Page:Origin and Growth of Religion (Rhys).djvu/559

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V. THE SUN HERO.
543

the Anglo-Saxon word Frígedæg, now Friday, and by the Old Norse habit of calling the planet Venus Frigg's Star, to have been treated to a certain extent as a counterpart of the Latin Venus. Her dwelling in a mansion called Fensal, the Hall of the Fen or Swamp, recalls Lleu's mother Arianrhod and her sea-girt castle. But we have also treated as her counterpart the maiden giantess Gefjon, who created the island of Seeland, which she brought, as an addition to Denmark and as the price of her love, from the site since occupied by lake Wener. She knew everybody's destiny, and passed for one of Woden's loves;[1] but Frigg was his wife, and even the latter's life had not been immaculate, though her laches[2] could not vie in enormity with those of Arianrhod or Duben. Both Frigg and Gefjon belong, however, to the same class of goddesses as the Celtic ones, though there is little left to prove it in the case of Frigg except the name of her abode in the Fenn. The strolling maiden Gefjon belonged perhaps to a lower stage of culture than the ideas of the Wicking period, which brought the Anses to dwell together and made Frigg lead a matrimonial life comme il faut as Woden's consort.


Taliessin.

In the last section I spoke of the Sun-god in the person of a mythic judge: we have now to discuss a Welsh story which makes him a great bard and poet, bearing the well-known name of Taliessin. It is convenient to follow the long-established custom of speaking of certain Welsh poems as Taliessin's, and of a manuscript of the 13th century in which they are contained

  1. Corpus. Poet. Bor. i. 104, ij. 465.
  2. Ibid. i. 105.