Boniface (Epist. 71), who says that the Franks immolated bulls and goats
to the gods, and ate the sacrifices of the dead. It has been supposed
that a number of teeth, of oxen and sheep or goats, which were found
among heathen Saxon graves at Harnham, near Salisbury, might be evidence
of this practice.[47]

In the "Laws of the Northumbrian Priests," c. 48, it is enacted:--"If
there be a sanctuary (frith-geard) in any one's land, about a stone, or
a tree, or a wall, or any such vanity, let him that made it pay a fine
(lah-slit), half to Christ, half to the landlord (land-rica); and if the
landlord will not aid in executing the law, then let Christ and the king
receive the mulct."


THE POETRY

preserves many traces of heathendom. The unconscious relics of old
mythology that are imbedded in the recurrent formulæ of the heroic
diction is one of our strongest proofs that this diction was already
matured in heathen times. A very prominent term is Wyrd = Destiny, Fate;
which is the same as the Urðr of the Scandian mythology, one of the
three fates, Urðr, Werðandi, Skuld = Past, Present, Future. In Wyrd, the
whole of the attributes are included under one name; and it counts among
the marks of affinity between the Heliand and our Anglo-Saxon
literature, that the same thing is observed there also, though in a less
distinct manner. In the "Beowulf" it is said:--"Wyrd often keeps alive
the man who is not destined to die, if his courage is equal to the
occasion." Wyrd is said to weave, to prescribe, to ordain, to delude, to
hurt. In Cædmon she is wælgrim = bloodthirsty. And the heathen
association may still be felt, even when the name of Wyrd is displaced