where she dies at the birth of
her twins, Ruggiero and Marfisa. This Ruggiero is he of
the ItaUan poets. Bojardo tells how he was bred up on lion's
marrow by the enchanter Atlante, in Africa, and when his
education was finished, was sent to France with the wonderful
hippogriff, or winged horse. And Ariosto, probably in com
pliment to the House of Este, made his adventures the main
plot of the Orlando Furioso, and completed it by converting
him to Christianity, and marrying him to the brave and
amiable Amazon, Bradamante.
Bojardo probably adopted Ruggiero because his country
was Reggio, a country with which the name had become
connected, when Roger de HauteviUe had founded the king
dom of Sicily, and Ruggero, the son of his elder brother.

366

THE KARLING ROMANCES.

Robert Guiscard, had been count of Apulia. These were
both, of course, direct from the northern Hruodgeir, as was
the turbulent Roger de Montgomery, who gave so much
trouble in Normandy. It was once a famous knightly name,
but is now too much discarded. The French peasants' pro
verb for ' there's a good time coming,' is ' Roger Bon Tems,'
but I suspect this to be caused by a confusion with Holger
Danske.

EngUsh.
Roger
Hodge

French.
Roger

ItaUan.
Ruggiero Rogero

Spanish.
Rogerio

German.
Rudiger
Roger

Nor.
HrodgjerRaadgjer

Netherlands. RogierRutger

Russian.
Rozer

Polish.
Rydygier

Lettish.
Rekkerta

Hrothgar was also a famed name among the Angles. It
appears in Beowulf, as the chief of the Scyldings, the son
of Healfdane. There, too, are found Hrothmund and Hroth-
wulf ; and the northem names of Hroar and Hrolfr are con
tractions of these, though the characters they belong to are
not the same as those in Beowulf Hrolf Krake was the sub
ject of a northern Saga; and the father of our Norman kings,
whom we are wont to call by his Latinism of RoUo, formed
from the French stammer of Ron, was in fact Hrolf Gangr, ¦
or at full length, Hrothulf, the wolf of fame. A name of
fame and terror it was, when the mighty man, too weighty
for steed to carry him, was expelled from his own land, and
fought for a home, not for plunder, among the fertile orchards
of Neustria, when his followers' rude homage overthrew the
degenerate Karling, and 'the grisly old proselyte,' m his
baptism, assumed, without perhaps knowing of the simUarity^
the French Robert. This change prevented his original name
from being very prevalent among the Normans ; and the Ger-

eodoLph. 367
man form, Rudolf, is chiefly from a sainted Karling prince,
who was bishop of Bourges, and from whom Rudolf, of Haps-
burg must have taken it, when it became imperial, and other
countries received it without knowing it, for their old friend.

EngUsh.
Rodolph
Rolf

French.
Rodolphe RaoulRoulRou

Spanish.
Rodulfo

ItaUan.
Rodolfo
Ridolfo

Portuguese.
Rodolpho

German.
Rudolf

Bavarian.
Ruedolf

Frisian.
RulefRulves Rotholf

Swiss.
Ruedi Rnedeli
Rudi

Swedish.
Rudolf
Rolf

Nor.
Hruodulf
Hrolfr

Lettish.
Rohlops

Hungarian.
Rudolf

The name assumed by Rolfr at his baptism was Frank,
rather than Northem, inasmuch as hjart is an uncommon
conclusion among his native race. Hruadperaht, or bright
fame, was the original form, the property of a bishop, who
somewhere about the year 700 founded the first Christian
church at Wurms. Honoured alike in France and Germany,
he became Ruprecht in the latter, and Robert in the former.
Like St. Nicolas, he is in Germany supposed to exercise a
secret supervision over children ; in some places Knecht
Ruprecht dispenses Christmas gifts, but he more often keeps
watch over naughty children, and thus answers to the Eng
Ush Robin Goodfellow, or Hob Goblin. The German spirit,
Rubezahl is probably of the same connection, but when the
countryfolk wish to propitiate him they call him ' Herr Jo
hannes,' and near Vienna ' Karl.' In Denmark, Robin God
Breng is the polite name for the niss, or water spirit, exactly
answering to Robin Goodfellow, a semi-human goblin or elf

368 THE KARLING ROMANCES.
in the old English chapbook, though where we know him best,
in Midsummer Night's Bream, Shakespeare has melted him
into one with the Keltic puck, or phooka, the pixie of Devon.
It was probably from sound that so many red objects were
named after Robin: the Robin Redbreast, Herb Robert {Gera
nium Robertianum), the Ragged Robin or Lychnis jks
cuculis, and the Lychnis dioica, or red campion, commonly
called robins. These latter may indeed be all so called from
their similarity to the original Herb Robert, which is reaUy
sacred to St. Ruprecht, but red was long supposed to be the
origin of the name, which some made Redbert, or bright
speech, others Redbeard ! The German form, however, dis
proves both of these, and Ruprecht continued in honour in its
ovm country, naming in especial that wise Pfalgzraf of the
Rhine, who, in 346 founded the university of Heidelberg ; and
on the deposition of the crazy Bohemian Kaisar Wenzel, was
elected Emperor of Germany, and reigned for nine years with
great success and glory. It was after him that the infant,
born at Prague, during the brief greatness of the Winter
King, received that name of Rupert, which was so terrible to
the Roundheads, but which for the most part they translated
by their native Robert — native, because thoroughly angli
cized, for it was of French growth, had belonged to two or
three saints, and to the hymn-writing and much persecuted
king called the pious, the second of the Capet or Parisian
dynasty ; but after the son of St. Louis carried it off to the
House of Bourbon, it scantily appeared among the royal
family. Normandy, however, cultivated it after it had been
chosen at the baptism of her first duke, and sent it to
Apulia with the astute Robert Guiscard, whence Roberto
became national in the Neapolitan realms, and was adopted
by the Angevin line, among others by the king who patron
ized Petrarch. The next Duke of Normandy who bore it
was that wild pilgrim, whose soubriquet varies between the
DevU and the Magnificent. The disinheritance of his equally

ROBERT.

369

wild, but more unfortunate grandson, of the court house,
diverted it from the English throne, but a flood of knights
and nobles had poured in and established it so completely,
that in a few generations more Hob was one of the estab
lished peasant names in England. Robin was its more
gracious contraction — ^let our dearly beloved archer be who
he will — either as ballad tells, the outlawed Earl of Hun
tingdon, or as late critics would have us believe, only another
manifestation of Robin Goodfellow, or of the wild huntsman.
Robin was the epithet by which Queen Elizabeth was wont
to address the two earls, stepfather and stepson, who so long
.sunned themselves ia her favour; and though it has now
acquired a homely sound, and the popularity of the fuU
name has somewhat waned, it is stUl frequent. To Scotland
it was brought by the Anglo-Norman barons, and when the
EngUsh Bruces had made their distant drop of royal Scot
tish blood fioat them to the throne, Robert the Bruce became
a passionately beloved national hero, and his name one of
the most favoured in the Lowlands. In Ireland it is called
Roibin, a gentleman called in English Robin Lawless being
in Erse, Roibin Laighleis.
It has been fertUe in sumames, from Robertson to Hobbs,
and the Welsh Probert.

EngUsh.
RobertRobinHob BobRupert

Scotch.
Robert
Robin Robbie Rab

French.
RobertRobersRobiRobinet Rupert

ItaUan.
RobertoRuberto
Ruperto

German.
Hruodebert
Ruprecht Rupert
RudbertRobert

Bavarian.
RuprechtPrechtl

Slovak.
Ruprat

Lusatian.
Hupreoht

VOL. II.

BB

370

THE KAELING EOMANCES.

Not behindhand in glory is the northem Hrothrekr, or
Germanic Hraoderich, famous ruler. In Gothic Spain, it
was indeed Rodrigo, who lost his country to the Moors, but
became in his people's minds the centre for pity as much as
for blame, and the subject of the beautiful legends that
Southey has embodied in the finest of his poems. And it
was Rodrigo Diaz de Bivar, ' Ruy mi Cid Campeador' who
was the most noble and most beloved of all Spanish heroes,
and left his to be one of the most frequent of all the grand
sounding names prefaced by Don, and Rodriguez and Ruiz
to be very common surnames.
The northern Hrothrekr was not long in being shortened to
Hrorekr, and thence came the name of that Norseman, who,
according to Russian historians, was invited by the Slaves to
be their protector, and founded the Norman dynasty of
Ruric, which continued on the throne during the troubled
days of Tartar supremacy. Roric and Godwald were the
first Northmen to obtam fiefs in France. In Wales, Scotland,
and Ireland, Roderick has a sort of false honour, being
adopted as the equivalent of the native Keltic names, the
Welsh Rhydderc, and the Gadhaelic Ruadh ; for Roy and
Rorie, though rightly and traditionally so called by their
friends, would now all make Teutons of themselves, and use
the signature of Roderick.

English.
Roderick

French.
Rodrigue

Italian.
Rodrigo

Spanish.
Rodrigo Ruy

German.
Roderick

Nor.
Rothrekr
Hrorek

Russian.
Rurik

There are numerous other forms from this prolific source.
Rother, who figures in Lombardic history, is the German
Hruodhari, or famous warrior, and in the North divides with

EADEGOND. 37 1
'Hrothgar the property of the strange abbreviation. Roar, and
in the harsh old Latinisms of Frank names is Crotcharius.
There too is found Chrodovaldus, which in German was
once Hrodowald, and afterwards Rudold, perhaps, too, the
Danish and Scottish Ribolt, and in the North Roald, and
in Italian Roaldo, the founder of an order of monks. Nay,
Romeo de' Montecchi himself, the Montague of Shakespeare,
bore a common Lombardic name, softened down from the
Chrodomarus of Frankish Latin, as in Germany Hruotmar
is Rudmar and Romar. Hromund, or Romund, must not
be confused with the derivatives of Ragin, though it is most
likely that the Irish Redmond is a Danish legacy from this
source.

Nor. Hrodbern — Famous bear
Frank. Chrodogang — Famous progress
Nor. Hrothild ; Ger. Hrodhilde ; Frank. ChrodehUda—
Famous heroine
Ger. Hrodfrid — Famous peace
Ger. Hrodhard — Famous strength
Ger. Hrudo ; Frank. Chrodo ; Nor. Hroi — Fame
Nor. Hrodny — Famous freshness
Nor. HroUaug — Famous liquor
Nor. HroUeif — Relic of fame
Nor. Hrodsind ; Frank. Chrodoswintha — Famous strength
Ger. Hrodstein — Famous stone.

Ruod must have been evolved from the word meaning
speech, razda in Gothic, r(e(?oin Anglo-Saxon, whence advice
became rede in Old EngUsh and Scottish, and rath in modem
German. Rad is chiefly a Frankish prefix, though we had one kmg
Redwald. Badegond, or war councU, was a Frankish queen
B B 2

372 THE KARLING EOMANCES.
who became a nun at Poitiers, and left a name stiU used by
French girls in that neighbourhood. King Ordono of Gal
licia married, about the year 910, a lady recorded as Rade-
gonda, or Arragonda, or Urraca, so that the perplexmg
Urraca may possibly be a contraction of this name.
Radegist or Radelchis, and Radegar, were princes of Bene-
ventum. Radbad, the Frisian Rabbo, and Radbert, seem to
be Old German forms, but it is a word Uable to be confused
with hramn, and with rand, and though a common masculine
termination in England, in the North it is only a corruption
of fred, peace. Section IV. — Renaud.
To the French, Renaud de Montauban was a far more
popular and national hero than even Roland.
His name, Raginwald was common among the Franks, and
his origin is suspected to be an Aquitanian Rainaldus, who
in 843 was killed in fighting with the Bretons, when in the
miserable days of Charles the Bald, they invaded France
under Nominee, and were joined by the traitorous Count
Lambert. Charles the Bald, as has been said, seems to have sat for
the picture of his grandfather, the Bretons tumed into the
Saracens, Count Lambert's treachery went to swell the
account of Gano, and Rinaldus could fall at Mans quite as
well as at Roncevaux ! The fine old castle of Montauban,
between the rivers Garonne and Tam, seems to have belonged
to him, for the oldest part of the fortress is called the Tour
de Renaud, though the present building was not begun tUl
1 144. Froissart teUs us, however, that all the castles in the
south of France that were buUt by Renaud de Montauban,
have secret passages leading to the open country.
He is just mentioned by Turpin as among the knights who
accompanied Charlemagne, and were killed at Roncesvalles ;

RENAUD. 373
and the Spanish ballads dwell much upon the exploits of
Don Reynaldos; indeed it appears that he enjoyed Don
Quixote's special admiration for having carried off, in spite of
forty Moors, a golden image of Mahomet, which he wanted
to pay his men !
Such an exploit was decidedly in the line of the French
hero Renaud, or Regnault, who is in romance a sort of prince
of freebooters. He and his three brothers go by the title of
the Quatre Fils Aymon, and he is a sort of chivalrous Robin
Hood to the French mind, insomuch that country ions may
still be found with the sign of the Quatre Fils Aymon.
Maugis, the great enchanter, who answers to Merlin in this
cycle of romance, is either their uncle or their cousin. In
the old French tale, the outlawry of Renaud is accounted for
by his having been insulted by the emperor's nephew Ber-
thelot, while playing at chess, and replying with a blow of
the golden board that struck out the offender's brains. He
and his brothers then were banished, lived a freebooting life,
built the castle of Montalban in Gascony, the king of which
country bestowed on him in marriage his daughter Clarice,
and finaUy went on pilgrimage, made his peace with the
emperor, and of all things in the world, turned his hand to
the building of Cologne Cathedral, and was killed there by
his jealous fellow workmen.
In Italy Rinaldo became a wild, high spirited Paladin,
always fighting and falling in love, and retaining little in
common with his French original, except the possession of
his matchless horse Bayard, or Bajardo, which fought as weU
as his master, and on his loss ran wild in the woods, and may
be living still ! In the Morgante, Rinaldo mistrusts Gano,
and avoids the ambush of Roncesvalles, but is afterwards
carried with his brother Ricciardetto by two devils, to revenge
the slaughter, which they do most effectually.
In the Orlando Innamorato, Rinaldo is at first ensnared by
AngeUca's beauty, but is cured by drinking unwittingly of

374 THE KARLING ROMANCES.
the fountain of hate, while she drank of the fountain of love,
and was enamoured of him. He is carried off by Malagigi
to an enchanted island of delight, but returns during the
great siege of Paris, takes a counter draught of the fountain
of love, fights in single combat with Ferrau, but is interrupted
by Bajardo straying into a wood, whither he pursues the animal,
and is there deserted by Boiardo, to be taken up by Ariosto,
and after many adventures brought to relieve the Christian
army in the utmost danger, and to give his sister Bradamante
in marriage to Ruggiero.
Some have thought that Tasso's one fictitious hero, Rinaldo,
was partly borrowed from the Paladin, going as he does to
the enchanted gardens of Armida, and only brought back
when the crasading host was in the utmost jeopardy. The
chief mission of this latter Rinaldo was, however, it may be
suspected, to be a compliment to the House of Este.
Some even think Roland himself only another version of
Ragenwald, but the one Paladin is undoubtedly traceable to
Hruodland, as is the other to Ragenwald, though I am in
clined to think that the Rolandsaulen, that accompany the
Irminsaulen at the gates of old cities, may perhaps be rightly
from Raginwald, or judge, power of judgment.
The Normans received this name from two sources, the
French Regnault or Renaud, generally from the Paladin,
and from their own northem Ragnwold or Rognwald. So
Domesday has it in various forms, as Ragenald, Reynald, and
Rainald, the latter fourteen times after the Conquest ; and
amongst them all we have derived our Christian name of
Reginald, and the surname of Reynolds. The Scots took
their form from the northern Rognvald, belonging to a great
Jarl of the Orkneys, a noted skald, and thus obtained Ronald,
which is in Gaelic RaonmiU.
Ragn, or judgment, the leading word in this class of
names, is connected with the Latin rego, to rule, and as
rectus sprang from the one, so the Gothic raihts and our right
arose from the Teutonic forms, as well as to wreak, and the

RENAUD.

375

German rache, vengeance, both from the old idea of justice.
Ragn, though primarUy meaning justice, is also used, as
judgment is, in the sense of wisdom.

EngUsh.
ReginaldReynold

Scottish.
Ronald Ranald

GaeUc.
RaonmiU

ItaUan.
Rinaldo

Spanish.
Reynaldos

French.
Regnauld Renaud
Regnault

German.
Reinwald
Reinald

PoUsh.
Raynold ¦

Esth.
ReinReino

Lettish.
Reinis

Frisian.
ReinoldRennold

Some of Renaud's freebooting fame may have come from
a person whose name so closely resembles his own, that it is
by no means easy to distinguish their progeny ; namely,
Raginhard, or firm judge. A nobleman of this name was
Count of the Palace, or Pfalzgraf, to Louis le Debonnaire, and
engaged in a conspiracy against him, with Bernard, king of
Italy. They were made prisoners, and condemned ; the
emperor commuted the sentence to the loss of their sight ; but
his wife, who wanted Bernard's inheritance, took care that so
savage a person was sent to perform the operation that they
both died in consequence.
Another Reginard is said by Le Grand to have been a
cunning politician, who lived in Austrasia in the ninth
century, and much troubled his lord by sometimes taking part
with the Germans, sometimes with the French, by which
means he became so much detested that he was the subject of
many songs in which he was caUed the Little Fox. At any
rate, in the great animal epic the fox has taken the name of
Reinart, or Reinecke Fuchs, and as early as 13 13, when the
sons of the wily PhiUppe le Bel were knighted, the edifying
spectacle was represented before them of the life of Renard

376

THE KARLING ROMANCES.

the Fox, who became successively physician, clerk, bishop,
archbishop, and pope, eating however hens and chickens all
the while, much after the fashion of their father's unhappy
tool at Avignon. Renard has thus become the absolute name
of the animal in France, to the entire exclusion of the an
cient golpe, and in England Reynard is his universal epithet.
It was not however confined to the creature, but was once
prevalent among the human kind.

EngUsh.
Reynard

French.
Regnard Renart

Provenpal.
Rainart

ItaUan.
Rainardo

German.
RaginhartReinhard ReinekeRenke Renz

Frisian.
Renert RennertRinnart
Rienit

PoUsh.
Raynard

Hungarian.
Reinhard

Another old Frankish form is Raginmund, much in use in
southem France, where there was a long line of counts of
Toulouse, called Raymond, one of whom was celebrated by
Tasso in the first Crusade as a gallant knight, but the last of
whom, Raymond Berenger, one of the earliest examples of
double names, went down before the sword of the fio-st Simon
de Montford, as a supporter of the Albigenses. The counts
of Barcelona, in Spain, bore the like name, and the old Ro
manesque territories are still its usual home.

EngUsh.
Raymond

Provenfal.
Raimons

Italian.
Raimondo

German.
Reinmund
Reimund

French.
Raimond

Spanish.
Ramon

Terrible to us, but glorious to Denmark, was the name of
Ragnar. Once we had it peacefuUy in East Anglia, as Ragin-

RAGNAR. 377
here, the warrior of judgment, but in that same East Anglia
it was to have a deadly fame. The historical Ragnar seems
to have been decorated with a few mythical exploits of some
more ancient hero, for he is one of the dragon killers. His
first wife, Thyra, had her bower encircled by a deadly poisonous
serpent, the ravager of the whole country, until he won her
hand by the slaughter of the serpent, having guarded him
self from its venom by a suit of hairy garments covered with
pitch, whence he obtained the soubriquet of Lodbrog. After
wards he married a poor but beautiful maiden called Krake,
who, after she had bome him four sons, disclosed that she was
the last of the Wolsungen, the daughter of Sigurd and Bryn
hild. Nay, Icelandic families connect themselves through
her with the heroes of Wurms ! And after this it is strange
to find Jarl Ragnar sailing up the Seine, and ravaging Paris,
in the days of Charles the Bald, being in fact the Agramante
of the poets. Here again he is the cause of bitter woe to
England, falling into the hands of King JElla of Northumbria,
and being put to death by being thrown into a pit filled with
vipers, where, till his last breath he chanted the grand death
song that is worthy to stand beside the dirge of King Eric
Blodaxe. It was revenge for his death that brought his
fierce sons with that dire armament which ravaged England
— the invasion that was fatal to Edmund of East Anglia,
ruined the great abbeys of the fens, and though finally
mastered by Alfred, inade the north of England Danish.
This name of dread was brought to Normandy by his kin
dred, and figures in Domesday as Raynar, a frequent surname
in England. In France it was cut down to Rene, a name
that crept into the House of Anjou, and was bestowed on the
prince — too much of a troubadour and knight errant for a king
— who vainly tried on so many crowns, and was hated in
England because ' Suffolk gave two dukedoms for his daugh
ter.' Why the feminine of this name, Renee, was chosen for
the younger daughter of Louis XH., does not appear, but

378

THE KARLING EOMANCES.

when she married into the House of Este, it was translated
into Renata, and the Italians, in their revived classicalism,
seem to have fancied it had some connection with regeneration.
Her friendship for Calvin, and endeavours to protect the
Huguenots from her terrible son-in-law of Guise, rendered
hers rather a favourite name with the French Calvinists —
a very remote descent from the terrible viking. Renira is
the Dutch feminine form.

EngUsh.
Rayner Rainer

French.
Reignier Renier
Ren6

Provenijal.
Raynier

German.
Reiner

Italian.
Renato
Ranieri

Nor.
Ragnar

Raginmar, great judgment, still exists in Germany, as
Reinmar, or Reimar, and is the most probable origin of the
Ramiro, so frequent among the early kings of the smaU
struggling Pyrenean realms.
Ragnhild, a favourite with old Norwegian dames, has be--
come in Lapp, Ranna.
The German contraction rein has been often translated into
pure, but this is an error, as these names can almost uniformly
be traced back to ragn.
The remaining forms are —

German.
Ragnfrid, m.
Ragnfrida, f.

EngUsh.
Renfred, m.

Nor.
Ragnfrid, p.
Ragnrid, f.
Randid, f.
Randi, f.

>¦ Judgment of peace

Fair judgment

EICHARD. 379

Ger. Prov.

Raginbald

Rambauld 'J

Reinbt)ld

Renbold

> Prince of judgment

Rembald

j

Ger. Reginbrecht, Reinbert— Splendour of judgment

Nor. Ragenheid — Wise impulse

Ger. Reinger — Spear of judgment

Nor. Reginleif — Relic of judgment

German. Frisian.

Raginward

Remward "|

Reinward

Renward >- Guardian of judgment.

Remma )

And lastly Regina, caUed in Bavaria Reigl and Regl, was
originally less the Latin queen than the feminine of ragn.
Nor in effect is the meaning far apart.''^
Section V. — Richard.
Richard, or Richardet, was one of the Quatre Filz
d' Aymon, who, according to one version, was the person
who gave the fatal blow with the chess-board, instead of
Renaud. He is not a very interesting personage, being
rather the attendant knight than the prime hero, the rescued,
not the rescuer ; but under his Italian name of Ricciardetto,
he has a whole poem to himself, 'written by a secretary of
the Propaganda, who afterwards broke his heart at not being
made a cardinal. It was, in fact, a mere scurrilous satire
upon friars, and was the lowest depth to which romantic
poetry fell.
It was not to this Paladin that his name owed its fre
quency, but to Ricehard, or stern kmg, an Anglo-Saxon
• Roscoe, Bojardo and Ariosto; Sismondi, Histoire de France; MaUet;
Northern Antiquities ; Spanish BaUads.

38o

THE KARLING ROMANCES.

monarch of Kent, who left his throne to become a monk
at Lucca, and was there said to have wrought many miracles.
The Normans must have had some connection with Lucca,
as it may be remembered the Holy Face of Lucca was
WUUam Rufus's favourite oath, — for the third of their dukes
bore the name, and transmitted it to two successors, whence
we obtained as many as twenty Richards at the Conquest,
and have used it as a favourite national name ever since.
Two more saints bore it, the excellent bishop of Chichester,
and a hermit, who was made bishop of Andria, in Apulia.
Three times has it been on the throne, though finally dis
carded by royalty after the enormities imputed to the last
Plantagenet ; and latterly it has lost a little of its popu
larity, though never entirely disused.

EngUsh.
RichardRitchie (Scot.)
Diccon Dick

French.
Richard

ItaUan.
Riccardo Ricciardo
Ricciardetto

Netherlands. Rijkert Riikard Riik

Portuguese.
Ricardo

PoUsh.
Ryszard

The leading syllable is from the same source as ragn;
it is he who executes judgment, the ruler or king, the same
word as the Indian rajah, and the Latin rex. It was reihs
in Gothic, rich in Old German, ryce in Anglo-Saxon ; and
its derivative reich was the origin of the Neustria and
Austrasia, the oster reich and ne oster reich, eastem and not
eastern, realms, of the Franks, and of the present Austria or
eastern kingdom. Reich is the home term for the German
empire at the present day. Our adjective rich is its sordid
offspring, and in France a wealthy peasant is un richart,
Rih is more in vogue as a Gothic and Frank commence
ment than among most of the other Teutons, though all use

RICHARD. 381
it as a conclusion. Richard is its only universal name ; but
among the first foes of the Romans, we find among the
Suevi, Rechiarius, who is the same with the German Richer,
or kingly warrior, and the French saint, Riquier. Ricimar,
the name of the terrible Goth who for a short time held Rome,
is the great king, and was the maker and dethroner of the four
last Augusti; and his namesakes, Ricimer and Rechimiro, ap
pear in Spain, and may, perhaps, be the right source of Ramiro.
Recared, Richila, Riciburga, are also Gothic.
The Franks show Rigonthe, or royal war, a daughter of
Fredegonda ; Rictrude, a saint, as well as Richilde, also a
queenly name, which continued for some time in use, and is
better than the Richenza and Richarda, sometimes used in
England as the feminines of Richard. Richolf endures in
Friesland as Rycolf, Ryklof or Rickel, and Germany once
had Ricbert.
One great name of this derivation is the northem Eirik.
The first syllable is that which we call aye to the present
day, the word that lies at the root of the Latin cevum, the
German ewig, and our o'wn ever. Ei-rik is thus Ever King,
An ancient Eirik was said to have been admitted among the
gods, and Earic was the second name of .^sc, the son of
Henghist; but it was the northern people who really used
Eirik, which comes over and over in the line of succession of
all the Northem sovereignties, figures in their ballads, and,
in the person of King Eirik Blodaxe, is connected with their
finest poetry. In the present day it is scarcely less popular
than in old times, and has the feminine Eirika.

EngUsh.
Erie

French.
Eric

German.
Erich

Nor.
Eirik

Swedish.Erik

PoUsh.
Eryk

Slovak.
Erih Areh

Lettish.
Erik

Esth.
Erik Eers

Lapp.
Keira

382 THE KARLING ROMANCES.
Two other names of the North have the same commence
ment, Eimund, ever protecting, or eternal guard, commonly
called Emund, and EiUf, the ever-living, answering to the
Greek Ambrosios. Eilif is also written Eiliv, EUiv, EUef,
and even Elof, and latinized in Elavus.''*'

*)

Section VI. — Astolfo.
Astolfo is to the Paladins what Conan is to the Feen, the
butt or grazioso. In his full-blown perfection he is first
cousin to Orlando, being the son of Milone's brother Ottone,
and was also related to Rinaldo, according to the quaint
genealogies of the chivalrous heroes that exact heraldry loved
to draw up. He joined the four sons of Aymon, when they
left the court after the quarrel at chess, and joined in their
wild exploits ; but apparently permitted no meaner inter
lopers in the trade, for when he caught a party of robbers,
he insisted on some unfortunate hermits being their execu
tioners, declaring such an office was quite as pleasing to
Heaven, ' che dire il pater nostra,' and finally pummeUing
them into compliance. In Bojardo, Astolfo gains possession
of a magic lance, brought by Angelica from Catay, which
unhorsed all its antagonists, and secure in its aid, refused
when he was required to deliver up to Gradasso, Bajardo
and Durindana, which had been left in his charge while their
masters were wandering after Angelica, but challenged Gra
dasso to single combat, defeated him, and then went in search
of his cousins. Ariosto conducts him into the enchanted
palace, where every one was pursuing something lost;
Rinaldo his horse, Bradamante Ruggero, Ruggero Brada
mante. One blast of Astolfo's horn, also magical, destroyed the
enchantment, and he became possessed for the time of the
* Roscoe; Munch; Butler; MichaeUs.

