[50] Reinhart Fuchs, Introduction
[51] Grimm, Irisch. Elfenm., 114-9, and D. M., 447.
[52] Comp. Vict. Hugo, Nôtre-Dame de Paris, where he tells us that the gipsies called the wolf piedgris. See also Grimm, D. M., 633 and Reinhart, lv, ccvii, and 446.
[53] Douce, Illust. to Shakspeare, ii, 33, 344, quoted in Reinhart Fuchs, ccxxi.
[54] Germania, 9, 10.
[55] Snorro’s Edda, ch. vi, English translation.
[56] Thus from the earliest times “dog”, “hound”, has been a term of reproach. Great instances of fidelity, such as “Gellert” or the “Dog of Montargis”, both of which are Eastern and primeval, have scarcely redeemed the cringing currish nature of the race in general from disgrace. M. Francisque Michel, in his Histoire des Races Maudites de da France et de l’Espagne, thinks it probable that Cagot, the nickname by which the heretical Goths who fled into Aquitaine in the time of Charles Martel, and received protection from that king and his successors, were called by the Franks, was derived from the term Canis Gothicus or Canes Gothi. In modern French the word means hypocrite, and this would come from the notion of the outward conformity to the Catholic formularies imposed on the Arian Goths by their orthodox protectors. Etymologically, the derivation is good enough, according to Diez, Romanisches Wörterbuch ; Provençal ca, dog; Get, Gothic. Before quitting Cagot, we may observe that the derivation of bigot, our bigot, another word of the same kind, is not so clear. Michel says it comes from Vizigothus, Bizigothus. Diez says this is too far-fetched, especially as “Bigot”, “Bigod”, was a term applied to the Normans, and not to the population of the South of France. There is, besides another derivation given by Ducange from a Latin chronicle of the twelfth century. In speaking of the homage done by Rollo, the first Duke of Normandy, to the King of France, he says:
Hic non dignatus pedem Caroli osculari nisi ad os suum levaret, cumque sui comites illum admonerent ut pedem Regis in acceptione tanti muneris, Neustriae provinciae, oscularetur, Anglica lingua respondit “ne se bi got”, quod interpretatur “ne per deum”. Rex vero et sui illum deridentes, et sermonem ejus corrupte referentes, illum vocaverunt Bigottum; unde Normanni adhuc Bigothi vocantur.
Wace, too, says, in the Roman de Rou, that the French had abused the Normans in many ways, calling them Bigos. It is also termed, in a French record of the year 1429, “un mot très injurieux”. Diez says it was not used in its present sense before the sixteenth century.
[57] The most common word for a giant in the Eddas was Jötunn (A. S. coten ), which, strange to say, survives in the Scotch Etin. In one or two places the word ogre has been used, which is properly a Romance word, and comes from the French ogre, Ital. orco, Lat. orcus. Here, too, we have an old Roman god of the nether world degraded.
[58] These paroxysms were called in Old Norse Jötunmodr, the Etin mood, as opposed to Asmodr, the mood of the Aesir, that diviner wrath which, though burning hot, was still under the control of reason.
[59] It may be worth while here to shew how old and widespread this custom or notion of the “naked sword” was. In the North, besides being told of Sigurd and Brynhildr, we hear it of Hrólf and Ingigerd, who took rest at night in a hut of leaves in the wood, and lay together, “but laid a naked sword between them”. So also Saxo Grammaticus says of King Gorm, “Caeterum ne inconcessum virginis amorem libidinoso complexu praeripere videretur, vicina latera non solum alterius complexibus exult, sed etiam districto mucrone secrevit. Lib. 9, p.179. So also Tristan and Isolt in Gottfried of Strasburg’s poem, line 17,407-17.