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TEUTONIC    MYTHOLOGY. 


JACOB     GRIMM. 


TEUTONIC   MYTHOLOGY 


BY 


JACOB    GRIMM. 


TE  AN  SLATED  FROM  THE  FOUETH  EDITION. 


NOTES  AND  APPENDIX 


JAMES     STEVEN     STALLYBRASS, 


VOL.    II. 


LONDON:  GEORGE  BELL  &  SONS,  YORK  STREET, 

COVENT  GARDEN. 

1883. 


Butler  &  Tanner. 

The  Seltvood  Printing   Works, 

Frome,  and  Loudon. 


CHAPTER  XVII. 
WIGHTS   AND   ELVES. 

Apart  from  deified  and  semi-divine  natures  there  stands  a 
whole  order  of  other  beings  distinguished  mainly  by  the  fact 
Jthat,  while  those  have  issued  from  men  or  seek  human  fellowship, 
these  form  a  separate  community,  one  might  say  a  kingdom  of 
their  own,  and  are  only  induced  by  accident  or  stress  of  circum- 
stances to  have  dealings  with  men.  They  have  in  them  some 
admixture  of  the  superhuman,  which  appi'oximates  them  to  gods ; 
they  have  power  to  hurt  man  and  to  help  him,  at  the  same  time 
they  stand  in  awe  of  him,  being  no  match  for  him  in  bodily 
strength.  Their  figure  is  much  below  the  stature  of  man,  or  else 
mis-shapen.  They  almost  all  have  the  faculty  of  makiug  them- 
selves invisible.1  And  here  again  the  females  are  of  a  broader 
and  nobler  cast,  with  attributes  resembling  those  of  goddesses 
and  wise-women ;  the  male  spirits  are  more  distinctly  marked  off, 
both  from  gods  and  from  heroes.3 

The  two  most  general  designations  for  them  form  the  title  of 
this  chapter ;  they  are  what  we  should  call  spirits  nowadays. 
But  the  word  spirit  (geist,  ghost),3  like  the  Greek  hal^wv,  is 
too  comprehensive;  it  would  include,  for  instance,  the  half- 
goddesses  discussed  in  the  preceding  chapter.  The  Lat.  genius 
would  more  nearly  hit  the  mark  (see  Suppl.). 

The  term  wiht  seems  remarkable  in  more  than  one  respect,  for 
its  variable  gender  and  for  the  abstract  meanings  developed  from 

1  But  so  have  the  gods  (p.  325),  goddesses  (p.  2G8)  and  wise-women  (p.  419). 

2  Celtic  tradition,  which  runs  particularly  rich  on  this  subject,  I  draw  from 
the  following  works:  Fairy  Legends  and  Traditions  of  the  South  of  Ireland, 
by  Crofton  Croker,  Lond.  1825  ;  2nd  ed.,  parts  1,  2,  3,  Lond.  1828.  The  Fairy 
Mythology,  by  Th.  Keightley,  vols.  1,  2,  Lond.  1828.  Barzas-Breiz,  chants  popu- 
lates de  la  Bretagne,  par  Th.  de  la  Villemarque,  2<j  ed.,  2  vol.,  Paris  1840. 

3  OHG.  keist,  AS.  g&st,  OS.  gist  (see  root  in  Gramm.  2,  46);  Goth,  ahma, 
OHG.  atum  for  ahadum,  conn,  with  Goth,  aha  (mens),  ahjan  (meminisse,  cogitare), 
as  maji  (homo),  manniska,  and  manni,  miuni  belong  to  munan,  minnen  (pp.  5(J. 
314.433). 

VOL.  II.  *89  B 


440  WIGHTS   AND   ELVES. 

it.  The  Gothic  vaihts,  gen.  vaiht&is,  is  feminine,  and  Ulphilas 
hardly  ever  uses  it  in  a  concrete  sense  ;  in  Luke  1,  1  he  translates 
by  it  7rpay/j,a,  and  much  oftener,  when  combined  with  a  negative, 
ovSev  (Gramm.  3,  8.  734).  This,  however,  does  not  exclude  the 
possibility  of  vaihts  having  at  other  times  denoted  to  the  Goths 
a  spirit  regarded  as  female;  and  in  1  Thess.  5,  22  the  sentence 
diro  TravTos  e'lSovs  irovripov  tnrkyeaQe  is  rendered  :  af  allamma 
vaihte  ubilaizo  afhabaih  izvis,  where  the  Vulg.  has  :  ab  omni 
specie  mala  abstinete  vos  ;  the  use  of  the  pi.  '  vaihteis  ubilos  '  of 
itself  suggests  the  notion  of  spirits.  The  other  Teutonic  tongues 
equally  use  the  word  to  intensify  and  make  a  substantive  of  the  * 
negative,  and  even  let  it  swallow  up  at  last  the  proper  particle 
of  negation ; x  but  in  all  of  them  it  retains  its  personal  meaning 
too.  The  OHG.  writers  waver  between  the  neut.  and  masc. ;  the 
Gothic  fem.  is  unknown  to  them.  Otfried  has  a  neut.  wiht,  with 
the  collective  pi.  wihtir,-  and  likewise  a  neut.  pi.  wihti,  which 
implies  a  sing,  wihti;  thus,  armu  wihtir,  iv.  C,  23;  armu  wihti, 
ii.  16,  117;  krumbu  wihti,  iii.  9,  5;  meaning  '  poor,  crooked 
creatures/  so  that  loiht  (derivable  from  wihan  facere,  creare) 
seems  altogether  synonymous  with  being,  creature,  person,  and 
can  be  used  of  men  or  spirits  :  '  in  demo  mere  sint  wunderlichiu 
ivihtir,  diu  heizent  sirenae/  Hoffm.  Fundgr.  19,  17.  In  MHG. 
sometimes  neut.:  unreinez  wiht,  Diut.  1,  13;  Athis  H.  28; 
triigehaftez  wiht,  Barl.  367,  11 ;  vil  tumbez  wiht,  11,  21;  some- 
times masc. :  boeser  iviht,  Barl.  220,  15 ;  unrehter  bossewiht,  MS. 
2,  147%  Geo.  3508;  kleiner  wiht,  Altd.  bl.  1,  254;  der  wiht, 
Geo.  3513-36;  der  tumbe  wiht,  Fragm.  42* ;  and  often  of  in- 
determinable gender:  boese  wild,  Trist.  8417;  helle  wiht,  Geo. 
3531  ;  but  either  way  as  much  applicable  to  men  as  to  spirits. 
Ghostly  wights  are  the  '  minuti  dii '  of  the  Eomans  (Plaut. 
Casina,  ii.  5,  24).  In  Mod.  Germ,  we  make  wield  masc, 
and  use  it  slightingly  of  a  pitiful  hapless  being,  fellow,  often 
with  a  qualifying  epithet:  '  elender  wicht,  bosewicht  (villain)/ 
If  the  diminutive  form  be  added,  which  intensifies  the  notion  of 
littleness,  it  can  only  be  used  of  spirits  :  wichtlein,  wichtelmann ; 3 

1  Aught  =  a-wiht,  any  wight  or  whit ;  naught  =  n'a-wiht,no  wight,  no  whit. — 
Trans. 

-  So :  thiu  diufilir,  iii.  14,  53,  hy  the  side  of  ther  diufal,  iii.  14,  108. 

3  In  Hesse  wicht elmnnner  is  the  expression  in  vogue,  except  on  the  Diemel  in 
Saxon  Hesse,  where  they  say  'gute  holden.' 


WIGHTS.  411 

MUG.  diu  wihtel,1  MS.  1,  157a ;  bcesez  wihtel,  Elfenm.  cxviii. ; 
kleinez  wihtelin,  Ls.  1,  378,  380,  Wolfdietr.  783,  799;  OHG. 
wihtelin  penates  ;  wihtelen  vel  helbe  {I.e.  elbe),  lernures,  dsemones, 
Gl.  Florian.  The  dernea  ivihti,  occulti  genii,  in  Hel.  31,  20.  92,  2 
are  deceitful  demonic  beings,  as  '  tliie  demo'  104,  19  means 
the  devil  himself;  letha  ivihti,  70,  15;  wreda  iviidi  70,  1.  In 
Lower  Saxony  wield  is  said,  quite  in  a  good  sense,  of  little 
children  :  in  the  Miinster  country  '  dat  wicht '  liolds  especially 
of  girls,  about  Osnabriick  the  sing,  wicht  only  of  girls,  the  pi. 
wichter  of  girls  and  boys;  'innocent  wichte'  are  spoken  of  in 
Sastrow,  1,  351.  The  Mid.  Nethl.  has  a  neut.  wicht  like  the 
H.  German:  quade  ivicltt,  clene  wicht  (child).  Huyd.  op  St.  3,  6. 
370;  arern  wild,  Reink.  1027;  so  the  Mod.  Dutch  wicht,  pi. 
wichteren  :  arm  wicht,  aardig  wicht,  in  a  kindly  sense.  The  AS. 
language  agrees  with  the  Gothic  as  to  the  fern,  gender  :  wild, 
gen.  wihte,  nom.  pi.  wihta;  later  ivuld,  wuhte,  wuhta;  seo  wiht, 
Cod.  Exon.  418,  8.  419,  3.  5.  420,  4.  10.  The  meaning  can  be 
either  concrete:  yfel  wild  (phantasma),  leas  wiht  (diabolus), 
Casdra.  310,  10;  scewild  (animal  marinum),  Beda,  1,  1;  or 
entirely  abstract  =  thing,  affair.  The  Engl,  wight  has  the  sense 
of  our  wicht.  The  ON.  vcett  and  vcettr,  which  are  likewise  fern., 
have  preserved  in. its  integrity  the  notion  of  a  demonic  spiritual 
being  (Saam.  I45a)  :  allar  vcettir,  genii  quicunque,  Sa3tn.  93b; 
hollar  vcettir,  genii  benigni,  Ssem.  240b;  ragveettir  or  meinvcettir, 
genii  noxii,2  landvcettir,  genii  tutelares,  Fornm.  sog.  3,  105. 
Isl.  sog.  1,  198,  etc.  In  the  Faroes  they  say:  'fear  tu  tear 
til  mainvittis  (go  to  the  devil) ! '  Lyngbye,  p.  548.  The  Danish 
vette  is  a  female  spirit,  a  wood-nymph,  meinvette  an  evil  spirit, 


1  Swer  weiz  und  clocli  niht  wizzen  wil,      Whoso  knows,  yet  will  not  kuow, 
der  slaet  sich  rnit  sin  selbes  hant ;  Smites  himself  with  his  own  hand  ; 

des  wlsheit  aht  ich  zeime  spil,  His  wisdom  lvalue  no  more  than  a  play 

daz  man  din  wihtel  hat  genannt :  That  they  call  '  the  little  wights ' : 

er  hit  una  sehouwen  wunders  vil,  He  lets  us  witness  much  of  wonder, 

der  ir  ha  waltet.  "Who  governs  them. 

The  passage  shows  that  in  the  13th  cent,  there  was  a  kind  of  puppet-show  in  which 
ghostly  beings  were  set  before  the  eyes  of  spectators.  'Der  ir  waltet,'  he  thai 
wields  them,  means  the  showman  who  puts  the  figures  in  motion.  A  full  confir- 
mation  in  the  Wachtelmare,  line  40:  ' rihtet  zu  mit  den  sniieren  (strinj 
tatermanne !  '  Another  passage  on  the  wihtel-spil  in  Haupt's  Zeitschr.  2,  GO  : 
'  spilt  mit  dem  wihtelin  hi'  dem  tisch  umb  guoten  win.' 

2  Bib'rn  supposes  a  masc.  (fern.  ?)  meinvattr  and  a  neut.  meinvcetti ;  no  doubt 
Biein  is  noxa,  malum  ;  nevertheless  I  call  attention  to  the  Zendic  mainyus,  daemon, 
and  agramainyus,  daemon  malus. 


4-4-2  WIGHTS   AND   ELVES. 

Thiele  3,  98.  The  Swedish  tongue,  in  addition  to  vlitt  (genius) 
and  a  synonymous  neut.  vdttr,  lias  a  wild  formed  after  the  German, 
Ihre,  p.  1075.  Neither  is  the  abstract  sense  wanting  in  any  of 
these  dialects. 

This  transition  of  the  meaning  of  wight  into  that  of  thing  on 
the  one  hand,  and  of  devil  on  the  other,  agrees  with  some  other 
phenomena  of  language.  We  also  address  little  children  as 
'  thing,'  and  the  child  in  the  marchen  (No.  105)  cries  to  the 
lizard  :  '  ding,  eat  the  crumbs  too  ! '  Wicht,  ding,  wint,  teufel, 
valant  (Gramm.  3,  731.  736)  all  help  to  clinch  a  denial.  0.  French 
males  choses,  mali  genii,  Ren.  30085.  Mid.  Latin  bonce  7*es  =  boni 
genii,  Vine.  Bellov.  hi.  3,  27  (see  Suppl.). 

We  at  once  perceive  a  more  decided  colouring  in  the  OHG. 
and  MHG.  alp  (genius),  AS.  celf,  ON.  dlfr  ;  a  Goth,  albs  may 
safely  be  conjectured.  Together  with  this  masc,  the  OHG. 
may  also  'have  had  a  neut.  alp,  pi.  elpir,  as  we  know  the  MHG. 
had  a  pi.  elber;  and  from  the  MHG.  dat.  fern,  elbe  (MS.  1,  50b) 
we  must  certainly  infer  a  nom.  diu  elbe,  OHG.  alpia,  elpia,  Goth. 
albi,  gen.  albjos,  for  otherwise  such  a  derivative  could  not  occur. 
Formed  by  a  still  commoner  suffix,  there  was  no  doubt  an  OHG. 
elpmna,  MHG.  elbinne,  the  form  selected  by  Albrecht  of  Halber- 
stadt,  and  still  appearing  in  his  poem  as  remodelled  by  Wikram;1 
AS.  el  fen,  gen.  elfenne.  Of  the  nom.  pi.  masc.  I  can  only  feel 
sure  in  the  ON.,  where  it  is  cllfar,  and  would  imply  a  Goth, 
albus,  OHG.  alpa,  MHG.  albe,  AS.  selfas;  on  the  other  hand  an 
OHG.  elpi  (Goth,  albeis)  is  suggested  by  the  MHG.  pi.  elbe 
(Amgb.  2b,  unless  this  comes  from  the  fern,  elbe  above)  and  by 
the  AS.  pi.  ylfe,  gen.  pi.  ylfa  (Beow.   223). 2     The  Engl,  forms 

1  Wikram  1,  9.  6,  9  fed.  1631,  p.  11*  199b).  The  first  passage,  in  all  the  editions 
I  have  compared  (ed.  1545,  p.  3a),  has  a  faulty  reading:  '  auch  viel  ewinnen  und 
freyen,'  rhyming  with  '  zweyen.'  Albrecht  surely  wrote  '  vil  elbinnen  und  feien.' 
I  can  makj,  nothing  of  '  freien '  but  at  best  a  very  daring  allusion  to  Frigg  and 
Frea  (p.  301) ;  and  '  froie'  =  fraulein,  as  the  weasel  is  called  in  Reinh.  clxxii.,  can 
have  nothing  to  say  here. 

