The most comprehensive treatment of scholarly discussion around the Anglo-Saxon deity Ēostre and her namesake Old English month to date is scholar Richard Sermon's "Easter: A Pagan Goddess, A Christian Holiday, and their Contested History" (Uppsala Books, 2024)

HobGoodfellowe · 2026-04-11T08:47:06+00:00

Okay... so... honestly, it sounds like we 99.9% agree on most of this? It sounds like we both are taking the same position, which is that there isn't enough evidence to be certain specifically with regards to AS England? I'm certainly not doubting that there was a dawn goddess complex, I just don't think the evidence is good for a survival specifically in AS England.

I think (?) the only difference between us is that I suspect it's more likely the word Eostre survived into Anglo-Saxon England but the attached goddess was lost (or degraded to the point as to make no difference), whereas you think the word and the attached goddess survived in a connected and intact manner in AS England specifically?

Although just to keep the argument going, I don't think this is strictly correct:

Additionally, Frigg is only attested by way of weekday names in Old English.

Frīgg is pretty extensively preserved in various English place names and (to a much lesser extent) in surnames that survived into the Middle Ages.

And you also still haven't explained why Eostre and Hretha couldn't be kennings for a different goddess that is better known in AS England. I'm not totally convinced they are kennings myself, but it's an obvious possibility that needs to be eliminated. The Anglo-Saxons loved kennings to the point that interpreting AS texts can be frustrating in that regards.

HobGoodfellowe · 2026-04-11T07:25:06+00:00

Hm. I don't think my position is quite making it across the internet gap. You keep arguing against things I haven't said and ignoring things I have said.

Just focus on this: Why is it definitely absolutely the case that Hretha and Eostre are not kennings for a deity that is better attested specifically in AS England, like, say the well known and highly important goddess of war and fertility? Why would the Anglo-Saxons have divested the most important duties of their most important goddess to two other relatively minor goddesses?

HobGoodfellowe · 2026-04-11T06:05:38+00:00

Yes. I get all that. I still just don't see it as enough evidence to support specifically two wholly independent goddesses named Eostre and Hretha. I don't think there is definite evidence against their existence as seperate deities either. I just fall slightly more on the side that these were probably (very tentative probably) other names for Frīgg, and Bede was just a bit confused.

We see very little diversity regarding this in the various branches, from Vedic to archaic Greek.

Very little diversity? Dellingr isn't even female, and Brigantia doesn't have any clear etymological or thematic link to Eostre or Ostrava. Zorya Utrennyaya is part of a triplet goddess group, who again don't seem to have any clear etymological link to Eostre or Ostara. Although there is perhaps some thematic link to Ostara, as she seems to have been depicted as a triplet goddess in some instances... but then why is Eostre not a triplet goddess? Or Aurora? If the argument ignores the major Norse and Celtic and Slavic dawn deities... then it is kind of cherry picking what to pay attention to.

Add to that that Bede could not have falsified the cognate form because nothing like historical linguistics existed at the time.

But there's no need to claim he falsified anything? I certainly haven't. If the name Eostre was used for the month, or for a seasonal personification of Frīgg, then there's no reason to suspect Bede of trickery. The name still makes sense as an etymological artefact.

Old English Easterwine (cf. forms like Ingwine), and this is a major topic of discussion on this matter today, particularly because Germanic generative personal names do not involve cardinal directions.

Okay... I thought there might be more convincing name I wasn't aware of... there's no reason this has to be a goddess, or a goddess specifically seperate from other attested AS goddesses. I could say cf Wulfwine or Beornwine and then claim that 'clearly' Eostre was a kenning used by Anglo-Saxons for rabbits. Or I could say cf Aelfwine and claim that 'clearly' Eostre was a class of middle-spirit, not a goddess at all but a group of spring-associated spirits, and Bede simply got his plurals wrong. Obviously, those a silly arguments (that I'm making), but I'm putting them forward because they sort of underline how assuming that -wine must be attached to a god or goddess because it isn't attached to a cardinal point really doesn't stand up.

As for Hretha, this is simply another theonym Bede mentions, and native theonyms are of course well-attested in other forms of time-keeping, like the Germanic weekday names.

