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the idea of Folly or Madness, they would at least be due to those enthusiastick ravings and mad contortions with which such women delivered their pretended oracles. The word Fol bore the same meaning in the ancient Gothic, as it does in French, English, and in almost all the languages of the north; in all which it signifies either a Fool or a Madman[1].
This Poem attributed to the Sibyl of the north, contains within the compass of two or three hundred lines, that whole system of Mythology, which we have seen disclosed in the Edda; but this laconic brevity, and the obsoleteness of the language in which it is written, make it very difficult to be understood. This, however, does not prevent us from observing frequent instances of grandeur and sublimity, and many images extremely fine: then the general tenor of the work, the want of connection, and the confusion of the style, excite the idea of a very remote antiquity, no less than the matter and subject itself. Such were,
- ↑ Fool, (antiq. Fol) Stultus, delirus, fatuus, rationis expers. Gallicè Fol. Islandice Fol, ferox, iracundus, fatuus insipiens. Folska, Stultitia. Ang. Folly: Gall. Folie. Hinc forsan Ital. Fola, Ineptiæ, nugæ, quid vanum, fatuum fabulosum, &c. Inde verbum Folare, Ineptias, aut stultas & inanes fabulas recitare, nugas venditare. Hickes, in Junij Etymolog. a Lye Edit. T.