2  Taking  AS.  y  [as  a  modified  a,  a,  ea,~]  as  in  yldra,  ylfet,  yrfe,  OHG.  eldiro, 
elpiz,  erpi.  At  the  same  time,  as  y  can  also  be  a  modified  o  (orf,  yrfe  =  pecus),  or 
a  modified  it  (wulf,  wylfen),  I  will  not  pass  over  a  MHG.  ulf,  pi.  illve,  which  seems 
to  mean  much  the  same  as  alp,  and  may  be  akin  to  an  AS.  ylf:  '  von  den  iilven 
entbunden  werden,'  MS.  1,  81* ;  '  Ulfheit  ein  suht  ob  alien  siihten,'  MS.  2,  135s; 
'der  sich  iilfet  in  der  jugent,'  Helbi.  2,426;  and  conf.  the  olp  quoted  from  H. 
Sachs.  Shakspeare  occasionally  couples  elves  and  goblins  with  similar  beings  called 
ouphes  (Nares  sub  v.).  It  speaks  for  the  identity  of  the  two  forms,  that  one 
Swedish  folk-song  (Arwidsson  2,  278)  has  Ulfver  where  another  (2,  276)  has  Elfver. 


ELVES.  443 

elf,  elves,  the  Swed.  elf,  pi.  masc.  elfvar  (fem.  elfvor),  the  Dan. 
elv,  pi.  elve,  are  quite  in  rule ;  the  Dan.  compounds  ellefulli,  ellc- 
honer,  elleskudt,  ellevild  have  undergone  assimilation.  With  us 
the  word  alp  still  survives  in  the  sense  of  night-hag,  night-mare, 
in  addition  to  which  our  writers  of  the  last  century  introduced 
the  Engl,  elf,  a  form  untrue  to  our  dialect ;  before  that,  we  find 
everywhere  the  correct  pi.  elbe  or  elben.1  H.  Sachs  uses  dip  : 
'  du  olp  !  du  dolp  !  ;  (i.  5,  525b),  and  olperisch  (iv.  3,  95°)  ;  conf. 
ijlpern  and  olpetriitsch,  alberdriitsch,  drelpetriitsch  (Schm.  1,48) ; 
elpentrotsch  and  tolpentrotsch,  trilpentrisch  (Schmidts  Swab.  diet. 
162) ;  and  in  Hersfeld,  hilpentrisch.  The  words  mean  an  awkward 
silly  fellow,  one  whom  the  elves  have  been  at,  and  the  same  thing 
is  expressed  by  the  simple  elbisch,  Fundgr.  365.  In  Gloss.  Jan. 
340  we  read  elvesce  weltte,  elvish  wights. 

On  the  nature  of  Elves  I  resort  for  advice  to  the  ON.  authori- 
ties, before  all  others.  It  has  been  remarked  already  (p.  25), 
that  the  Elder  Edda  several  times  couples  cesir  and  alfar  together, 
as  though  they  were  a  compendium  of  all  higher  beings,  and 
that  the  AS.  es  and  ylfe  stand  together  in  exactly  the  same  way. 
This  apparently  concedes  more  of  divinity  to  elves  than  to  men. 
Sometimes  there  come  in,  as  a  third  member,  the  vanir  (Seeni. 
83b),  a  race  distinct  from  the  sesir,  but  admitted  to  certain 
relations  with  them  by  marriage  and  by  covenants.  The  Hrafna- 
galdr  opens  with  the  words  :  AlfoSr  orkar  (works),  alfar  skilja, 
vanir  vita,"  Seem.  88a ;  Allfather,  i.e.  the  as,  has  power,  alfar 
have  skill  (understanding),  and  vanir  knowledge.  The  Alvismal 
enumerates  the  dissimilar  names  given  to  heavenly  bodies, 
elements  and  plants  by  various  languages  (supra,  p.  332)  ;  in 
doing  so,  it  mentions  aisir,  alfar,  vanir,  and  in  addition  also 
gotf,  menu,  ginregin,  iutnar,  dvergar  and  denizens  of  hel  (hades). 
Here  the  most  remarkable  point  for  us  is,  that  alfar  and  dvergar 
(dwarfs)  are  two  different  things.  The  same  distinction  is  made 
between  alfar  and  dvergar,  Sasm.  8b  ;  between  dvergar  and 
dockalfar,  Sasm.  92b ;  between  three  kinds  of  norns,  the  as-kungar, 
alf-kungar  and  dcetr  Dvalins,  Sasm.  188%  namely,  those  descended 
from  ases,  from  elves  and  from  dwarfs;  and  our  MHGr.  poets, 
as  we  see  by  Wikram's  Albrecht,  6,  9,  continued  to  separate  elbe 

1  Besold.  sub  v.  elbe ;  Ettner's  Hebamme,  p.  910,  alpen  or  elben. 


444  WIGHTS   AND   ELVES. 

from  gctwerc}  Some  kinship  however  seems  to  exist  between 
them,  if  only  because  among  proper  names  of  dwarfs  we  find  an 
Alfr  and  a  Vinddlfr,  Seem.  2.  3.  Loki,  elsewhere  called  an  as, 
and  reckoned  among  ases,  but  really  of  iotun  origin,  is  neverthe- 
less addressed  as  alfr,  Saem.  110b;  nay,  Vulundr,  a  godlike  hero, 
is  called  '  alfa  lio'Si/  alforum  socius,  and  '  visi  dlfa/  alforum 
princeps,  Stem.  135a'b-  I  explain  this  not  historically  (by  a 
Finnish  descent),  but  mythically  :  German  legend  likewise  makes 
Wielant  king  Elberick's  companion  and  fellow  smith  in  Mount 
Gloggensachsen  (otherwise  Gougelsahs,  Caucasus?).  Thus  we 
see  the  word  alfr  shrink  and  stretch  by  turns. 

Now  what  is  the  true  meaning  of  the  word  albs,  alp  =  genius  ? 
One  is  tempted  indeed  to  compare  the  Lat.  albas,  which  according 
to  Festus  the  Sabines  called  alpus ;  «\.</>o?  (vitiligo,  leprosy) 
agrees  still  better  with  the  law  of  consonant-change.  Probably 
then  albs  meant  first  of  all  a  light-coloured,  white,  good  spirit,3 
so  that,  when  dlfar  and  dvergar  are  contrasted,  the  one  signifies 
the  white  spirits,  the  other  the  black.  This  exactly  agrees  with 
the  great  beauty  and  brightness  of  alfar.  But  the  two  classes 
of  creatures  getting,  as  we  shall  see,  a  good  deal  mixed  up 
and  confounded,  recourse  was  had  to  composition,  and  the  elves 
proper  were  named  liosdlfar.3 

The  above-named  dockalfar  (genii  obscnri)  require  a  counter- 
part, Avhich  is  not  found  in  the  Eddie  songs,  but  it  is  in  Snorri's 
prose.  He  says,  p.  21  :  'In  Alfheim  dwells  the  nation  of  the 
liosdlfar  (light  elves),  down  in  the  earth  dwell  the  dockalfar 
(dark  elves),  the  two  unlike  one  another  in  their  look  and  their 
powers,  liosdlfar  brighter  than  the  sun,  dockalfar  blacker  than 
pitch/  The  liosdlfar  occupy  the  third  space  of  heaven,  Sn.  22. 
Another  name  which  never  occurs  in  the  lays,  and  which  at 
first  sight  seems  synonymous  with  dockalfar,  is  svartdlfar  (black 

1  In  Norway  popular  belief  keeps  alfer  and  drerfje  apart,  Faye  p.  49. 

2  The  word  appears  in  the  name  of  the  snowclad  mountains  (alpes,  see  Snppl.), 
and  that  of  the  clear  river  (Albis,  Elbe),  while  the  ON.  elf  elfa,  Swed.  elf,  Dan. 
elv  =  fiuvius,  is  still  merely  appellative  ;  the  ghostly  elvish  swan  (OHG.  alpiz, 
MHG.  elbez,  AS.  aelfet,  ON.  alpt,  p.  429)  can  be  explained  both  by  its  colour  and  its 
watery  abode  ;  likewise  the  Slav,  labud,  lebed,  from  Labe. 

3  Vanir  also  may  contain  the  notion  of  white,  bright ;  consider  the  ON.  vcenn 
(ptdcher),  the  Ir.  ban  (albus),  ben,  bean  (femina),  Lat.  Venus,  Goth,  qino,  AS.  circn. 
To  this  add,  that  the  Ir.  banshi,  ban-sighe  denotes  an  elvish  being  usually  regarded 
as  female,  a  fay.  The  same  is  expressed  by  sia,  sir/he  alone,  which  is  said  to  mean 
properly  the  twilight,  the  hour  of  spirits  (see  Suppl.). 


ELVES.  445 

elves) ;  1  and  these  Snorri  evidently  takes  to  be  the  same  as 
dvergar,  for  his  dvergar  dwell  in  Svartulfaheiin,  (Sn.  34.  130. 
13G).  This  is,  for  one  thing,  at  variance  with  the  separation 
of  dlfar  and  dvergar  in  the  lays,  and  more  particularly  with 
the  difference  implied  between  doclcdlfar  and  dvergar  in  Saem. 
92b  1 88a.  That  language  of  poetry,  which  everywhere  else  im- 
parts such  precise  information  about  the  old  faith,  I  am  not 
inclined  to  set  aside  here  as  vague  and  general.  Nor,  in  con- 
nexion with  this,  ought  we  to  overlook  the  ndir,  the  deadly  pale 
or  dead  ghosts  named  by  the  side  of  the  dvergar,  Saem.  92b, 
though  again  among  the  dvergar  themselves  occur  the  proper 
names  Nar  and  Nainn. 

Some  have  seen,  in  this  antithesis  of  light  and  black  elves,  the 
same  Dualism  that  other  mythologies  set  up  between  spirits  good 
and  bad,  friendly  and  hostile,  heavenly  and  hellish,  between  angels 
of  light  and  of  darkness.  But  ought  we  not  rather  to  assume 
three  kinds  of  Norse  genii,  liosdlfar,  dochdlfar ,  svartdlfar  ?  No 
doubt  I  am  thereby  pronouncing  Snorri's  statement  fallacious : 
'  dodkalfar  eru  svartari  en  bik  (pitch).-'  DiJdcr  ~  seems  to  me  not  so 
much  downright  black,  as  dim,  dingy  ;  not  niger,  but  obscurus, 
fuscus,  aquilus.  In  ON.  the  adj.  iarpr,  AS.  eorp,  fuscus,  seems  to 
be  used  of  dwarfs,  Haupt's  Zeitschr.  3,  152  ;  and  the  female  name 
Irpa  (p.  98)  is  akin  to  it.  In  that  case  the  identity  of  dwarfs 
and  blade  elves  would  hold  good,  and  at  the  same  time  the  Old 
Eddie  distinction  between  dwarfs  and  dark  elves  be  justified. 

Such  a  Trilogy  still  wants  decisive  proof ;  but  some  facts  can 
be  brought  in  support  of  it.  Pomeranian  legend,  to  begin  with, 
seems  positively  to  divide  subterraneans  into  white,  brown,  and 
blade ; 3  elsewhere  popular  belief  contents  itself  with  picturing 
dwarfs  in  gray  clothing,  in  gray  or  brown  cap-of-darkness ; 
Scotch  tradition  in  particular  has  its  brownies,  spirits  of  brown 
hue,  i.e.  dockalfar  rather  than  svartalfar  (see  Suppl.).  But  here 
I  have  yet  another  name  to  bring  in,  which,  as  applied  to  such 
spirits,  is  not  in  extensive  use.     I  have  not  mot  with  it  outside 

1  Thorlac.  spec.  7,  p.  1G",  gives  the  liosalfar  another  name  Jivit&lfar  (white 
elves) ;  I  have  not  found  the  word  in  the  old  writings. 

s  Conf.  OHG.  tunchal,  MHG.  tunkel  (our  dunkel),  Nethl.  donker. 

3  E.  M.  Arndt's  Marchen  und  Jugenderinnerungen, Berl.  1818,  p.  150.  In  Phil. 
von  Steinau'8  Volkssagen,  Zeitz  1838,  pp.  291-3,  the  same  traditions  are  given, 
but  only  white  and  black  (not  brown)  dwarfs  are  distinguished. 


446  WIGHTS   AND   ELVES. 

of  the  Vogtland  and  a  part  of  East  Thuringia.  There  the  small 
elvish  beings  that  travel  especially  in  the  train  of  Berchta,  are 
called  the  heimclten  (supra,  p.  276) ;  and  the  name  is  considered 
finer  and  nobler  than  querx  or  erdmannchen  (Borner  p.  52).  It 
is  hardly  to  be  explained  by  any  resemblance  to  chirping  crickets, 
which  are  also  called  heinichen,  OHG.  heimili  (Graff  4,  953) ; 
still  less  by  heim  (domus),  for  these  wights  are  not  home-sprites 
(domestici)  ;  besides,  the  correct  spelling  seems  to  be  heinchen 
(Variscia  2,  101),  so  that  one  may  connect  it  with  '  Friend 
Hein/  the  name  for  death,  and  the  Low  Sax.  heinenMeed 
(winding-sheet,  Strodtmann  p.  84) -1  This  notion  of  departed 
spirits,  who  appear  in  the  '  furious  host '  in  the  retinue  of  former 
gods,  and  continue  to  lead  a  life  of  their  own,  may  go  to  support 
those  nair  of  the  Edda;  the  pale  hue  may  belong  to  them, 
and  the  gray,  brown,  black  to  the  coarser  but  otherwise  similar 
dwarfs.  Such  is  my  conjecture.  In  a  hero-lay  founded  on 
thoroughly  German  legend,  that  of  Morolt,  there  appear  precisely 
three  troops  of  spirits,  who  take  charge  of  the  fallen  in  battle 
and  of  their  souls  :  a  white,  a  pale,  and  a  black  troop  (p.  28b), 
which  is  explained  to  mean  l  angels,  kinsmen  of  the  combatants 
coming  up  from  hades,  and  devils.-'  No  such  warlike  part  is  ever 
played  by  the  Norse  alfar,  not  they,  but  the  valkyrs  have  to  do 
with  battles  ;  but  the  traditions  may  long  have  become  tangled 
together,  and  the  offices  confounded.3  The  liosdlfar  and  svartdlfar 
are  in  themselves  sufficiently  like  the  christian  angels  and  devils  ; 
the  pale  troop  '  uz  tier  helle '  are  the  dochdlfar  that  dwell  '  ni&ri 
i  iorcFu,'  nay,  the  very  same  that  in  the  Alvismal  are  not  expressly 
named,  but  designated  by  the  words  ei  heljo.'  Or  I  can  put  it  in 
this  way  :  liosalfar  live  in  heaven,  dockalfar  (and  nair  ?)  in  hel, 
the  heathen  hades,  svartalfar  in  Svartdlfaheim,  which  is  never 
used  in  the  same  sense  as  hel  (see  Suppl.).  The  dusky  elves 
are  souls  of  dead  men,  as  the  younger  poet  supposed,  or  are  we 
to  separate  dockalfar  and  nair  ?  Both  have  their  abode  in  the 
realms  of  hades,  as  the  light  ones  have  in  those  of  heaven.  Of 
no  other  elves  has  the  Edda  so   much  to  tell  as  of  the   black, 


l*'  Heinenkleei  is  not  conn,  with  Friend  Hein,  but  means  a  hiinen'kleed 
(ch.  XVIII.) ;  couf.  also  the  hiinuerskes,  and  perhaps  the  haunken,  or  aunken  in 
the  Westph.  sgonaunken.' — Extr.  from  Suppl. 