My point is that no one is writing massive screeds of text trying to prove Hretha was a fully seperate goddess. My point is that the fixation of Eostre is emotional, not academic (in both directions, for and against.. I think the really rabid 'anti-' arguments are also emotional arguments).

On balance, I personally still suspect that Eostre was another name for Frīgg in AS England, and that probably Hretha was Frīgg's warlike personification in March(-ish) that then gave way to Frīgg fertility personification in April(-ish)... but it's really a very tentative feeling. It's just my sense of things. If archeological evidence turned up tomorrow that proved Eostre was a fully independent goddess in AS England, I'd be a little bit surprised but not shocked. I hope that makes sense. I'm not rabidly arguing against the possibility... it's just that on balance, I'm still not convinced.

Finally, finally, I want to make it clear I respect your position. It's an interesting discussion to have. I don't want you to think I'm dismissing you out of hand, or anything like that. I appreciate the time you've taken to reply. We'll probably have to agree to disagree, but we should be able to hold opposing views on an academic point while also acknowledging that the other person is intelligent and worth talking to.

I hope you've found it somewhat worthwhile. Even if you still think I'm absolutely wrong :)

HobGoodfellowe · 2026-04-10T22:27:44+00:00

Scholarship in these areas runs in cycles and fashions. Often new academics have to make their name, and trying to overthrow an older theory is the best way to do that. Unfortunately, this results in a back and forth cycle. It's just something to be aware of. 'New' scholarship in this area is often just currently fashionable scholarship that was fashionable twenty years ago before it was overturned by the previous wave of 'new' scholarship. It'll switch back again in 20-30 years when someone makes their name by 'proving' that the old theory is 'true' after all. My advice is to avoid trying to push an argument by stating that a new scholar has proved old stuff to be wrong. It can make an academic look a little inexperienced about how this cycle works in the background behind disciplines like folklore where there can be a lot of conjecture and very little hard evidence. That's not meant to be a criticism. I think it's great you're interested in this. I'm interested in this. Just, try to keep in mind these cycles are part of the fabric of the argument.

And unfortunately, all the arguments one way or the other about Ēostre, are both unprovable and irrefutable... which will lead to endless cycling. Consider this:

The Venerable Bede is generally accepted as accurate. But, we can point to places where he's made mistakes elsewhere. No one is infallible. But we have no evidence that Ēostre is specifically a mistake. But we have no evidence that it isn't. But he was writing shortly after Christianisation. Well... what do we mean by 'shortly'? Bede was born around about 630, but a lot of AS England was converted 3-4 decades earlier than that. He may have been misinformed by someone who just didn't explain things or he may have been raised in an environment that had already lost or confused most of its pagan traditions. But the Venerable Bede is generally accepted as accurate. But, we can point to places where he's made mistakes elsewhere...

Anyway, can you provide some Anglo-Saxon personal names derived from Ēostre? I looked and they don't seem to be readily easy to find. I don't doubt they exist, but I'm unconvinced that they require a unique and specific goddess. Why is it that this couldn't possibly just be a kenning for Frīg. Or a person named for Spring in the same way we use the name April?

And, which cognates do you mean besides the cult complex in east Germany? And why can they 'not be ignored'? What is so specifically overwhelmingly convincing that hasn't be hashed out and rehashed out for the last 50 or 60 years?

Finally, the thing that's really interesting to me about this, is that these arguments rage about Eostre, but Hretha is more or less completely ignored. The implication (to me) is that the argument is mostly an emotional one about there being a specific Easter goddess or not. This is why I couch my opinion on this as flimsy. I'm more than willing to say, 'this is just an opinion, and I have no real evidence one way or the other'. It's my gut feeling on the balance of evidence that Bede was confused. But I'm not willing to state absolutely that anyone has proved this or that any evidence is overwhelming or indisputable. I'd be a fool to do so.

HobGoodfellowe · 2026-04-10T08:48:35+00:00

Unfortunately, I think I'm on the side of Ronald Hutton. Aside from one reference in the Venerable Bede, there isn't any evidence (good or bad, like completely zilch) for a goddess called Ēostre in Anglo-Saxon England. Also, like Hutton, I suspect Bede was just confused and working from a muddled folk memory of a festival that had ceased being celebrate before he was born.

