208 Origm of Mythology. 



Loke^ or hoch^ the evil deity of the north, is darkness j 

 being nothing more than the Celtic loc^ or loch^ black, 

 dark, still seen in Irish, as well as in the Chaidee np*?, ob- 

 scurity.* 



Frea^ (or Frigga) was the Venus of the north, and like 

 this goddess, her name is the appellative of woman, still 

 preserved in the Celtic and Teutonic languages ; in Irish, 

 frag; in Welch, itraig ; in German, frail; in Dutch, 

 vrouw. Gebelin supposes Frea and the Latin Rhea, to 

 be the same, and derived from the Hebrew "yi. to feed or 

 nourish — a verb found also in the Arabic and Ethiopic. 

 This is indeed a veiy obvious derivation of Rhea, the 

 earth ; but as Faber thinks, Frea is more naturally deduc- 

 ed from iT^a» to produce, to be fruitful, the root of pario^ 

 and the English bear.\ 



Gebelin, in another passage, deduces this word from 

 "^1. to see, or inspect ; from which root the Egyptians, 

 by prefixing the article ph, formed phre, the sun 4 And 

 perhaps from the supposition of such an origin of the 

 word, Rhea may have been believed to signify the moon. 



But Rhea was undoubtedly intended to signify the 

 earth ; for Hcsiod informs us that Rhea was the mother 

 of Vesta, Ceres, Juno, Pluto, Neptune, and Jupiter, 

 which represent fire, corn, the female powers of produc- 

 tion, the regions of death, the ocean, and the atmosphere. 

 The earth was considered as the parent and nurse of 

 men, beasts and vegetables ; the word Rhea, signifies 

 parent and nurse ; and hence the mother of Romulus and 

 Remus was called Rhea Sylvia, And as the earth was 

 considered by all the ancients, as the mother, the female 

 parent of productions, she had a husband assigned to her, 

 among the physical powers of nature. Thus Isis, the 

 earth in Egypt, had Osiris, the sun, for a husband ; 

 Rhea, the earth in Greece and Rome, had for a husband, 



* Orient. Coil. ii. 234— Malkt, cb. vi. 



t Faber. i. 143. — Gebelin's Hist, of Hercules, vol. i. p. 205. — 

 Mallet's North. Antiq. cb. vi. — Parkhurst & Ludolf s Lex. 



t Gebelin, vol. iv. 42, 43. — The Celtic ortbography /?'fl§-, wrr/i-'^-, 

 eovresponds with frigga ; the modern German and Dutch words 

 correspond with Rhea* 



