Homer. In one of the Eddic poems Gunnar says that the Rhine ‘will rule
over’ the Niflungs’ treasure, and he appears to call the river ‘of the race of the
gods’ (Rín... in áskunna, Atlakviða 27). Rivers and springs were no doubt
venerated in Germanic lands from the earliest times. Agathias reports that the
Alemanni worshipped rivers (mει
θρα ποταμ;ν) as well as trees, hills, etc., and
that they made sacrifices of horses, bulls, and much else to such divinities.
Christian writers in the following centuries routinely refer to Germanic cults
of rivers and springs.^144 Canute’s edict quoted earlier shows that ‘flood, water,
wells’ were still objects of reverence to some in eleventh-century England.
Of the Slavs Procopius (Bell. Goth. 3. 14. 24) writes that they ‘revere rivers
and nymphs and various other heathen powers’ (Eλλα Eττα δαιμο ́ νια); and
they sacrifice to them all, and practise their divinations at these sacrifices’.
Again, this is a commonplace that recurs in many later sources, both Latin
and vernacular.^145 In the Russian byliny rivers are affectionately referred to as
Mother Dniepr, Mother Volkh, Papa Don. A princess anxious to escape from
captivity prays ‘O you river, Mother Darya! Grant me to ford you and go to
my husband.’ ‘And the river gave ear to Marya, it let her ford it and go to her
husband.’^146
Among the Balts too the worship of springs and streams is attested by
many writers from the Middle Ages on. Some sources provide circumstantial
detail, like the sixteenth-century report of a holy stream Golbe near Chernya-
khovsk in east Prussia which, as a sign of special favour, sometimes deprived
its devotees of the sight of one eye, which they regarded as a great honour; or
the account from the Jesuit Relatio for 1600 of a rustic who made an annual
sacrifice of a hen to a river in which he had once nearly drowned while
crossing.^147 Another sixteenth-century source names a god Upinis, ‘who had
rivers in his power; and to him they sacrificed white piglets, so that the water
shouldflow clear and transparent’. His name is equally transparent, being
formed from ùpe ̇‘river’ (IE *apa ̄). So are those of ‘Ezernis, lacuum deus’,
from ezˇeras‘lake’, and ‘Szullinnys, der den Brunnen vorsteht’, from sˇulinys
‘spring’. The great god Potrimpo is sometimes identified as the god of flowing
waters, or of rivers and springs; he was invoked in a form of divination that
involved dropping wax into water and observing the images formed. In Latvia
(^144) Grimm (1883–8), 100–2; Agath. Hist. 1. 7; Clemen (1928), 38. 36, 42. 3, 45. 8, 46. 3, 18, 37,
- 13, 61. 11, 68. 12–21, 72. 24; de Vries (1956), i. 349 f.
(^145) C. H. Meyer (1931), 15. 23, 20. 27, 21. 3, 22. 23, 23. 21, 26. 37, 43. 38, 46. 15, 58. 15; Vánˇa
(1992), 109.
(^146) Chadwick (1932), 112 lines 309, 327, 332, 352, etc.; 140 line 148; 171 lines 104–9.
(^147) Mannhardt (1936), 313, 433. The loss of an eye recalls the Irish legend of Nechtan and
Bóand, as well as the Norse myth that Odin deposited one of his eyes in Mimir’s well. More
general references to holy rivers and springs: Mannhardt, 12, 28, 39, 87, 107, 280, 443, 464, 511.
278 6. Storm and Stream