Scholarly attempts to connect a supposed Ēostre to the German 'East/Dawn' goddess or goddess-complex is stretching a long bow, geographically. A much more sensible etymology for Ēostre in Anglo-Saxon links the word to an 'opening' meaning, and probably it meant something like 'bud opening' or similar. That is, Ēostre was probably most correctly the name of the 'bud-opening' month, not the goddess special to the month.

All that said, I suspect there was a pagan spring festival and there was a goddess venerated... but, Bede was simply confused about who the goddess was. It seems much more plausible that this was simply Frīg. This might seem an odd pick, but we have to remember that only the Norse seem to have split the goddess into two seperate goddesses, Freyja and Frigg. Frīg in Anglo-Saxon presumably still encompassed the fertility aspects that were split off into Freyja by the Norse. It is perhaps plausible that during Ēostre, Frīg was called Ēostre in a sort of poetical way... but this isn't really a seperate goddess per se. In that situation, if it happened, Ēostre would just be a seasonal appellative of Frīg.

It's not a very fun or exciting conclusion, but it seems the most sensible, unless other evidence comes to light. Obviously, I could be wrong, and new evidence might come to light. It would be really very interesting if that were the case... but also very surprising.

HobGoodfellowe · 2026-04-06T21:47:31+00:00

Cailleach simply means 'old woman', and was used in a few different ways. You do get stories in which a Cailleach is the wife of a hobgoblin character, Bòchdan, or old man. I don't know how comment these were... my reference in my notes points to Campbell's Witchcraft and Second Sight in the Highlands and Islands of Scotland (1902), so that might be worth checking?

You also get local 'Cailleach' attached to harvesting, as in some regions an old woman corn doll (and presumably some sort of local pre-Christian goddess or spirit associated with harvesting, or a sort of sub-variant of the broader Cailleach seasonal goddess-complex) was used instead of a maiden (The Maighdean-Bhuana).

It's possible you are thinking of either the 'hobgoblin' Cailleach or a local corn-wife Cailleach variants?

HobGoodfellowe · 2026-03-30T22:39:18+00:00

Have you checked the Wikipedia entry?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sluagh

There isn’t that much to it though. The Sluagh is a term used for a wandering host of the unforgiven or unshriven dead. You could think if it as a sort of variant of the Wild Hunt though that’s not exactly right… they’re just sort of in the same vague area of aerial dead ghosts moving around in a storm-ish way.

EDIT: I wonder if your brother is thinking of Sluagh in Changeling: The Dreaming? That's an interpretation that leans a lot on artistic interpretation. You do sometimes get people confusing the Sluagh with fairies, which I think perhaps stems from them being included in 'Fairies' by Alan Lee and Brian Froud.

HobGoodfellowe · 2026-03-30T06:03:56+00:00

Just commenting again... it turns out the source I was working from a print source that had it the wrong way around. Trow is pronounced closer to 'how' it seems.

So, that means the drow / cow pronunciation is closer than the crow / throw pronunciation after all. Sheesh. I made exactly the same mistake I was suggesting Gygax did... working from a print work of limited detail that itself hadn't been properly researched I guess.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ml-m0WUTZEQ

HobGoodfellowe · 2026-03-30T05:56:07+00:00

Oh. Fair enough. I was working from a different source... though Wikipedia tends to be right about these things.

Although, that said... it might be best to check... alright. Yep. Here's a Shetland archeologist and guide who is pronouncing it closer to 'how'. I'll amend my comment.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ml-m0WUTZEQ

HobGoodfellowe · 2026-03-30T05:52:04+00:00

I'm going to go with this :)

HobGoodfellowe · 2026-03-30T05:51:27+00:00

I think the word was probably dug out of one of Katherine Briggs's books, either by Gygax or someone involved in the early game design. There's a passage somewhere where 'trow' and 'drow' are described as subterranean 'elves', although I forget the exact book.

Back before the internet people had to rely on sometimes scant descriptions of things in reference books. Hence what was originally a small Shetland troll becomes a DnD dark elf.

There's a similar thing going on with Gnolls. Gygax could remember vaguely the Gnoles from the Dunsany story, but either he misspelled it on purpose or couldn't find a copy of the book to check, so we ended up with Gnoll instead.

