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obvious that they must have been introduced while the Teutonic world was still pagan, and through pagan not Christian influence. If Augustine's English converts had only known the week, as presented to them in a Christian form, it is quite conceivable that they should pick up these pagan names for five days of the week, which, as the present week-day names in the Latin countries shew, remained in general currency, but in this case we should expect that they would have been taken over as they stood, with merely linguistic variations. But it is hardly conceivable that these converts should have proceeded to turn these mere survivals of a pagan terminology into the names of the deities whom they were in the act of discarding. It is hardly less unintelligible that they should go one better than their converters and turn the Lord's day back into the Sun's day and in some countries at any rate Sabbath into Saturn's day. The conclusion[1] seems inevitable that the week was carried into the lands beyond the Rhine and Danube from the still unchristianized Empire, that is to say, not much later and probably earlier than the fourth century. It is quite possible that the remarkably strong Mithraistic zeal which, as inscriptions shew, prevailed in the Roman army may have had something to do with this. At any rate it seems clear to me, that when the week originally obtained a footing outside the borders
- ↑ This was also Grimm's opinion.
