Several things indicate that, when their father became a foe of the gods, Ivalde's sons were still their friends, and that Slagfin particularly was on the side of his foster-father in the conflict with Ivalde. With this corresponds also the conduct of the Gjukungs toward Valtarius, when he takes flight with Hildigun. In the Anglo-Saxon heroic poetry, the name Hengest is borne by the person who there takes Slagfin's place as Hnæf-Gevar's nearest man. The introduction to the Younger Edda has from its English authorities the statement that Heingestr (Hengest) was a son of Vitta and a near kinsman of Svipdag. If, as previous investigators have assumed, Vitta is Vade, then Hengest is a son of Ivalde, and this harmonises with the statement anent his kinship with Svipdag, who is a grandson of Ivalde. The meaning of the word Hengest refers of itself to Slagfin-Geldr. The name Geldr is a participle of gelda, and means castratus. The original meaning of Hengest is "a gelding," equus castratus (in the modern German the word got for the first time its present meaning). That the adjective idea castratus was transferred to the substantive equus castratus is explained by the fact that Gils, Gisl, a mythic name for a horse (Younger Edda, i. 70, 482), was also a Gjukung name. One of Hengest's ancestors in his genealogy in Beda and in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle is called Vict-gils; one of Slagfin-Gjuke's sons is named Gilser. A neither mythic nor historic brother of Hengest added in later times is named Horsa. The Ravenna geography says that when the Saxons left their old abodes on the continent, they marched cum principe suo Anschis, and with their chief Ans-gisl, who therefore here appears in the place of Hengest. Synonymous with Hengest is the Norse Jálkr, equus castratus, and that some member of the mythological group of skee-runners, that is, some one of the male members of the Ivalde race, in the Norse version of the Teutonic mythology, bore this epithet is proved by the paraphrase öndr-Jálkr, "the equus castratus of the skee-runners." The cause of the designation is found in the event described above, which has been handed down by the poem "Valtarius Manufortis." The chief one of the Gjukungs, originally Gjuke himself, there fights with Valtarius, who in the mythology was his father, and receives in the conflict a wound "clean to the thigh-bone." This wound may have symbolic significance from the fact that the fight is between father and son. According to the English chronicler Nennius, Hengest had two brothers, Ochta and Ebissa. In spite of their corruption these names remind us of Slagfin's brothers, Aggo-Ajo (Volund) and Ibor-Ebbo (Egil).
According to the historified saga, Hengest was the leader of the first Saxon army which landed in Britain. All scholars have long since agreed that this Hengest is a mythical character. The migration saga of the Teutonic mythology was transferred by the heathen Saxons to England, and survived there until Christian times. After the names of the real leaders of the Saxon immigration were forgotten, Hengest was permitted to take their place, because in the mythology he had been a leader of the Saxon emigrants from their original country, the Scandian peninsula (see No. 16), and because this immigration was blended in Christian times with the memory of the emigration from Germany to Britain. Thus, while the Longobardians made Volund and Egil (Ajo and Ibor) the leaders of their emigration, the Saxons made Volund's and Egil's brother Slagfin (Hengest-Gjuke) their leader. The Burgundians also regarded Slagfin (Gjuke) as their emigration hero and royal progenitor. Of this there is evidence partly in Lex Burgundionum, the preface of which enumerates Burgundian kings who have Gjukung names; partly in a Middle High German poem, which makes the Gjukungs Burgundian kings. The Saxon migration saga and the Burgundian are therefore, like those of the other Teutonic races, connected with the Ivalde race and with the fimbul-winter.
THE END.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] For "brothers" the text, perhaps purposely, used the ambiguous word germani. This would, then, not be the only instance where the word is used in both senses at the same time. Cp. Quintil, 8, 3, 29.
[2] There is a story of the creation of man by three wandering gods, who become in mediæval stories Jesus and SS. Peter and Paul walking among men, as in Champfleury's pretty apologue of the bonhomme misére, so beautifully illustrated by Legros. In the eddic legend one of these gods is called Hœne; he is the speech-giver of Wolospa, and is described in praises taken from lost poems as "the long-legged one" [langifotr], "the lord of the ooze" [aurkonungr]. Strange epithets, but easily explainable when one gets at the etymology of Hœne = hohni = Sansc. sakunas = Gr. kuknos = the white bird, swan, or stork, that stalks along in the mud, lord of the marsh; and it is now easy to see that this bird is the Creator walking in chaos, brooding over the primitive mish-mash or tohu-bohu, and finally hatching the egg of the world. Hohni is also, one would fancy, to be identified with Heimdal, the walker, who is also a creator-god, who sleeps more lightly than a bird, who is also the "fair Anse," and the "whitest of the Anses," the "waker of the gods," a celestial chanticleer as it were (Vigfusson, Corpus Poeticum Boreale, vol. i., Introduction, p. cii., quoted by the translator).
[3] In strophe 8 Fjolsvin says of Menglad:
Menglöd of heitir,
en hana módir of gat
vid Svafrthorins syni.
Svafr alone, or as a part of a compound, indicates a Vana-god. According to an account narrated as history in Fornaldersaga (i. 415), a daughter of Thjasse was married to "king" Svafrlami. In the mythology it is Freyja's father, the Vana-god Njord, who gets Thjasse's daughter for his wife. The Sun-song (str. 79, 80) mentions Njord's daughters together with Svafr and Svafrlogi. The daughters are nine, like Menglad and her dises.