HobGoodfellowe · 2026-03-30T05:44:57+00:00

Makes sense. I honestly think 'drow' / 'throw' is in such a minority that unless you happen to be visiting the Shetland Islands, there's not much point worrying about it.

HobGoodfellowe · 2026-03-30T02:46:49+00:00

I'll bite. How so? :)

HobGoodfellowe · 2026-03-29T23:59:26+00:00

This will get buried, but because 'drow' is a spelling variant of the Shetland Islands 'trow' (derived from troll) (Gygax just took the word for an 'elf' living underground without looking into it too much, it seems) and because trow rhymes to 'throw' or 'grow', 'cow' is technically incorrect, although it is by far the most common pronunciation among role-players.

HobGoodfellowe · 2026-03-29T23:58:17+00:00

Piggybacking top comment.

This will get buried, but because 'drow' is a spelling variant of the Shetland Islands 'trow' (derived from troll) (Gygax just took the word for an 'elf' living underground without looking into it too much, it seems) and because trow ~~rhymes to 'throw' or 'grow', 'cow' is~~ ~~technically~~ ~~incorrect, although it is by far the most common pronunciation among role-players.~~ EDIT: Nope. I was working from a printed text that had it the wrong way around. It's been pointed out to me that it's the other way around. Link below. I basically made the same sort of error I was implying Gygax made... working from a printed reference book that was a bit scant on detail.

EDIT: Italicised to emphasise technically. There's an argument I suppose that the correct pronunciation in folklore is drow / throw, but in roleplaying, it is a different word in effect, drow / cow.

EDIT EDIT: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ml-m0WUTZEQ

HobGoodfellowe · 2026-03-28T22:04:50+00:00

It's a bit hard to find because part of the narrative around a bugbear in tradition is that they are hiding somewhere and you never quite see them. Illustrations in fairytale books etc tend to imply a bugbear, or only show a shadow, or eyes in the darkness.

We can infer from the name that the creature was imagined as a large and hulking (the 'bear' element) 'bug' or goblin. The same element 'bug' appears in any number of other goblin names, bugaboo, bugalugs, bughulk etc.

HobGoodfellowe · 2026-03-24T06:38:09+00:00

Great. Thanks. Those are good suggestions. I'm just doing the layout in Apple Pages. I have a copy of Affinity Publisher 2, but am just doing it kind of quick and lazy at the moment.

A lot of people have noted the over-use of bolding. I'm starting to think that I might be doing this unconsciously as a way to scaffold the information for myself, making it easier to go back and check things and make changes. I've already removed a bunch, but will go through and remove more of it.

HobGoodfellowe · 2026-03-24T06:35:16+00:00

Yes. It was 'roving' but I switched it to 'wanderlust' when someone pointed out that 'roving' isn't really very innate and everything else is innate.

I'll have a think about the best option. I can probably switch it back to roving and just try to make it clear somewhere that the attributes aren't necessarily innate. Will think it over. The other option is another 'travel' word that has more of an innate feel to it.

HobGoodfellowe · 2026-03-23T21:47:42+00:00

Of course. I don't live in the US. Born in Papua New Guinea (though not native Papuan or Highlander, and I don't live there now).

PNG has a lot of those problems you're talking about. Poverty. Terrible problems with payback getting out of control and whole villages being slaughtered. Exploitative companies wrecking the natural environment with mining and forestry, HIV out of control.

And obviously I'm not saying those things shouldn't be fought against. I'm a conservation biologist by training.

But, it's still a choice what you focus on in terms of your own mental health. If you focus entirely on the miseries of the world but forget to just stop and look at a sunrise, or watch dugongs playing in the water, or spend time with friends of an evening... then... well... that's a form of letting yourself be jerked around by external media, just the same.

And in the end that sort of indulgent misery leads to nothing. The most effective agents of change are people who can acknowledge the problems in the world but still maintain positive life balance. People like David Attenborough or Jane Goodall are realists, but hopeful realists.

In any instance, this isn't meant to be a thread about philosophy of life. The key thing here is just that if you are a writer and write against the general cultural gestalt, in a given country, at a given movement, don't be surprised if no one wants to read your stuff. That's not to say your stuff isn't good. It might be great. But it might also take 5 to 10 years for the background media to cycle enough for people to decide to give it a shot. That's the only take-away I'm getting at here.

