HER SILL ON

In Fortification, a lattice portcullis armed with pikes, to block up a gateway, or impede the march of an enemy. HERTHA (sometimes written Aertha, Aortha, and Eorthe.) In German Mythology, the name generally a igned in modern times to the chief divinity of the ancient German and Scand in avian nations. She was worshipped under variety of names, of which the chief were exactly analogous to those of Terra, Rhea, Cybele, and Ops, among the Greeks and Romans. Long before the Christian era the knowledge of Hertha appeared to have been extended over a great portion of northern Europe; for in his work, Be Moribus Oermanorum, c. 40, in which the reader will find a graphic description of the peculiarities of her worship. Tacitus speaks of the wonderful unanimity which tribes that had no other feature in common displayed in worshipping this godde , whom he designates Her thus, or Mother Earth. Her chief sanctuary was situated, according to the same authority, in a sacred grove in an island of the ocean, in insula ocean i, which, by some writers, has been supposed to be Riga, and by others Zetland or Heligoland; but no modern researches have been able accurately to fix its locality. A great deal of curious information upon this subject is to be found in Grimm's Deutsche My tho logie, chap. x. [s. 572]