-  The  different  races  of  elves  contending  for  a  corpse  (Ir.  Elfenm.  68). 


ELVES,    DWARFS.  447 

who  have  more  dealings  with,  mankind  ;  svartalfar  are  named  in 
abundance,  liosalfar  and  dockalfar  but  fitfully. 

One  thing  we  must  not  let  go  :  the  identity  of  svartalfar  and 
dvergar. 

Dvergr,  Goth,  dvairgs?  AS.  dweorg,  OHG.  tuerc,  MHG.  tverc, 
our  ziverg,1  answer  to  the  Lat.  nanus,  Gr.  vdvvos  (dwarf,  puppet), 
Ital.  nano,  Span,  enano,  Portug.  anao,  Prov.  nan,  nant,  Fr.  nain, 
Mid.  Nethl.  also  naen,  Ferg.  2243-46-53-82.  3146-50,  and  nane, 
3086-97;  or  Gr.  wvyficuo?.  Beside  the  masc.  forms  just  given, 
OHG.  and  MHG.  frequently  use  the  neut.  form  gituerc,  getwerc, 
Nib.  98,  1.  335,  3.  MS.  2,  15*.  Wigal.  6080.  6591.  Trist. 
14242.  14515.  daz  wilde  getwerc,  Ecke  81.  82.  Wh.  57,  25. 
Getwerc  is  used  as  a  masc.  in  Eilhart  2881-7.  Altd.  bl.  1 ,  253-6-8  ; 
der  twerk  in  Hoffm.  fundgr.  237.  Can  Oeovpyos  (performing 
miraculous  deeds,  what  the  MHG.  would  call  wunderasre)  have 
anything  to  do  with  it  ?  As  to  meaning,  the  dwarfs  resemble 
the  Idasan  Dactyls  of  the  ancients,  the  Cabeiri  and  Trdraucoi :  all 
or  most  of  the  dvergar  in  the  Edda  are  cunning  smiths  (Sn.  34. 
48.  130.  354).  This  seems  the  simplest  explanation  of  their 
black  suoty  appearance,  like  that  of  the  cyclopes.  Their  forges 
are  placed  in  caves  and  mountains  :  Svartdtfalieimr  must  there- 
fore lie  in  a  mountainous  region,  not  in  the  abyss  of  hell.  And 
our  German  folk-tales  everywhere  speak  of  the  dwarfs  as  forging 
in  the  mountains:  'vongolde  wirkent  si  diu  spcehen  were '  says 
the  Wartburg  War  of  the  getwerc  Sinnels  in  Palakers,  whereas 
elves  and  elfins  have  rather  the  business  of  weaving  attributed  to 
them.  Thus,  while  dwarfs  border  on  the  smith-heroes  and  smith- 
gods  (Wielant,  Vulcan),  the  functions  of  elves  approach  those  of 
fays  and  good- wives  (see  Suppl.).2 

If  there  be  any  truth  in  this  view  of  the  matter,  one  can  easily 
conceive  how  it  might  get  altered  and  confused  in  the  popular 
belief  of  a  later  time,  when  the  new  christian  notions  of  angel 
and  devil  had  been  introduced.  At  bottom  all  elves,  even  the 
light  ones,  have  some   devil-like  qualities,  e.g.   their   loving  to 

1  In  Lausitz  and  E.  Thuringia  querx,  in  Thiiringerwald  querlich.  Jac.  von 
Konigshofeii,  p.  89,  has  qucrch.     In  Lower  Saxony  sometimes  tuarm,  for  twarg. 

2  In  Bretagne  the  korr,  pi.  korred  answers  to  our  elf,  the  kurrigan  to  our  elfin  ; 
and  she  too  is  described  like  a  fay :  she  sits  by  the  fountain,  combing  her  hair,  and 
whoever  catches  her  doing  so,  must  marry  her  at  once,  or  die  in  three  days  (Yille- 
marque  1,  17).     The  'Welsh  cater  means  a  giant. 


448  WIGHTS   AND  ELVES. 

teaze  men ;  but  they  are  not  therefore  devils,  not  even  the  black 
ones,  but  often  good-natured  beings.  It  appears  even  that  to  these 
black  elves  in  particular,  i.e.  mountain  spirits,  who  in  various 
ways  came  into  contact  with  man,  a  distinct  reverence  was  paid, 
a  species  of  worship,  traces  of  which  lasted  down  to  recent 
times.  The  clearest  evidence  of  this  is  found  in  the  Kormaks- 
saga  pp.  216-8.  The  hill  of  the  elves,  like  the  altar  of  a  god, 
is  to  be  reddened  with  the  blood  of  a  slaughtered  bull,  and  of 
the  animal's  flesh  a  feast  prepared  for  the  elves  :  (  H611  eiun  er 
he  San  skamt  i  brott,  er  dlfar  biia  i  (cave  that  elves  dwell  in)  ; 
graSung  ]?ann,  er  Kormakr  drap  (bull  that  K.  slew),  skaltu  fa,  ok 
rioSa  bl6S  grabamgsins  a  hulinn  titan,  en  gera  dlfum  veizlu  (make 
the  elves  a  feast)  af  slatrinu,  ok  man  ]?er  batna/  An  actual 
dlfablot.  With  this  I  connect  the  superstitious  custom  of  cooking 
food  for  angels,  and  setting  it  for  them  (Superst.  no.  896).  So 
there  is  a  table  covered  and  a  pot  of  food  placed  for  home-smiths 
and  kobolds  (Dent,  sagen,  no.  37.  38.  71)  ;  meat  and  drink  for 
domina  Abundia  (supra,  p.  286) ;  money  or  bread  deposited  in 
the  caves  of  subterraneans,  in  going  past  (Neocorus  1,  262.  560). ' 
There  are  plants  named  after  elves  as  well  as  after  gods  :  alpranlie, 
alpfranke,  alfsranke,  alpkraut  (lonicera  periclymen.,  solanum  dul- 
cam.),  otherwise  called  geissblatt,  in  Denmark  troldbiir,  in  Sweden 
trullbar;  dweorges  dwosle,  pulegium  (Lye),  Mone's  authorities 
spell  dwostle,  322a ;  dvergeriis,  ace.  to  Molbech's  Dial.  Lex.  p.  86, 
the  spartium  scoparium.  A  latrina  was  called  alfreh,  lit.  genios 
fugans,  Eyrb.  saga,  cap.  4  (see  Suppl.). 

Whereas  man  grows  but  slowly,  not  attaining  his  full  stature 
till  after  his  fifteenth  year,  and  then  living  seventy  years,  and  a 
giant  can  be  as  old  as  the  hills ;  the  dwarf  is  already  grown  up 
in  the  third  year  of  his  life,  and  a  greybeard  in  the  seventh ; 2 
the  Elf-king  is  commonly  described  as  old  and  white-bearded. 

1  The  Old  Pruss.  and  Litli.  parstuk  (thumbkin)  also  has  food  placed  for  him, 
conf.  Lasicz  54.     The  Lett,  behrstuhki  is  said  to  mean  a  child's  doll,  Bergm.  145. 

2  Emp.  Ludwig  the  Bavarian  (1347)  writes  contemptuously  to  Markgraf  Carl  of 
Moravia  :  '  Becollige,  quia  nondum  venit  bora,  ut  pigmei  de  Judea  (1.  India)  statura 
cubica  evolantes  fortitudine  gnauica  (1.  gnanica,  i.e.  nanica)  terras  gygantium  de- 
trahere  debeant  in  ruinas,  et  ut  pigmei,  id  est  homines  bicubitales,  qui  in  anno 
tercio  crescunt  ad  perfectam  quantitatem  et  in  septimo  anno  senescunt  et  moriun- 
tur,  imperent  gygantibus.'  Pelzel's  Carl  IV.  1  urk.  p.  40.  Conf.  Bohmer's  Font. 
1,  227.  2,  570.  Yet  this  description  does  not  look  to  me  quite  German  ;  the  more 
the  dwarfs  are  regarded  as  elves,  there  is  accorded  to  them,  and  especially  to  elfins 
(as  to  the  Greek  oreads),  a  higher  and  semi-divine  age  ;  conf.  the  stories  of  change- 
lings quoted  further  on.     Laurin,  ace.  to  the  poems,  was  more  than  400  years  old. 


ELVES,    DWARFS.  449 

Accounts  of  the  creation  of  dwarfs  will  be  presented  in  chap. 
XIX. ;  but  they  only  seem  to  refer  to  the  earthly  form  of  the 
black  elves,  not  of  the  light. 

The  leading  features  of  elvish  nature  seem  to  be  the  follow- 
ing : — 

Man's  body  holds  a  medium  between  those  of  the  giant  and. 
the  elf;  an  elf  comes  as  much  short  of  human  size  as  a  giant 
towers  above  it.  All  elves  are  imagined,  as  small  and.  tiny,  but 
the  light  ones  as  well-formed,  and.  symmetrical,  the  black  as  ugly 
and  misshapen.  The  former  are  radiant  with  exquisite  beauty, 
and  wear  shining  garments:  the  AS.  celfsciene,  Ca3dm.  109,  23. 
165,  11,  sheen  as  an  elf,  bright  as  angels,  the  ON.  '  MS  sem 
alfkona/  fair  as  elfin,  express  the  height  of  female  loveliness. 
In  Rudlieb  xvii.  27  a  dwarf,  on  being  caught,  calls  his  wife  out 
of  the  cave,  she  immediately  appears,  '  parva,  nimis  pulchra, 
sed  et  auro  vesteque  compta/  Fornald.  sog.  1,  387  has  :  '  bat  er 
kunnigt  i  ollum  fornum  frasognum  um  )>at  fulk,  er  alfar  hetu, 
at  bat  var  miklu  friSara  enn  onnur  mankind/  The  Engl,  elves 
are  slender  and.  puny  :  Falstaff  (1  Henry  IV.  i.  4)  calls  Prince 
Henry  '  you  starveling,  you  elfskin  !  ' 1  The  dwarf  adds  to  his 
repulsive  hue  an  ill-shaped,  body,  a  humped,  back,  and.  coarse 
clothing ;  when  elves  and.  dwarfs  came  to  be  mixed  up  together, 
the  graceful  figure  of  the  one  was  transferred  to  the  other, 
yet  sometimes  the  dwarfs  expressly  retain  the  blade  or  grey 
complexion:  ' svart  i  synen/ p.  457;  'a  little  black  mannikin/ 
Kinderm.  no.  92;  'grey  mannikin/  Biisching's  Woch.  nachr.  1, 
98.  Their  very  height  is  occasionally  specified  :  now  they  attain 
the  stature  of  a  four  years'  child/  now  they  appear  a  great  deal 
smaller,  to  be  measured  by  the  span  or  thumb:  'kiime  drier 
spannen  lane,  gar  eislich  getan?  Elfenm.  cxvi. ;  two  spans  high, 
Deut.  sag.  no.  42;  a  little  wight,  c  relit  als  em  dumelle  lane/  a 
thumb  long,  Altd.  bl.  2,   151;  '  ein  kleinez  weglin    (1.  wihtttn) 

1  In  Denmark  popular  belief  lectures  the  ellekone  as  young  and  captivating 
to  look  at  in  front,  but  bollow  at  the  back  like  a  kneading-trough  (Tbiele  1,  118) ; 
which  reminds  one  of  Dame  Werlt  in  MHG.  poems. 

2  Whether  the  OHO.  pusilin  is  said  of  a  dwarf  as  Graff  supposes  (3,  352  ;  conf. 
Swed.  pyssling),  or  merely  of  a  child,  like  the  Lat.  pusus,  pusio,  is  a  question.  The 
Mid.  Age  gave  to  its  angels  these  small  dimensions  of  elves  and  dwarfs  :  '  Ein 
iegelich  enr/el  schinet  also  gestalter  als  ein  kint  in  jaren  vieren  (years  t)  in  der 
jugende,'  Tit.  5895  (Hahn) ;  'juncliche  gemalet  als  ein  kint  daz  d.-i  vtinf  jdr  (5 
year)  alt  ist,'  Berth.  184.  Laurin  is  taken  for  the  angel  Michael;  Elberich  (Otnit, 
Ettm.  21)  and  Antilois  (Ulr.  Alex.)  are  compared  to  a  child  of  four. 


450  WIGHTS   AND   ELVES. 

dumeln  lane,'  Ls.  1,  378.  In  one  Danish  lay,  the  smallest  trold 
is  no  bigger  than  an  ant,  D.V.  1,  176.  Hence  in  fairy  tales 
daumling  (thumbling,  petit  poucet)  indicates  a  dwarfish  figure; 
the  8cifCTv\o<;  TSato?  is  to  be  derived  from  Sa/cn/A-o?  (finger) ; 
TrvyfMaio'i  pigmajus  from  Trvyfirj  (fist)  ;  the  0.  Pruss.  parstuck, 
perstuch,  a  dwarf,  from  Lith.  pirsztas,  Slav,  perst,  prst  (finger)  ; 
and  a  Bohem.  name  for  a  dwarf,  pjdimuzjk=  sjiaji-maxunkin,  from 
pjd'  (span).1  In  Sansk.  bdl akhily a  =  geniorum  genus,  pollicis 
inagnitudinem  aequans,  sixty  thousand  of  them  sprang  out  of 
Brahma's  hair,  Bopp's  Gloss.  Skr.  p.  122a  (ed.  2,  p.  238b) ;  bala, 
balaka  =  puer,  parvulus,  the  '  ilya  '  I  do  not  understand.  There 
are  curious  stories  told  about  the  deformity  of  dwarfs'  feet,  which 
are  said  to  be  like  those  of  geese  or  clacks ; 2  conf.  queen  Berhta, 


1  When  we  read  in  a  passage  quoted  by  Jungmann  4,  652  :  '  mezi  pjdimuzjky 
kraluge  trpasljk'  (among  thurnblings  a  dwarf  is  king),  it  is  plain  that  a  trpasljk  is 
more  than  a  pjdimuzJk.  Can  this  trp-  (Slovak,  krpec,  krpatec)  be  conn,  with  our 
knirps,  knips,  krips,  gribs  (v.  infra),  which  means  one  of  small  stature,  not  quite  a 
dwarf?     Finn,  peukalo,  a  thumbling,  Kalew.  13,  67  ;  mies  peni,  pikku  mies,  little 

man  three  fingers  high  13,  63-8.  24,  144. For  dwarf  the  MHG.  has  also  '  der 

kurze  man,'1  Wigal.  6593.  6685.  6710;  'der  loenige  man,'1  Er.  7442.  Ulr.  Alex,  (in 
Wackern.'s  Bas.  Ms.,  p.  29,J),  in  contrast  with  the  'michel  man'  or  giant.  One 
old  name  for  a  dwarf  was  churzibolt,  Pertz  2,  104,  which  otherwise  means  a  short 
coat,  Hoff.  Gl.  36,  13.     lloth.  4576.     Conf.  urkinde  (nanus),  Gramm.  2,  789. 