ASTOLFO. 383
Hippogriff, upon whom he soared to the terrestrial paradise,
and was conducted by St. John to the moon, where he ob
tained possession of Orlando's senses, and restored them to
him. The later 'writers, who added to the burlesque ele
ment and diminished the chivalrous, made more and more of
Astolfo's boastfulness, till he is quite the buffoon of their
poems. He was finally kiUed at Roncesvalles; and the
Spaniards call him Don Estolfo.
The person kiUed with Rotlandus is called, by Eginhard,
Anselmus, and he, no doubt, contributed in the idea of the
Astolfus, Count of Champagne, whose burial after the battle
is recorded by Archbishop Turpin. But the real bearer of the
name of Astolfo was one of the enemies of the Karlings, and
of the House of Este, namely, Astolfo, king of the Lombards,
who held his court at Pavia, and whose encroachments on
the Roman territory were the first cause of the interference
of the Franks in Italy. He was besieged by Pepin at Pavia
in 755, and forced to come to terms ; but he was evidently a
very considerable sovereign ; and Ernesto, Marchese d'Este,
was kiUed in battle with him in 745. His promotion to be
a Paladin is accounted for by his having been a Christian,
and the character he bears, by the possibUity of there having
been satirical songs and poems upon him, especially at the
time when Charlemagne ill-treated his granddaughter, De-
sirata. Astolfo is still a current name in Lombardy, though
we do not find it anywhere else, and its congeners only in
Scandinavia. The meaning of the last syUable is, of course, wolf; the
first is aast or ast, love or wishes, or if the sense of hot
impetuosity be allowed, Astolf is the swift wolf. Aasta was
rather a favourite name with the maidens of the North, and
as Asta is not disused, though too often treated as the short
for Augusta.
Astridur is from hridhur, an impulse, and thus would mean
swift impulse, or the impulse of love. It was greatly used by

384 THE KARLING ROMANCES.
the royal ladies of the North, among whom may be specified
the mother of St. Olaf, and a daughter of Knut, called by
Danish pronunciation, Estridh, but transmuted into Margaret.
The diminutive of Ast, under various mispronunciatiotis,
named that most terrible of vikings. Hasting, whose ravages,
though kept from England by the policy originated by Alfred,
were fearful all along the French coast, and even extended to
Italy. It is he who is said to have many times submitted to
baptism, and then returned to his fury again ; and there is a
curious report, that RoUo's Normans found him settled in
France, and reproached him with the tameness of his old'
age, so that he dashed away again, and returned to his ships
and his piracy. Hastinc occurs in Domesday, and Warren
Hastings' family claimed descent from the old Sea King.*
Section VH. — Ogier le Bands.
One of the Paladins was, undoubtedly the legacy of a
much more ancient myth, namely, Ogier le Danois. He does
not play a very prominent part in the poems of the ItaUans,
but as Ogier the Dacian he is one of Turpin's catalogue of
knights, and a baUad especially dear to Don Quixote thus
commences : — ' De Mantua sale el Marques,
Danes Urgel el leal..
It proceeds to teU how he found Valdovinos, his nephew,
dymg under a tree, having been assassinated by the emperor's
son, Carloto, and making a long speech, which Don Quixote
rehearsed the first time he found himself in a similar condi
tion. Also, how el Marques proceeds to court, gets Carloto
tried by his peers and sentenced to death, and though el Rey
Carlo banishes them all for the condemnation, sees it carried
out. • Roscoe; Sismondi; Munch; J/Lichnelia ; Histoire de Normandie.

OGIER LE DANOia. 385
This Italian marquis is an exceedingly droll development
of the old Teutonic hero, Holger Danske. In Italy he is
Oggieri, Oggero, or Uggieri, U Danese; in French, Ogier
le Danois ; and, at times, le damn^, or il dannato, which title
is further accoimted for by the story that he was a Saracen
who became a Christian, and that his friends wrote from home
' tu es damnd' whence he chose to be thus christened. In
the Reali de Francia, Charlemagne cuts off, with his own
hand, the head of an unfortunate Oldrigi, whose blood was
too noble to be shed by anyone else. Now this Oggier was
'without doubt a contribution from the stores of Norman tra
dition, for Holger, or Olger, Danske is the grandest national
hero of Denmark. There is a ballad, given by Weber, where
he and Tidrek the Strong have a tremendous battle, and he
comes off victor. Moreover, he has eaten of the fruit of the
trees of the sun and moon, and has become immortal, and
there he sits with his feUows in the vaults of the Castle of
Kronberg, near which are two ponds, called his spectacles.
A peasant, with a ploughshare on his shoulder, once lost hia
way, and wandered in ; he found a circle of tall old men in
armour, all asleep round a stone table, with their heads
resting on their crossed arms. Holger Danske, who sat at
the head of the table, raised his head and the stone broke
asunder, for it had grown into the stone. He asked his
guest some questions about the upper world and dismissed
him, offering his hand. The peasant, dreading the gigantic
grip of the old champion, gave his ploughshare. ' Ha ! ha ! '
said Holger, as he felt its firmness, ' it is well. There are still
men in Denmark. Tell them that we shall come back when
there are no more men left than can stand round one tun ! '
But the ploughshare had been twisted round in his fingers.
Can this return of Holger be the Roger Bon Temps of the
French peasantry ?
But Holger, though I have placed him among the Paladins,
might have gone even farther back than the days of Dietrich.
VOL. IL C C

386 THE DARLING ROMANCES.
He is a mythical king, well-nigh a god, originally called
Haaloge, and owning, as his sacred island, Haalogaland, or
Heligoland. His name itself is holy, our very word holy — ^the halig of
the Anglo-Saxons, the hellig of the North, the heilig of Ger
many, and these words sprang from those denoting health ;
as the Latin salve, hail, salvus, safe, and salvatio, safety, are
all related to soundness.
Leaving this, as not belonging to our main subject, we
find that Helgi, the Norse form of the word for this holy old
mythic king, was exceedingly popular in the North. Helgi
has a poem to himself in the elder Edda. Forty-two
cases of Helgi are found in the Landnama-bok, and thirty-
four of its feminine, Helga; and a son of Burnt Njal
was Helgi. In Domesday there are five called Helgi, besides
fourteen Algars, very possibly meant for Holger ; and it may
be suspected that the Helie of the early Norman barons may
have been as much due to the Helgi of their forefathers as to
the prophet whom they learnt to know on Mount CarmeL
Perhaps, too, Helga was the source of Ala, or Ela, by which
a good many Norman ladies are recorded, the best known of
whom was Ela, heiress of Salisbury, the wife of one William
Longsword and mother of the other, one of the founders of
Salisbury Cathedral, and the witness of a vision of her son's
death in Egypt.
Helgi's descendants towards the East are far more certain
matters. Helgi, called Oleg by the Russian historians, was
the son of Rurik, the first Norman grand prince of Kief, and
his daughter, Olga, visited Constantinople, and was there bap
tized by the name of Helena, which makes the Russians sup
pose her two names to translate one another ; but they have
fortunately not discarded either Oleg or Olga, which thus
remain mementoes of the northern dynasty among the very
scanty number of Russian names that are neither Greek nor
Slavonic.

LOUIS. 387
In its own country Helgi gets contracted into HeUe, and
Helga into Hsege.*

Section VTH. — Louis.
With the throne of the Franks, the Karlingen took their
favourite prefix of the old Salic line. Mod.
This word, the same va. root as the Sanscrit gru, Greek
kXvu, (kluo,) Latin duo, Anglo-Saxon hlowan, may possibly
have been originated by the cow, to whose voice, in our own
language, the verb to low is now restricted; aU mean to make
a noise ; and the dignity of that noise increased, for kKvto's
(klutos) was Greek for renowned, xXeos, fame, as we saw when
deaUng with Cleomenes, Cleopatra, &c. ; and in Latin, clueo,
was to be famous, clientes or callers beset the honoured man,
and laus was praise or fame ; and so not only have we loud in
English, lyde in the North, for the ordinary adjective, but
Mod or hlud was the old German term for renown, the los for
which French knights afterwards fought and bled, and a
score of other words, less relevant to our purpose, will easily
suggest themselves as current in every European tongue,
first cousio words from laus or from Mod.
The rough aspirate at the beginning was once an essential
portion of the word, and among the Franks it must have
been especially harsh, since their contemporary Latinists
always render it by ch.
Chlodio, as they call him, is numbered as the second of
the long-haired Salians, the father of ' Meroveus,' and leader
of the incursions of the Franks about 428. His grandson
inarried the Burgundian maiden, called by the Valkyr title of
Hlodhild, or ChlodechUda, as the Latin civiUzation of her day
called her, when it hailed her with delight as the converter of
? Munch; Roscoe; Keightley; M.Bxr^a.i, Jutland. C C 2

388 THE KARLING ROMANCES.
her husband to Christianity. Although canonized, her name was
not in great use for a good many generations, and to this she
probably owes it that when it was revived as belonging to a royal
saint, for the benefit of the daughter of the good dauphin,
son of Louis XV., it had not been shorn of its aspirate like aU
the cognate ones. It has since become a favourite with
French ladies.

French.
Clotilde

ItaUan.
Clotilda

 , . , ¦
German.
Klothilde

The husband of ClotUda was kno'wn to his own fierce
Franks as Hluodoveh, or famous holiness, or consecration ;
but when his success after his prayer to the god of HluodhUd
had brought him to abjure his Teuton gods, and receive bap
tism from St. Remi, the pope accepted the only orthodox
sovereign of Europe as most Christian king and eldest son of
the Church by the appellation of Chlodovisus ; and round
Clovis, the re-translation into French, clustered the French
legends of the angel who bade him change the toads upon his
shield into the emblematic iris or fieur-de-lys of the holy
dove that brought the ampulla of celestial oil to Rheims for
his coronation, and all those of his successors, and of the
cast of his axe which determined the length of the cathedral
of Notre Dame.
A monarch of whom such tales were told was sure to have
namesakes, and among his successors were found many a fai
neant who had nothing of him but his prefix and his long
hair, and one who is counted as Clovis H. When these had
passed away, Charles the Great gave the name of the great
founder of the former line to one of his younger sons, the
only one who Uved to succeed him.
What he was called in his own day may be seen by the
curious barbaric Latin poem sung by his soldiers in honour of
their exploit in setting him at liberty, when he had been

LOUIS. 389
treacherously made prisoner by Adelgis, Duke of Beneven-
tum, a song that shows Latio in its first step towards the
tongues of southern Europe.
' Audite omnes flues terre errore cum tristitia,
Quale scelas fuit factum in civitas Beneventum
Lluduicum comprenderunt, sancto pio Augusto.'
'Lluduicus' is now known to the French as Louis le
Debonnaire, a title that some ascribe to his piety, others to
his weakness. The Germans took him as Ludwig, and
thenceforth these two varieties held a double course, while
the softer Proven9als made him Aloys, which is now regarded,
owing to a saint of its own, as a separate name. Three
monarchs of the Karling Une bore this favourite name, and
the fifth descendant of Hugh Capet brought it in again, to
come to its especial honour with the saintly Crusader, ninth
king so called, from whom it became so essentially connected
with French royalty, that after the accession of the Bour
bons, no member of the royal family was christened without
it. Indeed, hardly any one of rank or birth failed to have
it among their many names, tUl its once-beloved sound be
came a perU to the O'wners' heads in the Revolution, and it
has in the present day arrived at shariog the unpopularity of
Fran9ois. Elsewhere it is chiefiy a French importation ; the Welsh
use Lewis as an Anglicism of Llywel'wyn, and the Irish of
Lachtna ; and the Scots make rather more use of it from
their old alliances and connection through the Scottish
guard. There Lodowick is probably taken from the northem
form of the original word ; just as with the Italians, Luigi is
the mere Italian version of Louis, Lodovico the inheritance
from the Lombards or Germans, and in this shape long cur
rent in northem Italy, belonging in particular to the un
fortunate Sforza, of MUan, who perished in the first shock
between France and Italy.

399

THE KARLING ROMANCES.

EngUsh.
Ludovick
LewisLouis

Breton.
Loiz
Loizik

Scottish.
Lodowick

French.
Clovis Louis Looys
Loys

Provencal.
Aloys
Chlodobeu Lozoic

ItaUan.
LodovicoLuigi
Alo'isio

Spanish.
ClodoveoLuis

Portuguese.
Luia

German.
LudwigLuz
Lotze

Swiss.
Ludi

Swedish.
Ludwig

Dutch.
LodewickLood

Bavarian.
Wickl

PoUsh.
LudvikLudvis

Bohemian.
Ludvik

Slovak.
Ludvick Ljudevit

Hungarian.
Lajos

The Proven9al Aloys apparently was the first shape that
threw out a feminine, the Aloyse or Heloise, whose corre
spondence with Abelard was the theme of so much sentiment,
and whose fame, brought by the archers to Scotland, no
doubt was the origin of the numerous specimens of AUson
found in that romantic nation. According to Dugdale, the
wife of WiUiam Mallet (that gaUant though conceited hero,
whom the readers of Sir E. Bulwer's Harold cannot forget)
was Hesilia or Helewise, no doubt the same as Heloise, and
causing a little hesitation whether this may not be an excep
tional Heiliwig, or holy war, instead of, as is generally
allowed, and far more probable, Hlodovicia, holy fame.
Heloise had nearly died away in France when Rousseau's
romance of La Nouvelle Heloise brought it as weU as Julie
into fashion again.
The votaresses of St. Louis had, however, chosen to come

LOUIS.

39^

much nearer to his name, and by the end of the fifteenth
century Louise was in great vogue at the French court ; it
traveUed everywhere with French princesses, came to us with
the House of Hanover, and has now a thorough hold of all
ranks, often getting confused with Lucy.

EngUsh.
Louisa
Louie

French.
Louise Lisette
Loulou
Heloise Louison

ItaUan.
Luisa
Eloisa

Spanish.
Luisa

Portuguese.
LuizaLuizinha

Scotch.
LootAlison Aifie

German.
Ludowicke
Luise

Swedish.
LudovicaLovisa Lova

PoUsh.
LudvikaLudoisiaLodoiska

Lettish.
LuscheLasche
Lawise

The eldest son of the great Clovis was Hlodmir, or Clodomir,
great fame, made more euphonious in German as Ludomir,
and furnishing such surnames as Luttmer and Lummers.
AU his sons were murdered by their uncles, except one who
was shorn of his long locks to save his life, and was put into a
convent, where he became a holy man, was canonized, and his
harsh name of Hlodowald, or Clodvald, became the pleasant
one of St. Cloud, best known for the sake of the palace near
Paris. Another St. Chlodvald, of Metz, is commonly called
St. Clou.
One^of the uncles who killed the poor boys was Hlodhari,
or Chlotachari, famous warrior, a terrible savage, but the
last survivor of the brothers, and counted in the Frank his
tory as Chlother, or Clotaire. Others of his race likewise
were so baptized, and when the name passed to the Karlingen
it was as Lothar. So was called the son of Louis le Debon
naire, whose portion, known at first as Lotharingen, came to

2^2 THE KARLING EOMANCES.
be in Latin Lotharingia, and still remains Lorraine. Lothar
did not pass away from Germany; one emperor, after the
separation, was so called; and it fell into many forms of
surnames, in especial into Luther ; and when Martin Luther
had rendered this almost saintly to his countrymen, they
over-hastily explained it by lofher, pure ; while the Bohemians
found a similar word ia their o'wn tongue, meaning a swan.
Oddly enough, Huss signified a goose, and the saying arose
that the Bohemian goose had let fall a quill, which had been
picked up by a swan of far more distant flight. Indeed an
inn where Luther slept, on his way to the Diet of Wurms,
still bears a swan as its sign, in his honour ; and the story
must in some shape or other have traveUed eastward, since
it is an Armenian opinion that the English and Germans
were deluded by Luther into the worship of a swan.
Luther has a few namesakes in his own country on his own
account, but, in general, Chloter has died out of Christian
nomenclature.

EngUsh.
LotharioLowther

French.
Clotaire Lothaire

German.
Lothar
Luther

Spanish.
Clotario

Lettish.
Lutters

ItaUan.
Lotario

Chlodoswmtha, or famous height, was a Frank princess,
without namesakes beyond her own raee ; in fact, the use of
this prefix seems to have been exclusively Frank.'*
* Sismondi, Histoire des Francois, Littdrature du Midi de I'Eurove-
Friednch Pott ; MichaeUs; Thieny, R^cits des Temps Uhmingien.

393

CHAPTER VL
DESCRIPTIVE NAMES.
Section I. — Nobility.
The names connected with any great cycle of interest have
been nearly exhausted, and only those remain that seem to
have been chosen more for sense than connection, though
afterwards continued for the sake of their owners. Several
of our own truly English or Anglo-Saxon names are among
these, and in especial those with the prefix meaning noble,
.ffithel, Athel, Adel, Edel, or, in High German, Adal. It is
thought to come from the universal word atta, a father, and
thus to convey that the owner has forefathers, the essence of no
bUity, as with the pater and patrician of Rome, and the hidalgo,
the son of something, of Spain. Adel, or Mthel, is a favourite
prefix in all the Teutonic branches except the Scandinavian,
where it does not occur at all. It is essentially Gothic, —
witness Athalaric, the formidable but gentle conqueror of
Rome, who weU deserved his name of noble king. He is
generally, however, called Alaric, and his name has been
deduced from al, all; but the right reading seems to be
that which identifies his appellation with our own English
.ffithelric, and the Uadalrich of Germany.
Udalrich, archbishop of Augsburg till the year 973, is
notable as the first person canonized by the pope according
to the present forms, which could not, however, have included
the half century of posthumous probation, as he was placed
in the calendar only twenty years after his death. Contract
ing hia name to Ulrich, Germany made him a favourite

394

DESCRIPTIVE NAMES.

national saiot; and we find him and his feminine spread
throughout the countries influenced by the empire, and the
feminine particularly prevalent in Denmark, whither it was
carried by German queens. Though the ensuing table places
aU the forms of Athalaric together^ it should be kept in
mind that the forms begmning with A are the modern name
sakes of the great Goth, those with U and 0 the votaries of
the saint, and Adelrich is treated as a separate name.

EngUsh.
.a^thelric
Alaric Ulrick

French.
Alaric
Ulric Olery

ItaUan.
Alarico Ulrico

German.
Adelrich Alarich Dadalrich
Ulrich Alerk Oelric

Bavarian,
Rickel

Swedish.
Alarik Ulrik

Frisian.
Ulrik Olrick
Ulerk Ulk
Ucko Ocko

Swiss.
Uoli
Ueli Uerecb

PoUsh.
Ulryk

Bohemian.
Ulric Oldrich

Slovak.
UrehUlrih

Lettish.
Uldriks

FEMININE.

German.
Ulrike

French.
Ulrique

Roman.
Ulrica

Polish.
Ulryka

The successor of Alaric, who laid him in his river-gravej
is known to us as Ataulfus. In his O'wn time he was Athaulf,
the noble wolf, and his likeness stands in our own roll of
English kings as the father of Alfred, and, by popular reportj

NOBILITY.

39S

the founder of the tithe system, namely, iEthelvulf ; but this
good old name was dropped ia England, while its German
cousin, in honour of a sainted bishop of Metz, of the ninth
century, became very common in the principalities of the
empire, and was imported with the house of Hanover in the
barbarous Latin form of Adolphus. Its feminine, coined in
Germany, is Adolfine, usuaUy called Dolfine, and now ex
tremely common. This may possibly be the source of the
Dolphine given as the name of one of the daughters of Wal
theof, Earl of Northumbria, as the habit of making barbarous
feminines was just beginning in her time.

English.
EthelwolfAdolphusDolph

French.
Adolphe

ItaUan.
AdolfoUdolfo

German. Adolf Odulf

Finn.
AtoAtU

Athanagild, or AthalagUd, noble pledge, was another of
these early Goths, and afterwards we meet the same meaning
in Adelgis, or Adelchis, the brave son of the last Lombardic
kiag, whose noble spirit, under his misfortunes, is the subject
of a fine tragedy of Manzoni. The duke of Beneventum,
who made Louis le Debonnaire prisoner, was Adelgis ; but
it is curious to find the soldiers in the dog-latm poem above
alluded to, terming him Adalfieri, thus showing the source of
the Italian Alfiero, and its patronymic Alfieri. Odelgis was
old High German.
Mthel was so much used by the royal famUies of Kent
and Wessex, that the diminutive .Sltheling was latterly ap
plied to designate the heir to the crown, and was thus con
tinued even after the Conquest to the son of Henry I., who
perished in the white ship.
..SJthelbryht, or noble splendour, named our first Christian
king of Kent, also a brother of King Alfred's, and a mis
sionary of the royal blood of Northumbria, who preached in

39^ DESCRIPTIVE NAMES.
southern Germany, and died about the year 700, at Egmond,
where as St. Adelbrecht, he became patron. His name was
taken at baptism by one who became archbishop of Magde
burg, who, in his tum, bestowed it on his pupU, the Bohe
mian Woyteich, army help. This convert was afterwards
bishop of Prague, and was martyred near Dantzic whUe
preaching to the heathen Prassians in 997. Adelbrecht
could not faU to become national wherever the saint had
set his foot; and when shortened to Albrecht, was adopted
by Italy, and thence sent to Jerusalem with a Latin pa
triarch, who, being beatified, rendered Alberto freshly popu
lar in the South. Albrecht, and the feminines Alberta and
Albertine, were, however, almost entirely German, untU the late
Prince Consort brought the name to England, where it bids fair
to become one of the most frequent of national names. Some
fancy it comes from AUbright; but the German saints,
whence it was taken, are evidently direct from our English
^thelbryht, though in Germany Adelbert and Albrecht
are now treated as two separate names. Bela, which belonged
to an excellent blind king of Hungary, is believed to be the
Magyar form of the name.

EngUsh.
Ethelbert
Albert

French.
AlbertAubert Albret Aubertin

Provencal.
Azalbert

ItaUan.
Alberto
Albertino

German.
Adalbert AlbrechtUlbricht

'WaUachian.Averkie

Finn.
Alpu

Danish.
Albert Bertel

PoUsh.
Albert Olbracht

Mtheliei, or noble speech, the brother of Alfred, waa

NOBILITY.

397

almost canonized by his subjects, and is sometimes called
Ethered, whence the Scottish Ethert ; but the dismal repu
tation of ' the unready ' king prevented this from being
popular. It must not be confused with Etheldred, the femi
nine name, properly ^thelthryth, meaning in Anglo-Saxon
tha noble threatener, though at the same time it may be
coimected with the German EdUtrud, or noble maiden.
Most likely names ending in trud had been brought to
England, and as the Valkyr sense was forgotten, the na
tive meaning of threat was attached to the word, and the
spelling adapted to it. When ' a resolute will and a strong
hand were a woman's best title to respect,' as Mr. Pearson
says in his excellent lectures on the early and middle ages of
England, a noble threatener was no inappropriate ladies' name,
and something of the same spirit stUl prevails ; for we are
told that the truly popular hospital nurse is she who is firm
of hand and decided of will; kind, indeed, but ready to
enforce discipline even sharply. St. JEthelthryth was a
queen who must have been a very uncomfortable 'wife, and
who, finally, retired into a monastery, getting canonized as
St. Etheldreda, and revered as St. Audrey. From the gew
gaws sold at her fairs some derive the term tawdry ; and, at
any rate, Awdrey has never been wholly extinct as a name
among the peasantry, and has of late been revived, though
with less popularity than the other more modem contrac
tion, Ethel, which is sometimes set to stand alone as an
independent name. Addy is the common Devonian short for
Audrey. Germans do, however, seem to have used the word without
another syllable, for Adilo, or Odilo, was an old name, and
Ado and Addo are stiU current in Friesland, no doubt, the
same as the Ade of the Cambrian registers. Adela and
Adele, too, occur very early ; indeed, there is reason to think
that just as in England the son was the ^theling, in Frank-
land the daughter was the Adalheit, or the Adelchen. This

398 DESCRIPTIVE NAMES.
word heit is translated as the root of the present German
heiter, cheerful, and thus would mean noble cheer ; but I sus
pect it is rather heid, condition, answering to the hood at the
end of our abstract nouns, and that the princess royal of
each little Frankish duchy or county was thus the ' nobleness '
thereof. AU the feudal princes of the tenth and eleventh centuries
seem to have had an Adelheid to ofier in marriage, and to
have latinized her in aU manner of ways, while practically
they called her Alix, (or Alisa in Lombardy,) a name that
was naturalized in England, when Alix la Belle married
Henry I. AUce is our true English form, though it has
been twisted into Alicia, and then referred for a derivation
to the Greek Alexios, so as often to appear in Latin docu
ments of the later middle ages in the form of Alexia;
whereas in earlier times, before its origin was forgotten, it
is translated by Adelicia, Adelisa, or AdeUdis.
The French made great use of all the forms of the name ;
the Germans, in honour, perhaps, of the Italian Queen
Adelaide — whose adventures before her marriage with the
Emperor Otho were so curious — ^preferred that variety, and
from them we received it again with our good Queen Ade
laide, from whom it is becoming frequent amongst us. The
German AUce, is Else, a favourite old peasant word, distin
guishing the damsel in Grimm's collection as ' die kluge Else'
when she was so much overpowered by contingencies as to
let all the beer run to waste, and the ' frau die Hsebill,' who
impelled her husband to such unwarrantable demands of the
Old Man of the Sea. This same contraction is common in
northern England, but gets confused with EUzabeth, as in
Scotland, with Alison ; and in Ireland, the prevalent Alicia
is, perhaps, meant for Aileen, or Helen.

NOBILITY.

399

EngUsh.

French.

Provencfal.

ItaUan.

Adelaide

Adelaide

Azalais

Adelaida

Adeline

Adeline

Alisa

Adeliza

Adelais

Adela

Adele

Alice
Alix
Alicia
Elsie
German.
Netherlands.
Slovak.
Lettish.
Adelheid
Adelheid
Adelajda
Audule
Adeline
Adelais
Addala
Adele
Else
Rse
The Adeleve of early Norman times is probably meant for
.ffithelgifu, noble gift, a frequent Old Saxon lady's name,
which we generally call Ethelgiva.
.^thelwold, the Saxon historian of royal blood, is noble
power, ^thelheard, or noble resolution, answers to Adelhard,
a cousin of Charlemagne, and abbot of Corbie, whom his
contemporaries glorified as at once the Augustin, the Antony,
and the Jeremiah of his day, and, being canonized, left
Alard and Alert to Friesland, and Aleardo, Alearda to
Provence. Probably, too, the celebrated Abelard was so
caUed by a Breton corruption of the same.
iEthelstan, the noble jewel, was second only to Alfred in
ability and glory, and his name lived on to the Conquest,
when it is set down as Adestan and Adstan. The surnames
Alstan and Huddlestone are regarded as its remains.
Adelhelm, the noble helmet, named the excellent and
poetical Aldhelm, bishop of Sherbom, from whom the head
land on the Dorset coast was once called St. Aldhelm's head,
but is now corrupted into St. Alban's head.
Adelgar, or noble spear, was chiefiy continental, first figur
ing in the beautiful Scottish baUad of Sir Aldingar, but
400 DESCRIPTIVE NAMES.
better kno'wn in Lombardy, where AUighera sprang from it,
and gave his patronymic to Dante Alighieri. Algarottij
was another Italian derivative ; and in France, Augier and
Augereau; in Germany, Oehlkar, show that it once must
ha.ve been much in use. It is not always easy, however, to
separate between the words from Adel and from Hilda. The
remaining varieties are —

Ger. Adelar — Noble eagle
Ger. Adelbar, Alpero — Noble bear
Ger. Adelbold ; Eng. .^thelbald — Noble prince
Ger. Odelburga ) -^ ,. defence
Eng. iEthelburgl J^lof^e defence
Eng. .lEthelburh — Noble pledge
German.
Adelfrid ^
AdalfridUlfrid I Noble peace
Ulfert
Olfert
Eng. jEthelfledh — Noble increase
Ger. Adelgard — Noble protection
Ger. Adelgnnd ; Fr. Adelgonde — ^Noble war
Ger. Adelhild — Noble heroine
Ger. UdaUand, Uland — Noble land
Ger. Adelinde, Odelind; Eng. Ethelind {mod.)— 'Nolle snake
Ger. Adelmann, UUman — Noble man
Ger. Adelmund ; Eng. Edelmund (Z»o?nes.)— Noble protection
Ger. Adelmar ; Eng. Ethelmar ; Fr. Ademar, Adhemar—
Noble greatness
Ger. Adelschalk — Noble servant
Ger. Adelswind— Noble strength
Ger. Adeltac — Noble day*

• Pott; MichaeUs; Lappenburg; Butler; Palgrave, Dukes of N6r.
mandy ; Turner.

