[131]. Nibelungenlied; Weber and Jamieson; Thierry; Mariana; Munch.
Section IV.—Gunther.
Gunth (Goth.), guth (A.G.S.), gunnr (North), gond or gonz (High German), all meant war or battle, and have an immense number of derivative names, inextricably mixed up with those from God and Gut; and it is even thought that there may be a close connection between them, so much did the Teutons believe their deities to be gods of battle, and goodness to be courage. The word gunth has lived on even in Lombardy in the Gonfalon, the war banner, solemnly carried out to battle in a car as the images of the gods had formerly been, in charge of the official known as the gonfaloniere in the republics of northern Italy. Gundahari, warrior, was really an old name among the kings of Burgundy, who were, no doubt, called in honour of Gunther or Gunnar, the eldest brother of Kriemhild, and husband of Brynhild. He seems to have been brave but weak, led first by Sigurd, then by Hagen, but at last fighting with great spirit.
Gunthar, or Gunnar, at full length Gundahari, continued in favour with the Burgundians; and an abbot in Brittany being canonized, left Gonthier to France, and Gontiere to Italy.
This masculine Gunnar was very common in the North, and so was likewise the feminine Gunnr, war, or Gundvar, war prudence, both confounded in Gunnar, which historians generally render as Gunnora.
Gunnhildur was in high favour in the North. One most celebrated owner was the wicked queen of Eric Blodaxe. She was said to be a native of the Orkneys, and to have filled Scandinavia with her crimes, upon the details of which, however, Norse and Danish histories are not quite agreed.
Gunhild again was the Danish princess whose murder on St. Brice’s night brought her brother Sweyn down in fury upon England; and her nephew Knud likewise had a daughter so called, but who was Anglicized into Æthelthryth; and each generation of the Godwine family records a lady Gunhild. After the Conquest, however, Gunhild died away in England; but it has never been discarded in the North, where it is now called Gunnilda, or Gunula.
That daughter of William the Conqueror, or sister of Gherbod the Fleming, whichever she was, who was the ancestress of the Warrennes, and is buried at Lewes, has a name so much disguised as to be as doubtful as her birth. It maybe Gunatrud, a Valkyr title, or Gundridur, war haste, or Gundrada, war council, the same as the Spanish Gontrado; at any rate it has had few followers.
Gunnr and Göndol were both Valkyr titles, and the Valkyr Göndol’s most noted namesake was a maiden of the Karling race, who was bred up by St. Gertrude, at Nivelle; and on her return to her father’s castle at Morzelle, used to go to her early devotions at a church half a league distant from home. On winter mornings she was lighted by a lantern, which the legend avers to have been blown out by the wind, but rekindled by her prayers. Thence comes the name of St. Gundula’s lamp, applied to the Tremella, an orange-coloured jelly-like fungus that grows on dead branches of trees in the winter. She is the patroness of Brussels, where the church of St. Gudule is the place used for coronations; but her common title in Flanders is Ste. Goëlan, while the convent built in her honour at Morzelle, in Brabant, is Ste. Goule.
War could not fail to have her wolf, the Gundulf of Norman England, the Gunnolfr of Iceland, the Gundolf of Germany, and, far more notable than either, the Gonsalvo or Gonzalo of Spain, always frequent among the Visigothic families, and becoming especially glorious in the person of the great captain, the brave and honourable conqueror of Naples, and the trainer of the infantry that gave the predominance to Spain for a hundred years, until they fell as one man at Rocroy.