2  Deutsche  Sagen,  no.  149;  I  here  give  a  more  faithful  version,  for  which  I  am 

indebted  to  Hr.  Hieron.  Hagebuch  of  Aarau. Vo  de  hardmandlene  uf  der  Kains- 

flue.  Hinder  der  Arlisbacher  egg,  zwiischenem  dorfle  Hard  und  dem  alte  Lorenze- 
kapallele,  stoht  im  ene  thale  so  ganz  eleigge  e  griisle  vertriiite  flue,  se  sagere 
dRamsflue.  uf  der  hindere  site  isch  se  hohl,  und  dhole  het  numme  e  chline  igang. 
Do  sind  denn  emol,  me  weiss  nid  axact  i  wele  johrgange,  so  rarige  mtindle  gsi,  die 
sind  i  die  hohle  us  und  i  gauge,  hand  ganz  e  so  es  eiges  labe  gefiiehrt,  und  en 
apartige  hushaltig,  und  sind  ganz  bsunderig  derhar  cho,  so  warklick  gestaltet,  und 
mit  eim  wort,  es  isch  halt  kei  monsch  usene  cho,  wer  se  denn  au  seige,  wohar  se 
cho  seige,  und  was  se  tribe,  arnel  gekochet  hand  se  mit,  und  wiirzle  und  beeri 
ggasse.  unde  a  der  flue  lauft  es  biichle,  und  i  dem  bachle  hand  die  mandle  im  sum- 
mer badet,  wie  tilble,  aber  eis  vonene  het  immer  wacht  gha,  und  het  pfiffe,  wenn 
bpper  derhar  cho  isch,  uf  dem  fuesswag :  denn  sind  se  ame  gsprunge,  was  gisch 
was  hesch,  der  barg  uf,  class  ene  kei  haas  noh  cho  wer,  und  wie  der  schwick  in 
ehre  h'ohle  gschloffe.  dernabe  hand  se  kem  monsch  niit  zleid  tho,  im  giigetheil, 
gfiilligkaite,  wenn  se  hand  chonne.  Einisch  het  der  Hardpur  es  fuederle  riswiille 
glade,  und  wil  er  elei  gsi  isch,  het  ers  au  fast  nid  moge.  E  sones  mandle  gsehts  vo 
der  flue  obenabe,  und  chunt  der  durab  zhb'pperle  fiber  driese,  und  hilft  dem  pur, 
was  es  het  moge.  wo  se  do  der  bindbaum  wand  ufe  thue,  so  isch  das  mandle  ufem 
wage  gsi,  und  het  grichtet,  und  der  pur  het  Uberunde  azoge  a  de  bindchneble.  do 
het  das  mandle  sseil  nid  riicht  ume  gliret.und  wo  der  pur  azieht,  schnellt  der  baurn 
los  und  trift  smandle  ane  finger  und  hets  wfirst  blessiert ;  do  foht  der  pur  a  jom- 
mere  und  seit  '  o  heie,  o  heie,  wenns  numenau  mer  begegnet  wer  ! '  do  seit  das 
mandle  '  abba,  das  macht  niit,  salben  tho,  salben  gha.'*  mit  dene  worte  springts 
vom  wage  nabe,  het  es  chriitle  abbroche,  hets  verschaflet  und  uf  das  bluetig  fin- 


*  Swab.  '  sell  thaun,  sell  haun,'  Schrnid  p.  628.     More  neatly  in  MHG.,  '  selbe 
toete,  selbe  habe,'  MS.  1,  10b.  89a. 


ELVES,   DWARFS.  451 

p.  2S0,  and  the  swan-maidens,  p.  429.  One  is  also  reminded 
of  the  blateviieze,  Rother  1871.  Ernst  3828;  conf.  Haupt's 
Zeitschr.     7,  289. 

The  Mid.  Nethl.  poem  of  Brandaen,  but  no  other  version  of  the 
same  legend,  contains  a  very  remarkable  feature.1  Brandan  met 
a  man  ou  the  sea,  who  was  a  thumb  long,  and  floated  on  a  leaf, 
holding  a  little  bowl  in  his  right  hand  and  a  pointer  in  his  left : 
the  pointer  he  kept  dipping  into  the  sea  and  letting  water  drip 
from  it  into  the  bowl ;  when  the  bowl  was  full,  he  emptied  it  out, 
and  began  filling  again  :  it  was  his  doom  to  be  measuring  the 
sea  until  the  Judgment-day  (see  Suppl.).  This  liliputian  floating 
on  the  leaf  reminds  us  of  ancient,  especially  Indian  myths.2 

The  alfar  are  a  'people,  as  the  Edda  expressly  says  (Sn.  21),  and 

gerle  gleit,  und  das  het  alles  ewiig  puzt.  do  springts  wider  nfe  wage,  und  bet  zurn 
pur  gseit,  er  soil  sseil  nume  wider  urne  ge.  Mangisch,  wenn  riichtschafne  Hit  durn 
tag  gbeuet  oder  bunde  hand  und  se  sind  nit  fertig  worde  bis  zobe,  und  shet  oppe 
welle  cho  riigne,  so  sind  die  hardmandle  cho,  und  hand  geschaffet  und  gewiirnet 
druf  ine,  bis  alles  irn  scharme  gsi  isch.  oder  wenns  durt  dnacht  isch  cho  wattere, 
hand  se  sheu  und  schorn,  wo  dusse  glage  isch,  de  lute  zuru  tenn  zue  trait,  und  am 
morge  het  halt  alles  gross  auge  grnacht,  und  se  hand  nid  gwiisst,  wers  tho  het.  den 
hand  erst  no  die  mandle  kei  dank  begehrt,  nuruenau  dass  me  se  gern  hat.  Amenim 
winter,  wenn  alles  stei  und  bei  gfrore  gsi  isch,  sind  die  mandle  is  oberst  hus  cho 
zArlispach  :  se  hand  shalt  gar  guet  chonnen  mit  dene  lute,  wo  dert  gwohnt  hand, 
und  sind  ame  durt  dnacht  ufem  ofe  glage,  und  am  morge  vortag  hand  se  se  wieder 
drus  grnacht.  was  aber  gar  gspiissig  gsi  isch,  si  hand  ehre  fiiessle  nie  viire  glo,  hand 
es  charlachroths  mantele  trait,  vom  hals  bis  life  bode  nabe.  jetzt  hets  im  dorf  so 
gwunderige  meitle  und  buebe  gha,  die  sind  einisch  znacht  vor  das  hus  go  gen  iische 
streue,  dass  se  gsache,  was  die  hardmandle  fiir  fiiessle  hebe.  und  was  h&ndse 
gfunde  ?  sisch  frile  wunderle  :  ante  und  geissfiless  sind  in  der  asche  abdriickt  gsi. 
Aber  vo  salber  stund  a  isch  keis  mandle  meh  cho,  und  se  sind  au  niimme  uf  der 
Eamsflue  bliebe,  i  dkrachehand  se  se  verscJdoffe,  tief  id  geissflue  hindere,  und  hand 
keis  zeiche  me  von  ene  ge,  und  chomme  niimme,  so  lang  dliit  eso  boshaft  sind 

(see  Suppl.). [Substance  of   the  above.      Earth-mannikins  on  the  Eamsflue: 

lived  in  a  cave  with  a  narrow  entrance  ;  cooked  nothing,  ate  roots  and  berries ; 
bathed  in  a  brook  like  doves,  set  one  to  watch,  and  if  he  whistled,  were  up  the  hills 
faster  than  hares,  and  slipt  into  their  cave.  Never  hurt  men,  often  helped :  the 
farmer  at  Hard  was  alone  loading,  a  dwarf  came  down,  helped  to  finish,  got  on  the 
waggon,  did  not  properly  run  the  rope  over  the  bind-pole,  it  slipped  off,  the  pole 
flew  up  and  hurt  him  badly.  Farmer:  'I  wish  it  had  happened  tome.'  Dwarf: 
'Not  so;  self  do,  self  have.'  Got  down,  picked  a  herb,  and  cured  the  wound  in- 
stantly. Often,  when  honest  folk  cut  hay  or  tied  corn,  dwarfs  helped  them  to 
finish  and  get  it  under  shelter;  or  in  the  night,  if  rain  came  on,  they  brought  in 
what  was  lying  cut,  and  didn't  the  people  stare  in  the  morning  !  One  severe  winter 
they  came  every  night  to  a  house  at  Arlisbach,  slept  on  the  oven,  departed  before 
dawn;  wore  scarlet  cloaks  reaching  to  the  ground,  so  that  their  feet  were  never  seen  ; 
but  some  prying  people  sprinkled  ashes  before  the  house,  on  which  were  seen  the 
next  morning  marks  of  duck's  and  goose's  feet.  They  never  showed  themselves 
again,  and  never  will,  while  men  are  so  spiteful.] 

1  Blommaert's  Oudvlaemsche  gedichten  1,  118'1.  2,  2G*. 

2  Brahma,  sitting  on  a  lotus,  floats  musing  across  the  abysses  of  the  sea.  Vishnu, 
when  after  Brahma's  death  the  waters  have  covered  all  the  worlds,  sits  in  the  shape 
of  a  tiny  infant  on  a  leaf  of  the  pipala  (fig-tree),  and  floats  on  the  sea  of  milk, 
sucking  the  toe  of  his  right  foot.     (Asiat.  lies.  1,  315.) 


452  WIGHTS   AND    ELVES. 

as  the  Alvismal  implies  by  putting  alfar,  dvergar,  and  helbuar  (if 
I  may  use  the  word),  by  the  side  of  men,  giants,  gods,  ases  and 
vanir,  each  as  a  separate  class  of  beings,  with  a  language  of  its 
own.  Hence  too  the  expressions  '  das  stille  volk ;  the  good 
people  (p.  456) ;  huldu-folk  ; '  in  Lausitz  ludhi,  little  folk  (Wend, 
volksl.  2,  268),  from  lud,  liud  (nation),  OHG.  liut,  Boh.  lid;  and 
in  Welsh  y  teidu  (the  family),  y  tylwyth  teg  (the  fair  family,  the 
pretty  little  folk,  conf.  Owen  sub  v.  tylwyth,  and  Diefenbach's 
Celtica  ii.  102.  Whether  we  are  to  understand  by  this  a  histo- 
rical realm  situate  in  a  particular  region,  I  leave  undecided  here. 
Dvergmal  (sermo  nanorum)  is  the  ON.  term  for  the  echo  :  a  very 
expressive  one,  as  their  calls  and  cries  resound  in  the  hills,  and 
when  man  speaks  loud,  the  dwarf  replies,  as  it  were,  from  the 
mountain.  HerrauSssaga,  cap.  11,  p.  50:  i  SigurSr  stilti  sva, 
hatt  horpuna,  at  dvergmal  qva'S  i  hollunni/  he  played  so  loud 
on  the  harp,  that  dwarf's  voice  spoke  in  the  hall.  When  heroes 
dealt  loud  blows,  '  dvorgamal  sang  uj  qvorjun  hamri/  echo 
sang  in  every  rock  (Lyngbye,  p.  464,  470)  ;  when  hard  they 
hewed,  'dvorgamal  sang  uj  fiodlun/  echo  sang  in  the  mountains 
(ibid.  468).  ON.  ' qveffr  vicf  i  klettunum/  reboant  rupes.  Can 
grceti  dlfa  (ploratus  nanorum)  in  the  obscure  Introduction  to 
the  Hamdismal  (Sasm.  269a)  mean  something  similar  ?  Even  our 
German  heroic  poetry  seems  to  have  retained  the  same  image : 

Dem  fehten  allez  nach  erhal,         To  the  fighting  everything 

resounded, 
do  beide  berg  und  ouch  diu  tal     then  both  hill  and  also  dale 
gciben  ir  slegen  stimme.  gave  voice  to  their  blows. 

(Ecke,  ed.  Hagen,  161.) 

Daz  da  beide  berg  und  tal 

vor  ir  slegen  wilde  wider  einander  allez  hal.     (ibid.  171.) 

The  hills  not  only  rang  again  with  the  sword-strokes  of  the 
heroes,  but  uttered  voice  and  answer,  i.e.  the  dwarfs  residing  in 
them  did.1 

This  nation  of  elves  or  dwarfs  has  over  it  a  Icing.  In  Norse 
legend,  it  is  true,  I  remember  no  instance  of  it  among  alfar 
or  dvergar;  yet  Huldra  is  queoi  of  the  huldrefolk  (p.  272),  as 

1  The  Irish  for  echo  is  similar,  though  less  beautiful :  viuc  alia,  swine  of  the  rock. 


ELVES,    DWARFS.  453 

Berchta  is  of  the  heinclien  (p.  276),  and  English  tradition  tells 
of  an  elf-queen,  Chaucer's  C.  T.  6442  (the  fairy  queen,  Percy 
3,  207  seq.)  ;  I  suppose,  because  Gallic  tradition  likewise  made 
female  fairies  (fees)  the  more  prominent.  The  OFr.  fable  of 
Huon  of  Bordeaux  knows  of  a  roi  Oberon,  i.e.  Auberon  for 
Alberon,  an  alb  by  his  very  name  :  the  kingdom  of  the  fays 
(royaume  de  la  feerie)  is  his.  Our  poem  of  Orendel  cites  a  dwarf 
Alban  by  name.  In  Otnit  a  leading  part  is  played  by  kilnec 
Alberich,  Mberich,  to  whom  are  subject  "  inane c  berg  und  talj" 
the  Nib.  lied  makes  him  not  a  king,  but  a  vassal  of  the  kings 
Schilbung  and  Nibelung  ;  a  nameless  king  of  dwarfs  appears  in 
the  poem  of  Ecke  80  ;  and  elsewhere  king  Goldemdr  (Ueut.  held- 
ensage  p.  174.  Haupt's  Zeitschr.  6,  522-3),  king  Sinnels  and 
Laurin  (MS.  2,  15a) ;  '  der  getwerge  hilnec  Bilei,3  Er.  2086. 
The  German  folk-tales  also  give  the  dwarf  nation  a  king  (no. 
152);  king  of  erdmiinnchen  (Kinderm.  3,  167).  Giibich  (Gibika, 
p.  137)  is  in  the  Harz  legends  a  dwarf -king.  Heiling  is  prince  of 
the  dwarfs  (no.  151). l  These  are  all  kings  of  black  elves,  except 
Oberon,  whom  I  take  to  be  a  light  alb.  It  appears  that  human 
heroes,  by  subduing  the  sovereign  of  the  elves,  at  once  obtain 
dominion  over  the  spirits  ;  it  may  be  in  this  sense  that  Volundr 
is  called  visi  dlfa  (p.  444),  and  Siegfried  after  conquering  Elbe- 
rich  would  have  the  like  pretensions  (see  Suppl.). 

