of a Saxon punishment, the nation is too barbarous, or too contaminated, to be benefited, by the penalty. In their marriages they allowed a son to wed his father's widow, and a brother his sister-in-law." By one of the laws of their confederates, the Frisians, who were among the tribes that settled in England, we learn that their religious establishment was protected by penalties as terrible as those which guarded their chastity. "Whoever 66 "breaks into a temple, and takes away any of the sacred things, let him be led to the sea, and in the sand which the "tide usually covers, let his ears be cut off, let him be castrated, and immolated to the gods, whose temples he "has violated." " 66 14 Sax Chron. Bede i. c. 27. p. 64. "Lex Fris. ep. 1. Lindenb. p. 509. CHAP. II. BOOK СНАР. III. The Religion of the Saxons in their Pagan State. AT this happy period of the world, we cannot reflect on the idolatry of ancient times without astonishment at the infatuation which has so inveterately, in various regions, clouded the human mind. We feel, indeed, that it is impossible to contemplate the grand canopy of the universe; to descry the planets, moving in governed order; to find comets darting from system to system in an orbit of which a space almost incalculable is the diameter; to discover constellations beyond constellations in endless multiplicity, and to have indications of the light of others whose full beam of splendor has not yet reached us; we feel it impossible to meditate on these innumerable theatres of existence, without feeling with awe, that this amazing magnificence of nature announces an Author tremendously great. But it is very difficult to conceive how the lessons of the skies should have taught that localizing idolatry, which their transcendant grandeur, and almost infinite extent, seem expressly calculated to destroy. The most ancient religions of the world appear to have been pure theism, with neither idols nor temples. These essential agents in the political mechanism of idolatry were unknown to the ancient Pelasgians, from whom the Grecians chiefly sprung, and to the early Egyptians and Romans. The Jewish patriarchs had them not, and even our German ancestors, according to Tacitus, were without them. In every nation but the Jewish, a more gross system of superstition was gradually established. The Deity was dethroned by the symbols which human folly selected as his representatives; the most ancient of these were the heavenly III. bodies, the most pardonable objects of erring adoration. But CHA P. when it was found possible to make superstition a profitable craft, then departed heroes and kings were exalted into gods. Delirious fancy soon added others so profusely, that the air, the sea, the rivers, the woods, and the earth, became so stocked with divinities, that it was easier, as an ancient sage remarked, to find a deity than a man. When the Anglo-Saxons came into Britain, they had also abandoned the nobler customs of their ancestors for the degrading practice of idolatry. Their peculiar system is too imperfectly known to us for its stages to be discriminated, or its progress detailed. It appears to have been of a very mixed nature, and to have been so long in existence as to have attained a regular establishment and much ceremonial pomp. That when they settled in Britain they had idols, altars, temples, and priests; that their temples were surrounded with inclosures; that they were profaned if lances were thrown into them; and that it was not lawful for a priest to bear arms, or to ride but on a mare; we learn from the unquestionable authority of our venerable Bede.' Some of the subjects of their adoration we find in their names for the days of the week. Sunday, or Sunnan dæg, is the Sun's day. Bede, lib. ii. c. 13 et 9; lib. iii. c. 8; lib. ii. c. 6. Pope Gregory mentions, that if their pagan temples were well built, they might be used for christian churches, lib. i. c. 30. Their name for idol was wig, and for altar wighed, the table or bed of the idol. The word wig also signifies war, and this Friga's day. may imply either that the idol was a war- 2 I take the Saxon names of the days of VII. BOOK Of the sun and moon we can only state, that their sun was a female deity, and their moon was of the male sex ;' of their Tiw, we know nothing but his name. Woden was the great ancestor from whom they deduced their genealogies. It has been already remarked, that the calculations from the Saxon pedigrees place Woden in the third century. Of the Saxon Woden, his wife Friga, and of Thunr, we know very little, and it would not be very profitable to detail all the reveries which have been published about them. The Odin, Frigg, and Thor of the Northmen were obviously the same characters; but we are not authorized to ascribe to the Saxon deities the apparatus and mythology which the Northern scalds of subsequent ages have transmitted to us from Denmark, Iceland, and Norway. Woden was the predominant idol of the Saxon adoration, but we can state no more of him, unless we describe the Odin of the Danes and Norwegians. Yet, as every people has its peculiar superstitions, it would be incorrect to apply to the more ancient Woden of the Saxons the religious costume and crced attached to the Danish Odin. It will be better to confess our ignorance of the Saxon superstition wherever it exists, and to reserve for a separate occasion the idolatry of the later Northmen." 3 The same peculiarity of genders ob- Nec nomen femininum soli dedecus, always he turns his ridge to the sun." "The moon hath no light but of the sun, "and he is of all stars the lowest."Cotton MS. Tib. A. iii. p. 63. 1 Anglo-Saxons, p. 202. Perhaps hleothor, the Saxon for oracle, may have some reference to Thor. Illeo means a shady place, or an asylum. Hleothor is literally the retirement of Thor. Hleothor cwyde means the saying of an oracle. Hleothorstede the place of an oracle. 5 Without imitating those who have lately fancied that there never was an Odin, and that he is merely a mythological personage, the name of a deity, we may remark, that the date of Odin's appearance in the North cannot be accurately ascertained. This difficulty has arisen partly from the confusion in which, from their want of chrono 6 III. The names of two of the Anglo-Saxon goddesses have been CHAP. transmitted to us by Bede. He mentions RHEDA, to whom they sacrificed in March, which, from her rites, received the appellation of Rehd-monath; and EOSTRE, whose festivities were celebrated in April, which thence obtained the name of Eostre-monath.' Her name is still retained to express the season of our great pascal solemnity: and thus the memory of one of the idols of our ancestors will be perpetuated as long as our language and country continue. Their name for a goddess was gydena; and as the word is applied as a proper name instead of Vesta,' it is not unlikely that they had a peculiar divinity so called. The idol adored in Heligland, one of the islands originally occupied by the Saxons, was FOSETE, who was so celebrated that the place became known by his name; it was called Fosetesland. Temples were there built to him, and the country was deemed so sacred, that none dared to touch any animal which fed on it, nor to draw water from a fountain which flowed there, unless in awful silence. In the eighth logy, all the incidents of the North, anterior to the eighth century, are involved, and partly from the wild and discordant fictions of the scalds, who have clouded the history of Odin by their fantastic mythology. The same obscurity attends the heroes of all countries who have been deified after death, and upon whose memory the poets have taken the trouble to scatter the weeds as well as the flowers of their fancy. The human existence of Odin appears to me to be satis factorily proved by two facts: 1st, The founders of the Anglo-Saxon octarchy deduced their descent from Odin by genealogies in which the ancestors are distinctly mentioned up to him. These genealogies have the appearance of greater authenticity by not being the servile copies of each other; they exhibit to us different individuals in the successive stages of the ancestry of each, and they claim different children of Odin as the founders of the lines. These genealogies are also purely Anglo-Saxon. 2d, The other circumstance is, that the Northern chroni- Bede, De Temporum Ratione, in his 7 See Saxon Dictionary, voc. Gydena |