COMMAND 401

Section H. — Command.
The Gothic hidyan has resulted in our verb to hid, the
German haten, the Danish hyde, besides bote, a messenger,
and the budstick, bidding-stick, or summons to the muster.
All these were in the sense of command; but from the
same root grew the race of entreating words, the Scandi
navian hede, German bitten, and English beg. When these
entreaties were devotional, the Germans made the verb beten,
and our term for prayer, bede, passed on to the mechanical
appliance for counting prayers — the beads of the rosary,
while the pensioner bound to pray for his benefactor was his
bedesman. It is doubtful whether this, or the Welsh hedaws, life, gave
his name to the Venerable Bede, but no doubt to himself and
his contemporaries it suggested the idea of prayer. There is
no doubt, however, in the case of Baudvildur, or Bathilda,
(the commanding heroine,) the daughter of king Nidudr,
the lady whom Volundr carried ofi' with him when he
fled from her mother's cruelty. After her was called Bat-
hUda, an Anglo-Saxon slave, who was elevated to be the
wife of the second Hluodwig, and lived so holy a life and
exerted herself so much to obtain the redemption of slaves,
that she was canonized, and, as la reine Bathilde, was greatly
venerated in the believing days of France. Denmark also
used this name, having probably taken it from England.
There ' Dronning Bothild,' the wife of king Ejegod, spread
the name among the maidens, so that it passed to Norway as
Bodild, Bodil, and even to the contraction Boel.
Of English birth, too, was the commanding wolf — Bed-
vuolf, or Bodvulf — who, with his brother, St. Adolf, went,
about the end of the sisth century, to seek religious instruc
tion in Gallia-Belgica. Adolf became bishop of Maestricht,
and eponym to tbe Adolphuses. Bodvulf came home, and
VOL. IL D D

402 DESCRIPTIVE NAMES.
founded the monastery of Ikano, where he died in 655, and
was canonized. The monastery was destroyed by the Danes,
and the situation forgotten, but the samt's relics were carried
away by the fugitive monks, and dispersed into various
quarters, giving title to four churches in London, besides St.
Botolf's bridge, commonly caUed Bottlebridge, in Hunting
donshire, and St. Botolf's town, in Lincolnshire, usuaUy
known as Boston, whence was called its American cousin
Boston, with little relation to the saint. The tower of the
church of St. Botolf, looking forth over the Wash, was a
valued landmark, and thence the saint was apparently viewed
as a friend of travellers, and connected with the entrances to
cities, much as St. Christopher is elsewhere. Camden even
supposed him to be Boathulf, or boat helper, and his day, the
1 7th June, is a market day in Christiania, under the term of
Botolsok, or Botsok. In Jutland there is a church of St.
Botolv ; and in the North the names of Botol and Bottel are
kept up ; while, in England, there only remain to us the sur
names of Bottle and Biddulph. The Old German forms of
the two names above-mentioned are Botzhild, Botzulf, and
Botzo, or Boso, a commander, was now and then used as a
name with them, as in the instance of the troublesome
duke of Burgundy, whom French historians generally call
Boson, and who is apt to be translated by hose, wicked.
Bote, Botho, Poto, are also found in Germany, and the
very earliest specimen of this class of name is to be found in
Botheric, commanding king, the name of the govemor whose
murder in the hippodrome caused Theodosius to give his
bitterly repented command for the massacre of Thessalonica.
Now and then hot occurs at the end of a word, as in the
Spanish prince Sisebuto, the messenger of victory, or vic
torious commander.
These are not. the same with some that look much Uke
them, derived from the Northem h0d, German hadu, A. G. S.
beado, war. Bead wig, in the Wodenic ancestry, is thus bat-

BRIGHTNESS. 4O3
tie war, and the Gothic king of Italy, TotUa, is probably
made by the Romans from B0dvhar, battle pleader, a name
StiU used in the North as B0dvar. B0dmod, B0dulf, and
B0dhUd, or B0dvild, have also been in use.*

Section HI. — Brightness.
The root braj furnished the Greek ^Xiyav, Latin flagrare,
and Gothic bairht, the Anglo-Saxon beohrt, or byrht, the Old
^eraxan percht, and Northern hjart.
It is a component of Frank, German, and Anglo-Saxon
nomenclature, but is rarely found in genuine Norsk; the
only instance in the Landnama-bok is Biartmar, who is
noted as of Irish birth, so may have brought an Anglo-Saxon
name. Bertha, the most obvious of all the progeny of biart, has
been treated of in her character as a personification of the
bright epiphany night, mixed up with an old epithet of Frigga
and 'with the spinning Holda. So, in Swabia, these legends
have formed a masculine, Berchthold, who has become the
wild huntsman in that quarter. Berchtvold was really an
EngUsh prince of the Heptarchy, and Brichtold is in Domes
day. Perahtholt, a veritable Old German name, making the
modem Bartold — Niebuhr's name, — the Italian Bertaldo, and
French Bertould. Bertalda is not so likely to be the femi
nine of this word as to come from Berchthilda, like the name
of Bertille, a sainted abbess of Chelles.
It is not easy to discover whether the most popular of all
thus commencing should be regarded as a single corrupted
name, or the produce of two, of which one has the second
syllable hramn, a raven, the other rand, a house. The patron
* Munch; MichaeUs; Pott; Sismondi; Butler; Camden; Le Beau;
Kemble. I> D 2

404

DESCRIPTIVE NAMES.

saint of all alike is Bertichranmus, bishop of Mans tiU 623,
and his Latinism leaves no doubt that he was a bright raven.
It was chiefiy popular in France, whence we must have ob
tained it, although there is no instance of it in Domesday,
and it was especially glorious in the fourteenth century, for
the sake of gallant Constable du Guesclin, ' the eagle of
Brittany,' whom Spanish chroniclers, by a droll perversion
of his appellation, called ' Mosen Beltran Claquin,' when he
came to fight their battles.

EngUsh.
Bertram

Scotch.
Barthram

French.
Bertrand

Provencal.
Bertran

ItaUan.
Bertrando

Spanish.
Beltran

Portuguese. Bertrao

German.
BertramBerdrand

Lusatian.
BatramBatramusch

Hungarian.Bertok

The wolf was sure to accompany the raven ; so Perahtolf,
or Bertulf, was canonized as an abbot in Artois, and left the
German Bertulf, and our own Bardolph, the flaming comrade
of Falstafi".
Bertwine, or bright friend, was the St. Bertin of France,
and the Bertuccio of Italy, often found in the old Lombardic
towns. Brihtric was the English earl who so gallantly died in de
fending England from the Danes in the unhappy days of
Ethelred the Unready, and another Brihtric was the unsuc
cessful suitor of MatUda of Flanders, on whom she 'wreaked
an unworthy vengeance after the Conquest. All the Brights
in Domesday seem to be of Saxon birth, since they use the
English instead of the French commencement, which was
already Ber, as in the instance of Bertrade, bright speech,
the countess of Anjou, who deserted her husband for PhiUppe
I. of France. The remaining forms are —

BRIGHTNESS. 405

Ger. Bertar ; Pr. Berthier— Bright warrior
Brichteva — Bright gift
Bricfrid — Bright peace
Brichtmar — Bright fame
Eng. I Brichsteg— Bright warrior
Britfleda — Bright increase
Brichstan — Bright stone
Bricsteg — Bright day
Ger. Bertrud — Bright maid.

Bert is one of the most indispensable conclusions among
all the German range of names, and is far more common
there than as a commencement.
Another word meaning bright, or glittering, is the Northem
jar, jor, jer, the German ir. Iring, or Irinc, is a semi-
mythological person. Old German tradition declared him to
have been the counsellor of Imvrit of Thuringia, and that
when both had been taken by the Franks, he was deceived
into slaying his sovereign, after which, in his rage, he kiUed
the victorious Frank, laid him under his master's body, and
then cut his way through the enemy, and returned home.
It is said that it is in commemoration of this exploit that
Iringsweg is one of the many titles of the Milky-way.
He appears again in the Nibelungen-noth as the Mark
graf Irinch of Tenemarche, or Denmark, in company with
Imvrit of Diiringen, i.e., Thuringia: he wounds Hagen, but
is slain by him, and lamented over by Kriemhild. In the
VUkina Saga, Irung dies leaning on a stone wall, in Danish
veggr, while vegr is a road, and the tradition has made the
Galaxy a reflection of this wall, confusing vegr and veggr. In
fact, this glittering path-way in the sky has always had a
tendency to be called after the roads on earth. Even in
Chaucer's time it was called after Watling-street ; and the
Anglo-Saxons caUed one of their Roman roads Eormonstreot,

406 DESCRIPTI'VTE NAMES.
as well as the aforesaid path in the sky. Aventin, a German
writer in the tenth century, calls it Euringstrasse, and makes
it belong to a mythical king Euring, on the Danube. It is
thought, however, that the original term for the Milky-way
was an allusion to its appearance, and that the sound caused
it afterwards to be connected with the hero Irung. His
name was sometimes subsequently used, and is, perhaps, what
French histories call Harenc.
J0rund is a northern name with a similar prefix, and means
a briUiant or glittering man ; but it gets caUed J0ren, and
mixed up with Jorgen, or George.*

Section IV. — War,
In Ulfilas' Bible, ' the multitude of the heavenly host ' is
translated, ' Haryis hunniakundis mMnagei,' In Anglo-
Saxon, an army is here, in old German heri, in the North
her, all perhaps coming from the ear, and to hear, as having
been summoned, like the legion from being chosen. Thence
the leader was the English Heretoga, and German Her-
zog, finally translated into the Latin dux, and becoming
political and territorial. The doings of the herr were ex
pressed by various old words, of which the Scottish to harry
is the direct descendant. Heerfurst, or army leader, may be
the Ariovistus of Caesar.
The single warrior was har in the North, hari in Germany,
and as ar is often found at the end of names. Many Ger
man critics translate the word by the army, instead of the
warrior ; but Professor Munch considers that the warrior, hari,
was the original meaning, and that herjar, his plural, after
wards came to mean the army.
* Grimm, Deutcher Mythologie, Deutche Heldensage ; Munch; Alban
Butler; Sismondi; Ayale-y-z-urita.

WAR. 407
The oldest and most famous of all the family is introduced
to us by Tacitus as Chariovalda, a Batavian prince. It is
the hardened sound of Harivald, warrior power, or ' army
wielder,' a name that the Germans soon called Heriold, and
the North Harald. This soon became one of the most
renowned northern names. Harald Harfagre, or the fair-
haired, was he who vowed never to trim his locks till he was
sole king of Norway, and thus sent Thorer the Silent to Ice
land, and Rolf-ganger to Normandy. Harald Krake, king of
Sleswig, was baptized in the presence of Louis le Debonnaire,
and used the already mentioned vow to forsake Thunner,
Seaxnot, and all their works. He afterwards introduced St.
Anschar to Denmark, but like all the first Christian kings of
Scandinavia, was himself expelled from his realm by his sub
jects. Harald Hardrada, or the resolute, was the very crown
of the poetic sea-kings of Norway, meeting with romantic
adventures in Constantinople, singing the praises of his
Russian bride all across the sea, exchanging gallant messages
with his namesake Harold Godwinson, at Stamford Bridge,
and dying as poetically as he had lived at the foot of his
banner Landwaster. It was from the Danes that Harold
came to England with the son of Knut, and to the son of Earl
Godwin, the usurper, more than half a Dane in blood and
temper, who, because he died in battle with the Normans, is
regarded by the popular mind as an English patriot, and has
in very modem times had a good many namesakes. Harald,
or as the Frisians call it, Herold, is only properly national in
Scandinavia and the islands from Iceland to Man.
Next in note is what the Franks called Charibert, when it
belonged to the king of Paris, whose daughter brought Chris
tian doctrine to Kent, and prepared the way for St. Augus-
tuie. St. Haribert was archbishop of Cologne about the
year 1000, and at that time the name became extremely
common among the French nobility. A Norman settler had
brought it to England even in the time of Edward the Con-

408 DESCRIPTIVE NAMES.
fessor ; and one of the many Herberts founded a family in
Wales, which, in the time of Henry V., was one of the first
to follow the advice to use one patronymic instead of the
whole pedigree of names. It is probably owing to the
honours in various kinds of the branches of this family that
Herbert has of late years become an exceedingly prevalent
Christian name in England. Except that the Frisians call
it Harber and Hero, and Italy puts an o at the end, it has
no variations. Herman is confused with Eormen ; and the
other forms are —

Ger. Herberge — Warrior protection
Ger. Herbold — Warrior prince
Nor. Herbrand ; Ger. Herbrand — Warrior sword
Nor. Herbjorn — Warrior bear
Ger. Herdegen — Warrior blade
Ger. Hertag — Warrior day
Nor. Hergils — Warrior pledge
Nor. Herlaug — ^Warrior drink
Nor. Herleik — Warrior sport
Nor. Herleif — ^Warrior relic
Ger. Herimar — Warrior greatness
Nor. Hermod ; Ger. Hermund ; Frank. Charimund —
Warrior protection
Nor. Herjolf ; Ger. Heriulf ; Frank. Chariwulf —
Warrior wolf
Ger. Heraric — Warrior king.

The warrior names were of the fiercest order. Leid (if
it do not mean a road) was the same with the word in
modern German, meaning hurt or mischief, and expressed
spite or violence. The North had Liedulf, afterwards con
tracted into Leiul, and no doubt the Scottish Lyulf, and
German Lethard, Lethild, Laidrad, Laidwald, Laidwig.

WAR. 409
In the same spirit we have neid or not, meaning violence or
compulsion, though it has resulted in the German neid, envy,
and our need, want. We have it in the name of St. Neot,
the relative and rebuker of King Alfred in his haughty days,
and the hero of a legend of little fishes daily renewed for
his food. Also Nidhard was a great chronicler of Frank
history, and left a name surviving as Nyddert, in Friesland,
and cut into Nitz, in Germany. There, too, were Notburg
and Notger, Nidbert in France, and in the North, Notulf,
afterwards written Notto. The terminal ndt is, however,
more common.
Wig or Vig is war itself, and is found in the genealogy of
Odin. Waegdaeg, or war day, is an ancestor of the Deiran
kings. The participle wigand, warring, was an Old German
name, which continued in Holland and Friesland, as Wigel,
Gellies, Gyllys, Jellies, and comes out in the history of
the blunders of Philip H's reign as Vigelius, the counsellor
of the duchess of Parma.
Vigleik still subsists in the North, and so does Viglaf,
reUc of war, the same as that of Wiglaf, the chronicler, and
perhaps as Wickliffe, unless this is local, and be Wyecliffe.
The other forms are —

Ger. Wigbert ; Fris. Wicbo— Bright war

Nor. Vigbrand — War sword

Ger. Wigbald — War prince

Ger. Wigbnrg — ^War protection

Nor. Vigfus — War eagerness

German. Frisian. Nor.

Wighard

Wygard

Vighard \

Wichhard

Wiart

Weikard

Wiert

' War firmness

Wigo

Wigi
Viga ' /
41 0 DESCRIPTIVE NAMES.

Wigher, Wicher — Warrior
Wigbelm — War helmet
Wiglind — War serpent
Wigmann, Wichman — War man
Wigmar — War fame
Wigram — War raven

These are almost all German, and the terminations in wig
are chiefly owing to German pronunciation of the word veh, or
vieh, consecration, and sometimes of the northern veig, liquor.
The strange northern name of Snorre, famous for the sake
of that Froissart of the North, Snorre Sturleson, comes from
snerra, strife.
Styrke is the strong, the same word as that in which the
old chroniclers describe William the Conqueror, as ' so very
stark.' Sterkulv and a few other forms have been found in
the North.
Toke is a very curious old name. It seems to mean the
mad or raging, and, growing into Tyke or Tyge in Den
mark, was the name that was latinized into Tycho by the
celebrated astronomer Brahe, who did not leave his madness
behind him with his name. The famous Jomsburg sea rover,
a sort of northern Lycurgus of the tenth century, was
PaUiatoke, supposed to be properly Toke, the son of Paine.
Paine is an unexplained name used by the Danes, and per
haps borrowed from the Wends ; but there are a few other
instances of it, among them the angUcized Earl Pallig, the
husband of Sweyn's sister Gunhild, who was kiUed by
Ethelred the Unready.
One curious fact is, that of Palnatoke is told the same
story that Swiss tradition has connected with WilUam TeU,
and that at least some English peasants relate of Robin
Hood's archery (though they place the apple on his wife's

PROTECTION. 41 1
head). Now TeU is the corrupted form of toll, mad, and
hood is the same as wud or wuth. Has some old myth of the
unerring arrow of wrath been mixed up with the three heroes
whose names lent themselves to the tradition ?
Thiostr means hardness or harshness, and was in use in the
North as Thiostulf, since contracted into Kjostol, Thiostvald,
Thiostar ; and probably Tostig, the ungracious son of God-
wme, who brought Harald Hardrada to invade England, took
his name from thence.

Section V. — Protection,
Bar — the word for strength — ^has been most fertile in
produce. Its progeny are far too numerous to describe ; but
the most notable at present in use are the Berg, the strength
of the hills, a mountain, and Burg, a fortress.
The names derived from it are, in combination, the bjorg
of the North, in the masculine, meaning protector, and
horg, the feminine, meaning, perhaps, protection, — the berge
of the Germans and burg of the Anglo-Saxons answering to
the same. The Anglo-Saxon ladies also bear names ending
with burh, also from the same root, and meaning a pledge,
the strength of an engagement, and the origin of our verb,
to borrow. Burrhed, king of Mercia, bore this name; but
instances of it are not very common.
Birger, Byrger, Birge, are the masculines much used in
Scandinavia ; and the combinations were Biorgulv, Bergthor,
Bergthora, the faithful wife of Njal, and Bergliot, the daughter
of Thorer the Silent, — the same name that has been already
mentioned as the northern one that has been mixed with the
Irish Brighid, and which would mean protecting ugliness.
Other forms are Bergswain, protecting youth, Berghild, an
swering to our Mercian princess Burgenhild, and Borgny,
apt to be cut down to Borny.

412 DESCRIPTIVE NAMES.
This is the word to which the Burgundians owed their
title, as dwellers in burghs, instead of wanderers on the open
plain. Another large race of names comes from the Gothic
Warsaw, Anglo-Saxon warian, — the '¦ware' of rustic shouts
in England like the ' gare ' of France, the latter syllable Of
beware and aware, and the wehrer of Germany. The quality
of precaution furnished the North with its favourite termina
tions var and vara, indicating the possession of the prudent
virtue that makes a man wary. It does not begin names,
but it often ends them, both in the North and Germany, as
Geirvar, Hervar, Amalvara, Hildiwara, &c.
The inhabitant was the natural defender, and in Anglo-
Saxon and Norsk ware became synonymous with the dweller,
as Cantwara, the defenders of Kent, for the Kentishmen;
Burgwara, the burghers ; and in the North, Vikvarjar, bay
defender. Ware, a defender, is thus a commencement in the
German Warimunt, guarding protection, the Voermund of the
Mercian genealogy, and Vermund of the North, while its
surviving representatives in France are Guiremond and Ver
mont, in which latter shape it has entitled an American
state. Warenheri, or protecting warrior, is the Guarniero of
Tasso, the Gamier of France, whence this form came as
a sumame after the Edict of Nantes, whilst Warner had been
the legitimate descendant of the native Voernhare.
Warand, the German participle name, may have assisted
in forming Guerin and Warren, unless there was a Warewine
to account for it. Wamfrid or Warno, Werinhold and
Wamebold, are also German.
The defender was with us the Weard, guard-warden, and
weardian was to ward or guard; as in French garde and
garder, in the North vordhr, in Germany wart, warten. This
is the favourite termination, the ward of England passing the
wart of Germany, the vard of the North ; but of rare ap-

PROTECTION. 413
pearance as a commencement, though there is an instance of
a German Wartgar, or guardian-spear,
. These are extremely like the words taken from to gird,
Uke gerda, gaard, &c., but they are essentially diflerent:
watching is here the idea of safety, as enclosure is there.
The termination mund, so common among all the Teuton
nations, has been a very great diflSculty. Some regard it
as the German mund or muriths, a mouth ; others as muth,
courage. The fact, however, appears to be that mund means
a hand in the elder languages, and from a hand was early
transferred to him who used his hand in protection.
All the best authorities agree in translating mund as pro
tection ; but as mund, a hand, is a feminine noun, the deri
vation from this source is a little doubtful, as the only
feminine instance of the name is Rosamond. It is never a
prefix. It is very often confused with the names derived from mod
or muth, meaning courage or 'wrath, the mood of England
and muth of Germany. Even in very early times, Thuris-
mund, or Thurismod, would be indifierently written ; but mod
is not very common, and is apt to shorten into mo, as
Thormod, Tormo.
The Germans used to imagine that all their names ending
ia hulf meant help ; but this pleasant faith was destroyed by
the northern wolf, and only one real help name is extant, the
Helfrich of modern Germany, and Hialfrek of the North,
which own an ancient precedent in the old Frank Hialperik
or Chilperic.
The pronunciation of ward runs so naturally into hard,
that many names, which when traced to their roots, tum
out to terminate with ward, are spelt in German and French
as if they were hard. The word hard does, however, really
enter into the composition of a few names, chiefly German.
There is, however, a semi-mythical northem lady caUed by
the amiable name of Harthgrepa, flrm grip or hard-claw; and

414 DESCRIPTIVE NAMES.
Harthekund, or, as we call him, Hardicanute, seems to have
had this distiaguishing epithet added to his father's name.
The ,most noted of the other forms was Hardwine, a firm
friend, the Hardouin of old French chroniclers, called in
Italy Ardoiao.
Harding, firm Hartmund, firm protection
Hartrich, firm king Hartmod, firm spirit.
Hartwig, firm war
The names in rand have likewise been a difficulty ; but the
word is best referred to the Gothic razn, a house, and likewise
a shield, from the protection both afibrd.
Rand is a northem prefix, and its derivatives are not easy
to distinguish from those of Regin and Raven. Rondolfr,
or house wolf, was certainly a northern name, and the same
seems to have belonged to St. Radulphus, bishop of Bourges
in 888, and to thirty-eight Radulfs in Domesday Book, then
to the good justiciary, Ranulf de Glanville, under Henry H.,,
to the crusading Earl Randle of Chester, and subsequently
to many a Randal, Randolf, and Ralf, or, as we foolishly
spell the word, Ralph.
The North had Rannveig, house liquor, by way of a
lady, and have shortened her into Rannog and Ronnau, also
Rannmod, Randvid, Randve, or Randverr, house consecra
tion. Fast — in the sense of firm, not of quick — is found in the
northern Fastolf, in the Frank queen Fastrade, firm council,
in Fastburg, Fastmann, Fastmund. Lidvard, an old Norse
name, that with us has run into Ledyard, in its Own country
into Levor, is the gate ward.
Tryggve, a favourite old northem name, is the tme or
trusty. The same word sometimes serves as a termination,
as in Sigtryg or Sihtric.

POWER.

Section VI. — Power.

415

Magan is the Gothic and Saxon to be able, whence our
defective may, and a number of other words in all the
various northem tongues, in especial main or chief. The
names from it are chiefly of German origin. Maginfred, or
powerful peace, was a fine Old German name, which, by the
time it came to the brave but unfortunate Sicilian, son of
Frederick H., had been worn down to Manfred, whence he
was called by his subjects Manfredi, by his French foes
Mainfroi, and by his English contemporaries Mainfroy.
Meginhard, main power, was a chronicler of the early
ages, and in 1130 appears in the Cambrai registers. The
Germans used it as Mainhart, and the English sumame
Maynard is from it. Meginrat made Meinrad, or powerful
council, and Maginhild is stUl in use in the North as Mag-
nild. The main land is, in fact, the chief land, and might and
main are so closely connected together, that Maginhild is
the most natural step to Mahthild, main heroine to might
heroine ; for maht is really the modern German macht, and
our own might, and both these mighty names were in early
use in Germany. Mahthild was the wife of the emperor
Henry the Fowler, and afterwards became the sainted abbess
of Quedlingburg. Another Swabian Mechtild was canonized
after being abbess of Adilstetten ; and so fashionable did the
name become, that all the French maidens, who were not
Alis, seem to have been Mahthild ; and in Italy it was borne
by the Countess MatUda, the friend of Gregory VII., whose
bequest was one of the pope's first steps to the temporal
power, and who is introduced by Dante in the flowery flelds
of Paradise. The Flemings call it Mahault, and thus term
ihe lady, who, as the wife of William the Conqueror, brought
it to England. Molde, as the Normans were pleased to term

4i6

DESCRIPTIVE NAMES.

it, was regarded as so decidedly a Norman name, that the
Scottish-Saxon Eadgyth was made to assume it, and it con
tinued the regnant royal name until it sunk beneath the
influences of the Proven9al Alienor. It seems as if Matilde
had been freshly introduced in Flanders when Count PhUip
married Matilda of Portugal; and this, and the old traditional
Mehant, went on side by side, just as in England did the
full name Matilda, and the anglicized Norman contraction
Maude. The soft sound of the former brought it into favour
with Spenser, who so caUs one of his maidens in the Fairie
Queen; but of late years Maude has been fashionable, though
not so near the right word as Matilda.

EngUsh.
Matilda
MaudTildaTiUy

French.
Mathilde
Mahaud Mehaut

ItaUan.
Matilda

Bavarian.
Mechtild
MechelMelchel

German.
Mathilde

Hamb.
Tilde
Tille

Maatfred and Maatulf were old masculines.
From may and might we pass to our other defective aux
iUary can. ' Knowledge is power,' is an idea deeply rooted
in our languages, for the difference between I ken and / can
is weU nigh imperceptible. The Sanscrit gna, forming the
Greek verb yiyvwo-Kcu (gignosco), reappears in the Latin nosco,
and the Anglo-Saxon cnawan. Another Anglo-Saxon form
is cunnan, answering to the Danish kjende, Iceland kunna,
German kennan. Thence our word cunning, knowing, and
cuth, the past participle, known, noted, or dextrous, whence
came several North- AngUan names, Cutha, Cuthwealh, noted
power ; Cuthred, noted councU ; Cuthwine, noted friend ;
Cuthburh, noted pledge ; and chief of aU Cuthbryht, the great
saint of Lindisfam in his lifetime, of Durham after hia

POWER. 41 y
•death, when the wanderings of his relics rendered his fame
so great that Cuthbert is stUl national among the peasantry
of Northumbria and the Lothians, where it has shortened
into Cuddle, and become the epithet of asses, so strange are
the drawbacks of popularity. More honourable namesakes
are the gentle eider ducks, which, in the saint's time, were
exceedingly common on Fame Island, and so intimate with
him, that they are termed St. Cuthbert's ducks, and together
with porpoises were wrought on the silken robe that enveloped
his relics in his coffin. Moreover, like many other saints of
the blue lias, he has a share in the ammonites, ' the beads
that bear his name.'
The word couth long continued in the English tongue;
namecouth used to stand for well known, and uncouth still
continues to witness to the reverse from which it sprung.
Kann seems to have been originally a past tense of hen,
and the Teutonic mind concluded that to have learnt is to
be able, for all adopted the word can without an infinitive,
and varied it into past tenses. To be able was likewise to
dare, whence the old Teuton huoni, Frank chuon, Saxon
cene, German huhn, bold. Thence, too, the northern ho7ir, noble,
and the famous dispute whether the Konung, Cyning, Kdnig,
Kong, King, be the kioning, chief's son, or the kenning,
knowing man, involving the whole question of hereditary or
elective right.
Be this as it may, a large class of names has arisen from
these words of knowledge and action, earliest of the bearers
of which should stand Kunimund, king of the Gepid^, and
Chunimund, king of the Suevi, both meaning able protec
tion. Suevic, too, was able or bold councU ; Chuonrath, after
wards a world-wide name in the Swabian house of Hohen
staufen, till the last of their generous, though impetuous
blood was shed on the scafibld of Corradino, as Naples
fondly termed its unfortunate young heir, the Conradin of
Jiistory. Pity for his untimely fate assisted to spread the
- VOL. II. ^ ^

4i8

DESCRIPTIVE NAMES.

name through all the German dependencies, and it has come
to the pass of frequency that, like VasUi, Tom, and Heinz,
Kiinz has descended to cats. It has the feminine Cunzila;
and our old Mercian King Cenred represented it ia England.

EngUsh.
Conrad
Cenred

French.
Conrade Quenes

Proven9al.
Cohat

ItaUan.
Corrado Currado

German.
Konrad
KunzKurt Kuno

Bavarian.
Kadi
KuenlKuenzKunl

Swiss.
Chuedli
Kudli
ChuedlerKoredKoredliChuered

Swedish.
Konrad

Netherlands. Koenraad
Court

Danish.
Cort

Russian.
KonradKunrat
Kondratij

Bohemian.
Kunad

Slovak.
Kunsch

Lusatian.
Kunat

A host of German sumames, as Conz, Conds, Kunitz,
Corssen, arise from the ' bold of speech,' and from bold, or
able resolution, whichever we choose to tum Kuonhart, we
appropriately derive Cunard, so famUiar through the able
and resolute company that direct the steamers called after
them. Kunigund, or bold war, was the name of a daughter of
the counts of Luxemburg, who was wife to Henry of Bava
ria, the sainted emperor, and shared in his canonization, ren
dering her name national in Bavaria. Another royal saint
reigning in Hungary added to its honours, nor has it ever
sunk into disuse.

