Teutonic mythology

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III. WOESHIP. The simplest actions by which man expressed his reverence1 for the gods (see Suppl.), and kept up a permanent connexion with them, were Prayer and Sacrifice. Sacrifice is a prayer offered up with gifts. And wherever there was occasion for prayer, there was also for sacrifice (see Suppl.). Prayer.?When we consider the word employed by Ulphilas to express adoration, we at once come upon a correspondence with the Norse phraseology again. For irpoo-Kuveco the Goth. equivalent is inveita, invait, invitum, Matt. 8, 2. 9, 18. Mk. 5, 6. 15, 19. Lu. 4, 7-8. John 9, 38. 12, 20. 1 Cor. 14, 25; and once for ocrTrafo/iai, Mk. 9, 15 (see Suppl.). Whether in using this word the exact sense of irpoa-Kvvrjcris was caught, may be doubted, if only because it is invariably followed by an acc., instead of the Greek dat. In Mod. Greek popular songs, irpocricvveiv is used of a vanquished enemy's act of falling to the ground in token of surrender. We do not know by what gesture inveitan was accompanied, whether a bowing of the head, a motion of the hand, or a bending of the knee. As we read, 1 Cor. 14, 25: driusands ana anda- vleizn (=antlitz), inveitiS guS; a suppliant prostration like irpor- Kvvrjcris is not at variance vith the sense of the word. An OS. giwitan, AS. gewitan, means abire; could inveitan also have signified merely going up to, approaching ? Paul. Diac. 1, 8 twice uses accedere. Fraveitan is vindicare. Now let us compare the ON. vita inclinare,2 which Biorn quotes under veit, and spells, erroneously, Ithink, vita. From it is derived veita (Goth. vaitjan ?); veita heiSr, honorem peragere; veita tioir, sacra peragere; veitsla, epulum, Goth. vaitislo ?1 1 Verehrung, O.H.G. Sra, Goth. prob. aiza. The O.H.G. $rdn is not merely our ehren, to honour, but also ve...… (more)