The  ON.  writings  have  preserved  plenty  of  dwarfs'  names 
which  are  of  importance  to  the  study  of  mythology  (loc.  princ. 
Saam.  2b  3a).  I  pick  out  the  rhyming  forms  Vitr  and  Litr,  Fill 
and  Kill,  Fialarr  and  Galarr,  Skirvir  and  Virvir,  Anar  and  Onar, 
Finnr  and  Ginnr,  as  well  as  the  absonant  Bicor  and  Bavor. 
Ndr  and  Ndinn  are  manifestly  synonymous  (mortuus),  and  so 
are  Thrdr  and  Thrdinn  (contumax,  or  rancidus?).  With  Ndinn 
agrees  'Dtli an  (mortuus  again);  with  Oinn  (timidus)  Moinn ; 
Dvalinn,  Durinn,    Thorinn,    Fundhvn,    shew    at   least    the  same 

1  A  curious  cry  of  grief  keeps  recurring  in  several  dwarf-stories:  '  the  king  is 
dead!  Urban  is  dead!  old  mother  Pumpe  is  dead!'  (Buscking's  Woch.  nadir.  1. 
99.  101);  tke  old  schumpe  is  dead  !  (Legend  of  Bonikau),  MHG.  sckumpIV,  Pragm. 
36c ;  conf.  Bange's  Tkiir.  ckron.  49*,  where  again  tkey  say  '  king  Knoblauch 
(Kfirlic)  is  dead  !  '  Taking  into  account  the  saying  in  Saxony,  '  de  gauefru  ist  mi 
al  dot!  '  with  evident  allusion  to  the  motherly  goddess  (p.  253),  and  the  similar 
phrase  in  Scandinavia,  '  nu  eru  dauo'ar  allar  disir  !'  (p.  40'2);  all  these  exclama- 
tions seem  to  give  vent  to  a  grief,  dating  from  the  oldest  times,  for  the  death  of 
some  superior  being  (see  Suppl.). 


454  WIGHTS   AND   ELVES. 

participial  ending.  Alfr,  Ganddlfr,  and  Vinddlfr  place  the  con- 
nexion of  elves  and  dwarfs  beyond  doubt.  Ai  occurs  twice, 
and  seems  to  mean  avus,  as  in  Ssem.  100a;  Finnr  and  Billingr 
are  like  the  heroes'  names  discussed  on  pp.  373,  380.  Nyr,  and 
Niffi,  Nyr  and  Nyrdcfr  have  reference  to  phases  of  the  moon's 
lie-lit;  a  few  other  names  will  be  touched  upon  later.  In  Sasm. 
45b  and  Sn.  48.  130  all  dwarfs  are  said  to  be  '  I  valla  synir,' 
sons  of  Ivaldi,  and  he  seems  identical  with  the  elvish  Ivaldr, 
father  of  I/Sunn,  Saem.  89%  just  as  Folkvaldr  and  Folkvaldi  (AS. 
Folcwealda),  Domvaldr  and  Domvaldi  =  Domaldi,  are  used  in- 
differently. Ivaldr  answers  to  the  Dan.  Evald  and  our  Ewald, 
a  rare  name  in  the  older  documents  :  we  know  the  two  St. 
Ewalds  (niger  et  albus)  who  were  martyred  in  the  elder  Pipings 
time  (695)  and  buried  at  Cologne,  but  were  of  English  origin. 
Beda  5,  10  spells  it  Hew  aid,  and  the  AS.  transl.  Hedwold  (see 
Suppl.). 

Of  the  dwellings  of  light  elves  in  heaven  the  folk-tales  have 
no  longer  anything  to   tell ;    the  more  frequently  do  they  de- 
scribe those  of  dwarfs  in  the  rifts  and  caves  of  the  mountains. 
Hence  the  AS.  names  bergcelfen,  duncelfen,  muntcelfen.     ON.  'by 
ec  for  iorcf  neftan,  a  ec  iindr  steini  staft/  I  dwell  underneath 
the  earth,  I  have  under  stone  my  stead,  Saem.  48a.     'dvergr  sat 
undir  steininum,'  Yngl.  saga,  cap.  15.     'dvergar  bua  i  ior&a  oc 
i  steinum,'  Sn.  15.     Mbenstein,  Blphinstone,  are  names  of  noble 
families,   see   Elivenstein,  Weisth.   1,   4.       In    the    Netherlands 
the  hills  containing   sepulchral  urns   are  vulgarly  denominated 
alfenbcrgen  (Belg.  mus.  5,  64).      Treasures  lie  hidden  in  graves 
as  they  do  in  the  abodes  of  elves,  and  the  dead  are  subterraneans 
as  these  are.     And  that  is  why   dwarfs  are  called  erdmdnnlein, 
erdmanneken,  in  Switzerland  hdrdmdndle,  sometimes  even  unter- 
irdische,  Dan.  under jordishe.1     They  scamper  over  moss  and  fell, 
and  are  not  exhausted  by  climbing  steep  precipices  :  '  den  wilden 

1  I  cannot  yet  make  out  the  name  arweqgers,  by  which  the  earth-men  are  called 
up  in  Kinderm.  2, 163-4.  [erd-wihte?  v.  ar-  for  erd-,  p.  467,  1.  3  ;  and  wegiin,  p.  449] . 
The  ON.  arvakr  is  hardly  the  same  (see  Suppl.)-  In  Pruss.  Samogitia  '  de  uncler- 
MrdscTikes'' ;  the  tales  about  them  carefully  collected  by  Eeusch,  no.  48-59.  The 
Wends  of  Luneburg  called  subterranean  spirits  g'orzoni  (hill-mannikius,  fr.  gora, 
hill),  and  the  hills  they  baunted  are  still  shown.  When  they  wished  to  borrow 
baking  utensils  of  men,  they  gave  a  sign  without  being  seen,  and  people  placed 
them  outside  the  door  for  them.  In  the  evening  they  brought  them  back,  knocking 
at  the  window  and  adding  a  loaf  by  way  of  thanks  (Jugler's  Worterb.).  The  Es-y 
thonian  mythology  also  has  its  subterraneans  (ma  allused,  under  ground). 


ELVES,   DWARFS.  455 

getivergen  waere  ze  stigen  da  genuoc/  enough  climbing  for  wild 
dwarfs,  says  Wh.  57,  25,  speaking  of  a  rocky  region.1  The  popu- 
lar beliefs  in  Denmark  about  the  biergmand,  biergfolk,  biergtrold, 
are  collected  in  Molbech's  Dial.  lex.  p.  35-6.  The  biergmand's 
wife  is  a  biergehone.  These  traditions  about  earth-men  and 
mountain-sprites  all  agree  together.  Slipping  3  into  cracks  and 
crevices  of  the  hills,  they  seem  to  vanish  suddenly,  'like  the 
schwick/  as  the  Swiss  tale  has  it,  and  as  suddenly  they  come  up 
from  the  ground ;  in  all  the  places  they  haunt,  there  are  shown 
such  dwarfs  holes,  querlich's  holes.  So  the  ludhi  in  Lausitz  make 
their  appearance  out  of  underground  passages  like  mouseholes ; 
a  Breton  folk-song  speaks  of  the  horred's  grotto  (Villemarque 
1,  36).  In  such  caves  they  pursue  their  occupations,  collecting 
treasures,  forging  weapons  curiously  wrought ;  their  kings  fashion 
for  themselves  magnificent  chambers  underground,  Elberich, 
Laurin  dwell  in  these  wonderful  mountains,  men  and  heroes  at 
times  are  tempted  down,  loaded  with  gifts,  and  let  go,  or  held 
fast  (see  Suppl.).  Dietrich  von  Bern  at  the  close  of  his  life  is 
fetched  away  by  a  dwarf,  Deut.  heldens.  p.  300 ;  of  Etzel,  says 
the  Nibelungs'  Lament  2167,  one  knows  not  '  ob  er  sich  ver- 
sliiffe  in  locher  der  stein  wende,'  whether  he  have  slipped  away 
into  holes  of  the  rocks3:  meaning  probably,  that,  like  Tann- 
hauser  and  faithful  Eckart,  he  has  got  into  the  mount  wherein 
Lame  Venus  dwells.  Of  this  Dame  Venus's  mount  we  have  no 
accounts  before  the  15-16th  centuries;  one  would  like  to  know 
what  earlier  notions  lie  at  the  bottom  of  it :  has  Dame  Venus 
been  put  in  the  place  of  a  subterranean  elf-queen,  or  of  a  goddess, 
such  as  Dame  Holda  or  Frikka  ?  Heinrich  von  Morunge  sings 
of  his  beloved,  MS.  1,  55a : 

Und  dunket  mich,  wie  si  ge  zuo  mil*  dur  ganze  muren, 

ir  trust  und  ir  helfe  lazent  mich  niht  triiren ; 

swenne  si  wil,  so  viieret  sie  mich  hinnen 

mit  ir  wizen  hant  ho  he  iiber  die  zinnen. 

ich  weene  sie  ist  ein  Venus  here. 

1  Other  instances  are  collected  in  Ir.  Elfenm.  lxxvi.  ■  den  here  bfiten  wildiu 
getiverc,'  wild  dwarfs  inhabited  the  hill,  Sigenot  118. 

2  Sliefen  is  said  of  them  as  of  the  fox  in  lleinh.  xxxi. ;  our  suhst.  schlucht 
stands  for  sluft  (beschwichtigen,  lucht,  kracht.for  swiften,  lnft,  kraft),  hence  a  hole 
to  slip  into. 

3  Conf.  Deutsche  sagen,  no.  38J,  on  Theodeiic's  soul,  how  it  is  conveyed  into 
Vulcan's  alj\ss. 

VOL.    II.  C 


456  WIGHTS   AND   ELVES. 

(Metliinks  she  comes  to  me  through  solid  walls,  Her  help,  her 
comfort  lets  me  nothing  fear ;  And  when  she  will  she  wafteth  me 
from  here  With  her  white  hand  high  o'er  the  pinnacles.  I  ween 
she  is  a  Venus  high.)  He  compares  her  then  to  a  Venus  or 
Holda,  with  the  elvish  power  to  penetrate  through  walls  and 
carry  you  away  over  roof  and  tower  (see  chap.  XXXI.,  Tann- 
hauser;  and  Suppl.).  Accordingly,  when  a  Hessian  nursery- 
tale  (no.  13)  makes  three  haule-mannerchen  appear,  these  are 
henchmen  of  Holle,  elves  in  her  retinue,  and  what  seems  espe- 
cially worthy  of  notice  is  their  being  three,  and  endowing  with 
gifts  :  it  is  a  rare  thing  to  see  male  beings  occupy  the  place  of 
the  fortune-telling  wives.  Elsewhere  it  is  rather  the  little  earth- 
wives  that  appear;  in  Hebel  (ed.  5,  p.  268)  Eveli  says  to  the 
wood-wife  :  '  God  bless  you,  and  if  you're  the  earth-mannikin' s 
ivife,  I  won't  be  afraid  of  you.' l 

There  is  another  point  of  connexion  with  Holda :  the  ex- 
pressions '  die  guten  holden'  (p.  266),  c  guedeholden'  penates 
(Teutonista),  or  holdichen,  holdeken,  holderchen  seem  perfectly 
synonymous  with  '  the  good  elves;'  holdo  is  literally  a  kind, 
favourably  disposed  being,  and  in  Iceland  liuflingar  (darlings) 
and  huldufolk,  Imldumenn  (p.  272)  are  used  for  alfar.  The  form 
of  the  Dan.  hyldemand  is  misleading,  it  suggests  the  extraneous 
notion  of  hyld  (sambucus,  elder- tree),  and  makes  Dame  Holda 
come  out  as  a  hyldemoer  or  hyldeqvind,  viz.,  a  dryad  incorporated 
with  that  tree  (Thiele  1,  132) ;  but  its  real  connexion  with  the 
huldre  is  none  the  less  evident.  Thus  far,  then,  the  elves  are 
good-natured  helpful  beings ;  they  are  called,  as  quoted  on  p. 
452,  the  stille  volk  (Deut.  sagen,  No.  30-1),  the  good  people,  good 
neighbours,  peaceful  folk  (Gael,  daoine  shi,  Ir.  daoine  maith,  Wei. 
dynion  mad).  When  left  undisturbed  in  their  quiet  goings  on, 
they  maintain  peace  with  men,  and  do  them  services  when  they 
can,  in  the  way  of  smith-work,  weaving  and  baking.  Many  a 
time  have  they  given  to  people  of  their  new-baked  bread  or  cakes 
(Mone's  Anz.  7,  475).  They  too  in  their  turn  require  man's 
advice  and  assistance  in  certain  predicaments,  among  which  are 

i  One  winter  Hadding  was  eating  bis  supper,  when  suddenly  an  earth-wife 
pushed  her  head  vp  through  the  floor  by  the  fireside,  and  offered  him  green  vege- 
tables. Saxo,p.  16,  calls  her  cicutarum  gerula,  and  makes  her  take  Hadding  into 
the  subterranean  land,  where  are  meadows  covered  with  grass,  as  in  our  nursery- 
tales  which  describe  Dame  Holla's  underground  realm.  This  grass- wife  resembles 
a  little  earth-wife. 


