| Ēostre | |
|---|---|
 | |
|
Other Names |
Ostara |
|
First Appearance |
Germanic Mythology |
|
Created by |
Unknown |
Origin[]
Ēostre is an Anglo-Saxon goddess mentioned by Bede in his 8th century work The Reckoning of Time. He wrote that pagan Anglo-Saxons had held feasts in her honor during the month named after her: Ēosturmōnaþ (April), and that this became the English name for the Paschal season: Easter.
The Old High German name for April was the cognate Ôstarmânoth, which has led scholars to suggest there was a similar Continental Germanic goddess, *Ôstara. Their theory is supported by votive inscriptions dedicated to goddesses called the matronae Austriahenae, found in 1958 in Rhein-Erft-Kreis, Germany. The theonym may also be a part of some placenames and personal names.
By way of linguistic reconstruction, the matter of a goddess called *Austrō(n) in the Proto-Germanic language has been examined in detail since the foundation of Germanic philology in the 19th century by scholar Jacob Grimm and others. As the Germanic languages descend from Proto-Indo-European (PIE), historical linguists have traced the name to a Proto-Indo-European goddess of the dawn *H₂ewsṓs, from which may descend the Germanic goddess at the origin of the Old English Ēostre and the Old High German *Ôstara.
It has been debated whether the goddess was an invention of Bede, particularly before the discovery of the matronae Austriahenae and further developments in Indo-European studies. Due to these later developments, modern scholars generally accept that she was a genuine pagan goddess. Ēostre and Ostara are sometimes referenced in modern popular culture and are venerated in some forms of Germanic neopaganism.
In Northern Europe, Easter imagery often involves hares and rabbits. The first scholar to make a connection between the goddess Eostre and hares was Adolf Holtzmann in his book Deutsche Mythologie. Holtzmann wrote of the tradition, "the Easter Hare is inexplicable to me, but probably the hare was the sacred animal of Ostara; just as there is a hare on the statue of Abnoba." Citing folk Easter customs in Leicestershire, England, where "the profits of the land called Harecrop Leys were applied to providing a meal which was thrown on the ground at the 'Hare-pie Bank'", late 19th-century scholar Charles Isaac Elton speculated on a connection between these customs and the worship of Ēostre. In his late 19th-century study of the hare in folk custom and mythology, Charles J. Billson cited numerous incidents of folk customs involving hares around the Easter season in Northern Europe. Billson said that "whether there was a goddess named Ēostre, or not, and whatever connection the hare may have had with the ritual of Saxon or British worship, there are good grounds for believing that the sacredness of this animal reaches back into an age still more remote, where it is probably a very important part of the great Spring Festival of the prehistoric inhabitants of this island."
The earliest evidence for the Easter Hare (Osterhase) was recorded in south-west Germany in 1678 by the professor of medicine Georg Franck von Franckenau, but it remained unknown in other parts of Germany until the 18th century. Scholar Richard Sermon writes that "hares were frequently seen in gardens in spring, and thus may have served as a convenient explanation for the origin of the colored eggs hidden there for children. Alternatively, there is a European tradition that hares laid eggs, since a hare's scratch or form and a lapwing's nest look very similar, and both occur on grassland and are first seen in the spring. In the nineteenth century the influence of Easter cards, toys, and books was to make the Easter Hare/Rabbit popular throughout Europe. German immigrants then exported the custom to Britain and America where it evolved into the Easter Bunny."
Public Domain Appearances[]
All published appearances of Ēostre from before January 1, 1930 are public domain in the US.
Some notable appearances are listed below:
Public Domain Literary Appearances[]
- The Reckoning of Time (725)
- Deutsche Mythologie (1835)
Notes[]
- In 1853, Scottish protestant minister Alexander Hislop published The Two Babylons, an anti-Catholic tract. In the tract, Hislop connects modern English Easter with the East Semitic theonym Ishtar by way of folk etymology. Because Hislop's claims have no linguistics foundation, his claims were rejected, but the Two Babylons would go on to have some influence in popular culture. In the 2000s, a popular Internet meme similarly claimed an incorrect linguistic connection between English Easter and Ishtar.