Re: [tied] Saving Hengist and Horsa

There were no doubt later interpolations added in order to make the H&H episode a better story -- like their having a sister and even their being twins (neither "fact" is reported by Bede). I would not exclude some deliberate Dioscurisation of H&H by mediaeval erudites. It is at any rate quite possible that the choice of alliterating "horse" names was motivated by older Jutish traditions, if a Germanic pair of horse twins can indeed be reconstructed. Still, I am inclined to accept the historicity of the brothers so named (or at least of Hengist, granting the possibility that Horsa is merely his ficticious "horse twin" invented by sycophantic genealogists) as leaders of the Jutish mercenaries, given the short historical distance -- four generations, or just a century -- between Hengist and Ethelbert I, during whose reign the official genealogy of the Oiscing dynasty, as transmitted to Bede by his Kentish collaborators, was no doubt recorded at Canterbury.

Piotr

----- Original Message -----
From: Christopher Gwinn

To: cybalist@yahoogroups.com

Sent: Tuesday, November 20, 2001 12:57 AM

Subject: Re: [tied] Saving Hengist and Horsa

I have serious doubts about H&H's existence - even if there were two men named Hengist and Horsa, I would suspect they had taken on these names in order to identify themselves with pre-existing Germanic horse twins (after all, we already have Tacitus' comments that some Western Germanic people worshipped divine twins that were very much like Castor and Pollux). There is a book on the subject (which I have not read yet, but am told that it is a good title): Donald Ward, "The Divine Twins. An Indo-European Myth in Germanic Tradition", 1968. What would you make of the tradition that H&H had a sister named Swanna ("Swan")? Seems to me that there are enough parallels between the stories surrounding H&H and Divine Twins in Greek, Vedic, and Baltic sources to seriously consider that H&H were divine twins themselves. There also seems to be some reflexes of the divine twins in other Germanic tales, I believe (perhaps in the story of Sunild/Swanhilda and her avenging brothers).