Mag er heissen Herr oder Knecht,
Hängen ist sein verdientes Recht."
Underneath is the usual picture of the gallows-tree and its fruit.
Iseldunensis.
PRAYING TO THE WEST.
(Vol. viii., p. 343. &c.)
The setting sun and the darkness of evening has been immemorially connected with death, just as the rising orb and the light of morning with life. In Sophocles (Œdipus Rex, 179.), Pluto is called ἕσπερος θεός; and the "Oxford translation" has the following note on the line:
"In Lysia's Oration against Andocides is this passage: To expiate this pollution (the mutilation of the Hermæ), the priestesses and priests turning towards the setting sun, the dwelling of the infernal gods, devoted with curses the sacrilegious wretch, and shook their purple robes, in the manner prescribed by that law, which has been transmitted from the earliest times."—Mitford, History of Greece, ch. xxii.
Liddell and Scott consider Ἔρεβος (the nether gloom) to be derived from ἐρέφω, to cover; akin to ἐρεμνός, and probably also to Hebrew erev or ereb, our eve-ning; and mention as analogous the Egyptian Amenti, Hades, from ement, the west. (Wilkinson's Egyptians, ii. 2. 74.)