French.
Cunigonde

Italian.
Cunegonda

Portuguese.
Cunegundis

German.
Kunigunde

Bavarian.
Kunl
Kundl

POWER.

419

The West Saxon Cenbyrht is the same with the German
Kunibert ; and Wessex likewise reckoned among her kings
Cenfyrth, or able peace, Cenfus, bold impetuosity ; while
Mercia has Cenhelm and Cenwulf.
Alternating with these are Cynric, Cynebald, CynewaJd,
Cyneburh, Cynethryth, whose first syllable is cyn, hin, or
kind, meaning, of course, kindred or lineage. Some refer
Kunibert and Kunigund to this same hin instead of huhn.
This word cyn is one of those regarded as the root of king,
cyning, the son of his race or kindred.
Another word seems to have had the same double meaning
of ability being strength ; for svinn, which is wise in the
northem tongues, is in those of central Europe, strong ; the
English swith, Gothic swinths, German swind; whence
the present geschwind, and swift ; moreover, swindig is much,
or many, in vulgar Dutch, and to swindle is probably to be
too much for the victim.
Suintila was an old Gothic king of Spain, Swithbert, one
of the early Anglo-Saxon missionaries, especially honoured
as the converter of the kindred land of Friesland, where he
was revered as St. Swibert. Swithelm was another Saxon
form; but the most noted amongst us was Swithun, the
bishop of Winchester, tutor to King Alfred, and endowed
with many supposed miracles, the best known of which was
the forty days' rain, by which, like other honest English
saints, he testified his displeasure at having his bones meddled
with. It is curious that while Winchester itself considers
rain on his feast to forbode forty more wet days, most other
parts of England prefer a shower to christen the apples.
The Germans have had Swidburg, Swintfried, Swidger ; but
in general this has served as a feminine termination, as in
Melicent, Frediswid, and in all the many swiths and swinds
of the Franks and Goths.
Whether this be the root or not, Svein is in the North a
strong youth, generally a servant, but in the form of Svend
becoming the favourite name of the kmgs of Denmark,
\\ E E 2

420 DESCRIPTIVE NAMES.
belonging to him whom Ethehred's treachery brought down
on England, where it was called Swayn, and translated
into Latin as Sueno, while Tasso calls the crusading Swend,
Sveno. Svinbjom occurs in Iceland, and is our Swinbum.
Svenke, again, is the active or slender youth. It is amusing
how, from a strong man, the swain became a young man,
then a batchelor, then a lover, and, finally, a shepherd.
Another of the mighty words that have been formed into
names is vald, the near relative of the Latin valeo. Our
verb to wield contioues the Anglo-Saxon wealdan, which
named the wealds of Kent, nay, and the world itself; and
from the like source, too, came worth, in aU its forms, in the
different languages.
Vald still stands alone in the North, and once was the
name of a Frank abbot of Evreux; St. Valdus, in Latin,
St. Gaud, in French.
The leading name is, however, Waldheri, powerful war
rior, appearing as the young prince of Aquitaine, who, in the
curious Latin poem which seems to represent the Frankish
Nibelungenlied in the south of France, flies from Attila's
court with his fellow hostage, the Burgundian Hildegunna, and
her treasure, and repulses the pursuing Gunther and Hagano.
This same Walther was said to have afterwards reigned thirty
years in Aquitaine, and, no doubt, the name was already com
mon there, when, about 990, it came to saintly glory, through
a monastic saint of that dukedom, who, being followed by two
others, caused it to be spread far and wide. Indeed, there
are twenty-eight Walters in Domesday, and Cambrai made
plentiful use of it in the same form, tiU about 1300, the
spelling was altered to the French Gautier. Walther von
Vogelwied, the minnesinger, who bequeathed a perpetual
dole to the birds of the air at his tomb, weU deserved that
the memory of his name should be kept up in Germany, and
it has always been very popular. Wat, as a contraction, is
as old as Rufus's time, and Water was in use, at least, in

POWER.

421

Shakespeare's time, when he shows the prophecy of Suffolk's
death by water fulfilled by the name of his assassin.

EngUsh.
WalterWater Wat
Watty Wattles

Irish.
Thaiter

French.
Waltier Gualtier
Wautier GatierGautier

ItaUan.
Gualtiero

Spanish.
Guttierre

Portuguese.Gualter Gualterio

Netherlands. GualterusWalter WouterWout

Lettish.
Waters

Dutch.
Wolder

Swiss.
Watli

The Irish Thaiter, with the contraction Waltin, founded
the family of MacBhaitin Bared, now Barrett.'
Waldemar is an old German form imported by the Nor
mans to England, and sometimes supposed to have been car
ried to Russia, and to have tumed into Vladimir ; but this
has been traced to a genuine Slavonic source, though it is
used by the Russians to represent Walter.
This commencement is almost exclusively German ; its
other varieties are Waldobert, or Walbert, the Gualberto of
Italy, Waldrich, and, perhaps, Walpurg, though she is more
probably from val, slaughter.
Frodhr, the wise or learned, is sometimes an epithet, but
is also used for a name, and latinized into Frotho. The
Germans have it in combination as Frodwin, wise friend,
Frodbert and Frodberta, whence tbe French make Flobert
and Floberte.
The root mah, which made the Sanscrit mahat, Zend
maz Greek megas, Latin magnus, Kelt mawr, comes forth
again in Teutonic, with masre, or mara, in Anglo- Saxon^
with its comparatives mcerre and mceriste, whence our m^re

422 DESCRIPTIVE NAMES.
and most. This same sense of greatness formed the word
maara, fame, and maren, to celebrate, both old German, and
it is the commencement of the Frank chieftain's name from
whom all the princes of the earlier race were called Meer
wings, Meroweh, or famed holiness, the Meerwig of German
writers and Meroveus of Latinity, whence the Merovee of
French history.
Our own Anglian Mercians had among their royal line
Merowald, Merehelm, and Merewine ; but, in general, mer,
or mar, is used as a termination rather than a commence
ment, and then is always masculine. Merohelm is also
called Merehelm, so the French saint, ' Marculphe,' may
have been Merowulf, though he now looks more Uke Mark-
ulf, a border wolf.* Section VH. — Affection,
The Teutons had a few names denoting affection. Dyre is
the same in Norse as our own word dear, or dyr in Anglo-
Saxon. An inlet on the north-west corner of Iceland is
still termed Dyrefiord, from one of the first settlers, and
Dyre was the hero of a ballad in the Kcempeviser, answering
to the Scottish Katharine Janfarie, the original of young
Lochinvar. The old Germans had Dioro and Diura, and the
Anglo-Saxons affectionately called the young sons of their
nobility Dyrling, or darling. The last relic of the custom is
that in some parts of England the smallest pig of the litter
is termed the darling.
Leof the German lieb, beloved, is much used by the
Anglo-Saxons. Two bishops, one of WeUs, and afterwards
primate, the other of Crediton, were called Leofing, or
* Munch ; Sismondi ; Butler ; Junius ; Kemble ; MichaeUs ; Lappen
burg ; Mariana ; Weber and Jamieson ; Donovan.

AFFECTION. 423
Lyfing. The first was certainly properly iElfstan, so it is
probable that in both instances Leofing was merely an en
dearing name that grew up with them, and displaced the
baptismal one ; but its Latin translation, Livingus, shows the
origin of the surname of Livingstone.
England also had Leofwine, beloved friend, the only native
name borne by any of the sons of Earl Godwin. An earlier
Leofwine was a member of St. Boniface's mission, and con
verted many of the heathens on the banks of the Weser ;
and as St. Lebwin is patron of Deventer, probably occasioned
the name of Lubin, which, from being borne by French
peasants, crept into pastoral poetry.
Another of the same mission party was Leobgytha, or dear
gift, called also Liuba and Liebe, who was sent for from her
convent at Wimborne to found one of the earliest nunneries
in Germany. It is probably from her that Lievine became
an old Cambrecis name.
Leof seems to have been the special prefix of the earls of
Mercia, for we find among them, besides Leofwine, Leofstan
and Leofric, the last the best known for the sake of his wife
and of Coventry.
The continental instances of the prefix are among the
Spanish Goths, Liuva, Leovigildo, and Liuvigotona; and
among the Franks, Leobhard, or Liebhard, a saint of
Touraine. The only present survivor of all the varieties is probably,
if we exclude the occasional Puritan Love, the Cornish and
Devon feminine Lovedy.
Far more universal are the names derived from the old
word vinr, or wine, meaning friend or object of love, the same
which has left a descendant in the German wonne, affection,
and the Scottish adjective winsome. It is a continual termi
nation, as must have been already observed, and we had it as
a commencement in our great English missionary Winfrith,

4^4 DESCRIPTIVE NAMES.
or friend of peace, the Devonian bishop who spread Chris
tianity over Germany, but who is far better known by the
Latin sumame which he assumed, namely, Bonifacius. Wini-
bald was another of our missionary saints, and Germany has
also had Winrad, Winrich, and Winmar.
Mild, or mild, is exclusively Saxon; nay, almost exclu
sively Mercian, for it only occurs in one famUy ; that of
King Merowald, who named his three daughters MUdgyth,
Mildburh, and Mildthryth : all became nuns, the two latter
abbesses, one in Shropshire, the other in the Isle of Thanet,
and they were canonized as Milburga and Mildreda. Mil-
borough, as the first became anglicized, was found within the
last century in Shropshire, and Mildred was never entirely
disused; it belonged to the daughter of Burleigh, and has
lately been much revived, under the notion that it means
mild speech ; but red is always masculine, and, as has been
before said, thryth commands or threatens, so that MUdthryth
is the gently strict.

Section VHI. — Appearance.
Miss Carolina Wilhelmina Amelia Skeggs was verily named
after a beard. Skegg means neither more nor less than a
beard, and strange to say, Bardr and Skegg were both fashion
able names in the North ; indeed, one Icelandic gentleman
rejoiced in the euphonious title of Bardr Bla-skegg, or Beard
blue-beard. Truly he must have belonged to a remarkable
family. But we have an independent name of this class. WUliam
de Albini, the second husband of Henry I.'s widow Alix of
Louvaine, wore moustachios, which the Normans called ger^
nons, and thus his usual title was WiUiam als Gernons ; and
as the common ancestor of the Howards and Percys, left
this epithet to them as a baptismal name, one of the most

APPEARANCE. 425
whimsical of the entire roU. From the Percys it came to
Algernon Sidney; and partly through his admirers, partly
through inheritance, and partly through the love of trisylla
bles, has become diffused in England.
The axe was called by the northem people harthr, on ac
count of its form (like barbed or bearded darts), whence the
halbard and bartisan, or partisan. Sometimes it was the
Langbard, and thus the Lombards have the same sort of
curious connection with this weapon that the Saxons have
with the seax, the Franks with the frankiska, or axe, and the
Germans with the gher, or spear.
Faxe meant the hair or tresses, as may be seen in the
names of the horses of day and night, Skinfaxi and Hrin-
faxi. Two instances of it are found in the Landnama-bok,
Faxi, a colonist from the Hebrides, and Faxabrandr, most
likely an epithet to some peculiarity of hair, probably white
ness, or perhaps fieriness ; but it was not common, though it
came to England to be the surname of the Roundhead Sir
Thomas Fairfax.
The name of our excellent friend Wamba in Ivanhoe must
probably have been taken from one of the Visigothic kings of
Spain, with whom it was most likely a nickname, like that of
Louis le Gros in France, for it means nothing but the belly.
Epithets like this were not uncommon, and sometimes were
treated as names, such as Mucel, or the big, the soubriquet
of the earl of the Gevini ; or Budde, the pudding, the person
who showed Knut the way over the ice. Many of those
used in England were Keltic, showing that the under
current of Cymric population must still have been strong.
It is remarkable how very few are the names taken from
the complexion in comparison with the many used by the
Kelts, and even by the Romans, either because the Teutons
were all fair alike, or because they thought these casual
titles unworthy to be names. Bruno was exclusively German,
and may perhaps be only a nickname, but it came to honour

4^6 DESCRIPTIVE NAMES.
with the monk of Cologne, who founded the Carthusian
order, and has been used ever since ; and the North has
Sverke, Sverkir, swarthy or dark, a famous name among the
vikings. Far more modern is the name of Blanche. The absence
of colour is in aU tongues of western Europe denoted by
forms of hlec. In Anglo-Saxon, bloec or blac is the colour
black, but hloeca is a bleak, empty place, and blmcan is to
bleach or whiten ; bloeco, like the German bleich, stands for
paleness. It is the same with German and Norse, in the
latter of which blakke hund is not a black dog but a white
one. All these, however, used their own weiss or white for
the pure uncoloured snow ; while the negative hlmc, or colour
less, was adopted by the Romance languages, aU abandoning
the Latin alhus in its favour. It is literally true that our
hlach is the French white; hlach and hlanc are only the
absence of colour in its two opposite effects.
Blach, Blacheman, Blancus, and Blancard, all appear in
Domesday; but Blanchefleur and Blanche, seem to have-been
the produce of romance. The mother of Sir Tristrem was
Blanchefleur, a possible translation of some of the Keltic
Gwenns or Finns, and it probably crept from romance to
reality among the poetical people of southern France. The
first historical character so called was Blanca of Navarre, the
queen of Sancho IV. of CastUle, from whom it was bestowed
on her granddaughter, that child of Eleanor Plantagenet
whom her uncle. King John, employed as the lure by which
to detach Philippe Auguste from the support of Arthur of
Brittany. The treaty only bore that the son of PhUippe
should wed the daughter of Alfonso of CastUle ; the choice
among the sisters was entrusted to ambassadors, and they
were guided solely by the sound of the name borne by the
younger, that of the elder sister, Urraca, being considered by
them hateful to French ears, and unpronounceable to French
Ups. John was punished for his policy, for Blanche's royal

APPEARANCE. 427
English blood was the pretext of the pope in directing against
him her husband, Louis the Lion, but no choice could have
been a happier one for France, since Blanche of CastUle was
the first and best of her many distinguished queen-regents,
and was so much revered as to leave it doubtful whether she,
or the custom of wearing white weeds, were the origin of the
old term of La Reine Blanche for the dowager queen of
France. From her the name became very common in France. One
of the daughters of Edward I. was so caUed, probably from
her, in honour of his friendship for her son ; it became usual
among the English nobility, and is most common in Italy,
Jthough it is somewhat forgotten in Spain.

EngUsh.
Blanch

French.
Blanche

ItaUan.
Bianca

Spanish.
Blanca

Portuguese. Branca

A Swedish heroine called Blenda made this name, from
hlenden to dazzle, common in her o'wn country, but it is not
known 'elsewhere.
Koll, with a double I, meaning head, is sometimes used in
northem names, but far less commonly than kol, cool, or
rather in the act of cooling after great heat. The great
blast-bellows with which the gods charitably refreshed the
horses of the sun, are caUed in the Eddaic poetry, isarnkol,
or iron coolers, and there may have been some allusion to
this in the names of Kol and Kale, which alternated in one
of the old northern families. But as the cooling of iron in
volved its turning black, kolhrunn meant a black breastplate,
and was thus used as a bye-name; and it may be in this
sense of black that kol enters into the composition of Kolbjom,
black bear (the origin of the surname of Colborne), Kolgrim,
Kolgrima ; Kolskegg would thus be black beard; but Kolbein
can hardly be black-leg, so, perhaps, it may refer to the

428 DESCRIPTIVE NAMES.
bones being strong as wrought iron ; and Kolfinn and itS:
feminine are either cool- white or refer to Finn's strength.
Colbrand is in English romance the name of the Danish giant
killed by Guy of Warwick, at Winchester ; but the Heptarchy
displays a very perplexing set of Cols, as they have been
modernized, though they used to be spelt Ceol. There were
three Ceolwulfs in Bernicia, Mercia, and Wessex ; Ceolred in
Mercia, Ceolwald in Wessex, Ceolnoth on the throne of
Canterbury. Are these the relatives of the northern hoi,
cool, or are they ceol, keel, meaning rather a ship than merely
the keel, as it does now? Or, on the other hand, are both
these, and the northern col, adaptations of the Keltic col or
gall, like those already mentioned of Finn ? Their exclusive^
prevalence among the Scandinavians and Anglo-Saxons would
somewhat favour the notion.
The northem feminine terminal, /ni, belongs to this class,
and means the fair, or pretty, from the old northern fridhr,
though it is most deceitfully like fred, or frey, peace, and is
probably from the same root.
Teitr is a northern man's name, meaning cheerful : Zeiz
answers to it in old German ; and though the analogue in
Anglo-Saxon does not otherwise occur in any Anglo-Saxon
work, yet we find from Bede that .S^ltbelburh, the daughter
of ^thelbeorht and Bertha, of Kent, who carried her Chris
tianity to her husband, Eadwine, was also called Tate, by
which we may gather that she was particularly lively and
cheerful. The surname Tate is evidently from this source.*
Section IX. — Locality,
A large and interesting class of names relate to country,
and express the birthplace or the wandering habits of the
original bearers.
* Munch ; Grimm ; Pott ; Mrs. Green, Princesses of England ; Bran-
t<5me; Domesday; Lappenburg.

LOCALITY. 429
The word land was one of these. Its primary meaning
seems to be the abode of the people. Long ago we spoke of
the Greek Xaos, prominent in Laodamia, and many other
of the like commencement. An almost simUar term runs
: through the Teutonic tongues; the Saxon leod, German
ikute, Frank Hade, Northem lydhr. The leod, or leute,
seem to have been the free inhabitants, including all ranks,
and thence we have the laity, for the general people, and
the lewd, which has sunk from the free to the ignorant,
and then to the dissipated.
The great region of these names taken from the people
is Germany. Leutpold, the people's prince, was a canonized
Markgraf of Austria, in the days when that family had
hardly yet begun its course of marrying into greatness, and
making Leutpold better known at every stage, and by
each new dialect differently pronounced till it turned into
Leopold, and was confounded with the old lion names. In
deed, in the old Swiss ballad on the battle of Sempach,
translated by Scott, Leopold the Handsome is called the
Austrian Lion. The recurrence of the name in the modem
imperial line has made it European, and the close connection
of our own royal family with the wise king of the Belgians
has brought it to England. Of course, it has not escaped
a modern German Leopoldine.

, English.
Leopold

French.
Leopold

ItaUan.
Leopoldo

German.
Luitpold Leupold Leopo

Slav.
Leopoldo Poldo
Poldi

Leutgar, the people's spear, was a good bishop of Antrim,
who was speared by the people, or, at least, murdered by
them, in the furious wars of the long-haired kings, and was
revered as a martyr under the Latin form of Leodigarius.

430

DESCRIPTIVE NAMES.

A priest of Chalons was canonized by the same name, which
is in France Leguire, and was brought as a territorial sur
name to England as St. Leger.
Liutgarde seems to have been a Frank saint, but there is
no account of her in Alban Butler ; but hers is one of the
favourite old names at Cambrai. Liutprand, the people's
sword, is one of the chief chroniclers of early French his
tory, and the other forms are Liuther, the only one accepted
by the North, and that in the form of Lyder.

Ger. Liutbert ; Pries. Liubert — People's brightness
Ger. Liutberga — People's protection
Pr. Leodefred, Leufroi — People's peace
Ger. Liutmar ; Fries. Luttmer, Lummer ; Pr. Leodemir —
People's greatness
Ger. Leuthold, Liutold; Ags. Leod wald — People's power.

The land itself was compounded into names chiefly among
the Franks, Germans, and Lombards, often as a conclusion,
but now and then at the beginning. Lantperaht, or the coun
try's brightness, is the most noted of these, having been
borne by three saints of Maestricht, Lyons, and Venice, and
having thus become national in all the countries around ; but
it is universally corrupted into Lambert, and has been gene
raUy derived from a lamb. The murderous ' Lammikin ' of
Scottish ballad is sometimes said to have been really named
Lambert Lmkin, sometimes to have this as an ironical
epithet.

EngUsh.
Lambert

French.
Lambert
Lanbert

ItaUan.
Lamberto

German.
LandbertLambert

Dutch.
Lambert
Lammert

LOCALITY. 43 1
Landerich, or country's ruler, was an early Frank saint,
who has left Landry to be still frequent among the Flemish
and French peasantry.
Landfrang, lord of the country, was the Lombardic Lan-
franco, whence the Lanfranc of the archbishop of Canter
bury, whom William the Conqueror imposed on the Church,
but who brought in fresh vigour and learning. Landfrid has
left the surname Laffert to France ; its contraction Lando
belonged to a saint, and has the feminines Landine and
Landoline. There are also recorded Landolf, Landrad, Lan-
drada, and Landinn.
If Germany and Italy talked of dwellers in the land, the
North, with its seas and numerous islets, distinguished the
islanders with the word Ey, or 0i, the word that we use to
this very day in speaking of Guernsey, Jersey, &c., of an
eyot in a river ; and even in Sodor, that puzzling companion
to the Isle of Man, which once was the Sudoe, or South Isles,
the Hebrides. Our very term «'-land preserves the word,
though in spelling the s has been foisted in from some sup
posed connection with insula, of which isle is the legitimate
French contraction.
The most famous northem island name is Eystein, or 0is-
tein, much in use among the early kings, and specially honoured
for the sake of the good brother of Sigurd, the Crusader,
who staid at home and worked for his people's good, whUe
Sigurd was killing blue men in the land of the Saracens.
The Danish Eystein was tumed into Austin, or Augustin,
to be more ecclesiastical, and this may be the origin of some
of our Austins. Eyulf, or the island wolf, has become, in
the course of time, 0iel and 0iuf. Eyvind, who appears in
the Landnama-boh with the unpleasant soubriquet of SkaU-
dur Spiller, or the poet spoiler, is supposed to have been the
Island Wend, a reminiscence of the Wends on the shores of
the Baltic. It was a very common name, and became 0vind
and Even, whUe Eymund, in like manner, was tumed into

43 2 DESCRIPTIVE NAMES.
Emund. An island thief was not wanting, as Eythiof; nor
an island warrior, as Eyar ; also Eyfrey, Eylang ; and the
ladies Eygerd, Eydis, Eyny, and Eyvar, or, as Saxo calls
her, Ofura.
An island is also sometimes holm, whence the northern
Holmstein and Holmfrid, with Holmgeir, which gets mixed
with Holger.
Persons of mixed birth were droUy called by the actual
fractional word half, in Germany Halbwalah, half a foreigner,
or half a WaUachian, and Halbtiiring or half a Thuringian;
and in the North, generally, Halfdan, half a Dane. So early
was this in use that there was a mythical king Halfdan, from
whom the name was adopted by many a true bom Dane and
Northman, and has been latinized as Haldanus. Our Mul,
of Northumbria, the mule of half breed, is thought to have
been named in the same way, as having a British mother ;
and his brother Ceadwalla actually bears a Kymric name.
Travellers had their epithets, which probably came to be
family names. Lide, the northern wanderer, was compounded
in Haflide, sea wanderer ; Vestlide, west wanderer ; Vetilide,
winter wanderer ; and Sumalide, or summer wanderer, which
last was current among the lords of the Isles, and kings of
Man, in the -shape of Somerled, or, in Gaelic, Somhle ; but
' the heirs of mighty Somerled ' did not long keep up his
name.
. Travellers again had their name from fara, the modem
German fahren, and the scarcely disused English to fare,
meaning to journey. The most noted instance is Faramund,
who, in the guise of Pharamond is placed at the head of the
long-haired Frankish dynasty, far traveUed it may be, from
the river Yssel whence the Salic stock took the title that
was to pass to one peculiar law of succession ; also Fara-
bert, Farulf, and Farthegn, contracted into Far ten, and Fal-
tui, and then supposed to be a contraction of Falentin or
Valentme. Thegn did, in fact, originally mean a servant,

LOCALITY. 433
SO that Farthegn was either the travelled servant, or the
travelled thane. Fargrim appears in Domesday; but these
names are not easy to divide from those taken from waren, to
beware. Even the exile had his sorrows commemorated in his chil
dren's names. No doubt if we could meet with the story of
the original Erland, we should find that he was bom under
the same circumstances as Peregrine Bertie, for the name
is from the old northern er, out, or away from, and land.
Erland is the Outland, the banished man, and he must have
been beloved, or celebrated, for Erlendr, as the Icelanders
had it, occurs plentifully, with its diminutive Erling, and
perhaps the corruption Filing. It was from the misery of
the exUe that the German noun elend was taken ; also elland
was, in Anglo-Saxon, a stranger ; and ellande often is used in
old Scottish ballads for a forlorn dreary place.
The unfortunate Bishop Hatto's name was anciently Hazzo,
and is translated a Hessian.
Viking has been used as a Christian name in Norway in
comparatively modern days, in memory of the deeds of the
terrible Vikingr of old ; but, in spite of the resemblance in
sound, it must not be suspected of any relation to sea-kings,
beiog only the inhabitant of a vik, or bay, of course the most
convenient abode for a sea rover.
The sea, haf, or hav, as it was called ui the North, named
besides Haflide, Hafthor, and Hafgrim, as weU as the mythic
hero, Haflok, the Dane, whose life, according to his legend,
was saved by his faithful servant Grun, the founder of
Grimsby, in Lincolnshire, the native place of our own Sir
Henry Havelock, who was bewaUed by the Danish school-
chUdren as then- own ballad hero. The two feminine ter
minations laug and veig may have been in its honour, but it
is much to be feared that they only meant liquor, and at
the best were allusions to the costly mead of the gods, the
drink of inspiration, or the magic bowls that inflamed the
VOL. II. ^ ^

434 DESCRIPTIVE NAMES.
Berserks. Nay, men rejoiced in the name of 01ver, or 01ve,
meaning neither more nor less than ale, 0I, which acquires a
V in the oblique cases and plural. 01ver, together with Olaf,
has no doubt been confounded into the modem Oliver.
Knud, or Knut, a very common northem name, is a very
puzzling one. Its origin and nationality are Danish, and it
only came to Norway by intermarriages, nor does it appear
at all in the Landnama-hok, The great Dane who brought
it here is called by the chroniclers Canutus, from some notion
of making it the Latin hoary, and thus we know him as
Canute ; but even in Domesday, one landholder in Yorkshire,
and another in Derbyshire, are entered as Cnud. The whole
North, and the inhabitants of the Hebrides, use the name,
which comes from the same root as our knot, and properly
means a protuberance, a hill, or barrow.

Section X. — Life,
Life played its part among Teutonic names. One old
word conveying this sense was the Gothic ferchvus, Saxon
feorh, and Northern _^or A. The Anglo-Saxon/eorA also meant
youth, and thus passed on to mean a yoimg man.
There are not many names frofa thence, but one of the
few has been a great perplexity, and has been explained in
many ways, i,e,, the Gothic Ferhonanths, the last syllable
being nanth, daring, so that its sense would be, ' adventuring
his life.' It was the Spanish Goths who used this gallant
name, and made it with their Romance tongues into Feman
and Fernando. San Fernando, king of CastUle, and father
of our own Eleanor, made it a favourite for his royal line ;
and a younger son of CastiUe so called, being heir of Ara^on,
carried it thither, and thence it passed to southern France,
where the grandson of old King Rene was Ferrand or Ferry.

LIFE. 435
Aragon again bestowed it upon Naples; but it was there
prolonged into Ferdinando, whUst Spanish elisions had at
home turned it to Hernan, as the conqueror of Mexico
termed himself. It was bestowed upon the second son of
Juana la Loca, who was born in Spain, and long preferred
there to his brother, though it was to the imperial throne
that he was destined to succeed, and to render his Spanish
name national through Germany, where Ferdinand has long
been a sore puzzle ; sometimes explained by fart, a journey,
and sometimes hj fried, peace, but never satisfactorily. The
contraction Nandel was the shout of the mob in the ears of
Ferdinand, the obstinate, narrow-minded man who won his
cause by mere force of undivided aim. It is so popular in
Spain and Germany as in each to have a feminine, Fernanda
and Ferdinandine.

EngUsh.
Ferdinand

French.
Ferdinand
Ferrand Ferry

Spanish.
Fernando
Hernando Hernan

Italian.
Ferdinando Fernando
Ferrante

German.
FerdinandNandl

PoUsh.
Ferdynand

Lettish.
Werlands

Ferahbald and Ferahmund were forgotten old German
forms, and Fjorleif was known in the North.
This is probably relic of life, as otherwise tbe word would
be a reduplication ; but the termination leif or Iif is some
times used, being our very word life.
There are two words which may be said to form names of
progress, the German gang, from to go, sometimes commencing
as in Gangolf, but more usual at the end of a word, and
the northern stig, from the universal root stig, found in the
F P 2

436 DESCRIPTFVE NAMES.
Greek eorixcj ^^^ in our step and stile, also stairs, for the
usual sense of the word implies mounting upwards ; and the
name of the semi-Danish archbishop of Canterbury who
cro'wned Harold, and was one of the Conqueror's lifelong
captives, was the participle Stigand, mounting, and was long
extant in the North, as well as the Danish Styge and Stygge.

