Section V The Horse
No sacred animal was in more request than the horse. The gods had their wonderful horses. Sleipner (the Slider) was the eight-footed steed of Odin; Gullfaxi, 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 eastern origin of the Teutons was never more shown 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 neighings when alive, and from their heads when killed in sacrifice. 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 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 northern hest, the last in our ordinary word horse: while the High German hross has fallen 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 still claimed by the county of Kent, and by the Anglian-Continental 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. 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 ἵππος, equus, and the Keltic each have been traced; and it is curious to find that Brittany preserves the word ronse, as does Spain ronzin, the term that Don Quixote magnified into the magnificent 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-bok, 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.
Hrossbert formed into Rospert, Hroshelm into Roselm, Hrosmod into Rosmund, Hrosswald, or horse-power, into Roswal, who was the hero of a Scottish poem called Roswal and Lilian. He is the disinherited heir of Naples; and, after a series of troubles, fights his way back to honour and the hand of Lilian, the fair princess of Bealn.
The feminines Hrossmund, Hroswith, Hroshild, Hrosa, have by general consent been changed from horses to roses, giving up the old idea of the Valkyr on her tall shadowy horse, weaving her web of victory, and have been treated of under the head of Latin flowers.
Hengst seems to have been used for the male, horse for the female; but jor in the North, ehu in Old German, ehvus in Gothic, meant 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 accommodated their names to the river in their crusading fervour; but, en revanche, the great Gothic historian, Jornandes, 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.124
Notes
124. Grimm; Munter; Munch; Dasent; Cambro-Briton; Blackwell, Mallet; Weber and Jamieson, Northern Romance; Sturleson, Heimskringla; Kemble Beowulf; Ellis, Specimens of Early English Poetry; Pott, Personen Namen.