Chapter CLXIX: Section VIII: Heimdall

The porter of Valhall is Heimdall, the son of nine sisters, who watches at the further end of the rainbow-bridge Bifrost to guard the Æsir from the giants. He sleeps more lightly than a bird, can see a hundred leagues by day or night, and can hear the grass growing in the fields, and the wool on the sheep’s backs. He bears in one hand a sword, in the other a trumpet, the sound of which resounds throughout the universe.

When the powers of evil break loose, Heimdall will rouse the gods to their last conflict by a blast of his trumpet, and in the struggle will kill and be killed by Loki.

His name is explained by _heim_, home, and _dallr_, powerful. The latter half is in Anglo-Saxon _deall_, in old High German _tello_, and in the old Norse _dallr_, whence Dalla is found as a name in the _Landnama-bok_.

_Heim_ is in Ulfilas both a field and a village, and the Anglo-Saxons use the word _dhăm_ for an enclosure, and _hām_ for a village; _ham_ in a similar manner, as is still shown in the diminutive, hamlet, for a small village, as well as in the _ham_ that concludes many local names. At the same time, the word, slightly altered, assumed that closer, dearer, warmer sense which is expressed by the terms, _heim_, _hiemme_, _hjem_, _hame_, and _home_, in all the faithful-hearted Teutonic race, yet which is so little comprehended by our southern relatives, that they absolutely have no power of expressing such an idea as “It’s hame, and it’s hame, and it’s hame.”

Even in their heathenism “true to the kindred points of heaven and home,” the guardian of the dwelling of the brave spirits of the dead was made by the Northmen no grim Cerberus nor gloomy Charon, but the _Home_ ruler.

And though Heimdall nowhere occurs as a name, yet the old German Heimirich is almost identical with it; though it should be observed that _heim_ is a commencement peculiar to the Germans; we never find a name with this first syllable originating either with the Northmen or the English.

Where Heimirich first began does not appear, but it sprung into fame with the Saxon emperor called the Fowler, and his descendant won the honours of a saint, whence this became a special favourite in Germany, where it was borne by six emperors, by princes innumerable, and by so many others that the contraction Heintz had already passed to cats when _Reinecke Fuchs_ was written.

It is from the endearment, Heinz, that, the handsome and unfortunate son of Frederick II, who, after his brief royalty in Sardinia, spent the rest of his life in a Genoese prison, was known to Italy as Enzio, and to history as Enzius.

From the Kaisers, the third Capetian king of France was christened Henri, a form always frequent there, though only four times on the throne. Its popularity culminated during the religious wars, when Henri de Valois, Henri de Bourbon, and Henri de Guise were fighting the war of the three Henris; but in spite of the French love and pride in _le grand monarque_, the growing devotion to St. Louis, from whom the Bourbon rights to the throne were derived, set Henri aside from being the royal name, until the birth of him whom legitimists still call Henri V.

There are but three instances of ‘Henricus,’ even after the Conquest, in Domesday; and it must have been from the reigning French monarch that William the Conqueror took Henry for his youngest son, from whom the first Plantagenet King received and transmitted it to his ungracious son, his feeble grandson, and through him to the elder House of Lancaster, then to the younger, who for three generations wore it on the throne, and for whose sake it was revived in the House of Tudor. Its right native shape is Harry; the other form is only an imitation of French spelling. It was ‘Harry of Winchester’ who cried out for help at Evesham; Harry of Bolingbroke who rode triumphant into London, and who died worn out in the Jerusalem chamber; Harry Hotspur whose spur was cold at Shrewsbury; Harry of Monmouth who was Hal in his haunts at Eastcheap, and jested with Fluellen on the eve of Agincourt; Harry of Windsor who foretold the exaltation of Harry Tudor when “Richmond was a little peevish boy,” and Harry VIII., or bluff King Hal, who lives in the popular mind as an English Blue Beard; perhaps connected in some cases with the popular soubriquet of the devil.

An early Swedish bishop bore the name, and so did a bishop of Iceland before the twelfth century; but these must have been foreigners, for there are no other instances in the North in early times, though the general fusion of European names brought in Hendrik, to the loss of the native Heidrick, just as Heinrich seems to have in Germany destroyed an independent Haginrich.

┌───────────────┬───────────────┬───────────────┬───────────────┐
│ English. │ French. │ Spanish. │ Italian. │
│Henry │Henri │Enrique │Enrico │
│Harry │Henriot │ │Arrigo │
│Hal │ ———————— │ ———————— │Enzio │
│Halkin │ Breton. │ Portuguese. │Arriguccio │
│Hawkin │Hery │Enrique │Arrigozzo │
│ │ │ │Guccio │
├───────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────┤
│ German. │ Dutch. │ Danish. │ Frisian. │
│Heimirich │Hendrik │Hendrik │Enrik │
│Heinrich │Hendricus │ ———————— │ ———————— │
│Hein │Heintje │ Swedish. │ Polish. │
│Heine │ │Henrik │Henryk │
│Heinz │ │ │ │
│Heinecke │ │ │ │
│Henke │ │ │ │
│Henning │ │ │ │
├───────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────┤
│ Bohemian. │ Lett. │ Lithuanian. │ │
│Jindrich │Indrikis │Endrikis │ │
│ │Indes │Endruttis │ │
│ │Induls │ │ │
├───────────────┴───────────────┴───────────────┴───────────────┤
│ FEMININE. │
├───────────────┬───────────────┬───────────────┬───────────────┤
│ English. │ French. │ Spanish. │ Swedish. │
│Henrietta │Henriette │Enriqueta │Henrika │
│Harriet │ ———————— │ ———————— │ ———————— │
│Harriot │ Italian. │ Portuguese. │ German. │
│Harty │Enrichetta │Henriqueta │Henriette │
│Hatty │ │ │Jette │
│Etta │ │ │ │
│Hetty │ │ │ │
└───────────────┴───────────────┴───────────────┴───────────────┘

The founder of the Portuguese kingdom was a Henri from Burgundy; but the name did not greatly flourish in the Peninsula till Enrique of Trastamare climbed to the Castilian throne, and his namesakes, alternating with Juan, threw out the old national Alfonso and Fernando.

On the whole this is one of the most universal of Teutonic names, and one of the most English in use, although not Anglian in origin. The feminine seems to have been invented in the sixteenth century, probably in France, for Henriet Stuart appears in the House of Stuart d'Aubigné in 1588, and there were some Henriettes to match the Henris at the court of Catherine de Medicis. England received the name from the daughter of Henri IV., Henriette Marie, whom the Prayer Book called Queen Mary, though her godchildren were always Henrietta, so Latinized by their pedigrees, though in real life they went by the queen’s French appellation, as well as English lips could frame it, so that Hawyot was formerly the universal pronunciation of Harriet, and is still occasionally used.

Heimo, or Hamo, is another old German form, becoming in French Hamon, Haymon, Aymon; and Amone in Italian. _Les Quatre Filz Aymon_ were notable freebooters in Karling romance, and in Italy were _i Quattro Figli d'Amone_. Early Norman times gave us Hamo, Hamelin, and Fitzaymon; but except for an occasional Hamlyn in an old pedigree, they have disappeared.

Germany had Heimrod, Heimbert, and Heimfred; but these are not easy to disentangle from the derivatives of the word _hun_, which are much more in use.[112]

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Footnote 112:

Michaelis; Pott; _Edda_.