437

PART VII.
NAMES FEOM THB SLAVONIC.
CHAPTER L
Section I. — Slavonic Races,
The last class of names that have had any influence upon
European nomenclature are those borne by the Slavonic
race dwelling to the eastward of the Teutons, and scarcely
coming into notice before the period of modern history.
Nor, indeed, have they been ever very prominent. SUp-
ping into the regions left empty by the Teutons, or depopu
lated by the forays of the Tatars, these nations have carried
on a life for the most part obscure and industrious, though now
and then dra'wn, either by Mongol fury on the one hand, or
by Teuton ambition on the other, into gallant exertions ; but
a genuine Slavonian has seldom or never extended his power
far beyond his own country. Imaginative and poetical, they
have nevertheless few ancestral traditions, they have no his
tory previously to coming under the influence of other
countries, and their migrations are even less known than
those of the early Kelts and Teutons.
All that we do know is that by the time the ten horns of
modern empire were developing themselves, there was a long
strip of Slavonians, or Wends, extending from the White and
Baltic seas down to the Black and Adriatic, making a divi
sion between the Teutons and the Tatars, but utterly unable

43 8 NAMES FROM THE SLAVONIC.
to oppose a barrier when periodical fits of fury and invasion
seized upon the wild hordes to the eastward of them.
Wends, or Venedi, seems to have been one universal national
term ; Slava furnished another. The word, like the Greek
kKvo. and Teuton Mod, is from the root gru, and denotes fame
or glory ; and it is constantly employed in the personal names,
commencing Slavoljub, glorious love, Slavomir, glorious
peace, Slavomil, friend of glory, and terminating Siroslav,
far famed, and many others, usually rendered as slas and
slaus. But just as Geta, the Goth, stood for a bondsman in clas
sical literature, so when the Slav became the captive of the
German, his once glorious epithet became the generic term
of the thrall, bought and sold, while the derivatives of the
Latin servus were reserved for the free hired domestic.
Glory had literally tumed to slavery, perhaps the more
readily because it is the Slav, who, of all the Indo-European
race, most readily bows beneath the yoke, so that to this
day, his forms of courtesy are the most servile, his respect
ful address the most extravagant used in Europe.
At our first glimpse of the Slavonic nations, the Danube
flowed through the midst of a considerable settlement of
them, known to classical writers as Bulgarians, and most
savage foes to the Eastern empire, who lost army after army
in expeditions against these barbarians.
In the North, two great merchant republics at Kief and
Novgorod were conducting the trade of the North, and ap
parently living an honourable life of industry and self-
government. All around the east and south of the Baltic were other
large territories occupied by Slavonians, from Finland to
Jutland ; and, with few exceptions, most of these lands stiU
own a Slavonian population, though only one has a native
government. The Mongols have, perhaps, chiefly influenced the changes

SLAVONIC RACES. 439
undergone by the Slaves. The great and terrible Tatar in
vasion of Attila trod them down, but by ruining the Roman
empire, established homes for them, especially round the
Danube. In the kingdom now called Hungary, there is a
large Slavonian population, called Slovak, from the term
slov, a word, living mixed with the remains of the Huns, but
keeping a separate language.
The mountain-girt lozenge of Bohemia was also a separate
kingdom, with its own language, not the same though nearly
related, and more resembling that of the fierce elective king
dom of Poland.
The migrations of the Teutons drove most of the Wends
out of Denmark into the marshy and sandy lands at the
mouth of the Vistula ; and, somewhat later, home quarrels,
and fears of the Tatars, impelled the republics of Russia
to call in the aid of the Northmen, who quickly put an end
to the freedom of the cities, and set up the principality that
was the germ of the Russian empire.
The Greek Church converted the Bulgarians about the
year 870, and the translations of the liturgy and Scriptures,
made for their benefit, have been the authorized version of
the Slavonians ever since. The same missionaries, Cyrillus
and Methodius, likewise baptized the first Christian king of
Bohemia; and in the next century, a Bohemian bishop,
Adalbert of Prague, converted Hungary and Poland. But
these three realms gave their allegiance to the Western, not
the Eastern Chm'ch ; and though Hungary received much
of her civilization from Constantinople, her faith was with
Rome. The Norse Grand Princes of Muscovy themselves
sought Christianity from Byzantium, and the Russian
Church has ever since been the most earnest and conservative
of the Eastem Churches.
The Baltic Slavonians held out longest against the Gospel.
Missionaries preached to them, and orders of knighthood
crusaded against them on far into modem history, and the

440 NAMES FROM THE SLAVONIC.
final period of their conversion and settlement into smaU
duchies or realms, held by the conquering knights, is hardly
worth tracing out.
The next step in general Slavonic history is the great
Turkish- outbreak, which almost crushed Muscovy, and in
fused a strong Tatar element into the Russian population ;
and, finally, conquered the Greek empire, and with it the
Bulgarian lands, which, though never Mahometanized, have
ever since remained under Turkish dominion.
The kingdoms of Bohemia and Hungary, with the other
western Slavonic provinces, were one by one absorbed into
the German empire, or by the House of Austria — it made
little difference which was the original tenure — all are
' Austrian ' now, whether willingly or not.
With the same skill, the House of Brandenburg obtained
the domains of the Baltic Slaves, and formed the kingdom
of Prussia, very Tataric to the west, and very Slavonic to
the east.
Meantime, after a long period of exhaustion, almost of
extinction, the Muscovites came forth from the Tatar op
pression stronger than ever ; and by gradual conquests from
their former enemies, at length formed their huge empire of
the east.
And Poland, after many a turbulent election, many a
summons to German princes to hold the reins of its restless
multitude, was finally and unrighteously dismembered and
divided, and the cry of its wrongs has ever since rent
the ears of Europe.
The existing Slavonian languages are the Russian, the
literary language of the great empire ; the Livonian, or the
language spoken by the persons who are not of Finnish blood
in the elbow beneath the Gulf of Finland ; the Lettish and
Lusatian, used by the old Prussian subjects and their neigh
bours in Russia ; the Polish ; the Slovak, spoken in Hungary ;

SLAVONIC RACES. 44 1
the Servian, lUyrian, and Croatian, all representing the old
Bulgarian. Of all these, it is perhaps the Polish that has contributed the
most names to the European stock, and they are but few ;
but there were intermarriages, and friendly intercourse, be
sides occasional elections to the Polish throne ; and, latterly,
the dispersion and exile of the Polish nobility carried their
names into distant parts of Europe, and gave them a ro
mantic interest.
Bohemia and Hungary sent a few names into the Austrian
line, but they soon died out ; and Russia uses comparatively
few native Slavonic names, but makes chief use of those of
the saints of the Greek Church.
Slavonian languages are said to be soft in their own
speech, but our letters clumsily render their sounds, and
make them of cumbrous length; and the few names that
have been adopted have been severely mangled.
They are, for the most part, grand and poetical com
pounds, often exactly corresponding to Greek or Teutonic
names, and with others more poetical than either, such as
Danica, the morning star ; Zwezdana, or in Russian, Swet-
lana, a star ; Zora, Zorana, Zorica, the Slovak Aurora ; and
Zorislava, the dawn of glory ; Golubica, the dove ; Lala, the
tulip. The Slaves use likewise the amaranth, or everlasting
flower, as a name both for men and women, namely, Smiljan
and Smiljana ; and while a man may be called Dubislav, or
oak fame, the Servians and lUyrians call their daughters after
fruits, — Grozdana, rich in grapes ; Jagoda, the strawberry ;
and Kupina, or Kupjena, the gooseberry*
* Kombst (in Johnson's) Physical Atlas; Max Muller, Lectures; Le
Beau, Bos Empire; Schleicher, Sprachen Europen ; Zeuss, Deutschen
und die Nachhar Stamme.

442 NAMES FROM THE SLAVONIC.

Section II. — Slavonian Mythology.
The Slavonians had a polytheistic religion, answering, in
spirit, to that of the other Indo-European nations ; but as
they had no mythic literature, like Greece and Scandinavia,
we are dependent for information upon popular ballads and
superstitions, eked out by the notices of missionaries and
statements of conquerors ; and it is not easy to perceive
whether their myths were an independent branch of the gene
ral stock, or only the Teutonic religion under another dress.
The divine '\vord, in all the various nations, is Bog. It is
used for God, both in the old heathen times, and afterwards
in its full sense, when Christianity became known to them.
It enters into numerous names, both before and after Christi
anity. The most noted is Bogoslav, or God's glory, which
was borne by many a Pole and old Prussian; and, in 1627,
it finished off the old Slavonic Une of dukes of Pomerania,
by whom that state was bequeathed to the acquisitive house
of Brandenburg. Bogislav was the last of a large family of
brothers, who all died childless, a misfortune ivhich was
ascribed to witchcraft, and thus furnished the plot of the
wild story of Sidonia the Sorceress. The historical Latinism
of the name is Bogislaus ; and it is still current in Ulyria as
Bogosav. Theophilus is literally translated by Bogoljub or Bogoje
in Ulyria, and Bohumil in Bohemia. This makes it pro
bable that Robert Guiscard thence took the name of his
eldest son, Bohemond, giving it a Norman termination. The
mother is called Alvareda, and she is said to have been
divorced on the score of consanguinity ; but it is not impro
bable that this was a mere excuse of the wily duke of Calabria
for ridding himself of an Hlyrian wife. Bohemond is said to
have been called after a giant of romance ; but the giant has

SLAVONIAN MYTHOLOGY. 443
not as yet transpired, and may have been, after aU, a Sla
vonic divinity. Bohemond, or Boemondo, as Tasso calls him,
was the Ulysses of the first Crusade, and left a grandson
namesake. Theodorus and Theodora are answered by Bogdan and
Bogdana, both spelt with h in Bohemia — Bohdan, Bohdana,
and in Ulyria Bozidar, Bozidara ; and, as has been already
said, the divine birth-night, Christmas, is commemorated
by Slovak children being called Bozo. Bogohval is thank
God, Bogoboj, God's battle, all names in use in Poland and
the kindred nations before the general names of Europe dis
placed the native growth.
The word does not answer to either Deus or God, but is
related to the Sanscrit bhagas, destiny. That which does
answer to Theos and Beus is Dievas, the proper title of
the supreme deity, though, as wielding the thunder, the old
Prussians called him Perkunas, the Russians Perun, answer
ing both to j3p<jivTq and to Thunner, and reminding us of the
Sanscrit Parjanyas, the title of India as rainy god. Among
the Wends of Luneburg Thursday is Perunsdan, as usual,
belonging to the thunderer. In Russia he had huge forests
consecrated to him, and temples with perpetual fires burning
before his image, where sacrifices, both human and of cattle,
were offered to him. The Servian name of Burac is, perhaps,
connected with him, as it means a storm, also the Hlyrian
Jurisa. There are various points in which the Slavonians bring us
back more directly to their Eastern origin than do either of
the other European races. With them the moon is masculine,
and reminds us of its origin as the measurer. Meno is the
name of the genius who was once betrothed to Saule, the
genius of the sun, but, for the love of the morning and even-
intr stars, deserted her, and, as a punishment, his moon was
clipped into her crescent form by Dievas.

444 NAMES FROM THE SLAVONIC.
Another curious fact is, that while the Brahmins have a
legend of Vishnu having once become incarnate, as Kupalo,
or the penitent, a deity was once adored at Kief as god of
the fruits of the earth ; and, moreover, the fires lighted on
Midsummer eve by the Slavonians bear his name, so that
the feast of St. Agrippina coming on that day, she is termed
by the Russians Agrifinia Kupalnitscha, and St. John the
Baptist himself is distinguished as Iwan Kupalnitsch. On
the other hand, Christmas bonfires are, in Bohemia, Koljada,
and it is thus likely that Kupalo was connected with some
solstitial observance in mid-summer and mid- winter ; but so
entirely has he been forgotten, that some have tried to derive
the summer feast from kupa, a haycock, and others from
kuhe, a cow.
Lila is the Sanscrit love, and upalila is felicity. The root
appears in the pretty Slavonian myth of Lada, or joy, the
goddess answering to Venus and owning her planet, which
the Bohemians call Hladolet, while lado is the term for a
lover in Russian ballads. Lada had three sons. Dido, Lelja,
and Polelja, who answer most curiously to some of the Greek
myths. Lelja and Dido are, like Eros and Anteros, love and
rivalry, and Polelja is after-love, returned love, or marriage,
answering to Hymen. In an old Cracovian ballad. Lei and
Polel are said to fly over the fields, bringing summer, and
leaving the gossamer in their track ; and it should be observed
that the Germans likewise call these silvery threads ' fiying
summer,' or, in some parts, Mariensamar. Samar, or simar, is
a cymar, a veil, or train; and sometimes the spring threads are
the maidcheiisamar, the autumn ones, alteweiher samar, the old
woman's train. Our own word gossamer, gottesamar, con
veys the same notion of being the trail of the summer god.
So closely united were Lei and Polel, that they served as a
popular interjection, like the Castor and Pollux of Roman
exclamation, and they have even been thought to represent
these twin deities ; but it is more likely that both are shoots

SLAVONIAN MYTHOLOGY. 445
from the same idea, since, in Greek, Leda is the mother,
Polydeukes one of the sons.
The word Ijube is rather a favourite in the affectionate
Slavonic nomenclature. At the outset of Bohemian history
we come on the beautiful legend of Queen Libussa, or the
darling. She succeeded her father in 618, governed alone
for fourteen years, then, finding her people discontented,
sought the wisest man in her domains for a husband, and
found him, like Cincinnatus, at the plough, when he not only
retained his homely cloak, iron table, and bark sandals, as
marks of his origin, but bade them be produced at all future
royal elections. His name, Przemysl, or the thoughtful, was
continued in his Une, though chroniclers cut its dreadful knot
of consonants by calling it Premislaus, and the next ensuing
namesake Germanized himself as Ottokar. He was afterwards
elected king of Poland, where the name was used with the
feminine Przemyslava.
Russia has the feminine Ljubov, love, fondly called Lu-
buika, and, in families where French is spoken, called Aimee,
though this more properly translates Ljubka and Ljubnia.
The Slovaks have Ljuboslav and its feminine, and the Polish
Lubomirsky is peace loving. The Russian Ljubov is chiefly
used in allusion to the Christian grace of love ; and faith,
or Vjera, and hope, Nadezna, are both, likewise, very popu
lar at the present day, the latter usually Frenchified into
Nadine ; whUe the Serbs have Nada, or Nadan.
The Slaves of Rugen had a terrible deity called Sviatovid,
or the luminous, who was considered to answer to Mars, or
Tyr, and had a temple at Acron, and an image with seven
heads, which must have much resembled Indian idols. A
white horse was sacred to him, and was supposed to be ridden
by him during the night, and to communicate auguries by
the manner in which it leaped over lances that were arranged
in its path. Human sacrifices were offered to this deity both
in Rugen and Bohemia ; and when his image was at length

446 NAMES FROM THE SLAVONIC.
overthrown, St. Vitus, from the resemblance of soimd, was
confounded with him by the populace, and Svantovit, as they
called both alike, was still the great idea of the spot. Sve-
tozor, dawn of Ught, and Svetiana, a Russian lady's name
StiU in use, are connected with light, the first syllable of his
name. Conjoined with Sviatovid, and lying on a purple bed in
the temple in Rugen, was the seven-headed Rugevid, or
Ranovid (whose name is explained by reference to the Sanscrit
rana, blood-thirsty) ; and likewise Radegost, the god of hos
pitality, from rad, prosperous, and gosc, a guest, the word so
often encountered. Several names began with the first syllable
— Rada, Radak, Radan, Radinko, Radmir, Radivoj, Radko,
Radman, Radmil, Radoje, Radoslav ; and the lUyrians have
the hospitable name of Gostomil, or guest love : indeed, gost
forms the end of many Slavonic names, in accordance with the
ready and courteous welcome always offered by this people.
Davor is another war god, whose name seems of very near
kindred to Mavors, or Mars, and who left Davorinn, Davros-
lav, and Davroslava, as names.
Tikla was the old Slavonic goddess of good luck, and,
being confounded with St. Thekla, made this latter name
popular in Poland, Russia, and Hungary ; and, in like man
ner, Zenovia, the huntress goddess, conduced to make Zeno-
bia, and Zizi, its contraction, common in Russia.
The Lesi, or Lechi, of the Poles answered to the Greek
. satyrs, and were supposed to have human bodies, with the
hair, beard, and legs of goats, and to be sometimes so small
as to be hidden by the grass, at others as tall as forest trees,
their size varying with the cover. They would chase the
unwary wanderer in the forest all day, and tickle him to
death at nightfaU. They were appropriate spirits for
Poland — the hunting ground — and probably from them was
taken the name of Lech, the mythical founder of the king-

WARLIKE NAMES. 447
dom, by whose name it is stiU said to be caUed in eastem
tongues. At any rate. Lech named many of the early kings,
and Lechsinska belonged to that Polish princess whose
insignificance recommended her to the base ministry of
Louis XV. as the queen of their young sovereign.
The fire god was Znitch ; and though he does not show
any direct namesakes, yet there are sundry fire-names in
his honour, such as the Slovak Vatroslav and lUvrian
Ognoslav, both signifying fire glory. Possibly, too, the
Russian Mitrofan may be connected with the old Persian
mithras, or sacred fire ; though in history it figures in Greek
ecclesiastical guise, as the patriarch Metrophanes.'*''

Section HI. — Warlike Names.
Few more Slavonic names remain to be mentioned, and
those more for their correspondence with those of other races
than for much intrinsic interest.
Very few are known beyond their own limits. Stanislav,
or camp glory, is, perhaps, the best known, and is one of the
very few found in the Roman calendar, which has two Polish
saints thus named. The first, Stanislav Sczepanowski, bishop
of Cracow, was one of the many prelates of the eleventh
century who had to fight the battle of Church against king,
and he was happy in that his cause was that of morality as
well as discipline. Having excommunicated King Boleslav
for carrying off the wife of one of the nobles, he was mur
dered by the king in his own cathedral ; and Gregory VII.
being the reigning pope, his martyrdom was an effectual
seed of submission to the Church. The wretched king died
by his own hand, and the bishop became a Slavonian Becket,
• Tooke, Russia; Eichioff, Tableau de laLitt€rature duNordauMoyen
Age ¦ Zeuss, Deutschen und die Nachhar Stamme ; Universal History.

448

NAMES FROM THE SLAVONIC.

was enshrined at Cracow, and thought to work miracles. His
name was, of course, national, and was again canonized in
the person of Stanislav Kostka, one of the early Jesuits
who guided the reaction of Roman Catholicism in Poland.
The name has even been used in France, chiefly for the sake
of the father of the Polish queen, and afterwards from the
influx of Poles after the partition of their kingdom.

EngUsh.
Stanislaus

French.
Stanislas

Portuguese.
Estanislau

ItaUan.
Stanislao

German.
Stanislav

Bavarian.
Stanes
Stanisl
StanelStanerl

PoUsh.
StanislavStachStas

Hlyrian.
Stanisav
Stanko

Lettish.
Stanislavs
Stachis

Much in the same spirit is the Russian Boris, from the
old Slavonian horotj, to fight. It has never been uncommon
in Muscovy, and belonged to the brother-in-law of Ivan the
Terrible, Boris Goudenoff, who was regent for his imbecile
nephew Feodor ; and, after assassinating the hopeful younger
brother, Dmitri, reigned as czar, till dethroned by a coun
terfeit Dmitri. Borka and Borinka are the contractions,
and Borivor was the first Christian duke of Bohemia.
Bron, a weapon, forms Bronislav and Bronislava. Voj is
the general Slavonic term for war, and is a very frequent
termination. Vojtach, the Polish Vojciech, and Lithuanian
Waitkus, all mean warrior.
It is a curious feature in nomenclature how strongly
glory and fame is the leading notion of the entire race, whose
national title of glory has had such a fall. Slav is an in
evitable termination ; voj almost as constantly used ; and
even the tenderest commencements are forced to love war,
and to love fame. The old Russian Mstisslav glories in ven-

NAMES OF MIGHT. 445
geance (j»es^), but is usually recorded as Mistislaus; Ros-
tislav increases glory; Vratislav, or glowmg glory, names
not only the Wratislaus of history, but the city of Breslaw.
The Slovak Vekoslav, and Vekoslava, are eternal fame.
The two animals used in Slavonic names are warlike;
Vuk, the wolf, and Bravac, the wild boar ; but both these
are very possibly adopted from the German Wulf and
Eber.

Section IV. — Names of Might.
Boleje, strong or great, answers to the Teuton mer, and
Boleslav is great glory. Boleslav Chrobry, the second
Christian prince of Poland, was a devout savage and great
conqueror, both in Russia and Bohemia. He was the first
Pole to assume the title of king; and after his death, in
1025, there are many instances of it in both Poland and
Bohemia. In this latter country it had, however, a far more sinister
fame. Borivor and Ludmilla, the first Christian prince and
princess of that duchy, had two grandsons, Boleslav and Ves-
teslav, or Venceslav, the first a heathen, the latter a Christian.
Boleslav stirred up the pagan population against his brother,
and murdered him while praying in church at Prague, on the
28th of September, 644, thus conferring on him the honour
of a patron saint and centre of legends. The House of
Luxemburg obtained the kingdom of Bohemia by marriage,
and Venceslav was introduced among their names in the form
of Wenzel ; and the crazy and furious Bohemian king of
that name sat for a few unhappy years on the imperial
throne; but in spite of the odium of his memory, the name
of good King Wenceslas, as we call it, held its ground, and
contracts into Vacslav and Vaclav. Some say that it is
crown glory, from vienice ; others deduce the prefix from vest,
VOL. II. a <J

45° NAMES FROM THE SLAVONIC.
the superlative of veliku, great, which famished the Bul
garian Velika, Veleslav, Velimir.
The familiar root that has been so often encountered in
valeo, wield, &c., in the sense of power, gives the prefix vead
to various favourite Slavonic names. The Russian Vladimir,
being of the race of Rurik, is sometimes seized upon as
Waldemar ; and, in fact, there is little difference in the sense
of his first syllable. He is a great national saint, since it
was his marriage with the Greek Princess Anna that ob
tained for the Byzantine Church her mighty Muscovite
daughter; and in honour of him, Vladimir has been per
petually used in Russia, shortened into Volodia, and ex
panded into Volodinka by way of endearment.
The national saint of Hungary was Vladislav, who was the
restorer of the faith that had almost faded away after the death
of the sainted King Stephen, and was chosen as leader of a cru-
sade,which was prevented by his death in 1 095. His name, and
that of his many votaries, have sorely puzzled Latin and Teu
tonic tongues, when not content, like the French, to term him
St. Lancelot, his countrymen call themselves after him Las-
zlo, or Laczko, the lUyrians Lako, the Letts Wendis ; but
chroniclers vary between Uladislaus and Ladislaus in Hun
gary and Poland ; and when the Angevin connection brought
down a king from Hungary to revenge the death of his
brother upon Giovanna of Naples, the Italians called him
Ladislao ; and as Ladislas we recognize the last native Hun
garian king, brother-in-law to Charles V. Vladislavka is a
feminine, contracting into Valeska, which is still borne by
Polish young ladies. Vladivoj is another of the same class,
and sve, all, with the verb vladati, to rule, has formed
Vsevolad and Svevlad, all ruler, and Vseslav, all fame.
Possibly there may be some connection here with the
deity Volos, Weles, or Veless, invoked under these names
by the Slaves, Bohemians, and Russians, as witness of their
oaths, and likewise as guardian of flocks. Possibly the

NAMES OF MIGHT.

451

Roman Pales may be the same deity under another form ;
but the name of Volos is stUl applied to shepherds, and
comes, no doubt, from the Slavonic vlas, or Russian volos, the
same word as wool.
The word mir at the end of Vladimir is somewhat doubt
ful. It may mean peace, or it may mean the world ; and in
Uke manner the Slovak Miroslav stands in doubt between
world-fame or peaceful-fame.
Purvan, Purvan^e, is the Bulgarian first, whether used in
the sense of chief or of first-bom does not appear ; but, at
any rate, bearing a most eastem sound with it.
We are familiar with the Russian ukase, from ukasat, to
show forth ; and haze in Polish has the same sense of com
mand. Kazimir is thus command of peace, a noble title for a
prince, and essentially national in Poland, where it was en
deared by the fame of three of the best of the earlier sove
reigns. It has the feminine Kasimira, and is one of the
very few Slavonic names used by Teutons. Intermarriages in
troduced it among the German princes ; and Johann Kasimir,
a son of the Pfalzgraf of the Rhine, was a noted commander
in the war of the Revolt of the Netherlands, and received
the Garter from Queen Elizabeth. He was commonly called
Prince Kasimir, and his namesakes spread in Germany ; and
either for the sake of the sound, or for Polish sympathies, was
somewhat fashionable in France. It was the true name of
the son of Madame de GenUs, the Csesar of the Veilldes
du Chateau.

French.
Casimir

PoUsh.
KazimirKazimierz

Bohemian.
Kazimir

Lettish.
Kasimirs Kasche Kaschis
Kaschuk

German.
Kasimir

Kol councU, formed Koloman, somewhat noted in early
Slavonic history.
a 0 2

45 2 NAMES FROM THE SLAVONIC.
Jar, pronounced as beginning with y, means strength or
firmness. Jaromir, firm peace, was prince of Bohemia in
999. Jaropolk, firm government, was the last heathen
grand prince of Muscovy ; and this name, with Jaroslav, is
very frequent in the early annals of the House of Rurik.
From lid, the people, (our old friends hleute and Xaos,)
came Ljudomir and Ludmilla, who was the first Christian
duchess in Bohemia, and was strangled by her heathen
granddaughter, Dragotina, the mother of Boleslav and Ven
ceslav, leaving a sainted name much used among all Slavonian
women, and called at home Lida and Lidiska; in Russia,
LjudmUa. Lidvina was likewise Bohemian, from Vina, an
old goddess.

Section V. — Names of Virtue,
Words signifying goodness are far from uncommon in this
class of nomenclature. Bohry, good, has a worthy family.
Dobrija, sometimes called Dobrowka, was the Bohemian
princess whose marriage, like those of Clotilda, Bertha, and
Anna, brought religion into her new country. Her husband,
Miczslav, of Poland, had been born blind, but recovered his
sight at seven years old. He had seven wives while still a
heathen, but was told that he would have no children unless
he began afresh with a Christian lady. He demanded the
Czech princess. She brought St. Adalbert, of Prague, with
her; and Mistislaus, as he is generally called in history,
counts as the first Polish Christian king, in the year 970.
So national was the name, that the Poles altered Maria of
Muscovy to Dobrija, on her marriage with Kasimir, then-
king. The other names of this commencement are Hlyrian
— Dobrogast, Dobroljub, Dobroslav, and its femmine Dobro-
voj, Dobrvok, Dobrutin, and Dobrotina, good guest, good love,
good glory, good war, good wolf, and beneficent.

NAMES OF AFFECTION. 453
Ssvatyj, holy, and polk, govemment, are the component
parts of the old Russian Sviatopolk, often found among the
early race of Rurik. Holy glory, Sviatoslav, was the inap
propriate name of the son of the Christian princess Olga, the
same who refused baptism, believing that all the converts
were cowards, and that he should lose the support of the war
gods and of his followers.
The Hlyrian hlag, good, makes Blagorod, good birth, also,
as usual, Blagovoj, Blagoslav, Blagodvor, Blagogost, and the
contraction Blagoje.
Prav is upright, a connection, it may be, of prohus, and
it has formed the Slavonic Upravda, and the Hlyrian Prav-
doslav, Pravdoslava, Pravoje. It is, perhaps, the same with
the Wend prib, which formed the name Pribislava, which
may be remembered as that of the favourite daughter who
died of terror at the sight of the resuscitated White Lady, at
the commencement of her weary weird. The Danes amalga
mated the Wend "pred into their own names as Predbiorn, or
Preban. (^ast, or cest, is honour. The first letter, p, should be pro
nounced z; it is rather a favourite with Poland and Bohemia.
^astibog exactly answers to the Greek Timotheus, as does
^astimir to the modern German Ehrenfried, very possibly a
translation from it. ^^^tislav is the most popular form, like
all else ending in slav, and has shortened into (Jaslav, ^aislav,
Cestislav, Ceslav.
Of the same sound is the first letter of gist, pure, whence
^istav and ^istislav. From tverd, firm, we have Tverdko,
Tverdimir, Tverdislav.