ELVES,    DWARFS.  457 

to  be  reckoned  three  cases  in  particular.  In  the  first  place,  they 
fetch  goodwives,  midwives,  to  assist  she-dwarfs  in  labour ; l  next, 
men  of  understanding  to  divide  a  treasure,  to  settle  a  dispute ; 2 
thirdly,  they  borrow  a  hall  to  hold  their  weddings  in  ; s  but  they 
requite  every  favour  by  bestowing  jewels  which  bring  luck  to  the 
man's  house  and  to  his  descendants.  They  themselves,  however, 
have  much  knowledge  of  occult  healing  virtues  in  plants  and 
stones.4  In  Rudlieb  xvii.  18,  the  captured  dwarf  retorts  the 
taunt  of  treachery  in  the  following  speech  : 


1  Ranzan,  Alvensleben,  Hahn.  (Deut.  sag.  no.  41,  68-9) ;  Miillenh.  Schlesw. 
hoist,  sag.  no.  443-4.  Asbibrn  Norw.  s.  1,  18.  Irish  legends  and  fairy  tales  1, 
245-250.       Mone's  Anz.  7,  475 ;  conf.   Thiele    1,   36. — Hulpher's    Samlingen   oin 

Jamtland  (Westeras  1775,  p.  210)  has  the  following  Swedish  story : '  ar  1660,  da 

jag  tillika  nied  ruin  hustru  var  gangen  til  faboderne,  som  ligga  'i  mil  ifran  llagunda 
prastegard,  och  der  sent  oin  qvallen  suttit  och  talt  en  stund,  kom  en  liteu  man 
ingaende  genoni  dbren,  och  bad  min  hustru,  det  ville  bon  hjelpa  bans  hustru,  som 
da  lag  och  qvaldes  med  barn,  karlen  var  eljest  liten  til  viixten,  svart  i  syneu,  och 
med  gamla  gra  klader  forsedd.  Jag  och  min  hustru  sutto  en  stund  och  undrade 
pa  deune  mannen,  emedan  vi  understodo,  at  han  var  et  troll,  och  libit  beriittas,  det 
sadane,  af  bondfolk  vettar  kallade,  sig  altid  i  fabodarne  ujipehalla,  sedan  folket  om 
hosten  sig  derifran  begifvit.  Men  som  han  4  a  5  ganger  sin  begjiran  payrkade,  och 
man  derhos  betankte,  hvad  skada  bondfolket  beratta  sig  ibland  af  vettarne  lidit, 
da  de  antingen  svurit  pa  dem,  eller  eljest  vist  dem  med  vranga  ord  til  helvetet ; 
ty  fattade  jag  da  til  det  radet,  at  jag  laste  ofver  min  hustru  nagre  boner,  valsignade 
henne,  och  bad  henne  i  Cuds  namn  foljamed  honom.  Hon  tog  sa  i  hastighet  nagre 
gamla  linklader  med  sig,  och  fiilgde  honom  at,  men  jag  blef  qvar  sittande.  Sedan 
nar  hon  mig  vid  aterkomsten  berattat,  at  da  hon  gatt  med  mannen  utom  porten, 
tykte  hon  sig  liksom  foras  udi  vadret  en  stund,  och  kom  sa  uti  en  stuga,  hvarest 
bredevid  var  en  liten  mork  kammare,  das  bans  hustru  lag  och  vandades  med  barn 
i  en  siing,  min  hustru  liar  sa  stigit  til  henne,  och  efter  en  liten  stund  bjelpt  henne, 
da  hon  fodde  barnet,  och  det  med  lika  atbbrder,  som  andra  menniskor  plaga  hafva. 
Karlen  har  sedan  tilbudit  henne  mat,  men  som  hon  dertil  nekade,  ty  tackade  han 
henne  och  fblgde  henne  at,  hvarefter  hon  ater  likasom  farit  i  vadret,  och  kom  efter 
en  stund  til  porten  igen  vid  passklockan  10.  Emedlertid  voro  en  hoper  gamla 
silfverskedar  lagde  pa  en  hylla  i  stugan,  och  fann  min  hustru  dem,  da  hon  andra 
dagen  stbkade  i  vraarne  :  kunnandes  forsta,  at  de  af  vettret  voro  dit  lagde.  At  sa 
i  sanning  iir  skedt,  vitnar  jag  med  mitt  nanins  undersattande.     Ragunda,  d.  12 

april,  1671.     Pet.  Rahm.'     [Substance  of  the  foregoing : 1,  the  undersigned,  and 

my  wife  were  accosted  by  a  little  man  with  black  fac<  and  old  gray  clothes,  who 
begged  my  wife  to  come  and  aid  his  wife  then  in  labour.  Seeing  he  was  a  troll, 
such  as  the  peasantry  call  vettar  (wights),  I  prayed  over  my  wife,  blessed  her,  and 
bade  her  go.  She  seemed  for  a  time  to  be  borne  along  by  the  wind,  found  his  wife 
in  a  little  dark  room,  and  helped,  etc.  Refused  food,  was  carried  home  in  the 
same  way  ;  found  next  day  a  heap  of  old  silver  vessels  brought  by  the  vettr.1 

In  Finland  the  vulgar  opinion  holds,  that  under  the  altars  of  churches  there  live 
small  mis-shapen  beings  called  hirkonwdki  (church-folk) ;  that  when  their  women 
have  difficult  labour,  they  can  be  relieved  by  a  Christian  woman  visiting  them  and 
laying  her  hand  on  them.  Such  service  they  reward  liberally  with  gold  and  silver. 
Mnemosyne,  Abo  1821,  p.  313. 

2  Pref.  p.  xxx.  Neocorus  1,  542.  Kindcrm.  2,  43.  3,  172.  225.  Nib.  92,  3. 
Bit.  7819.     Conf.  Deutsche  heldensagen,  p.  78. 

3  Hoia  (Deut.  sagen,  no.  35).  Bonikau  (Elisabeth  von  Orleans,  Strassb.  1789, 
p.  133 ;  Leipzig  1820,  p.  450-1).     Busching'a  Wbchentl.  nachr.  1,  98  ;  conf.  101. 

4  The  wounded  hardmandle,  p.  450-1.  Here  are  two  Swedish  Btories  (riven  in 
Udmau's  Bahusliin  pp.  191,  224  : Bibru  Martensson,  accompanied  by  an  archer, 


458  WIGHTS   AND   ELVES. 

Absit  ut  inter  nos  unquam  regnaverit  haec  fraus  ! 
non  tarn  longaevi  tunc  essemus  neque  sani. 
Inter  vos  nemo  loquitur  nisi  corde  doloso, 
hinc  neque  ad  aetatem  maturam  pervenietis  : 
pro  cuj usque  fide  sunt  ejus  tempora  vitae. 
Non  aliter  loquimur  nisi  sicat  corde  tenemus, 
neque  cibos  varios  edinms  morbos  generantes, 
long ias  incolumes  hinc  nos  durabimus  ac  vos. 

Thus  already  in  the  10th  century  the  dwarf  complains  of  the 
faithlessness  of  mankind,  and  partly  accounts  thereby  for  the 
shortness  of  human  life,  while  dwarfs,  because  they  are  honest 
and  feed  on  simple  viands,  have  long  and  healthy  lives.  More 
intimately  acquainted  with  the  secret  powers  of  nature,  they  can 
with  greater  certainty  avoid  unwholesome  food.  This  remark- 
able passage  justifies  the  opinion  of  the  longevity  of  dwarfs  ;  and 
their  avoidance  of  human  food,  which  hastens  death,  agrees 
with  the  distinction  drawn  out  on  p.  318  between  men  and  gods 
(see  Suppl.). 

went  hunting  in  the  high  woods  of  Ornekulla ;  there  they  found  a  bergsmed 
(mountain-smith)  asleep,  and  the  huntsman  ordered  the  archer  to  seize  him,  but 
he  declined :  'Pray  God  shield  you  !  the  bergsmith  will  fling  you  down  the  hill.' 
But  the  huntsman  was  so  daring,  he  went  up  and  laid  hands  on  the  sleeper ;  the 
bergsmith  cried  out,  and  begged  they  would  let  him  go,  he  had  a  wife  and  seven 
little  ones,  and  he  would  forge  them  anything  they  liked,  they  had  only  to  put  the 
iron  and  steel  on  the  cliff,  and  they'd  presently  find  the  work  lying  finished  in  the 
same  place.  Biorn  asked  him,  whom  he  worked  for  ?  '  For  my  fellows,'  he 
replied.  As  Biorn  would  not  release  him,  he  said:  'Had  I  my  cap-of-darkness 
(uddehat,  p.  463),  you  should  not  carry  me  away  ;  but  if  you  don't  let  me  go,  none 
of  your  posterity  will  attain  the  greatness  you  enjoy,  but  will  go  from  bad  to  worse.' 
Which  afterwards  came  true.  Biorn  secured  the  bergsmith,  and  had  him  put  in 
prison  at  Bohus,  but  on  the  third  day  he  had  disappeared. 

At  Mykleby  lived  Swen,  who  went  out  hunting  one  Sunday  morning,  and  on  the 
hill  near  Tyfweholan  he  spied  a  fine  buck  with  a  ring  about  his  neck  ;  at  the  same 
instant  a  cry  came  out  of  the  hill :  '  Look,  the  man  is  shooting  our  ring-buck  ! ' 
'  Nay,'  cried  another  voice,  '  he  had  better  not,  he  has  not  washed  this  morning ' 
(i.e.,  been  sprinkled  with  holy  water  in  church).      When  Swen  heard  that,  he 

immediately ,  washed  himself  in  haste,  and  shot  the  ring-buck.     Then 

arose  a  great  screaming  and  noise  in  the  hill,  and  one  said :  '  See,  the  man  has 
taken  his  belt-flask  and  washed  himself,  but  I  will  pay  him  out.'  Another 
answered :  '  You  had  better  let  it  be,  the  white  buck  will  stand  by  him.'  A  tre- 
mendous uproar  followed,  and  a  host  of  trolls  filled  the  wood  all  round.  Swen 
threw  himself  on  the  ground,  and  crept  under  a  mass  of  roots  ;  then  came  into  his 
mind  what  the  troll  had  said,  that  the  white  buck,  as  he  contemptuously  called  the 
church,  would  stand  by  him.  So  he  made  a  vow,  that  if  God  would  help  him  out 
of  the  danger,  he  would  baud  over  the  buck's  ring  to  Mykleby  church,  the  horns  to 
Torp,  and  the  hide  to  Langeland.  Having  got  home  uninjured,  he  performed  all 
this:  the  ring,  down  to  the  year  1732,  has  been  the  knocker  on  Mykleby  church 
door,  and  is  of  some  unknown  metal,  like  iron  ore  ;  the  buck's  horn  was  preserved 
in  Torp  church,  and  the  skin  in  Langeland  church. 


ELVES,   DWARFS.  459 

Whilst  in  this  and  other  ways  the  dwarfs  do  at  times  have 
dealings  with  mankind,  yet  on  the  whole  they  seem  to  shrink 
from  man;  they  give  the  impression  of  a  downtrodden  afflicted 
race,  which  is  on  the  point  of  abandoning  its  ancient  home 
to  new  and  more  powerful  invaders.  There  is  stamped  on 
their  character  something  shy  and  something  heathenish,  which 
estranges  them  from  intercourse  with  christians.  They  chafe 
at  human  faithlessness,  which  no  doubt  would  primarily  mean 
the  apostacy  from  heathenism.  In  the  poems  of  the  Mid.  Ages, 
Laurin  is  expressly  set  before  us  as  a  heathen.  It  goes  sorely 
against  the  dwarfs  to  see  churches  built,  hell-ringing  (supra, 
p.  5)  disturbs  their  ancient  privacy ;  they  also  hate  the  clearing 
of  forests,  agriculture,  new  fangled  pounding-machinery  for  ore.1 


1  More  fully  treated  of  iu  Ir.  Elfenm.  xciv.  xcv. ;  conf.  Thiele  1,  42.  2,  2.  Fare 
p.  17,  18.  Heinchen  driven  away  by  grazing  herds  and  tinkling  sheepbells,  Variscia 
2,  101.     Hessian  tales  of  wichtelmannerchen,  Kinderm.  no.  39,  to  which  I  add  the 

following  one : On  the  Schwalm  near  Uttershausen  stands  the  Dosenberg ;  close 

to  the  river's  bank  are  two  apertures,  once  tbe  exit  and  entrance  holes  of  the 
wichtelmdnner.  The  grandfather  of  farmer  Tobi  of  Singlis  often  had  a  little 
wichtelniann  come  to  him  in  a  friendly  manner  in  his  field.  One  day,  when  tbe 
farmer  was  cutting  corn,  the  wichtel  asked  him  if  he  would  undertake  a  carting  job 
across  the  river  that  night  for  a  handsome  price  in  gold.  The  farmer  said  yes,  and 
in  the  evening  the  wichtel  brought  a  sack  of  wheat  to  the  farmhouse  as  earnest ;  so 
four  horses  were  harnessed,  and  the  farmer  drove  to  the  foot  of  the  Dosenberg. 
Out  of  the  holes  the  wichtel  brought  heavy  invisible  loads  to  the  waggon,  which  the 
farmer  took  through  the  water  to  the  other  side.  So  he  went  backwards  and 
forwards  from  ten  in  the  evening  till  four  in  the  morning,  and  his  horses  at  last 
got  tired.  Then  said  the  wichtel :  '  That  will  do,  now  you  shall  see  what  you  have 
been  carrying.'  He  bid  the  farmer  look  over  his  right  shoulder,  who  then  saw  the 
whole  wide  field  full  of  little  wichtelmen.  Said  the  wichtel:  '  For  a  thousand  years 
we  have  dwelt  in  the  Dosenberg,  our  time  is  up  now,  we  must  away  to  another 
country  ;  but  there  is  money  enough  left  in  the  mountain  to  content  the  whole 
neighbourhood.'  He  then  loaded  Tobi's  waggon  full  of  money,  and  went  Ins  way. 
The  farmer  with  much  trouble  got  his  treasure  home,  and  was  now  a  rich  man  ; 
his  descendants  are  still  well-to-do  people,  but  the  wichtelmen  have  vanished  from 
the  land  for  ever.  On  the  top  of  the  Dosenberg  is  a  bare  place  where  nothing  will 
grow,  it  was  bewitched  by  the  ivichtel  holding  their  trysts  upon  it.  Every  seven 
years,  generally  on  a  Friday,  you  may  see  a  high  blue  flame  over  it,  covering  a 
larger  space  of  ground  than  a  big  caldron.  People  call  it  the  geldfeuer,  they  have 
brushed  it  away  with  their  feet  (tor  it  holds  no  heat),  in  hopes  of  finding  treasure, 
but  in  vain  :  the  devil  had  always  some  new  hocuspocus  to  make  some  little  word 
pop  out  of  their  mouths. 

Then,  lastly,  a  Low  Saxon  story  of  the  Aller  country : Tau  Offeusen  bin 

Kloster  Wienhusen  was  en  groten  buern,  Hovennann  neune  he  sick,  die  bane  ok  en 
schip  up  der  Aller.  Eins  dages  komt  2  Hie  tau  jum  un  segget,  he  scholle  se  over  dat 
water  schippen.  Tweimal  fauert  hei  over  de  Aller,  jodesmal  na  den  groten  rume, 
den  se  Allero  heiten  dauet,  dat  is  ne  grote  unminscldiche  wische  lan^'  an  breit,  dat 
man  se  kums  afkiken  kann.  Ans  de  buer  taun  tweitenmalo  over  efauert  is, 
ein  von  den  twarmen  to  ome  :  '  Wut  du  nu  ne  summe  geldes  hebben,  oder  wut  du 
na  koptal  betalt  sin?  '  '  Ick  will  leiver  ne  summe  geld  nemen  '  Bsi  de  bner.  Do 
nimt  de  eine  von  den  liitjen  Wen  sinen  haut  af,  un  settet  den  dem  Bohipper  up  : 
'  Du  herrst  dik  doch  beter  estan,  wenn  du  na  koptal  efodert  herrst '  segt  de  twarm  ; 


460  WIGHTS   AND   ELVES. 

Breton  legend  informs  us  :  A  man  had  dug  a  treasure  out  of  a 
dwarf's  hole,  and  then  cautiously  covered  his  floor  with  ashes  and 
glowing  embers ;  so  when  the  dwarfs  came  at  midnight  to  get 
their  property  back,  they  burnt  their  feet  so  badly,  that  they  set 
up  a  loud  wail  (supra,  p.  41 3)  and  fled  in  haste,  but  they  smashed 
all  his  crockery.     Villemarque  1,  42  (see  Suppl.). 

