58

IN CONFORMITY WITH BUTTE OR BUTZE.

have a circumnavigation of Britain by a revolted tribe of this nation. (cap. xxviii.)

Another mythical animal, a fish, can be brought into curious verbal conformity with our Pece or Petz: this is the Butte or Bütte, in diminutive, Büttge; English, Bot, in Tur-bot-properly, Stör, or Big-bot. Grimm has a pretty Story, Deutsche Sagen; and his Mythologie (p. 289") will point out the conformity in attributes, as Adelung, in Bätz and Bätze (s. v.), will point out the verbal identity in pronunciation with our Peze or Pece. Grimm says Butze signifies a stump-knocking spirit, exactly as Pochen (see p. 49) means to stamp anything (as ore) into small fragments, by means of a lever and a beam. He also quotes Phil. v. Sitten that Bützen, Heinzelmann means Spiritus familiaris, exactly as with our Robin Goodfellow. As Bear, they bring us round to the most remarkable synonym in the Wendic mythology with these Pece, viz., the Berstückken, or Stücks (pronounced stix). I have already (vol. i. p. 199) adduced from Abraham Frencelius a passage which proves them under this name to have been worshipped by all the Slaves or Slavonic tribes. In this he is confirmed by Masch: "Die gottesdienstlichen Alterthümer der Obotriten (p. 31): "die Wendichen Halbgötter sind von einer anderen Art. Sic heissen Berstuen, Marcopeten, and Coltki;" and as we have, in a previous chapter, produced the figure, which we truly believe to have proved a genuine and ancient Berstück, it will not be necessary to go into this proof any farther than its conformity, as Bearer of sticks, consequently with our Man in the Moon and with the Roman Stygius. We

ROMAN BERSTUCKS ON A LAMP.

59

anticipated of necessity, at vol. i. p. 187, that part of the proofs which showed that the Romans had originally a Deus Stygius, the supreme God of their creed, as Ovid calls him Deus ille Deorum, which, when the foreign divinities, Jupiter and the other Dii consentes, or the Cabiri, were introduced, was reduced to a river, but still with equal force to bind the greatest power, the sire of gods and men, by its

To those whom my verbal deductions for the classic knowledge and name of Berstucks may not be sufficient, I am happy to offer the above and

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WITH BEGER'S ACCOUNT.

following engraving by my friend W. T. Fairholt, which will give some pictorial and graphic proof of my asssertions and arguments. It is a Lamp in the Royal Collections of Berlin, as engraven by Beger, in his edition of Bartoli's Lucerne Antiquæ (p. 15, § 37), with a very unsatisfactory explanation: "Hac in lucerna tres Saltatores Gibbi et ridiculi delineantur inter saltandum fasciculum virgarum super se in altum jactantes cumque manibus distentis rursum captantes." All this every one can see from the mere inspection of the cut; but in the absence of any learned comment, we will take only the fact, which is admitted by him, of a bundle of sticks here borne up aloft by three men in motion, and ask whether they cannot be viewed as Ber-stücks; Stygium ferre numen. The practice and deity may have been forgotten or superseded by the simulated river (see vol. i. pp. 225, 226), but we have here undeniable proof that the allusion was known and the fact represented.

The following cut I look upon as another acknowledgment of the same beliefs. It is taken from the same work by Beger (see also Montfaucon l'Antiq. Expl. vol. v., pt. ii., pl. cxci.), whose explanation as before extends only to what every one can see, except that the Phrygian bonnet and total nudity of the figure give reason to suppose that a priest is represented in one of the sacred Roman Saltations with a quotation from Pollux, which is very important: "Erat, inquit, fissilia trahere ligna, Chorica Saltationis species." It is, in fact, a positive authority, that bearing of sticks was a portion of classical ritual in their solemn choral dances, pic

A SECOND ROMAN BERSTUECK.

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turing possibly from a forgotten creed their most ancient divinities by a name then obsolete, or used only as the power of a deity able to bind and control every other denizen of their Olympus. Hyde, in his Treatise de Relig. vit. Pesarum, has the engraving of a priest of Zoroaster, who has a number of such sticks, with some of which he is kindling the sacred flame of his pure altar and sacred fire; and the number and form of these sticks induce me to believe that a mythical meaning was also here intended to be represented.

I also adduced two remarkable passages from Procopius and Helmold, the earliest historian of the Wends, showing a similar supreme but nameless

VOL II.

G

62

BERSTUECKS BECOME STICK-BEARERS.

deity in their Mythology; and it is not only possible but probable that one of the names by which this northern supremacy in Heaven was designated was Berstucn; and as the Moon, which still keeps superiority of gender in the German languge (our Latin grammars 'tell us the masculine is more worth than the feminine), no doubt had originally also a superiority of worship before the sun, the Berstück would have then been identical with the orb of night, by which the oldest Britons reckoned their time; and though in the changes of language, of religion, and manners, nothing of the previous ideas would survive but a verbal conformity, by which the ancient Berstück deity was made into a bearer of sticks, and the moon, his former helpmate or identity, given him for a habitation. From such simple elements has sprung, I conceive, this widely-spread myth, pervading, as we have seen, so many and such widely-distant countries; for when once in progress, the story was too inviting not to exercise the wit and the rustic invention for the every varying circumstances in which we have found it. It must have been, however, very early invented, and existed possibly amongst the Romans as the hounds given to Diana and her attributes, not only as huntress (in which she answers to the Frau Perchta, who either hunts herself or precedes the Wilde Jagd with its hell hounds), but also as Moon, and the Man in the Moon with his dog (vide vol. i. p. 168), and finally as Hecate, with the triple-headed Cerberus, may all have helped to give the Man in the Moon and the Lambeth Pedlar their dogs. At all events, I should prefer such an association to the very