Section VI.^ — Names of Affection.
The Slavonian nature has much in common with the Irish,
and there is much of caressing and personal affection. Ljub,

454 NAMES FROM THE SLAVONIC.
as has been seen, is a favourite element in names, and dragi,
dear, does a considerable part. Dragomira, or dear peace,
was the name of the heathen mother of Boleslav and Ven
ceslav. Dragoslav, or dear glory, is Russian, and Poland and
Bohemia have used Dragan, Draganka, Dragoj, Dragojilaj
Dragioila, Dragnja, Dragotin, Dragotinka, Dragilika, Dragija.
Buschinka is the tender epithet which, in Russia, a serf
applies to her lady in addressing her. It is properly the
diminutive of Duscha, happy, which is sometimes a Christian
name in Russia, as well as in Ulyria, where it is called Dusa
and Dusica. Stastny is the Bohemian word for happy, and
is sometimes used as a name. Blazena, meaning happy, in
these tongues, is used as the South Slavonic equivalent for
Beatrice. Another word for love is mil. Mila and Milica are the
feminines, meaning lovely, or amiable, Milan the masculine ;
but all these are now confounded with the numerous progeny
of the Latin ^milius. Mil is a favourite termination, and
is found loving war and glory — Milovoj and Miloslav.
Cedoljub and Cedomil are both most loving names, the
first half of the name signifying a chUd, so that they
signify ' child-love,' or ' filial affection.'
Brotherly love is likewise honoured as nowhere else, save
in the Greek PhUadelphus, which exactly renders Bratoljub,
from brata, a word of the universal family likeness 'whence
oSeAc^os and hermano are the only noted variations. Brajan
and Bragican also belong to brotherhood.
Beva is a maiden, whence Devoslav and Devoslava, prob
ably formed, or at least used, in honour of the Blessed Virgin.

Section VH. — Names from the Appearance,
A few names of extremely personal application exist, such
as the Servian Mrena, white in the eyes, and Mladen, young,

NAMES FROM THE APPEARANCE. 455
and the highly uncomplimentary Hlyrian Smoljan and Smol-
jana, from smoljo, an overhanging nose, probably a continua
tion of the nickname of some favoured individual.
Krasan, the beautiful, however, was used in names, as
Krasimir, Krasislav, Krasomil, &c. ; and zlata, golden, though
once used in Zlatoust, as a literal translation of Chrysostomos,
in other names may, it is hoped, be employed to denote
beauty : or else Zlatoljub, with its contractions Zlatoje and
Zlatko, would be a most avaricious name. Zlata, Zlatana,
Zlatibor, and Zlatislav, are also used.
Tiho, silent, is a curious prefix. TibomU, silent love, and
Tibomir, silent peace, are clear enough ; but Tihoslav, silent
glory, is a puzzling compound, probably only arising from the
habit of ending everything with slav.
It is remarkable, however, that there is an entire absence
of the names of complexion so common among the Kelts and
Romans.

456

CONCLUSION.

MODERN NOMENCLATURE.
It still remains to cast a passing glance over the countries
of the European commonwealth, and observe the various
classes of names that have prevailed in them. It is only pos
sible to do this, with my present information, very broadly
and generally. In fact, every province has its own pecuUar
nomenclature, the more remote, the more characteristic, and,
therefore, the most curious are the least accessible. It is the
tendency of diffused civilization to diminish variations, and
up to a certain point, at least, to assimilate all to one model,
and this process for many years affected the educated and
aristocratic community, although latterly a desire for dis
tinctiveness and pride in the individual peculiarities of
race and family has arisen; but, on the other hand, the
class below, which used to be full of individualities, has
now reached the imitative stage, and is rapidly laying
aside all national and provincial characteristics. The Euro
pean nobility, except where some old family name has been
preserved as an heirloom, thus cease, about the sixteenth
century, to bear national names ; but all are on one level of
John, Henry, Frederick, Charles, Louisa, &c., while the
native names come to light among citizens and peasants ;
but now, while the gentleman looks back for the most dis
tinctive name in his remote ancestry, and proudly bestows
it ou his chUd, the mechanic or labourer shrinks from the
remark and misunderstanding that have followed his old tra
ditional baptismal name, and caUs his son by the last remark-

GREECE. 457
able one he can find, or by one culled from literature. These
remarks apply chiefiy to England, but also, in great measure,
to the town population of France, and to all other places
which are much affected by the universal fusion of national
ideas and general intercourse of the present day.

Section I. — Greece.
Modern Greece has the most direct inheritance from the
ancient, classical, and old Christian name. True, her popu
lation has undergone changes which leave but little of the
proud old Ionian or Dorian blood ; but her language has been
victorious over the barbarous speech of her conquerors,
and Latins and Bulgarians became Greek beneath her
infiuence. The inhabitants of her peninsulas and islands are, then,
with few exceptions, called by Greek names. The exceptions
are, in the first place, in favour of the Hebrew names that
are in universal use, not only the never-faUing Joannes
and Maria, but Isaakos, DaBid, Elias, and others, for whom
the Greek Church has inculcated more constant veneration
than has the Latin. Next there are the few Latin names
that were accepted by the Greeks during the existence of
the Byzantine empire, and either through martyrs or by
favourite sovereigns, recommended themselves to the love of
posterity; but these are few in number, and Konstantinos
is the only distinguished one. And, lastly, an extremely
small proportion have been picked up by intercourse with
the Western nations, but without taking root.
The mass of Greek names belongs to the class that I
have called ' Greek Christian,' being those that were chiefiy
current in the years of persecution and martyrdom — some
old hereditary ones from ancient time, others coined with
the stamp of the Faith. These, with others expressive of

458 MODERN NOMENCLATURE.
favourite ideas, such as Macharios, blessed, Sophia, wisdom,
Zoe, life, Haidee, were the staple of the Greeks untU the
modern revival brought forward the old heroic and historical
names ; and AchiUes, Alkibiades, Themistokles, &c., are
again in familiar use.
In a list of names used at the present day in the Ionian
Islands, I find seventeen men and four women of the old
historical and heroic class ; the four ladies being Kalliope,
Arethusa, Euphrosyne, and Aspasia; and, perhaps. Psyche
and Olympias ought to be added to these : twenty-three male
and nineteen female of the Christian Greek class : two He
brew, i. e., Joannes and Jakobos, of men ; three of women,
Maria, Anna, and Martha. Paulos and Konstantinos, and
perhaps Maura, alone represent the Latin, and Artorios the
Kelt, a probable borrowing from some Englishman.
Surnames are inherited from the Latin nomina, and began
earlier in Constantinople than anywhere else. They are di
vided between the patronymic, ending, as of old, in ides, the
local, and the permanent nickname.

Section H. — .
The European portion of the vast empire of Russia is
nationally Slavonic, but much mixed with Tatar; and the
high nobility is descended, at least by tradition, from the
Norsemen. The royal line is, through intermarriages,
almost Germanized. The Church continues the faith, prac
tice, and ritual of the Greek Church, but in the old Sla
vonic tongue, from which the spoken language has much
altered. The Greek element greatly predominates in the nomen
clature : native saints have contributed a few Slavonic speci
mens, and a very few inherited from the Norsemen occur ;
but the race of Rurik seem very quickly to have adopted

RUSSIA. 459
Russian names. The Tatar population hardly contributes a
Christian name to history, and the Germans almost always,
on their marriage with the Russian imperial family, assumed
native, i.e., Greek or Roman-Greek names. The present
fashions in nomenclature are, however, best explained in the
following letter from an English lady residing in Russia : —
' Children (and grown-up persons in their own family)
are, I may say, universally called by their diminutives. In
society the Christian name and patronymic are made use of,
and you seldom hear a person addressed by his family name,
though he may be spoken of in the third person as " Ro
manoff," or " Romanova " (surnames take the gender and
number of their bearers), except by his superiors, such as a
general to his younger officers, &c.
'The patronymic is formed by the addition of vitch, or
evitch, to the Christian name of a person's father ; as Con
stantine Petrovitch, Alexander Andreevitch, in the mascu
line ; and of ovna, or evna, in the feminine, Olga Petrovna,
EUzavetta Andreovna.
* I would call your attention to the error that is generally
made in the newspapers, where these patronymics are spelt
with a W, whereas they really are spelt and pronounced
with a V.
' The diminutives can always be traced to the root, being
derived from the first, or the accented syllable, of the full
name, with the termination of a little fond syllable, sha, ia,
inha, otchka, oushka ; for instance, Maria, Masha, Mashinka
— Olga, Olinka, Olitchka : Ian, John, Vanoushka, Vanka
^-Alexandre, Alexandra, Sasha, Sashinka. Not in one di
minutive are there such glaring differences of spelling and
sound, as Dick for Richard, Polly for Mary, Patty for
Martha. ' Perhaps it is not superflous to mention, that there are
diminutives of reproach as well as of affection ; if you scold
Olga she becomes Olka; Ivan, Vanka; and so on. This

460 MODERN NOMENCLATURE.
form, however, is seldom made use of by well educated
people, except in fun ; though there are some who do not
hesitate to make free use of it in their kitchens and nur
series, in a private sort of a manner. Among the lower
orders, and especially in the country, it is not considered
reproachful, but is the general form of appellation. You
observe, that this is formed by the addition of ka to the
principal syllable.
' I find, on attentive search in the " Monument of Faith"
a sort of devotional book for prayer and meditations applied
to every day of the year, and with the names and a short
biography of each saint, that there are 822 men's names,
and 204 women's in the Russian calendar. Of these, you
will be surprised to hear twelve only are really Slavonic.
Unfortunately I am unable to inform you of their meanings,
notwithstanding every enquiry among the few educated in
habitants of this little out-of-the-way town; but if ever I
have an opportunity of seeing a real " Sclavonophile," as
searchers into Russian antiquities are called, I will not fail
to ask about it. The names are as follows : —
' I Boris (m.), grand duke; murdered in 10 15.
' 2 Gleb {m.), brother to Boris ; murdered in 1016.
' 3 Vetcheslav {m.), Duke Chetsky.
'4 Vladimir {m.), grand duke ; baptized in 988 (ist
Christian grand duke).
' 5 Vsevolod (m.) , duke ; he changed his name to Gabriel
when baptized; died in 1138.
' 6 Igor {m.), grand duke of Tchernigoff, 1 147. (Norse.)
' 7 Razoomnik {m.) ; this name is taken from rdzoom,
which means sense, wisdom, and signifies a wise,
sensible person.
' 8 Olga (/.), grand duchess, god-mother to Vladimir.
She was the first Christian duchess. (Norse.)
' 9 Ludmilla (/.), god-mother to Vsevold, and martyred
in the cause of Christianity.

! RUSSIA. 46 1
' 10 Vera (/.), means faith.
' II Nadejda (/.), hope.
' 12 Lubov, charity, love.
' All the other names are of Greek, Latin, or Hebrew
origin (with a very few exceptions, of which I will speak
afterwards), and though they generally differ in termination,
yet they are to be recognized instantly. I observe that in
Greek names K is used, and not the sound of S, as in Kiril,
Kiprian (Cyril, Cyprian). Also that Th takes the sound of
F, as F^odore, Foma (Theodore, Thomas). But the Th is
represented by a letter distinct from that by which Ph or F
are represented, the former being written ® and the latter 0,
but both have exactly the same sound. U sometimes becomes
F'when used in the middle of names, as Evgenia (Eugenia),
Evstafi (Eustace). B in many instances becomes V, as in
VasUi (Basil), Varvara (Barbara), Varfolomey (Bartholo
mew). ' The names of other origin are very few, viz : —
' Avenir — Indian ;
Arisa — Arabian ;
Daria — Persian ;
Sadof — Persian ;
Erminigeld — Gothic.
' German names, I may say, are not to be found in the
Russo-Greek calendar.
' When I say that there are 1026 Christian names in the
calendar, I must explain that the number of saints is infi
nitely greater ; there being from two or three to twenty or
thirty every day of the year, the 29th of February included.
There are sixty-one St. John's days, thirty St. Peter's,
twenty-seven St. Feeder's, twenty-four St. Alexandre's,
eif^hteen St. Gregory's, sixteen St. VasUi's, twelve St.
Andre's, ten St. Constantino's, &c.
' Sometimes the same saint is feted two or three times in

462 MODERN NOMENCLATURE.
the year, but the different saints of the same name are very
many. The female saints are in less number. Maria and
Anna each occur ten times in the year, Euphrosinia six times,
Feodora eight, and so on. In proportion to the number of
saints so are the names of the population ; so that Ivan is
the most common; next, I think, comes Vasili, Andre, Petre,
Nicholas (Nikolai), Alexandre.
' The lower orders have no idea of dates; they always
reckon by the saints' days. Ask a woman the age of her
baby, she will say, " Well, I suppose it is about thirty weeks
old." " What is its name ?" " Ivan." " Which Ivan ?"
you ask, your calculations being defeated by the sixty-one
St. Johns. " Why, the Ivan that ' lives ' four days after
dirty Prascovia." You then understand that the child must
have been bom about the loth or 12th October, as the
blessed saint is irreverently called "dirty Prascovia" from
falling on the 14th October, a very muddy time of year in
holy Russia.
' One name only can be given at baptism, and it must be
taken from the orthodox calendar. German, French, and
English names not to be found there cannot be bestowed, nor
can a sumame, as in England.'

Section in..-^Italy.
Italy, like Greece, has her classical inheritance. Her
Lucio, Marco, Tito, Giulio, bear appeUations borne by their
Oscan or Sabine forefathers, even before Rome was a city ;
but mingled with this ancient stream there have been such
an infinite number of other currents, that no land has under
gone more influences, or has a more remarkable variety of
personal names.
In the decay of the Roman Empire, and the growth of the
Church, the old prsenomina were a good deal set aside by

ITALY. 463
the heathen in his search for heroic-sounding titles, by the
Christian in his veneration for the martyrs and saints of his
Church. So the prosaic matter-of-fact three-storied name of
the Roman was varied by importations, generally of Chris
tian Greek, but now and then of heroic Greek ; and as the
Christian element predominated, the Hebrew apostle or pro
phet became the name of the young Roman. Barbarians,
acquiring rights of citizenship, ceased to adopt the nomen of
their patron, retaining appellations that a Scipio or Cato
would have thought only fit to be led in a triumph, but still
putting on a Latin finish and regarding them as Roman.
But these — disgraceful as they are now regarded — were the
days that stamped the Roman impress on the world, and
marked the whole South of Europe with an indelible print
of Latin civilization and language.
Goths, Vandals, Gepidae, and Lombards came on northem
Italy one after the other; and the Lombards established a
permanent kingdom that deeply influenced the North of the
peninsula and Teutonized its nobility. The towns were less
open to their influence; and Venice remained the Roman
ia,nd partly Byzantine city she was from her source — using a
language where her g is still the Greek ^, and christening
her children by the names of later Rome in its Christian
days, only with the predominance of the national saint,
Marco, the guardian of the city ever since his bones were
stolen from Alexandria. The recurring ano, or ani, of
Venetian sumames is the adoptive anus of Rome — republican
Rome — whose truest representative the merchant city was
till her shameful degradation and final ruin.
The Italian element in the population of Cisalpine Gaul
continued far too strong for the Lombardic conquerors, and
ere long had taught them its own language. If they wrote,
it was their best approach to classical Latin ; when they spoke,
it was the dialectic Latin of the provinces farther broken by
the inability of the victors to learn the case terminations.

464 MODERN NOMENCLATURE.
which were settled by making, in the first declensions, all the
singular masculines end in 0, and plurals in i, all the feminines
in a and e ; in the others, striking a balance and calling all
ite. But though the speech was Latin, the Lombard kept
his old Teutonic name — Adelgiso, Astolfo, or the like, and
handed it on to his son, softened, indeed, but with its north
ern form clearly traceable. Time went on, and the Lom
bardic kingdom was fused into the Holy Roman Empire.
The towns remained self-governing, self-protecting old Roman
municipalities ; the Lombardic nobles, if they had a strong
mountain fastness, lived like eagles in their nests and were the
terror of all ; if they had but a small home on the plains,
were forced to make terms with the citizens and accept their
privileges as a favour. Thus came the Teuton element into
the cities, and old Lombardic names were borne by Florentine
and Milanese citizens. The Roman nomina so far were pre
served that a whole family would be called after its founder,
whether name or nickname. The noted man might be origin
ally Giacopo, but called Lapo for short. His children were,
collectively, Lapi ; a single one would be either Bindo Lapo,
or, latterly, dei Lapi, one of the Lapi. Sometimes office gave
a sumame, as CanceUiero, when the family became Cancellieri.
One of these Cancellieri was twice married; and one of the
wives being yclept Bianca, her children were caUed Bianchi;
their half-brothers Neri, merely as the reverse; and thence
arose the two famous party words of the Guelfs of Florence.
Latterly, when these names in i were recognized as surnames,
it was usual to christen a boy by the singular, and thus we
have Pellegrino Pellegrini, Cavaliere Cavalieri, and many
other like instances, familiar to the readers of Dante and of
old Italian history. Dante's o'wn names — the first contracted
from a Latin participle, the second the direct patronymic
from his father — Alighiero, the Teutonic noble spear, form a
fit instance of the mixed tongue, which he first reduced to the
dignity of a written language. Those were its days of vigour

ITALY. 465
and originality; of fresh name-coining from its own resources,
— Gemma, Fiamma, Brancaleone, Vinciguerra, Cacciaguido,
— words not merely 6f common-place tradition, but original
invention. Meantime southern Italy had been under other influences.
Long remaining a province of the Eastem empire, Calabria,
Apulia, and Sicily were the marauding ground of the Sara
cens, till the gallant Norman race of HauteviUe came to their
deliverance, and imposed on them a Norman-French royalty
and nobiUty, with their strange compound of French and
Northern names — Robert and Roger, Tancred and William,
Ferabras and Drogo, the latter certainly Frank, as it belonged
to an illegitimate son of Charlemagne. It was brought to
England by Dru de Baladon, a follower of the Conqueror ;
and we flnd it again in Sir Drew Drury, the keeper of Mary
of Scotland. It may be related to the Anglo-Saxon dry, a
sorcerer, and dreist, the German skilful, but its derivation is
uncertain. When the Norman influence waned, the Swabian power
gave a few German names to the Two Sicilies, but was less
influential than either the French in Naples or the Aragonese
in Sicily, where the one strewed Carlo, the other Femando
and Alfonso.
All this time the Christian name was the prominent one,
more used and esteemed than titles throughout all ranks.
Men and women would be simply spoken of as Giovanni or
Beatrice, or more often, by contractions, Vanni or Bice,
Massuccio, or Cecca, now and then with Ser or Monna
(signor or madonna) added as titles of respect.
AU the time, what may be called the Roman Catholic in
fiuence on nomenclature was growing in its great centre.
The city of martyrs was fiUed with churches where the
remains of the saint gave the title, and was thought to give
the sanctity, and these suggested names to natives and pU-
grims alike. CeciUa, Sebastiano, Lucia, &c., and more than
VOL. II. H H

466 MODERN NOMENCLATURE.
can be enumerated, won their popularity from owning a
church that served as a station in the pilgrimages, and thus
influenced the world. Relics brought to Rome, and then
bestowed as a gift upon prince^, carried their saints' epithets
far and wide ; and when Constantinople was in her decay,
and purchased the aid of Western sovereigns by gifts of her
sacred stores, the Greek and Eastern saints had their names
widely diffused, as Anna, Adriano, &c. Moreover, the feasts
of different events in the life of the Blessed Virgin Mary
began to tell on Italian names, and Annimciata, and later,
Assunta, were the produce.
Francesco is the most universal name of native Italian
fabrication. It is one of what may be called the names
spread by religious orders, all of which originate in Italy ;
Benedetto, oldest of all and universal in Romanist lands;
Augustino, never very popular; Domenico, not uncom
mon in Italy, but most used in gloomy Spain ; Francesco
and Clara, both really universal in Protestant as well as
Roman Catholic lands.
The revival of classical literature, produced partly by the
infiux of Greek scholars on the fall of Constantinople, partly
by the vigour of Boccaccio and Petrarch, brought a classical
influence to bear on Italy, of which her names are more
redolent than those elsewhere. Emilia, Virgilio, Olimpia,
Ercole, Fabrizio, all arose and fiourished in Italy, and have
never since been dropped, though the Romanist influence
has gone on growing, and others have affected parts of the
country. Romance had some influence — Orlando, Oliviero, Rinaldo,,
Ruggiero — and the more remote Lancilotto, Ginevra, Isolda,
Tristano, all became popular through literature; and the
great manufacture of Italian novels, no doubt, tended to
keep others in vogue.
The French and German wars in Italy, the erection of thC:
Lombardic republics into Uttle tyrannical duchies, and the

SPAIN. 467
Spanish conquest of Naples, aU tended to destroy much of
the individuality of Italian nomenclature, and reduce that
of the historical characters to the general European level..
And this tendency has increased rather than diminished, as
Spain devoured the North, and ' balance of power * struggled
for Austrian interests, and established Bourbon kingdoms
and duchies. The old national names were not utterly dis
carded ; there was still a Lombardic flavour in the North, a
classical one in the old cities, a Norman in Sicily ; but the
favourite common-place names predominated in the noblesse,
and titles began to conceal them. Moreover, the women
were all Maria, and many of the men likewise ; and the same
mie at present holds good, though of late the favourites have
become Filomena and Concetta — in honour, the one of the
new saint, the other of the new dogma of Rome.
The House of Savoy, which is just now the hope of Italy,
always had its own peculiar class of names — Humbert, Ame,
Filiberto, Emanuele, Vittore, and these are likely to become
the most popular in liberal Italy.

Section IV. — Spain.
Spain has many peculiarities of her o'wn, to which I
would fain do greater justice than is in my power. Celti
berian at first, she seems to have become entirely Latin, ex
cept in those perplexing Basque provinces, where the language
remains a riddle to philologists. One Spanish name is claimed
by Zamacola as Basque, i.e., Muno, with its feminine Muiia,
or Munila ; and for want of a more satisfactory history, one
is inclined to suppose that Gaston, or Gastone, must be like- ,
wise Basque. It first comes to light as Gascon among the
counts of Foix and Beam, from whom the son of Henri IV.
derived it, and made it French.
H H 2

468 MODERN NOMENCLATURE.
Rome latinized the Spanish speech for ever, and left many
an old Latin name, which, however, went on chiefly among
the lower orders, whUe the Suevi and the Goths ruled as
nobles and kings, bringing with them their Teutonic names,
to be softened down to the dignified Romance tongue, which
took the Latin accusative for its stately plurals in os and es.
It is likely that the Latin element was working upwards at
the time of the Mahometan conquest, since the traitor
JuUan, his daughter Florinda, the first patriot king, Pelayo,
all have classically derived names ; and some of these occur
in the early royal pedigrees of the Asturias and Navarre,
and the lords of Biscay, as these small mountain territories
proclaimed their freedom and Christianity. Here we find
Sancho (Sanctus) , Eneco (Ignatius), Lope, Manse, Fortunio,
Adoncia, Teresa, FeUcia, all undoubtedly Latin and Greek ;
and curiously, too, here are the first instances of double
Christian names, probably the remnant of the Latin style.
Eneco Aristo, Inigo Sancho, Garcias Sancho, and the Uke,
are frequent before the year 1000 ; and the Cid's enemy.
Lain Calvo, is supposed to be Flavins Calvus. The Goths,
however, left a far stronger impression on the nomenclature
than on the language. Alfonso, Fernando, Rodrigo, Beren
gario, Fruela, Ramiro, Ermesinda, are undoubtedly theirs ;
but other very early names continue extremely doubtful,
such as Ximen and Ximena, Urraca, Elvira, or Gelvira,
Alvaro, Bermudo, Ordono, Velasquita, aU appearing in the
earUest days of the Uttle Christian kingdoms, though not in
the palmy times of the Gothic monarchy. These names have
been abeady mentioned, with the derivations to which they
may possibly belong ; but they are far from being satisfac
torily accounted for. The simple patronymic ez was in
constant use, and formed many surnames.
As the five kingdoms expanded and came into greater in
tercourse with Europe, the more remarkable names graduaUy
were discarded; but Alfonso, Fernando, Rodrigo, Alvar,

SPAIN. 469
Gonzalo, were stiU national, and the two first constantly
royal, till the House of Trastamare brought Enrique and
Juan into fashion in CastiUe. The favourite saint was
James the Great, or, more truly, Santiago de ComposteUa,
in honour of whom Diego and his son Diaz are to be found
in very early times. Maria, too, seems to have been in use
in Spain sooner than elsewhere, and Pedro was in high
favour in the fourteenth century, as it has continued ever
since. Aragon and Portugal had variations from the CastUUan
standard of language ; and Portugal now claims to have a
distinct tongue, chiefly distinguished by the absence of the
Moorish guttural ; and in nomenclature, by the close ad
herence to classic speUing, and by the terminations which
would in Spanish be in on, or un, being in ao, the contraction
of nho. Aragonese has been absorbed in CastUlian, and
Catalan is only considered as a dialect.
After Aragon and CastiUe had become united, and crush-
ing the Moors and devouring Navarre, were a grand European
power, their sovereigns lost all their nationaUty. French, or
rather Flemish, Charles, and Greek PhUip, translated as
Carlo and Felipe, reigned on their throne as the House of
Austria, while the native Femando went off to be the Ger
man Ferdinand. Isabel, the Spanish version of either
Jezebel, or Elizabeth, did retain her popularity, but hardly
in equal measure with the universal Maria ; and as the
Inquisition Romanized the national mind more and more,
the attribute names of Mercedes and Dolores, and the
idolatrous Pilar were invented. Literary names seem to
have been few or none, and the saint, or rather the Ro
manist nomenclature, was more unmitigated in Spain and
her great western colonies than anywhere else ; even in
Italy where the classics and romance always exerted their
power. In the Spanish colonies even divine names are used,
without an idea of profanity.

,470 MODERN NOMENCLATURE.
The use of the Christian name in speech has, however,
never been dropped, even under the French influence of the
Bourbon monarchy; and Don Martin, Dona Luisa, &c.,
would StiU be the proper title of every Spanish gentleman
or lady.
The Spanish names that have been most spread have been
Fernando in Germany, iHigo and Teresa throughout all
Roman Catholic countries, for the sake of the two Spanish
saints who revived their old half-forgotten sound.

Section V. — France.
France, the most influential of European countries for
evil or for good, can hardly be properly spoken of as one,
in nation or language. Yet that one dialect of hers that
has contrived to be the most universal tongue of Europe, that
character, which by its vivacity and earnestness, and, per
haps, above all, by its hard, rigid consistency, has impressed
its ideas on all other nations, and too often dragged them in
its wake, though both only belonging to a fraction of the
population, are stiU in general estimation, tJie French, and
their importance is past denial. Dislike, despise, struggle
as we will, we are still influenced, through imitation and
vanity, and the deference of the weaker majority in matters
of conventional taste.
Old Gaul had its brave Keltic inhabitants, and its race in
Brittany, unsubdued by even Rome, were only united to the
rest of the country by the marriage of their heiress, only
subdued by gradual legalized tampering with their privileges.
Even in the Keltic province, however, genuine Keltic names
are nearly gone ; though Herve, Guennole, Yvain, Arzur,
are still found in their catalogues; and in France, Gene
vieve, by her protection of Paris, left her ancient name for
perpetual honour and imitation.

