258 ([return])
[ A deity of Scythian origin, called Frea or Fricca. See Mallet's Introduct. to Hist. of Denmark.]
259 ([return])
[ Many vestiges of this superstition remain to this day in Sweden. The peasants, in the month of February, the season formerly sacred to Frea, make little images of boars in paste, which they apply to various superstitious uses. (See Eccard.) A figure of a Mater Deum, with the boar, is given by Mr. Pennant, in his Tour in Scotland, 1769, p. 268, engraven from a stone found at the great station at Netherby in Cumberland.]
260 ([return])
[ The cause of this was, probably, their confined situation, which did not permit them to wander in hunting and plundering parties, like the rest of the Germans.]
261 ([return])
[ This name was transferred to glass when it came into use. Pliny speaks of the production of amber in this country as follows:—"It is certain that amber is produced in the islands of the Northern Ocean, and is called by the Germans gless. One of these islands, by the natives named Austravia, was on this account called Glessaria by our sailors in the fleet of Germanicus."—Lib. xxxvii. 3.]
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[ Much of the Prussian amber is even at present collected on the shores of the Baltic. Much also is found washed out of the clayey cliffs of Holderness. See Tour in Scotland, 1769, p. 16.]