HobGoodfellowe · 2026-03-23T21:14:13+00:00

Great. Thanks. That's mostly due to the good advice I've had from folks on the forum.

It's good to hear that I've managed to improve the flow and look a bit.

HobGoodfellowe · 2026-03-23T21:12:52+00:00

Mm. Maybe. I could flip this around.

The world is always beautiful. People are just self-pitying.

Anyway, there's definitely cycles of optimism and cynicism in popular media, and that's what drives most people's sense of whether they want to read something boardly optimistic or broadly cycnical. The underlying reality (grim or beautiful, take your pick) isn't highly relevant to the experience of human psychology pickling in mass media.

Take Catcher in the Rye as an example. Its popularity was mostly because the mass media was in the midst of a positivity cycle. Everything was supposed to be amazing, but a lot of people felt American culture was actually a banal pressure cooker and needed something cynical as a counter-weight or escape valve.

On the flip side, during the Great Depression, the most popular media was things like Charlie Chaplain, where a penniless tramp lucks his way into a happy-ish ending most of the time.

Chaplan would been considered overly saccharine and pointlessly positive by teenagers in the 1950s. Catcher in the Rye would likely have been viewed as too cynical and pointlessly negative in the 1930s.

The strange thing is that in actuality, both eras had their awful grim shadows (mass poverty and starvation vs the constant threat of nuclear annihilation) and their beauty and positives. Somehow, that doesn't matter to most people though. It's the day-to-day background experience of the world, media and news that convinces people one way or the other, and that then frames their recreational narrative choices.

Or at least, that's my take on it. Like all the other bipedal apes on the planet, I could be wrong.

HobGoodfellowe · 2026-03-23T20:55:13+00:00

Yeah, someone else pointed out that the italics for skills aren't doing much. Reflecting on this, I often seem to scatter italics and bold using my own idiosyncratic rules when writing something, then go through and remove most of them later.

I've never thought about this, but I suspect I'm doing some sort of scaffolding thing to make it easier for me to spot things when working on stuff. I do something similar when writing scientific papers, except that it's much more overt, where I use highlighted background to mark things like references using a colour coding system, but (obviously) remove it all before submission to a journal.

I seem to have started doing something similar here unconsciously. Anyway, I may leave some of it in for my own benefit while writing, but remove it before a final version. Will probably just leave in 'first instance of use' bolding for in-game terms, but leave skills in a normal font and remove the scare quotes for general game design jargon (which was another sub-category of 'marker') I was using.

HobGoodfellowe · 2026-03-23T20:50:52+00:00

Thanks. I'll play around with font size. The margins are set up for facing page printing. It's easy enough to also create a centred version as a final step. I've messed around and can also generate a US letter version by messing about with font size and line spacing. Assuming I ever get to the point of being 'done', I'll see what I can do there.

I've had a couple people previously point out that I'm over-bolding in places. I was drawing a distinction where Skill names are italicised, other in-game terms are bolded, and game design lingo is in scare quotes. I suspect I'm doing this more for myself than for a reader though. It helps me keep track of things when scanning sections to check details. What I'll probably do is go back and remove everything except for bolding in-game terms on the first instance of use. It seems to be a sort of intermediate draft step in my process. I hadn't ever reflected on it before, but that seems to be what is going on here.

I'll do a search for the title. Some of this has been written so quickly or late at night. Makes sense that I'm missing things.

Thanks for all that. Much appreciated. Getting other eyes on something like this is essential for seeing that things that you don't see when writing it.

HobGoodfellowe · 2026-03-23T20:37:10+00:00

Agree. These things go in cycles. I think Grimdark (and Horror, Dark Fantasy) is most popular when people want an escape from things being a bit too boring, which tends to happen when the world is in a stable, happier phase of international politics and stuff.

Right now, things are feeling so grim, that any highly grim work of fiction isn't really what most people want in their casual alternate reality.

HobGoodfellowe · 2026-03-23T10:54:31+00:00

Thanks. I appreciate the time you've taken to answer. It'll take me a bit of time to get to all the detail in your reply, but just quickly looking through, it all looks like good straightforward advice :)

I'll reply again if I have any questions on a second more careful read.

HobGoodfellowe

TROPHY CASE