FRANCE. 47 1
The Roman overflow came early and lasted long ; it left
a language and manners strongly impressed, and the names
seem to have been according to Latin forms and rules.
Dionysius, Pothinus, Martinus, HUarius, are all found
among the Gauls in the end of the Roman sway ; and when
the Franks had burst over the country and held the north
of the Loire, whenever a Gaul comes to the surface, he is
called by a Roman name — Gregorius, Sidonius ApolUnarius,
Germanns, Eligius.
Southem Gaul was, indeed, never Frank. The cities
were Roman municipalities, shut their gates, and took what
care of themselves they could; while the Hlodvehs and
Meervehs, the Hilperics, and Hildeberts ravaged over the
stony country, which still called itself Provincia. And there,
though Burgundians on the east, and Goths from the Pyre
nees, gradually contrived to erect little dukedoms and coun
ties, and hold them under the empire established by Charle
magne ; the country was still peopled by the Romanized
Gaul, and the Langue d'oc was spoken and sung. This was
the centre of the softened classic name, Yolande and Con
stance, Alienor and Delphine, while the legends of St. Marthe
and of the Martyrs of Lyons supplied provincial saints.
The rich literature, chiefly of amatory songs, died away, and
the current remains of the language are now unwritten, fall
ing further and further into patois, and varying more from
one another. One of its curious peculiarities is to make o a
feminine termination ; Dido is there short for Marguerite,
Zino for Theresine, &c.
A great number of French sumames are still Roman, such
as Chauvin (Calvinus), Godon (Claudius), Marat, Salvin,
and many more, showing that Latin nomenclature must long
have been prevalent among the mass of the people, though
as history is only concerned with the court, we hear chiefly
of the Franks around the unsteady thrones of Neustria and
Austrasia. The High German of these kingdoms, as used

472 MODERN NOMENCLATURE.
by the Meerwings, was extremely harsh ; Hlodveh and Hlod
hild, Hlother and Hlodvald were their rough legacies ; but,
despised as was the name and cheap the blood of the Roman
among them, his civilization was conquering his victors ;
and when the Karlings, with their middle class cultivation,
subdued the effete line of Meerveh, they spoke Latin as
freely as Frankish, and the names they bore had- softened ;
Ludovicus and Lotharius, Carolus and Emma in Latin, or
in German, Ludwe and Lothar, Karl and Emme. And now,
among the many saints that were fostered by the religious
government and missionary spirit of Frankland, arose the
founders of the chief stock names of Europe — Robert,
Richard, Henry, Williaume, Walther, Bernard, Bertram,
Eberhard, and the like.
When, in the next generation, Germany, Lorraine, and
France fell apart, the latter country was beginning to speak
the Langue d'oui, retaining the Latin spelling, but disre
garding it in speech, as though the scholar had written cor
rectly, but the speaker had disregarded the declension, and
dropped the case endings alike of Latin and Teutonic. And
so Karl was Charles, and Lodwe Louis, long before the
counts of Paris, with their assimilation of the Cymric Hu to
the Teuton Hugur, had thrust the Karlings down into Lor
raine, and commenced the true French dynasty in their small
territory between the Seine and Loire.
Already had the Northmen settled themselves in Neustria,
and, taking the broken Frank names and mangled Latin
speech for badges of civilization and Christianity, had made
them their own, and infused such vigour into the French
people, that from that moment their national character and
literature begin to develop.
Then it was that France exercised a genuine and honour
able leadership of Europe. Her language being the briefest
form of Latin, was, perhaps, the most readily understood
of the broken Romance dialects ; and though Rome had

FRANCE. 473
the headship of the Church, and Germany the nominal
empire of the West, France had the moral chieftainship.
The Pope did but sanction the crusades ; it was France
that planned them. Frenchmen were the connecting link
between the Lorrainer Godfrey, the Norman Robert, the
SicUian Tancred, the Provencal Raymond, the Flemish
Baldwin. The kingdom of Jerusalem, though founded by
the Lorrainer, was essentially French ; the religious orders
of knighthood were chiefly French; the whole idea and
language of chivalry were French ; and, perhaps rightly, for
France has at times shown that rare and noble spirit that
can exalt a man for his personal qualities, instead of his
rank, even in his own lifetime. The nation that could appre
ciate its St. Bernard, its Du Guesclin, its Bayard, deserved,
while that temper was in it, to be a leader of the civilized
world. England was in these earlier days regarded as a foreign
and semi-barbarous realm held by a French duke or count,
whUe southern France was divided into independent fiefs
of the empire. The names began to be affected by reverence
for saints, and fast included more and more of the specially
popular patrons, such as Jean, Jaques, Simon, Philippe.
They became common to all the lands that felt the central
crusading impulse, and the daughters of French princes,
Alix, MatUda, the Provencal Constance, Alienor, Isabel,
Marguerite, were married into all parts of Europe, and in
troduced their names into their new countries, often backed
up by legends of their patrons.
Normandy lapsed to France through King John's crime
and weakness, and the persecution of the Albigenses, and
the narrower views of the popes, changed the Crusades to a
mere conquest of the Langue d'oc by the Langue d'oui, com
pleted by the marriages of the brothers of St. Louis ; and
though Provence continued a fief of the empire, and the
property of the Angevin kings of Naples, yet their French

474 MODERN NOMENCLATURE.
royal blood united it more closely to the central kingdom,
and the transplanting of the papal court to Avignon, gave
a French tinge to the cardinalate which it only recovered at
the expense of the Great Schism.
Philippe le Bel was the last able sovereign of France of
the vigorous early middle ages ; but the brilliant character
of the nobility still carried men's minds captive, and m-
fluenced the English even through the century of deadly
wars that followed the accession of the House of Valois, and
ended by leaving Louis XI. king of the entire French soil.
The ensuing century was that when the infiuence of France
on other nations was at the lowest ebb. Exhausting herself
first by attacks on Italy, and then by her savage civil wars,
she required all the ability of Henri IV. and of Richelieu
to rouse her from her depression, and make her be respected
among the nations. Meantime, her nomenclature had varied
little from the original set of names in use in the tenth cen
tury ; dropping a few obsolete ones, taking up a few saintly
ones, recommended by fresh relics, and occasionally choosing
a romantic one, but very scantily ; Francois was her only
notable adoption. The habit of making feminines to male
names seems to have spread in France about the eighteenth
century, rather narrowing than widening the choice. Jeanne
seems to have been the first to undergo this treatment;
Philippine was not long after, then Jacqueline, and, indeed,
it may have been the habit — as it is still among the pea
santry of the South — always to give the father's name to
the eldest child, putting a feminine to it for a girl.
With the cinque-cento came a few names of literature,
of which Diane was the most permanent ; and the Huguenots
made extensive use of Scripture names — Isaac, Gedeon,
Benjamin, and many more; but the Christian name -«'as
quickly falling out of fashion. People were, of course,
christened, but it is often difficult to discover their names.
The old habit of addressing the knight as Sire Jehan, or

FRANCE. 475
Sire Pierre, and speaking of him as le Beau Sieur, had been
entirely dropped. Even his sumame was often out of sight,
and he was called after some estate — as le Sieur Pierre Ter-
rail was to the whole world Chevalier Bayard. Nay, even in
the signature, the Christian name was omitted, unless from
some very urgent need of distinction. Henri de Lorraine,
eldest son of the duke of Guise, signs himself Le Guisard
in a letter to the Dauphin Henri, son of Frangais I. Mar
ried ladies wrote themselves by their maiden, joined to their
married title, and scarcely were even little children in the
higher orders called by one of the many names that it had
become the custom to bestow on them, in hopes of concili
ating as many saints and as many sponsors as possible, —
sometimes a whole city, as when the Fronde-born son of
Madame de Longueville had all Paris for his godmother,
and was baptized Charles Paris.
Now and then, however, literature, chiefly that of the
ponderous romances of the Scudery school, influenced a name,
as Athenais or Sylvie; but, in general, these magnificent
appellations were more used as soubriquets under which
to draw up characters of acquaintances than really given to
chUdren. Esther is, however, said to have been much pro
moted by the tragedy of Racine.
The Bourbons, with their many faults, have had two true
kings of men among them — Henri IV. and Louis XIV. —
men with greatness enough to stamp the Bourbon defects
where their greatness left no likeness.
And thus, half French as English royalty had grown in
exile during the days of the Commonwealth, and French by
birth as was the young king of Spain, France again rose
to pre-eminence as the leader of European thought and taste.
Her literature received a strong impulse through the vigor
ous Jansenists whom she crushed; her strategy, from the
genius of Turenne and Conde, her fortifications, under
Vauban were the model of Europe ; and when Marlborough

476 MODERN NOMENCLATURE.
defeated her, it was with her own weapons. Her artificial
ornament and unbending code were the canons of taste.
The symmetry she loved in architecture and composition is
feebly refiected from one end to the other of Europe ; and,
for a full century, many a prince who could not be like Louis
XIV. in grandeur, endeavoured, at least, to resemble him in
morals. There is something very significant in the fact, that these
were the days when it was fashionable to forget the simple
baptismal name. There was little distinction in it, if it had
been remembered ; Louis or Marie always formed part of it
with half-a-dozen others besides. As to the populace, nobody
knows anything of them under Louis XIV. : they were
ground down to nothing.
The lower depth, under Louis XV., brought a reaction of
simplicity ; but it was the simplicity of casting off all tram
mels — the classicalism of the Encyclopaedists. Christian
names are mentioned again, and were chosen much for
literary association. Emile and Julie, for the sake of Rous
seau; and, from Roman history, Jules and Camille, and
many another, clipped down to that shortened form by which
France always appropriated the words of other nations, and
often taught us the same practice.
So strong was the taste for the antique, that in Mde.
de Genlis' tale of Les Parvenus she represents her hero as
presenting to the heroine a devotional book, where he has
illustrated the festival services of all the saints who bore clas
sical names, by copies of the gems of their heathen originals,
mentioning, as a discovery, that many saints' names can thus
be connected with the antiques to which the fashionable
world was then devoted.
The Revolution stripped every one do'wn to their genuine
two names, and woe to the owners of those which bore an
aristocratic sound, or even meaning. Thenceforth French
nomenclature, among the educated classes and those whom

GREAT BRITAIN. 477
they influencfe, has been pretty much a matter of taste.
Devotion, where it exists, is satisfied by the insertion of
Marie, and anything that happens to be in vogue is added
to it. Josephine fiourished much in the first Bonaparte
days ; but Napoleon was too imperial, too peculiar, to be
given without special warrant from its owner ; nor are po-
liticaUy-given names numerous : there are more taken from
popular novels or dramas, or merely from their sound. Zephy-
rine, Coralie, Zaidee, Zenobie, Malvine, Seraphine, prevail
not only among the ladies, but among the maid servants of
Paris; and men have, latterly, been fancifully named by
appellations brought in from other countries, never native to
France — Gustave, Alfred, Ernest, Oswald, &c. Moreover,
the tendency to denude words of their final syllable is being
given up. The names in us and in a are let alone, in spell
ing, at least ; and some of our feminine English contractions,
such as Fanny, have been absolutely admitted.
All this, however, very little affects the peasantry, or the
provinces. Patron saints and hereditary family names, con
tracted to the utmost, are still used there ; and a rich harvest
might be gathered by comparison of the forms in Keltic,
Latin, Gascon, or German, in France.

Section VI. — Great Britain.
The waning space demands brevity ; otherwise, the appel
lations of our own countrymen and women are a study in
themselves ; but they must here be treated of in general
terms, rather than in detaU.
The Keltic inhabitants of the two islands bore names that
their descendants have, in many instances, never ceased to
bear and to cherish. The Gael of Ireland and Scotland have
always had their Niel and Brighd, their Fergus and Angus;
Aodh Ardh, and Bryan, Eachan, Conan, the most ancient

478 modern NOMENCLATURE.
of all traditional names, continuing without interval on the
same soil, excepting a few of the more favoured Greek and
old Italian.
The Cymry, in their western mountains, have a few equaUy
permanent. Caradoc, Bronwen, Arianwy, Llud, and the
many forms of Gwen, are extremely ancient, and have never
dropped into disuse. In both branches of the race there was
a large mass of poetical and heroic myth to endear these
appellations to the people; and it is one of the pecuUar
features of our islands to be more susceptible than any other
nation to these influences on nomenclature. Is it from the
under current of the imaginative Kelt that this tendency has
been derived ?
Rome held England for four hundred years ; and though
Welsh survived her grasp and retained its Keltic character,
instead of becoming a Romance tongue, it was considerably
imbued with Latin phraseology; and the assumption of
Latin names by the British princes, with the assimilation of
their own, has left a peculiar class of Welsh classic names
not to be paralleled elsewhere, except, perhaps, in Wallachia.
Cystenian, Elin, Emrys, lolo, Aneurin, Ermin, Gruffydd,
Kay, are of these ; and there are many more, such as March,
Tristrem, Einiawn, Geraint, which lie in doubt between the
classic and the Cymric, and are, probably, originally the latter,
but assimilated to those of their Latin models and masters.
It was these Romanized Kelts who supplied the few martyrs
and many saints of Britain ; whose Albanus, Aaron, and JuUus
left their foreign names to British love, and whose Patricius'
founded the glorious missionary Church of Ireland, and made
his name the national one. His pupils, Brighde and Columba,
made theirs almost equally venerated, though none of these
saintly titles were, at first, adopted in the Gadhaelic Churches;
without the reverent prefix Gille, or Mael, which are com
pounded with all the favourite saintly names of the Keltic-
calendar.

GREAT BRITAIN. 479
Again, the semi-Roman Kelts were the origin of the
Knights of the Round Table. Arthur's own name, though
thorough Keltic, is claimed by Greek. Lancelot is probably
a French version of the Latin translation of Maelgwn ; and
the traces of Latin are here and there visible in the
rather nomenclature of the brave men who, no doubt, aimed
at being Roman citizens than mediaeval knights.
The great Low German influx made our island English,
and brought our veritable national names. An immense
variety existed among the Anglo-Saxons, consisting of dif
ferent combinations, generally with some favourite prefix, in
each family — Sige, jEthel, Ead, Hilde, Cuth, -Mlf, and the
terminations, generally, beorht, red, volf, veald, frith, or, for
women, fhrythe, hilde, gifu, or hurh. The like were in use
in the Low German settlements on the Continent, especially
in Holland and Friesland.
Christianity, slowly spreading through the agency of the
Roman Church on the one hand and the Keltic on the other,
did not set aside the old names. It set its seal of sanctity
on a few which have become our genuine national and native
ones. Eadward, Eadmund, Eadwine, Wilfrith, .Eadgifu,
JEthelthryth, Mildthryth, Osveald, and Osmund, have been
the most enduring of these ; and ^thelbyrht we sent out to
Germany, to come back to us as Albert.
The remains of the Danish invasions are traceable rather
in surnames than Christian names. The permanent ones
left by them were chiefly in insular Scotland and Ireland.
Torquil, Somerled, Ivor, Ronald, Halbert, are Scottish relics
of the invaders ; and in Ireland, Amlaidh, Redmond, Ulick.
But it was the Normans, Norsemen in a French dress,
that brought us the French rather than Frank names
that are most common with us. Among the thirty kings
who have reigned since the Conquest, there have been nine
Christian names, and of these but two are Saxon English,
three are Norman Frank, two French Hebrew, one French

480 MODERN NOMENCLATURE.
Greek, one French, one anglicized German Greek. Strictly
speaking, Richard is Saxon, and began with a native English
saint; but it was its adoption by Normans that made it
popular after the Conquest ; and it came in company with
WilUam, Henry, Robert, Walter, Gilbert, all in perpetual
use ever since. Alberic, Bertram, Baldwin, Randolf, Roger,
Herbert, Hubert, Reginald, Hugh, Norman, Nigel, and
many others less universally kept up, came at the same
time ; and Adelheid and Mathilda were imported by the
ladies ; but, in general, there were more men's names than
women's then planted, probably on account of WUUam's
policy of marrying Normans to English women.
Scripture names were very few. There are only two
Johns in Domesday Book, and one is a Dane ; but the saints
were beginning to be somewhat foUowed ; Eustace was pre
dominant ; Cecily, Lucy, Agnes, Constance, were already in
use ; and in the migration, Brittany contributed Tiffany,
in honour of the Epiphany. At the same time she sent
us her native Alan, Brian, and Aveline ; and vemacular
French gave Aimee and afterwards Algernon.
It was a time of contractions. Between English and
French, names were oddly twisted; Alberic into Aubrey,
Randolf into Ralph, Ethelthryth into Awdry, Eadgifu into
Edith, Mathilda into Maude, Adelheid into AUce.
Saint and Scripture names seem to have been promoted
by the crusading impulse, but proceeded slowly. The An
gevins brought us the French Geoffrey and Fulk, and their
Proven9al marriages bestowed on us the Proven9al version
of Helena — Eleanor, as we have learnt to caU their AUenor,
in addition to the old Cymric form Elayne. Thence, too,
came Isabel, together with Blanche, Beatrice, and other soft
names current in poetical Provence. Jehan, as it was called
when Lackland bore it, and its feminine Jehanne, seem to
have been likewise introductions of our Aquitanian queen.
The Lowland Scots had been much influenced by the An-

GREAT BRITAIN. 48 1
glo-Saxons, whose tongue prevailed throughout the Lothians ;
and after the fall of Macbeth, and the marriage of Malcolm
Ceanmore, English names were much adopted in Scotiand.
Cuthbert has been the most lasting of the old Northumbrian
class. The good Queen Margaret, and her sister Christian,
owed their Greek names, without a doubt, to their foreign
birth and Hungarian mother, and these, with Alexander,
Euphemia, and George, forthwith took root in Scotiand, and
became national. Probably Margaret Ukewise brought the
habit, then more eastern than western, of using saintly
names, for her son was David ; and from this time seems
to have begun the fashion of using an equivalent for the
Keltic name. David itself, beloved for the sake of the good
king, is the equivalent of Dathi, a name borne by an Irish
king before the Scottish migration. David I., nearly related
to the Empress Maude, and owning the earldom of North
umbria in right of his wife, was almost an English baron ;
and the intercourse with England during his reign and those
of his five successors, made the Lowland nobles almost one
with the Northumbrian barons, and carried sundry Norman
names across the border, where they became more at home
than even in England ; such as Alan, Walter, Norman,
Nigel, and Robert.
Henry II. was taking advantage of the earl of Pembroke's
expedition to Ireland, and the English Pale was established,
bringing with it to Erin the favourite Norman names, to be
worn by the newly implanted nobles, and Iricized gradually
with their owners. Cicely became Sheelah ; Margaret,
Mairgreg ; Edward, Eudbaird ; and, on the other hand, the
Irish dressed themselves for civilization by taking English
names. Finghin turned to Florence, and Ruadh to Rode
rick, &c.
Henry HI. had been made something like an Englishman
by his father's loss of Normandy ; and in his veneration for
English sahits, he caUed his sons after the two royal saints
VOL. II. I I

482 MODERN NOMENCLATURE.
most beloved in England, Edward and Edmund ; and the
death of the elder children of Edward I. having brought
the latter a second time to the throne, it was thenceforth
in honour. Thomas owed its popularity to Becket, who was
BO christened from his birth on the feast of the Apostle, St.
Thomas, and, in effect, saintly names were becoming more
and more the fashion. Mary was beginning to be esteemed
as the most honourable one a woman could bear; and
legends in quaint metrical English rendered Agnes, Bar
bara, Katharine, Margaret, and CecUy, well known and in
constant use.
The romances of chivalry began to have their influence.
Lionel and Roland, Tristram, Ysolda, Lancelot, and Guen
ever, were all the produce of the revival of the tales of
Arthur's court, arrayed in their feudal and chivalrous dress,
and other romances contributed a few. Diggory is a highly
romantic name, derived from an old metrical tale of a
knight, properly called D'Egare, the wanderer, or the almost
lost, one of the many versions of the story of the father
and unknown son. Esclairmonde came out of Huon de
Bourdeaux ; Lillias, such a favourite in Scotland, came out
of the tale of Sir Eger, Sir Graham, and Sir Graysteel;
Lillian out of the story of Roswal and Lillian; and Grizel
began to flourish from the time Chaucer made her patience
known. The Scots, by their alliance with France, were led to im
port French terminations, such as the diminutives Janet and
Annot ; also the foreign Cosmo, and perhaps likewise Esme.
Meantime we obtained fresh importations from abroad.
Anne came with the queen of Richard II. ; Elizabeth from
the German connections of Elizabeth Woodville's mother,
Jaquetta of Luxemburg ; Gertrude was taken from Germany;
Francis and Frances caught from France ; and Arthur was
revived for his eldest son by the first Tudor ; Jane instead
of Joan began, too, in the Tudor times.

GREAT BRITAIN. 483
But when the Reformation came, the whole system of no
menclature received a sudden shock. Patron samts were
thrown to the winds; and though many families adhered
to the hereditary habits, others took entu-ely new fashions.
Then, Camden says, began the fashion of giving sumames
as Christian names ; as with Guildford Dudley, Egremont
Ratcliffe, Douglas Sheffield; and in Ireland, Sidney, as a
girl's name-, in honour of the lord deputy. Sir Henry, the
father of Sir Philip, from whom, on the other hand, Sydney
became a common English boy's name.
Then, likewise, the classical taste came forth, and be
stowed all manner of fanciful varieties ; Homer, Virgil,
Horatius, Lalage, Cassandra, Diana, Virginia, Julius, &c.,
&c., all are found from this time forward ; and here and
there, owing to some ancestor of high worth, specimens have
been handed on in families.
The more pious betook themselves to abstract qualities;
Faith, Hope, Charity, Prudence and Patience, Modesty,
Love, Gift, Temperance, Mercy, all of which, even to the
present day, sometimes are used, but chiefly by the "pea
santry, or in old Nonconformist families.
Between the dates 1500 and 1600 began the full employ
ment of Scripture names, chosen often by opening the Bible
at hap-hazard, and taking the first name that presented
itself, sometimes, however, by juster admiration of the cha
racter. Thus began our use of Abraham and Sarah, Isaac
and Rebecca, Rachel, Joseph, Benjamin, Josiah, &c. ; and
others more quaint and peculiar, which are apt to be neg
lected in the next generation to those who have made proof
of the ridicule apt to be excited by an unusual Christian
appellation. Comparatively few of these Puritan names were used in
Scotland ; but several were for sound's sake adopted in Ire
land as equivalents; Jeremiah for Diarmaid; Timothy for
Tadhgh ; Grace for Graine. 112

484 MODERN NOMENCLATURE.
Charles was first made popular through loyalty to King
Charles I., who had received it in the vain hope that it
would be more fortunate than the hereditary James, itself
brought into Scotland seven generations back by a vow of
Annaple Drummond, mother of the first unfortunate James.
English registers very scantily show either Charles or James
before the Stuart days, but they have ever since been ex
tremely popular. Henrietta, brought by the French queen,
speedily became popular, and with Frances, Lucy, Mary,
Anne, Catherine, and Elizabeth, seems to have been pre
dominant among the ladies; but all contracted as Harriet,
Fanny, Molly, Nanny, Kitty, Betty. The French sup
pression of the Christian name considerably affected the
taste of the Restoration ; noblemen dropped it out of their
signature; the knight's wife discarded it with the prefix
Dame ; married daughters and sisters were mentioned by
the surname only; young spinsters fooUshly adopted Miss
with the surname instead of Mistress with the Christian ;
but the loss was not so universal as in France, for custom
still retained the old titles of knights and of the daughters
and younger sons of the higher ranks of the nobility. The
usual fashion was in imitation of the French, for ladies to
call themselves, and be addressed in poetry by some of the
Arcadian or romantic terms, a few of which have crept into
nomenclature ; Amanda, Ophelia, Aspasia, CordeUa, Phyllis,
Chloe, Sylvia, and the like.
The love of a finish in a was coming in with Queen Anne's
Augustan age. The soft e, affectionate ie or y, that had been
natural to our tongues ever since they had been smoothed by
Norman-French, was twisted up into an Italian ia : Alice
must needs be Alicia ; Lettice, Letitia ; Cecily, CecUia •
OUve, Olivia; Lucy, Lucinda; and no heroine could be
deemed worthy of figuring in narrative without a flourish at
the end of her name. Good Queen Anne herself had an a
tacked on to make her ' Great Anna ;' Queen Bess must needs

GREAT BRITAIN. 485
be Great Eliza ; and Mary was erected into Maria ; Nassau
had lately been invented for WUUam III.'s godchildren of
both sexes ; and Anne, after French precedent, made mascu
line for his successor's godsons. Belinda, originally the
property of the wife of Orlando, was chosen by Pope for his
heroine of Rape of the Lock ; Clarissa was fabricated out of
the Italian Clarice by Richardson ; and Pamela was adopted
by him out of Sir Philip Sydney's Arcadia, as a recommen
dation to the maid servant whom he made his heroine ; and
these, as names of literature, all took a certain hold. Pamela
is still not uncommon among the lower classes.
In the meantime the House of Brunswick had brought in
the regnant names of German taste — George, of which,
thanks to our national patron, we had already made an
English word, Frederick, Ernest, Adolphus — a horrible Eng
lish Latinism of good old German, Augustus, an adoption of
German classic taste ; and, among the ladies, generally clumsy
feminines of essentially masculine names — Caroline, Charlotte,
Wilhelmina, Frederica, Louisa, together with the less incor
rectly formed Augusta, Sophia, and Amelia.
This ornamental taste flourished, among the higher classes,
up to the second decade of the nineteenth century, when the
affectations, of which it was one sample, were on the decline,
under the growing influence of the chivalrous school of Scott,
and of the simplicity upheld by Wordsworth. The fine names
began to grow vulgar, and people either betook themselves to
the hereditary ones of their families, or picked and chose from
the literature then in fashion.
Two names, for the sake of our heroes by sea and land,
came into prominence — Horatio and Arthur, the latter trans
cending the former in popularity in proportion to the longer
career and more varied excellences of its owner. Woman
kind had come back to their EUen, Mary, and Lucy ; and
it was not till the archaic influence had gone on much longer
that the present crop sprang up, of Alice and Edith, Ger-

486 MODERN NOMENCLATURE.
trude, Florence, and Constance, copied again and again, in
fact and in fiction, and with them the Herbert and Reginald,
Wilfrid and Maurice, formerly only kept up in a few old
families. It is an improvement, but in most cases at the
expense of nothing but imitation, the sound and the fashion
being the only guides. After all, nomenclature cannot be
otherwise than imitative, but the results are most curious
and interesting, when it is either the continuation of old
hereditary names, like the Algernon of the Howards or the
Aubrey of the de Veres, or else the record of some deeply
felt event, like the Giustina of Venice, in honour of the
battle of Lepanto, or our own Arthur, ha memory of the
deeds of our great duke.
Names are often an index to family habits and temper.
Unpretending households go on for generations with the same
set, sometimes adopting one brought in by marriage, but
soon dropping it out if it is too fine. Romantic people re
flect the impressions of popular literature in their children's
names ; enthusiastic ones mark popular incidents, — Navarino,
Maida, Alma, have all been inflicted in honour of battles.
Another class always have an assortment of the fashionable
type — Augusta, Amelia, and Matilda, of old ; Edith and
Kate at present.
Non-conformity leaves its mark in its virtue names and
its Scripture names, the latter sometimes of the wildest kind.
Talithacumi was the daughter of a Baptist. A clergyman
has been desired to christen a boy ' Alas,' the parents sup
posing that ' Alas ! my brother,' was a call on the name of the
disobedient prophet. There is a floating tradition of ' Acts '
being chosen for a fifth son, whose elder brothers had been
called after the four Evangelists ; and even of Beelzebub
being uttered by a godfather at the font.
Among other proposed names may be mentioned ' EUbris,'
which some people persisted belonged to their family, for it
was in their grandfather's books : and so it was, being e lihris,

GREAT BRITAIN. 487
(from the books,) the old Latin manner of commencing an
inscription in a book. ' Valuable and serviceable ' is also
said to have been intended for a child, on the authority of
an engraving in an old watch ; and an unfortunate pair of
twins were presented for the imposition of Jupiter and
Orion, because their parents thought them pretty names,
and ' had heard on them.'
Double names came gradually in from the Stuart days,
but only grew really frequent in the present century; and
the habit of calling girls by both, now so common among the
lower classes in towns, is very recent.
With many famiUes it is a convenient custom to christen
the sons by the mother's maiden name in addition to their
first individual name ; but the whole conversion of surnames
into Christian names is exclusively English, and is impossible
on the Continent, as state and church both refuse to register
what is not recognized as in use. Of English surnames we
need say nothing ; they have been fully treated of in other
works, and as any one may be used in baptism, at any time,
the mention of them would be endless.
In speaking of England we include not only our colonies
but America. There our habits are exaggerated. There is
much less of the hereditary ; much more of the Puritan and
literary vein. Scripture names, here conspicuous, such as
Hephzibah, Noah, Obadiah, Hiram, are there common-place.
Virtues of all kinds fiourish, and coinages are sometimes to
be found, even such as ' Happen to be,' because the parents
happened to be in Canada at the time of the birth.
' Peabody Duty perhaps keeps a store.
With washing tubs, and wigs, and wafers stocked ;
And Dr. Quackenbox proclaims the cure
Of such as are with any illness docked :
Dish Alcibiades holds out a lure
Of sundry articles, all nicely cooked ;
And Phocion Aristides Franklin Tibbs,
Sells ribbons, laces, caps, and slobbering-bibs.'

488 MODERN NOMENCLATURE.
The Roman and Greek influence has been strong, pro
ducing Cato, Scipio, Leonidas, &c. ; but the habit of caUinj
negroes by such euphonious epithets has rather discouragec
them among the other classes, and the romantic, perhaps
predominates with women, the scriptural with men. Thi
French origin of many in the Southern States, and the Dutcl
in New England, can sometimes be traced in names.