From  this  dependence  of  the  elves  on  man  in  some  things, 
and  their  mental  superiority  in  others,  there  naturally  follows 
a  hostile  relation  between  the  two.  Men  disregard  elves,  elves 
do  mischief  to  men  and  teaze  them.  It  was  a  very  old  belief, 
that  dangerous  arrows  were  shot  down  from  the  air  by  elves ; 
this  evidently  means  light  elves,  it  is  never  mentioned  in  stories 
of  dwarfs,  and  the  AS.  formula  couples  together  '  esagescot  and 
ylfagescot,'  these  elves  being  apparently  armed  with  weapons 
like  those  of  the  gods  themselves; 1  the  divine  thunderbot  is  even 
called  an  albsclioss  (pp.  179,  187),  and  in  Scotland  the  elf-arrow, 
elf-flint,  elf-bolt  is  a  hard  pointed  wedge  believed  to  have  been 
dischai'ged  by  spirits ;  the  turf  cut  out  of  the  ground  by  light- 
ning is  supposed  to  be  thrown  up  by  them.2  On  p.  187  I  have 
already  inferred,  that  there  must  have  been  some  closer  con- 
nexion, now  lost  to  us,  between  elves  and  the  Thundergod  :  if  it 
be  that  his  bolts  were  forged  for  him  by  elves,  that  points  rather 
to  the  black  elves. 

Their  touch,  their  breath  may  bring  sickness  or  death  on  man 
and  beast;3  one  whom  their  stroke  has  falleu  on,  is  lost  or  in- 
capable (Danske  viser  1,  328)  :  lamed  cattle,  bewitched  by  them, 

un  de  buer,  de  vorher  nichts  nich  seien  harre,  un  den  et  so  licbte  in  schipp  vorko- 
rnen  was,  ans  of  he  nichts  inne  herre,  siit  de  ganze  Allero  von  luter  lutjen  minschen 
krimmeln  un  wimmeln.  Dat  sind  de  twarme  west,  dei  wier  trokken  sind.  Von  der 
tit  heft  Hovermanns  noch  immer  vull  geld  ehat,  dat  senich  kennen  deen,  averst  mi 
sind  se  sau  ein  nan  annern  ut  estorven,  un  de  hof  is  verkoft.  '  Wann  ist  denn  das 
gewesen  ?  '  Vor  olen  tien,  ans  de  twarme  noch  sau  in  der  welt  wesen  sind,  nu 
gift  et  er  wol  kerne  mehr,  vor  driittig,  virzig  jaren.      [Substance  of  the  foregoing  : 

Hbvermann,  a  large  farmer  at  Offensen,  had  also  a  ship  on  the  R.  Aller.     Two 

little  men  asked  him  to  ferry  them  over.  He  did  so  twice,  each  time  to  a  large 
open  space  called  Allero.  Dwarf  :  '  Will  you  have  a  lump  sum,  or  be  paid  so  much 
a  head  ?  '  Farmer  :  '  A  lump  sum.'  Dwarf :  '  You'd  better  have  asked  so  much 
a  head.'  He  put  his  own  hat  on  the  farmer's  head,  who  then  saw  the  whole  Allero 
swarming  with  little  men,  who  had  been  ferried  across.  The  Hovermanns  grew  rich, 
have  now  all  died  out,  farm  sold.  '  When  did  that  happen  ? '  Ages  ago,  in  the 
olden  time,  when  dwarfs  were  in  the  world,  30  or  40  years  ago.] 

1  Arrows  of  the  Servian  vila,  p.  436.     The  Norw.  ali-skudt,  elf-shotten,  is  said 
of  sick  cattle,  Sommerfelt  Saltdalens  prastegield,  p.  119,     Scot,  el/shot. 

2  Irish  Elf-stories  xlv.  xlvi.  cii. 

3  Ibid.  ciii. 


ELVES,    DWARFS.  461 

are  said  in  Norway  to  be  dverg-slagen  (Hallager  p.  20)  ;  the  term 
elbentrotsch  for  silly  halfwitted  men,  whom  their  avenging  hand 
has  touched,  was  mentioned  on  p.  443.  One  who  is  seduced  by 
elves  is  called  in  Danish  ellevild,  and  this  ellevildelse  in  reference 
to  women  is  thus  described:  'at  elven  legede  med  dem.' 
Blowing  puffing  beings  language  itself  shews  them  to  be  from 
of  old  :  as  spiritus  comes  from  spirare,  so  does  geist,  ghost  from 
the  old  verb  gisan  (flari,  cum  impetu  ferri) ;  the  ON.  gustr, 
Engl,  gust,  is  flatus,  and  there  is  a  dwarf  named  Gustr  (Seem. 
181b) ; x  other  dwarfs,  Austri,  Vestri,  Nor&ri,  Su&ri  (Sasui.  2\  Sn. 
9.  15.  16)  betoken  the  four  winds,  while  Vindalfr,  still  a  dwarf's 
name,  explains  itself.2  Beside  the  breathing,  the  mere  look  of 
an  elf  has  magic  power :  this  our  ancient  idiom  denominates 
intsehan  (torve  intueri,  Gramm.  2,810),  MHG.  entsehen:  fich 
han  in  gesegent  (blessed),  er  was  entsehen,'  Eracl.  3239  ;  'von 
der  elbe  wirt  entsehen  vil  maneger  man,'  MS.  1,  50b  (see  Suppl.). 
The  knot-holes  in  wood  are  popularly  ascribed  to  elves.  In 
Smaland  a  tale  is  told  about  the  ancestress  of  a  family  whose 
name  is  given,  that  she  was  an  elf  maid,  that  she  came  into  the 
house  through  a  knot-hole  in  the  wall  with  the  sunbeams ;  she  was 
married  to  the  son,  bore  him  four  children,  then  vanished  the 
same  way  as  she  had  come.  Afzelius  2,  145.  Thiele  2,  18. 
And  not  only  is  it  believed  that  they  themselves  can  creep 
through,  but  that  whoever  looks  through  can  see  things  other- 
wise hidden  from  him  ;  the  same  thing  happens  if  jrou  look 
through  the  hole  made  in  the  skin  of  a  beast  by  an  elf's  arrow. 
In  Scotland  a  knot-hole  is  called  elf  bore,  says  Jamieson  :  '  a  hole 
in  a  piece  of  wood,  out  of  which  a  knot  has  dropped  or  been 
driven  :  viewed  as  the  operation  of  the  fairies.'  They  also  say 
auwisbore,  Jutish  atisbor  (Molbech's  Dial.  lex.  p.  22.  94).  If  on 
the  hill  inhabited  by  elves  the  following  rhyme  be  uttered  15 
times  : 

iillkuon,  iillkuon,  est  du  her  inn, 

saa  ska  du  herud  paa  15  iegepinu  ! 

(elf-woman,  art  thou  in  here,  so  shalt  thou  come  out  through  1 5 

1  Norweg.  ah-gust,  an  illness  caused  by  having  been  breathed  upon  by  elves, 
Hallager  4b. 

2  Old  French  legend  has  an  elf  called  Zephyr ;  there  is  a  German  home-sprite 
Blaserle,  Mone's  Anzeiger  1834,  p.  200. 


462  WIGHTS   AND  ELVES. 

oak  knot-holes,  egepind),  the  elfin  is  bound  to  make  her  appear- 
ance, Molb.  Dial.  99  (see  Suppl.). 

In  name,  and  still  more  in  idea,  the  elf  is  connected  with  the 
ghostlike  butterfly,  the  product  of  repeated  changes  of  form. 
An  OHG.  gloss  (Graff  1,  243)  says  :  brucus,  locusta  quae  nondum 
volavit,  quam  vulgo  albam  vocant.  The  alp  is  supposed  often 
to  assume  the  shape  of  a  butterfly,  and  in  the  witch-trials  the 
name  of  elb  is  given  by  tui-ns  to  the  caterpillar,  to  the  chrysalis, 
and  to  the  insect  that  issues  from  it.  And  these  share  even  the 
names  of  gute  hoi  den  and  hose  dinger  (evil  things)  with  the  spirits 
themselves. 

These  light  airy  sprites  have  an  advantage  over  slow  unwieldy 
man  in  their  godlike  power  (p.  325)  of  vanishing  or  making 
themselves  invisible.1  No  sooner  do  they  appear,  than  they  are 
snatched  away  from  our  eyes.  Only  he  that  wears  the  ring  can 
get  a  sight  of  Elberich,  Ortn.  2,  68.  70.  86.  3,  27.  With  the 
light  elves  it  is  a  matter  of  course,  but  neither  have  the  black 
ones  forfeited  the  privilege.  The  invisibility  of  dwarfs  is  usually 
lodged  in  a  particular  part  of  their  dress,  a  hat  or  a  cloak,  and 
when  that  is  accidentally  dropt  or  cast  aside,  they  suddenly 
become  visible.  The  dwarf-tales  tell  of  nebelhappen  (Deut.  sag. 
nos.  152-3-5),  of  gray  coats  and  red  caps  (Thiele  1,  122.  135), 
of  scarlet  cloaks  (supra,  p.  451n.).3  Earlier  centuries  used  the 
words  helkappe,  helkeplein,  helkleit  (Altd.  bl.  1,  256),  nebelkappe 
(MS.  2, 156a.  258b;  Morolt  2922.  3932)  and  tamlzappe.  By  Albe- 
rich's  and  afterwards  Sigfrit's  tamkappe  (Nib.  98,  3.  336,  1. 
442,  2.  1060,  2)  or  simply  Imppe  (335,  1)  we  must  understand 
not  a  mere  covering  for  the  head,  but  an  entire  cloak ;  for 
in  337,  1  we  have  also  tarnhilt,  the  protecting  skin,   and   the 

1  '  Hujus  tempore  principis  (Heinrici  ducis  Karinthiae)  in  montanis  suae 
ditionis  gens  gnava  in  cavernis  montiurn  habitavit,  cum  bominibus  vescebantur, 
ludebant,  bibebant,  choreas  ducebant,  sed  invisibiliter.  Literas  scribebant,  rem- 
publicam  inter  se  gerebant,  legem  habentes  et  principem,  fidem  catholicam  pro- 
ritentes,  domicilia  hominum  latenter  intrantes,  bominibus  consedentes  et  arridentes. 
.  .  .  Principe  subducto,  nihil  de  eis  amplius  est  auditum.  Dicitur  quod 
gemmas  g  est  ant,  quae  eos  reddunt  invisibiles,  quia  deformitatem  et  parvitatem  cor- 
porum  erubescunt.'     Anon.  Leobiens.  ad  ann.  1335  (Pez  1,  940a). 

2  01.  Wormius's  pref.  to  Clausson's  Dan.  transl.  of  Snorre,  Copenh.  1633  :  '  der- 
for  sigis  de  (dverger)  at  halve  hcitte  paa,  huormid  kunde  giore  sig  usynlig.'  Other 
proofs  are  collected  in  Ir.  Elfenm.  lxxiv.  Ixxv.  A  schretel  wears  a  rotez  keppel  on 
him  (not  on  his  head),  ibid.  cxvi.  Bollenhagen's  '  bergmiinnlein  '  wear  little  white 
shirts  and  pointed  caps,  Froschmeuseler  xx.  v1'.  Maugis,  the  Carolingian  sorcerer, 
is  called  '  lerres  (latro)  o  le  noir  chaperon.'1 


ELVES,    DWARFS.  463 

schretePs  rr6tez  heppel'  becomes  in  H.  Sachs  1,  280*  a  '  mantel 

scharlacb  rot  des  zwergleins.'  Beside  invisibility,  this  cloak 
imparts  superior  strength,  and  likewise  control  over  the  dwarf 
nation  and  their  hoard.  In  other  instances  the  cap  alone  is 
meant:  a  Norwegian  folk-tale  in  Faye  p.  30  calls  it  uddehat 
(pointed  hat  ?),  and  a  home-sprite  at  Hildesheim  bears  the  name 
of  Eodeken  from  the  felt  hat  he  wore.  Probably  the  OHG-.  helot- 
helm  (latibulum),  Gl.  Hrab.  969%  the  OS.  helith-helm,  Hel.  164, 
29,  AS.  heolShelm,  Cod.  Exon.  362,  31,  haeWhelm,  Casdm.  29,  2, 
ON.  hiahnr  hnliz  (an  Eddie  word  for  cloud),  Seem.  50V  and  tne 
AS.  grimhelm,  Ca3dm.  188,  27.  198,  20.  Beow.  666,  all  have  a 
similar  meaning,  though  the  simple  helm  and  grime  (p.  238) 
already  contain  the  notion  of  a  covering  and  a  mask  ;  for  helm 
is  from  helan  (celare)  as  huot,  hood,  or  hat,  from  huotan  (tegere) . 
No  doubt  other  superior  beings,  beside  elves  and  dwarfs,  wore 
the  invisible-making  garment ;  I  need  only  mention  Oftin's  hat 
with  turned-up  brim  (p.  146),  Mercury's  petasvs,  Wish's  hat, 
which  our  fairy-tales  still  call  ivishing-hat,2  and  Pluto's  or  Orcus's 
helmet  (fti'Sos  Kvviv,  II.  5,  845.  Hesiod,  Scut.  227).  The  dwarfs 
may  have  stood  in  some  peculiar,  though  now  obscured,  relation 
to  OSinn,  as  the  hat-wearing  pataeci,  cabiri  and  Dioscuri  did  to 
Jupiter  (see  Suppl.). 

From  such  ability  to  conceal  their  form,  and  from  their  teazing 
character  in  general,  there  will  arise  all  manner  of  deception  and 
disappointment  (conf.  Suppl.  to  p.  331),  to  which  man  is  exposed 
in  dealing  with  elves  and  dwarfs.  We  read :  der  alp  trivget 
(cheats),  Fundgr.  327,  18;  den  triuget,  weiz  Got,  nicht  der  alp, 
not  even  the  elf  can  trick  him,  Diut.  2,  34;  Silvester  5199;  dio 
mag  triegen  wol  der  alp,  Suchenwirt  xxxi.  12;  ein  getroc  daz 
mich  in  dem  slafe  triuget,  Ben.  429  ;  dich  triegen  die  elbln  (1.  elln>, 
rhyme  selbe),  Altd.  bl.  1,  261  ;  elbe  tricgent,  Amgb.  2b;  din  elber 
triegent,  Herbort  5b;  in  beduhte  daz  in  triige  ein  alp,  Ir.  elfenm. 
lvii. ;  alfs  ghedroch,  Elegast  51,  775.  Reinh.  5367,  conf.  Horae 
Belg.  6,  218-9;  alfsche  droeh,  Eeinaert  (prose  lxxii.a).     In  our 


1  Fornm.  sog.  2,  141  says  of  Eyvindr  the  sorcerer  :  '  gun-Si  p-eim  hulitkhialm,' 
made  for  them  a  mist,  darkness,  hul  in  hiahnr,  Fornald.  sog.  3,  219  ;  hujUhSttr  1, 
9.    2,  20.     See  Rafn's  Index  sub  v.  dulgerfi. 

