SHAKESPEARE'S PUCK, AND HIS folkslore, ILLUSTRATED FROM THE SUPERSTITIONS OF ALL NATIONS. VOL. II. WITH A FINAL CHAPTER OF PROOFS OF SHAKESPEARE HAVING LIVED IN GERMANY. BY WILLIAM BELL, PHIL. DR. HONORARY MEMBER OF THE SCIENTIFIC COUNCIL OF THE GERMANIC MUSEUM AT NÜRNBERG, CORRESPONDING MEMBER OF THE SOCIETY OF ANTIQUARIES FOR NORMANDY, AT CAEN, AND OF MANY OTHER LITERARY AND ARCHEOLOGICAL BODIES. P Crunk LONDON: PRINTED FOR THE AUTHOR, 31 BURTON-STREET, EUSTON-SQUARE, AND SOLD BY JOHN CAMDEN HOTTEN, PICCADILLY; MESSRS. JUDD AND GLASS, BLACKFRIARS; BY MESSRS ASHER AND CO., BERLIN; AND BY ALL BOOKSELLERS. Translations and Epitomes of this Work are Reserved. 1860. INTRODUCTION TO VOL. II. So great a period has elapsed since the first volume of this work was published, that the readers of the one now offered may not be averse to receive a short résumé of the contents of its predecessor, and the chain of reasoning and "nice dependencies" by which the identity of Puck, Pece, Pug, Bog, Bacchus, from the Orient, or Bocchus in Egypt, and so for all nations was believed to be established; the more so, as the otherwise favourable criticism of the work in the Athenæum (October 2nd, 1852, leading article) at its first appearance seemed to consider the whole as so jumbled and confused, so ill-arranged and speculative, &c., and renders such recapitulation absolutely necessary, as well for my own vindication as the information of the reader. CHAP. I. pp. 1-30. General introduction, showing, by examples, the great early conformity of the VOL. II. B Continent in language, customs, &c., with those of our ancestors, and the consequence thence deducible, that as, from their more steady, agricultural, and impassive character, our neighbours across the North Sea have been nearly stationary since the date of Shakespeare's productions, many explanations of his now obsolete diction and allusions may be found in studying the dialects and Folkslore of our Teutonic brethren. As much of the forthcoming proofs are necessarily therefore of an etymological character, a few words are added on the laws of oral and articulate sounds. CHAP. II., pp. 31-84, shows the progress of the Wendic Duality of Bog (Biel-bog and Zerni-bog, the white and black deity), from the original unity of pagan worship in the Sun-God-El, Helios, Sol, Sonne, Sun, proven from the Homeric view of Fate coercing Jupiter and all the classic Olympus. So the Roman, Mors, the Greek, Mopa, identical with Mus, particularly in the title of Smintheus, given to Apollo. Stygius, also a supreme God; his title, "Deus ille Deorum," in Ovid (Met. lib. iii. fab. 3) answering to precisely the same idea in the same words, by Helmold, for the highest Wendic Divinity, without other designation. The next step after Monotheism, a duality of Good and Evil; e. g., that of Ahriman and Ormuzd, in Persia; of Osiris and Typhon, in Egypt; the black divinity of Evil contrasted with the white beneficent Genius in the Etruscan tombs, exactly answering to Zerni- and Biel-bog. |