Section VH. — Germany.
What was said of Frankish applies equally to old Higl
German, of which Frankish was a dialect, scarcely distin
guishable with our scanty sources of information.
We have seen Frankish extinguished in Latin in the West
but in the East we find it developing and triumphing. The
great central lands of Europe were held by the Franks and
Suevi, with the half civilized Lombards to their south, and s
long slip of Burgundians on the Rhine and the Alps, al
speakers of the harsh High German, all Christians by tht
seventh century, but using the traditional nomenclature
often that of the Nibelungenlied. The Low Germans,
speaking what is best represented by Anglo-Saxon literature,
were in the northerly flats and marshes, and were stil
heathens when the Franks, under Charlemagne conquered
them, and the Anglo-Saxon mission of Boniface began theii
conversion. The coronation of Charles by the pope was intended tc
establish the headship of a confederacy of sovereigns, one
of them to be the Kaisar, and that one to be appointed bj
the choice of the superior ones among the rest. This chief
tainship remained at first with the Karlingen ; but after thej
had become feeble it remained, during four reigns, with the
house of Saxony, those princes who established the strano-e

GERMANY. 489
power of the empire over Italy, and held the papal elections
m their hands. It was under them that Germany became a
confederation, absolutely separate from her old companion
France. There is not much to say of German nomenclature. She
little varied her old traditional names. Otto, Heinrich,
and Konrad, constantly appeared from the first ; and the
High German, as the literary tongue, has had the moulding
of all the recognized forms.
The Low German continued to be spoken, and became, in
time, Dutch and Frisian, as well as the popular dialect of
Saxony and West Prussia. The Frisian names are, indeed,
much what English ones would be now if there had been no
external infiuences.
In spite of being the central empire, the German people
long resisted improvement and amalgamation. The merchant
cities were, indeed, far in advance, and the emperors were,
of necessity, cultivated men, up to the ordinary mark of their
contemporary sovereigns; but the nobUity continued surly
and boorish, little accessible to chivalrous ideas, and their
unchanging names — Ulrich, Adelbert, Eberhard, marking
how little they were affected by the general impressions of
Europe. A few names, like Wenceslav, or Boleslav, came
in by marriage with their Polish, Bohemian, and Hungarian
neighbours ; and Hungary, now and then, was the medium
of the introduction of one used at Constantinople, such as
Sophia, Anne, Elisabeth, which, for the sake of the sainted
Landgraffinn of Thuringia, became a universal favourite.
Friedrich came in with the Swabian dynasty; Rudolf and
Leopold, with the house of Hapsburg.
Holland and the cluster of surrounding fiefs meanwhile
had a fluctuating succession, with lines of counts continually
coming to an end, and others acceding who were connected
with the French or English courts. The consequence was,
that the gentlemen of these territories gained a strong

49° MODERN NOMENCLATURE.
French tinge of civilization, especially in Flanders, where
the Walloons were a still remaining island of Belgse. The
Flemish chivalry became highly celebrated, and, under the
French counts of Hainault and Flanders, and dukes of
Burgundy, acquired a tone, which made their names and
language chiefiy those of France, and tinctured that of the
peasantry and artizans, so as to distinguish them from the
Hollanders. Andreas, Adrianus, Cornelius, saints imported
by the French dukes, were both in Holland and the Nether
lands, however, the leading names, together with PhiUp,
which was derived from the French royal family. The
Dutch artificers and merchants had their own sturdy, pre
cise, business-like character — their German or saintly names,
several of which are to be found among our eastem English,
in consequence of the intercourse which the wool trade esta
blished, and the various settlements of Dutch and Flemish
manufacturers in England.
The revival of classical scholarship in the fifteenth cen
tury was considerably felt in the great universities of the
Netherlands and of Germany, and its chief infiuence on
nomenclature is shown in the introduction of classical
names; namely, Julius and Augustus, and the Emperor
Friedrich's notable compound of Maximus .^milianus into
Maximilian, but far more in finishing every other name off
with the Latin us. Some were restorations to the original
form ; Adrianus, Paulus, and the ever memorable Martinus ;
but others were adaptations of very un-Latin sounds. Poppo
turned to Poppius ; Wolf to Wolfius ; Ernst to Ernestus ;
Jobst, instead of going back to Justinus, made himself
Jobstius ; Franz, Franciscus. The surnames were even
more unmanageable, being often either nicknames or local ;
but they underwent the same fate ; Pott was Pottus ; Bernau,
Bernavius ; while others translated them, as in the already
mentioned instance of Erasmus, from Gerhardson, and the
well known transformation of Schwarzerd into Melancthon.

GERMANY. 49 1
The Danish antiquary Broby (bridge town), figures as Pon-
toppidan ; Och became Bos ; Heilman, Servetus ; Goldmann,
Chrysander; Neumann, Neander; and as to the trades,
Schmidt was Faber ; Miiller, Molitor ; Schneider, Sartorius ;
Schuster, Sutorius ; Kellner, Cellarius.
The German Christian names did not permanently retain
this affectation; but the Netherlanders, owing probably to
the great resort to their universities, retained it long and in
popular speech, so that in many Dutch contractions, the us
is still used, as in Janus for Adrianus ; Rasmus for Eras
mus ; and almost always the full baptismal name includes
the classical suffix. The surnames, of course, adhered, and
are many of them constantly heard in Germany and Holland,
while others have come to England chiefiy with the fugitives
from the persecution that caused the revolt of the Nether
lands. The Latin left in Dacia and long spoken in Hungary
must have assisted to classicalize the Germans even on their
Slavonic side.
The Reformation did not so much alter German as English
nomenclature. The Lutherans, following their master's prin
ciple of altering only what was absolutely necessary, long
retained their hereditary allegiance to their saints, and did
not break out into unaccustomed names, though they modi
fied the old Gottleip into Gottlieb. Some of their sects of
Germany, however, invented various religious names ; Gott-
seimitdir, Gottlob, Traugott, Treuhold, Lebrecht, Tugend-
reich, and probably such others as Erdmuth and Ehrenpreis
were results of this revival of native manufacture. A few
Scriptural names came up among the Calvinists, but do not
seem to have taken a firm hold.
This was the land of the double Christian name. It was
common among the princes of Germany, before the close of
the fifteenth century, long before France and Italy showed
more than an occasional specimen. It was probably neces
sitated by way of distinction, by the large families all of

492 MODERN NOMENCLATURE.
the same rank in the little German states. They seem to
have set the fashion which has gradually prevailed more and
more in Europe ; indeed, there are some double names that
have so grown together as to be recognized companions, such
as Annstine for Anne Christine, Anngrethe for Anne Mar
garethe. At present it is the custom in almost all royal
families to give the most preposterous number of Christian
names, of which one, or at most two, is retained as service
able, &c.
A few Slavonic names crept in, chiefly Wenzel from Bo
hemia; Kasimir from the Prussian Wends; Stanislas from
Poland ; and the house of Austria, when gaining permanent
hold of the empire, spread the names derived from their va
rious connections ; the Spanish Ferdinand, and Flemish Karl
and Philipp, besides their hereditary Leopold and Rudolf,
and invented Maximilian.
The counter reformation brought the Jesuit Ignaz and
Franz into the lands where the Reformation was extin
guished, and canonized Stanislav. Under the horrors of the
Thirty Years' War, Germany retrograded in every respect ;
and when she began to emerge from her state of depression,
the brilliance of the French court rendered it her model,
which she followed with almost abject submission. Every
one who could talked French, and was called by as French
a name as might be ; the royal Fritz became Federic, and
little Hanne, Jeannette, the French ine and ette were liberallj
tacked to men's names to make them feminine, and whatevei
polish the country possessed was French.
This lasted till the horrors of the Revolution, and the
aggressions that followed it, awoke Germany to a sense oi
her own powers and duties as a nation. Her poets and greai
men were thoroughly national in spirit; and though, aftei
the long and destructive contest, she emerged with her granc
Holy Roman Empire torn to shreds, her electoral princei

GERMANY. 493
turned into petty kings, her noble Hanse towns mostly
crushed and absorbed in the new states, her Kaisar merely
the Markgraf of Austria, enriched by the spoUs of Lombardy
and the Slavonic kingdoms, yet she had recovered the true
loyalty to the fatherland and its institutions, cared again
for her literature and her language, and had an enthusiasm
for her own antiquities, a desire to develop her own
powers. German names, to a degree, refiect this. They have
ceased to ape Latin or French. So far as any are literary,
they come from their own national literature ; but as in most
of the states only ordinary names are registered, the va
riety is not great. More and more German names pass
to England in each generation, and become naturalized
there; but the same proportion of English do not seem
to be returned.
Bavaria, having been always Roman Catholic, has more
saintly names than most other parts of Germany, affd, in
particular, uses those of some of the less popular apostles,
who probably have been kept under her notice by the great
miracle plays.
Switzerland, once part of the empire, though free for
five hundred years back, is a cluster of varying tongues,
races, languages, and religions, — Kelt and Roman, Swabian
and Burgundian, Romanist, Lutheran, Calvinist, German,
French, Italian. Names and contractions must vary here ;
but only those on the German side have fallen in my way,
those about Berne, which are chiefiy remarkable for the Ours
and Ursel, in honour of the bears, and Salome among the
women ; the diminutive always in li.

494 MODERN NOMENCLATURE.

Section VIH. — Scandinavia.
Grand old Northmen ! They had their own character, ane
never lost it ; they bad their cwn nomenclature, and kept i
with the purity of an unconquered race.
The few influences that affected their nomenclature were
in the first place, in some pre-historic time, the Gaelic
Thence, when Albin and Lochlinn seem to have been or
friendly terms, they derived Njal, Kormak, Kylan, Kjartan
Maelkoln, and, perhaps, Brigitte. Next, in Denmark, a few
Wend names were picked up ; and, in fact, Denmark being
partly peopled by Angles, and always more exposed, first to
Slavonic, and then to German influences, than the North,
has been less entirely national in names.
In the great piratical days the Northmen and Danes left
their names and patronymics to the northern isles, from
Iceland to Man, and even in part to Neustria and Italy.
Oggiero and Tancredi, in the choicest Italian poems, are
specimens of the wideness of their fame. Our own popula
tion, in the north-east of England, is far more Scandinavian
than Anglian, and bears the impress in dialect, in manners,
and in surnames, though the baptismal ones that led to them
are, in general, gone out of use.
Christianity did not greatly alter the old northern names,
though it introduced those of the universally honoured saints.
But the clergy thought it desirable — and chiefly in Den
mark — to take more ecclesiastical names to answer to their
own ; so Dagfinn was David ; Solmund, Solomon ; Sigmund,
Simon; and several ladies seem to have followed their
example, so that Astrida and Griotgard both became Mar
garethe, and Bergliot Brigitte.
The popular nomenclature has included all the favourite
saints with the individual contractions of the country. The
royal lines have been influenced by the dynasties that have

COMPARATIVE NOMENCLATURE.

495

reigned. Gustaf grew national in Sweden after the disruption
of the union of Calmar, and Denmark alternated between
Christiem and Friedrich ; but the main body of the people
are constant to Olaf and Eirik, Ingeborg and Gudrun ; and
in the Norwegian valleys the old immediate patronymic of
the father is stiU in use. Linnea as a feminine from Lm-
naeus, the Latinism of their great natural historian's sur
name, is a modern invention. Linne itself means a lime tree.
The Northmen have hitherto been the most impressing,
and least impressed from without, of all the European
nations; and thus their names are the great key to those
of the South.

Section IX. — Comparative Nomenclature.
Before entirely quitting our subject, it may be interesting
to make a rapid comparison of the spirit of nomenclature,
and the significative appellations that have prevailed most in
each branch of the civilized family which we have been con
sidering. For instance — of religious names, the Hebrew race alone,
and that at a comparatively late period, assumed such directly
Divine appellations, as Eli, Elijah, Adonijah, Joel. The
most analogous to these in spirit would be the heathen Teu
tonic ones, Osgod, Asthor, Aasir ; but these were, probably,
rather assertions of descent than direct proclamations of glory.
The very obvious and appropriate Gift of God is in all
branches save the Keltic.

Hebrew.
JonathanElnathanNathanael MattaniahNethaniah

Greek.
Theodores
Dorotheus

Teutonic.
GodgifuGottgabe (late)

Persian.
Megabyzus i.e.
Bagabukhsha

Latin.
Adeodatus (late)

Slavonic.
Bogdan

496 COMPARATIVE NOMENCLATURE.
Servant of God is everywhere but among Latins and
the Slaves.

Hebrew.
Obadiah

Greek.
Theodoulas

Teutonic.
Gottschalk

Keltic.
GioUa-De'

Sanscrit.
Devadasa

Greek and Gaelic likewise o'wn tbe Service of Christ, by
Christopheros (Christbearer), GUchrist, and Malise; and the
Arabic has Abd-AUah, and Abd-el-Kadir, servant of the
Almighty. The name of the late Sultan, Abdul Medschid,
signified the servant of the All-Famed.

THE LOVE OF GOD, OR BELOVED OF GOD.

Greek.
Theophilus Philotheus

Latin.
Amadeus

Teutonic.
Gottlieb (late)

Slavonic.
Bogomil

Persian.
Bagadaushta

HONOURING GOD.

Greek.
Timotheus

Slavonic.
(J!astibog

Persian.
Megabazns

god's JUDGMENT.

Heb.
Daniel Jehoshaphat
Jehoiachim

Greek.
Theokritus

god's glory.

HELP OF GOD.

Greek. Slavonic.
Theokles Bogoslav

Hebrew.
Eleazar

German.
Gotthilf

The Greek and Slavonic have by far the most directly re-
Ugious names, next to the Hebrew, from having been less
pledged to hereditary names, and the time of the conversion.

COMPARATIVE NOMENCLATURE. 497
The Gaelic devotion was almost aU expressed in the Giolla
and Mael prefix.
Idol names are of course numerous, but comparison be
tween them is not easy, as they vary with different mytho
logies. One point is remarkable, that the Supreme God,
whether Zeus, Jupiter, Divas, or Woden, never has so many
votaries as his vassal gods. Zeno, Jovius, and, perhaps, the
Grim of the North, are almost exceptions. The Phoenician
Baal had, indeed, many namesakes, and the Persian Ormuzd,
giver of life, had several, of whom the pope, called Hor-
misdas, was one. In general. Ares, Mars, Thor, and Ranovit,
the warlike gods, or the friendly Demeter and Gerda, the
beneficent Athene, the brilUant Artemis, and Irish Brighde,
the queens of heaven, Hera, Juno, Frigga, are chosen for
namesakes. Mithras in Persia, and Apollo in Greece, have
their share ; but, in general, the sun is not very popular,
though Aurora and Zora honour the da'wn ; and the North
has various Dags.
Of animals the choice is much smaller than would have
been expected. The lion's home is, of course, the East, and
Sinha, his Sanscrit title, is represented by the Singh, so
famUiar in the names of Hindu chiefs. The Arabs have
Arslan in many combinations ; the Greeks introduced Leo,
which has been followed by the Romans, and come into the
rest of Europe ; but many as were the Uon names of Greece
and later Rome, Leonard, and, perhaps, Lionel, alone are of
European growth.
The elephant is utterly unrepresented, unless we accept
the tradition, that the cognomen of Caesar arose from his Afri
can name. Persia has a few leopards, such as Chitratachna.
The bear does not show himself in favourable colours in the
South, and Ursus and Ursula are more likely to be transla
tions of the northern Biorn — so extremely common — than ori
ginal Latin names. The Erse, however, owns him as Mahon.
The wolf is the really popular animal. Even the Hebrews
VOL. II. K K

498 COMPARATIVE NOMENCLATURE.
knew Zeeb through the Midianites, the Greeks used Lycos
in all sorts of forms, the Romans had many a Lupus, the
Teutons have Wolf in every possible combination, the Slaves
Vuk; the Kelts alone avoid the great enemy of the fold,
whose frequency is almost inexplicable. The Kelts are,
however, the namesakes of the dog, the Cu and Con, so
much loathed in other lands, that only a stray Danish Hund,
Italian Cane, and the one Hebrew Caleb, unite in bearing
his name in honour of his faithful qualities.
The horse is, of course, neglected in Judea, where his use
was forbidden ; but in Sanscrit was found Vrada9va, o'wning
great horses ; and the horse flourished all over Persia. Aspa-
mithras, horse's friend, Aspachava, rich in horses, Vishtaspa,
and many more, commemorate the animal ; and in Greece,
Hippolytus, Hippodamos, Hippomedon, Hipparchus, and
many more, showed that riding was the glory of the HeUenes.
Rome has no representative of her equus, except in Equitius,
a doubtful runaway, more likely to be named in honour of
the equestrian order, than direct from the animal. Marcus
may, however, be from the word that formed the Keltic
March, which, with Eachan and Eochaid, and many more,
represent the love of horses among the Kelts, answering to
the Eporedorix, mentioned by Caesar. The Slaves have
apparently no horse names ; but all our modern Roses are
properly horses, and Jostein, Rosmund, and various other
forms, keep up the horse's fame in northem Europe.
Rome dealt, to a curious degree, in the most homely
domestic names ; Mus, the surname of the devoted Decius,
was, probably, really a mouse ; for while the swine of other
nations never descend below the savage wild boar of the forest
— Eber, Baezan, Bravac, the Romans have indeed one Aper,
but their others are but domestic pigs, Verres, Porcius, Scrofa.
Goats flourished in Greece in honour of the ^Egis, and
of Zeus goats, and iEgidios, with others, there arose ; but
Sichelgaita, and a few northern Geits, alone reflect them.

COMPARATIVE NOMENCLATURE. 499
The chamois, or mountain goat, named Tabitha or Dorcas,
and is paralleled by an occasional masculine Hirsch, or stag,
in Germany.
The sheep appears to be solely represented by Rachael, for
though the lamb has laid claim to both Agnes and Lambert,
it is only through a delusion of sound.
Serpents, as Orm and Lind, are peculiar to the North.
The eagle figures in Aias, Ajax, Aquila, the Russian
Orlof, and many an Am of the Teutons. It is rather sur
prising not to find him among the Gael ; but the raven, Uke
the wolf, is the fashionable creature, as an attendant upon
slaughter — Oreb, Corvus, Morvren, Fiachra, Rafn, he croaks
his name over the plunderer everywhere but among the Greeks
and Slaves.
The swan has Gelges in Ireland, Svanwhit in the North ;
the dove named Jonah, Jemima in Palestine, Columba in
Christian Latinity, Golubica in Ulyria ; but gentle birds are, in
general, entirely neglected, unless the Greek Philomela, which
properly means loving honey, were named after the nightingale.
The Latin Gallus may possibly be a cock ; but Genserieh is
not the gander king, as he was so long supposed to be.
The bee had Deborah in Hebrew, and Melissa in Greek ;
but, in general, insects are not popular, though Vespasian is
said to come from a wasp ; and among fishes, the dolphin has
the only namesakes in Romance tongues, probably blunders
from Delphi.
. Plants were now and then commemorated ; Tamar, a palm
tree, Hadassah, a myrtle, are among the scanty eastem
examples. Rome had a Robur, and Ulyria Dobruslav, in
honour of the oak; but the Slaves have almost the only
genuine flower names. Rhoda is, indeed, a true Greek Rose,
but the modem ones are mistakes for hross, a horse. Violet,
probably, rose out of Valens, and LUias from CceciUus,
Oliver from Olaf. Primrose, Ivy, Eglantine, &c., have been
invented in modern books at least, and so has Amaranth.
K K 2

500 COMPARATIVE NOMENCLATURE.
Passing to qualities, goodness is found in many ar
Agathos of the Greeks, with his superlative Aristos, bul
early Rome chiefly dealt in Valens, leaving Bonus anc
Melior for her later inventors to use. The goods of the
Teutons are rather doubtful between the names of the Deitj
and of war, but in passing them, the relation between Gustal
and Scipio should be observed. The Slaves have manj
compounds of both Dobry and Blago, and the Irish, Alma.
Love is everywhere. David represents it in Hebrew.
Agape and Phile in Greek; but the grim Roman nevei
used the compounds of his amo, only left them to form manj
a gentle modem name — Amabel, Aimee, Amy. Caradoc
was the old Cymric, and Aiffe the Gadhaelic, beloved ; and
Wine and Leof in the German races, Ljubov, Libusa, Milica
in the Slavonic, proved the warm hearts of the people. Indeed,
the Slavonic names are the tenderest of all, owning Bratoljut
and ^edomil, fraternal and parental love, unparalleled except
by the satirical surnames of the Alexandrian kings.
Purity — a Christian idea — is found in Agnes and Katha
rine, both Greek ; perhaps, too, Devoslava, or maiden glory.
with the Slaves. Holiness is in the Hieronymus and Hagios
of heathen Greece, meaning a holy name, and in the northem
Ercen and Vieh, at the beginning and end of names, the
Sviato of the Slavonians.
Peace, always lovely and longed-for, names both Absalom
and Solomon, and after them many an eastern Selim and
Selima. Greece had Irene and Irenseus, but not till Christian
days, and the Roman Pacificus was a very modern invention ;
but the Friedrich, &c., of the North, and Miroslav of the
Slav, were much more ancient.
The soul is to be found in Greece, as Psyche, and nowhere
else but in the Welsh Enid. Life, however, figured at Rome.
as Vitalis, and in the Teutonic nations as the prefix fjor;
and the Greek Zoe kept it up in honour of the oldest of aU
female names. Eve.
Grace is the Hebrew Hannah or Anna, and the charis in

COMPARATIVE NOMENCLATURE. fOI
Greek compounds. Eucharis would not answer amiss to the
Adelheid, or noble cheer, of Teuton damsels. Abigail, or
father's joy, Zenobia, father's ornament, are in the same spirit.
Eu, meaning both happy and rich, wealthy in its best
sense, is exactly followed by the Northern ad and Anglo-
Saxon ead. Eulalia and Eulogios are the same as Edred,
Euphrasia would answer to Odny, Eucharis and Aine like
wise have the same sense of gladness. Eugenics is, perhaps,
rather in the sense of Olaf, or of the host of Adels and
Ethels. Patrocles and Cleopatra, both meaning the father's
fame, have nothing exactly analogous to them in the Teuton
and Keltic world.
Royalty is found in the Syriac Malchus, the Persian
Kshahtra, or Xerxes, the Malek of the Arab, the early
Archos, Basileus, and Tyrannos of the late Greek ; even the
Roman Regulus, with Tigeamach among the Kelts, and Rik
in its compounds in the Teutonic world. The loftiness and
strength of the royal power is expressed in the Persian prefix
arta, first cousin to our Keltic Art and Arthur, akin to the
root that forms Ares, Arius, AretinUs, and many more
familiar names from the superlative Aristos. It is the idea
of strength and manhood, perhaps akin to the Latin vir and
Keltic fear. Boleslav is the Wendic name, filling up the
cycle of strength and manly virtue.
Majesty and greatness are commemorated by closely re
sembling words — the Persian Mathista or Masistes, Megas
and Megalos in their Greek compounds, Latin Magnus and
Maximus, Keltic Mor, Teutonic Mer ; it is only the Velika
of the Slav that does not follow the same root. His crown
names Stephanas and Venceslas, or crown glory.
Justice and judgment are the prevalent ideas in the Hebrew
Dan and Shaphat, Greek Archos, Dike, and Krite, Latin
Justinus, Northem Ragn ; perhaps, too, in the Irish Phelim
and Slavonic Upravda. Bamo, to tame, is in many Greek
names ; and ward, or protection, answers to the Latin Titus.
Venerable is the Persian Arsaces, with Augustus and Se-

502 COMPARATIVE NOMENCLATURE.
bastian. Power figures in Vladimir and Waldemar, and the
many forms of wald ; and, on the other hand, the people assert
themselves in the Laos and Demos of Greece, the leutfolk
and theod of the Teuton, and even the Ijud of the Slave. The
lover of his people may be found under the various titles of
Demophilos, Publicola, Theodwine, and the Slavonic femmine
Ludmila ; their ruler, as Democritus, or Archilaus, or Theo
doric ; their tamer, as Laodamos ; their justice, as Laodike.
Boulos, council, finds a parallel in the Teuton raad ; but
Sophia, wisdom, is far too cultivated for an analogy among
the name makers of the rude North.
But fame and glory were more popular than wisdom and
justice. Slava rings through the names of the Wends, and
Mas through the Greeks ; while hluod and hruod form half
the leading names of Germanized Europe.
Clara is the late Latin name best implying fame, but
answering best to Bertha, bright, like the Phlegon of Greece,
and Barsines of Persia, which are all from one root. Lucius,
light, translates some of these.
Conquest, that most desired of events to a warlike nation,
is the Nike of the Greeks. Nikias, Victor, Sige, Cobhflaith,
are all identical in meaning ; and the Greek and Teuton have
again and again curiously similar compounds. Nicephorous
and Sigebot, Nikoboulous and Sigfred, Stratonice, would
perhaps be paralleled by Sighilda. Nicolas has not an exact
likeness, because the Teutons never place either sige or theod
at the end of a word.
War itself has absorbed the Teuton spear, and is ger in
our Teuton lands. But the Greek mache, and Teuton hadu,
the Kelt cath, and the Slav hoj or voj, all are in common use.
Telemachus, or distant battle, is best represented by Siroslav,
or distant glory. Stratos, meaning both army and camp,
Kleostralos and Stratokles, answer to Stanislav; and Cad
waladyr, in sound as well as sense, to Haduvald.
Cathair, the Irish battle-slaughter, has likeness in the

COMPARATIVE NOMENCLATURE. 503
Teutonic derivatives of Val, but the North stands alone m
honouring the Thiof with namesakes.
The hero, the warrior himself, the Hero as he really is of
Greece, the hari of our Teutons, the con and cathal and mal
of Ireland, the miles of the Roman, has namesakes in
hosts. Herakles himself was not far removed from Herbert,
Robert, or Lothaire, in meaning ; and Sigeher is the con
quering warrior, as Nikostratos is the victorious army.
In fact, warlike names are exhausting in similarity and
multitude, and our readers will discover many more for them
selves. The peaceful ones are far more characteristic.
See how the ocean figures in Pelagios, in Morvan, Muir-
cheartash, Haflide, — all the formation of maritime nations,
while the Slaves have no sea names at all, and the Latin
Marina is mere late coinage. It is the Welsh, however, who
have the most sea names : Guenever, Bronwen, Dwynwen, &c.
The earth makes Georges and Agricola, and its culti
vators have in Greece commemorated their harvest with
Eustaches and Theresa ; in Ulyria, their vintage with Groz
dana ; but though the old farmer citizens of Rome were called
Faber, Lentulus, Cicero, and the like, produce of their fields,
they were much too homely for our fierce Teuton ancestry.
Gold is not in much favour; Chryseis, Aurelia, Orflath,
and Zlata, just represent it; and silver is to be found in
Argyro, Argentine, and Arianwen; but iron nowhere but
with the Germanic races, Eisambart, &c., in accordance with
the weapon names in which they alone delight. Nor are
jewels many, — Esmeralda, Jasper (perhaps), Margaret, Li
gach, are almost their only representatives. Spices we have
as Kezia, Muriel, and strangest of all, Kerenhappuch, a box
of stibium for the eyes. Whether the Stein of the North is
to be regarded as a jewel does not seem clear, but it is more
according to the temper of the owners to regard it as an
swering to Petros, a rock. Veig, Laug, and 01, represent
liquors, and are one of the peculiarities of the North.

504 COMPARATIVE NOMENCLATURE.
Beauty is less common than might have been expected.
Kallista is the leading owner of the word in Greece, but the
Latin bella must not be claimed for it, and, in spite of the
ny and fridhr of the North, it is the Kelts who deal most
in names of beauty, — Findelbh, Graine, and more than can
here be specified.
Indeed, complexion names are chiefly found among the
Kelts and Romans. The white, Albanus and Finn, (which
last Finn passed to the North,) with Gwenn in Wales and
Brittany ; the light haired. Flavins, Rufus, Ruadh, and
Dearg. Fulvius, Niger, and Dubh, with the answering
Swerker, paralleled only by the late Greek Melania, have
very few answering names in other lands, though the Bruno
of Germany corresponds to Don, and the Blond, now Blount,
of England is said to be meant to translate Fulvius.
On exceptional names, from the circumstances of the
birth, we have not here dwelt. They were accidental, and
never became national, except from the fame of some bearer
of one. The names derived from places are almost all Latin,
at flrst cognomina, then taken at baptism by converts. The
number names are likewise Latin. Those of high Christian
ideas, like Anastasius, Ambrosius, Alethea, are generally
Gi^ek; and when Latin, as Benedictus, the blessed, and
Beatrix, the blesser, are apt to be renderings of the Greek.
Macharios was probably the occasion of the invention of both
of these. The early Latin names are the least explicable,
and the least resembling those of other nations ; the Keltic
are the most poetical ; the Slavonic either tender or warlike ;
the Greek and the Teutonic are the most analogous to one
another in sense, and are the most in use. except the more
endeared and wide-spread of the Hebrew. — John and Mary
deservedly have the pre-eminence in the Christian world above
all others. THE END.

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