At last I think I have discovered the source of one of the persistent urban
legends about Easter -- the notion that it originated with a goddess
called
Eostre or Ostara who was associated with hares and eggs.=20
The only reference I could find to this was the Venerable Bede, who
recorded
that the old English name for April was Eostremonath, from which the
modern
English word "Easter" comes, and he thought it was named after a goddess
Eostre, about whom nothing more is known.
As one blogger notes, "Jacob Grimm took up this remark of Bede, taking the
German name for the month, Ostara, as the name of a Germanic fertility
goddess. The Icelandic sagas, our primary source for Germanic paganism,
make
no mention of such a goddess."
And suddenly things fall into place for me.
Christianity was spread in Germany largely by English missionaries
(Boniface,
Willibrord & Co), whose ancestors had migrated from Germany only a few
generations before. At that time the languages had probably not diverged
very
much, so the English and German dialects were probably mutually
intelligible.
In such circumstances it is quite conceivable that the German Christians
took
over the English missionaries=92 word for Pascha, which in German became
Ostern.
I=92m rather surprised that Grimm, as a linguist and philologist, didn=92t
apparently think of this. It=92s also interesting that this didn=92t
happen to the
Dutch, for whom Pascha became Paas, since they were also largely
evangelised
by English missionaries, but they were also closer to the Franks/Gauls,
and
were perhaps influenced by them.
Anyone interested in the full story with links can check my blog at:
http://khanya.wordpress.com/2008/03/22/easter-for-some/
--=20
Steve Hayes from Tshwane, South Africa
Web: http://hayesfam.bravehost.com/stevesig.htm
Blog: http://methodius.blogspot.com
E-mail - see web page, or parse: shayes at dunelm full stop org full stop
uk
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