2  A  weighty  addition  to  the  arguments  for  the  identity  of  Wuotan  and  Mercury  ; 
conf.  p.  419  on  the  vrishing-rod. 


464  WIGHTS  AND  ELVES. 

elder  speech  gitroc,  getroc,  dgetroc,  abegetroc,  denotes  trickery 
especially  diabolic,  proceeding  from  evil  spirits  (Gramm.  2,  709. 
740-1). 1  To  the  same  effect  are  some  other  disparaging  epithets 
applied  to  elves  :  elbischez  getwas,  elbischez  as,  elbischez  ungehiure, 
as  the  devil  himself  is  called  a  getwas  (fantasma)  and  a  monster. 
So,  of  the  morbid  oppression  felt  in  sleep  and  dreaming,  it  is 
said  quite  indifferently,  either  :  '  the  devil  has  shaken  thee,  ridden 
thee/  '  hinaht  ritert  dich  satanas  (Satan  shakes  thee  to-night)/ 
Fundgr.  1,  170;  or  else  the  elf,  the  nightmare2 :  'dich  hat  geriten 
der  mar/  'ein  alp  zonmet  dich  (bridles  thee)/  And  as  Dame 
Holle  entangles  one's  spinning  or  hair  (p.  2G9),  as  she  herself  has 
tangled  hair,3  and  as  stubbly  hair  is  called  Hollenzopf ; 4  so  the 
nightelf,  the  nightmare,  rolls  up  the  hair  of  men  or  the  manes  and 
tails  of  horses,  in  knots,  or  chews  them  through:  alpzopf,  druten- 
zopf,  wichtelzopf,  weichselzopf  (of  which  more  hereafter),  in  Lower 
Saxony  mahrenlocke,  elfklatte  (Brem.  wortb.  1,  302),  Dan.  mare- 
lok,  Engl,  elfloclcs  (Nares  sub  v.),  elvish  knots,  and  in  Shakspeare 
to  elf  means  to  mat:  'elf  all  my  hair  in  knots/  K.  Lear  ii.  3. 
Here  will  come  in  those  '  comae  equorum  diligenter  tricatae,' 
when  the  white  women  make  their  midnight  rounds  (supra,  p. 
287).  The  Lithuanian  elf  named  aihvaras  likewise  mats  the 
hair :  aitwars  yo  plaukus  suzindo,  suwele  (has  drawn  his  hair  to- 
gether). Lasicz  51  has  :  aitwaros,  incubus  qui  post  sepes  habitat 
(from  twora  sepes,  and  ais  pone).  Some  parts  of  Lower  Saxony 
give  to  the  wichtelzopf  (plica  polonica)  the  name  of  selkensteert, 
selkin's  tail  (Brem.  wortb.  4,  749),  sellentost  (Hufeland's  Journal 
11.  43),  which  I  take  to  mean  tuft  of  the  goodfellow,  homesprite 


1  Daz  analutte  des  sih  pergenten  tmgetievcles,  N.  Bth.  44;  gidrog  pbantasma, 
0.  iii.  8,  24;  gedroq,  Hel.  89,  22  ;  tievels  qetroc,  Karl  62a;  '  ne  dragu  ic  enic  drugi 
thing,'  Hel.  8,  10.  '  The  dwarf  Elberich  (Ortn.  3,  27.  5,  105)  is  called  '  ein  trilge- 
■wiz  ' ;  conf.  infra,  bilwiz. 

2  Our  nachtmar  I  cannot  produce  either  in  OHG.  or  MHG.  Lye  gives  AS. 
'  mcere  fascce '  incubus,  epbialtes,  but  I  do  not  understand  fascce.  Nearly  akin  is 
the  Pol.  mora,  Boh.  mura,  elf  and  evening  butterfly,  sphinx.  In  the  Mark  they  say 
both  alb  and  mahre,  Adalb.  Kuhn,  p.  374.  French  cauchevwre,  cochemar,  also 
chaucheville,  chauchi  vieilli  (Mem.  des  Antiq.  4.  399;  J.  J.  Champollion  Figeac 
patois,  p.  125) ;  Ital.  pesaruole,  Span,  pesadilla,  O.  Fr.  appesart;  these  from  caucher 
(calcare),  and  pesar  (to  weigh  down). 

3  In  Kinderm.  3,  44,  Holle  gets  her  terrible  hair  combed  out,  which  had  not 
been  combed  for  a  year.  A  girl,  whom  she  has  gifted,  combs  pearls  and  precious 
stones  out  of  her  own  hair. 

■*  Hess.  Hollezaul  (for  -zagel,  tail),  Hollezopp,  Schmidt's  Westerw.  idiot.  341. 
Adelung  has  :  '  Iwllenzopf,  plica  polonica,  Pol.  koltun,  Boh.  koltaun.' 


ELVES,   DWARFS.  465 

(gesellchen).1  In  Thuringia  saelloclce,  Prtetorius's  Weltbesclir.  1, 
40.  293  (see  Suppl.). 

The  Edda  nowhere  represents  either  alfar  or  dvergar  as  mounted, 
whilst  our  poems  of  the  Mid.  Ages  make  both  Elberich  and  Laurin 
come  riding.  Heinrich  von  Ofterdingen  bestows  on  them  a  steed 
fals  ein  geiz  (goat)/  and  Ulrich's  Alexander  gives  the  dwarf 
king  Antilois  a  pony  the  size  of  a  roe,2  while  Altd.  bl.  2,  151 
without  more  ado  mounts  the  wihtel  on  a  white  roe.  Antilois  is 
richly  dressed,  bells  tinkle  on  his  bridle-reins ;  he  is  angry  with 
Alexander  for  spoiling  his  flower-garden,  as  Laurin  is  with  Diet- 
rich and  Wittich.  The  Welsh  stories  also  in  Crofton  Croker  3, 
306  say  :  '  they  were  very  diminutive  persons  riding  four  abreast, 
and  mounted  on  small  white  horses  no  bigger  than  dogs '  (see 
Suppl.). 

All  dwarfs  and  elves  are  thievish.  Among  Eddie  names  of 
dwarfs  is  an  Aljriofr,  Seem.  2b ;  Alpris,  more  correctly  Alfrikr 
dvergr,  in  Vilk.  saga  cap.  16,  40.  is  called  '  hinn  mikli  stelari' ; 
and  in  the  Titurel  27,  288  (Halm  4105),  a  notorious  thief,  who 
can  steal  the  eggs  from  under  birds,  is  Elbegast  (corrupted  into 
Elegast,  Algast).  In  our  Low  German  legends  they  lay  their 
plans  especially  against  the  pea-fields?     Other  thefts  of  dwarfs 

i  Ogonczyk  Zakrzewski,  in  his  Hist,  of  plica  polonica  (Vienna,  1830),  observes, 
that  its  cure  also  is  accomplished  with  superstitious  ceremonies.  In  Podlachia  the 
elftult  is  solemnly  cut  off  at  Easter  time  and  buried.  In  the  Skawina  district  about 
Cracow,  it  is  partially  cropped  with  redbot  shears,  a  piece  of  copper  money  tied 
up  in  it,  and  thrown  into  tbe  ruins  of  an  old  castle  in  which  evil  spirits  lodge  ; 
but  whoever  does  this  must  not  look  round,  but  hasten  home  as  fast  as  he  can. 
Superstitious  formulas  for  the  cure  of  plica  are  given  by  Zakrzewski,  p.  20,  out  of 
an  Old  Boh.  MS.  of  1325. 

2  Wackeruagel's  Basel  MSS.  p.  28. 

*  Deut.  sagen,  nos  152,  155  ;  to  which  I  will  here  add  two  communicated  by  Ifr. 

Schambach.    The  first  is  from  Jiibnde,  near  Gottingen  : Yor  nioh  langer  tid  gai 

et  to  Jiine  noch  twarge.  Diise  plegten  up  et  feld  to  gan,  un  den  liien  do  arftea 
(leuten  die  crbsen)  weg  to  stelen,  wat  se  iim  sau  lichter  konnen,  da  se  nnsichtbar 
woren  dor  (durch)  eue  kappe,  dei  se  uppeu  koppe  barren  (hatten).  Sau  woren  nu 
ok  de  twarge  enen  manne  iimmer  up  sin  grat  arftenstiicke  egan,  un  richteden  one 
velen  schaen  darup  an.  Diit  duerde  sau  lange,  bet  hei  up  den  infal  kam,  de  twarge 
to  fengen.  Hei  tog  alsau  an  hellen  middage  en  sel  (seil)  rings  iim  dat  feld.  As  nu 
de  twarge  unner  den  sel  dorkrupen  wollen,  fellen  onen  de  kappen  af,  se  seiten  nu 
alle  in  blaten  koppen,  un  woren  eichtbar.  De  twarge,  dei  sau  efongen  woren, 
geiwen  one  vele  gaue  wore,  dat  he  dat  sel  wcgnomen  mogde,  un  versproken  ene 
mette  (miethe)  geld  davor  to  gewen,  hei  solle  mant  vm-  twmu  nupgange  weer  (wieder) 
an  diise  Btee  komen.  En  ander  man  segde  one  awer,  hei  mogde  nioh  gegen  sun- 
nenupgang,  sundern  scbon  iim  tw5lwe  hengan,  denn  da  wore  de  dag  ok  schon 
anegan,  Diit  de"  he,  und  richtig  woren  de  twarge  da  met  ener  mette  geld.  Davon 
heiten  de  liie,  dei  dei  mette  geld  ekregen  barren,  Mettens.  Epitome  :—  Dwarfs  ai 
Jiihnde  preyed  on  the  pea-fields  ;  wore  caps  ■which  made  them  invisible.  One  man 
at  high  noon  stretched  a  cord  round  his  field.     Dwarfs,  creeping  under  it,  brushed 


466  WIGHTS   AND   ELVES. 

are  collected  in  Elfenm.  xcii.  xciii.,  and  their  longing  for  children 
and  blooming  maids  is  treated  of,  p.  civ.  cv.  Dwarf-kings  run 
away  with  maidens  to  their  mountains  :  Laurin  with  the  fair 
Similt  (Sindhilt  ?),  Goldemar  or  Volmar  with  a  king's  daughter 
(Deut.  heldensag.  174,  Haupt's  Zeitschr.  6,  522-3);  the  Swed. 
folk-lay  'Den  bergtagna'  (-taken)  tells  of  a  virgin,  who  spends 
eight  years  with  a  mountain-king,  and  brings  him  seven  sons  and 
a  daughter,  before  she   sees  her  home   again.1     The    following 

their  caps  off,  became  visible  artel  were  caught ;  promised  him  money,  if  he  came 
there  again  before  sunrise.  A  friend  advised  him  to  go  as  early  as  12,  for  even 
then  the  day  (of  the  dwarfs?)  was  begun.     He  did  so,  and  got  his  meed.] 

The  second  story  is  from  Dorste  in  Osterode  bailiwick : En  buere  harre  arften 

buten  stan,  dei  woren  one  iimmer  utefreten.  Da  word  den  bueren  esegt,  hei  solle 
hengan  un  slaen  met  weenrauen  (weidenruten)  drupe  riim,  sau  sleugde  gewis  einen 
de  kappe  af.  Da  geng  he  ok  hen  met  sinnen  ganzen  liien,  un  funk  ok  enen  twarg, 
dei  sie  (sagte)  tau  one,  wenn  he  one  wier  las  Ian  (wieder  los  lassen)  wolle,  sau  wolle 
one  enn  wagen  vul  geld  gewen,  hei  moste  awer  vor  sunnenupgange  komen.  Da  leit 
ne  de  buere  las,  un  de  twarg  sie  one,  wo  sine  bvile  wore.  Do  ging  de  buere  henn 
un  frang  enn,  wunnir  dat  denn  die  sunne  upginge?  Dei  sie  tau  one,  dei  ginge 
glocke  twolwe  up.  Da  spanne  ok  sinen  wagen  an,  un  tug  hen.  Asse  (as  he)  vor 
de  hiilen  kam,  do  juchen  se  drinne  un  sungen  : 

Dat  ist  gaut,  dat  de  buerken  dat  nich  weit, 
dat  de  sunne  iim  twolwe  up  geit ! 

Asse  sek  awer  melle,  wesden  se  one  en  afgefillet  perd,  dat  solle  mee  (mit)  nomen, 
wier  (weiter)  konnen  se  one  nits  gewen.  Da  was  de  buere  argerlich,  awer  hei  wolle 
doch  fleisch  vor  sine  hunne  mee  nomen,  da  haude  en  grat  stiicke  af,  un  laud  et 
upen  wagen.  Asser  mee  na  hus  kam,  da  was  alles  schire  gold.  Da  wollet  andere 
noch  nae  langen,  awer  da  was  hiile  un  perd  verswunnen.  [Epitome  : — A  farmer, 
finding  his  peas  eaten,  was  advised  to  beat  all  round  with  willow  twigs,  sure  to 
knock  a  dwarf's  cap  off.  Caught  a  dwarf,  who  promised  a  waggon  full  of  money  if 
he'd  come  to  his  cave  before  sunrise.  Asked  a  man  when  sunrise  was  ?  '  At 
twelve.'  Went  to  the  cave,  heard  shouting  and  singing :  ' '  Tis  well  the  poor 
peasant  but  little  knows  that  twelve  is  the  time  when  the  sun  up  goes  ! '  Is  shown 
a  skinned  horse,  he  may  take  that !  Gets  angry,  yet  cuts  a  great  piece  off  for  his 
dogs.  When  he  got  home,  it  was  all  sheer  gold.  Went  for  the  rest ;  cave  and 
horse  were  gone.] 

The  remarkable  trysting-time  before  sunrise  seems  to  be  explained  by  the  dwarf- 
kind's  shyness  of  daylight,  which  appears  even  in  the  Edda,  Sa?m.  51b  ;  they  avoid 
the  sun,  they  have  in  their  caves  a  different  light  and  different  time  from  those  of 
men.  In  Norse  legends  re-appears  the  trick  of  engaging  a  trold  in  conversation  till 
the  sun  is  risen  :  when  he  looks  round  and  sees  the  sun,  he  splits  in  two  ;  Asbiornsen 
and  Moe,  p.  186.  [The  marchen  of  Kumpelstilzchen  includes  the  dwarfs'  song, 
'  'Tis  well,'  etc.,  the  splitting  in  two,  and  the  kidnapping  presently  to  be  men- 
tioned.] 

1  But  she-dwarfs  also  marry  men  ;  Odman  (Bahuslan,  p.  78-9,  conf.  Afzelius  2, 

157)  relates  quite  seriously,  and  specifying  the  people's  names: Beors  foraldrar  i 

Hogen  i  Lurssockn,  some  bodde  i  Fuglekarr  i  Svarteborgssockn  ;  hvars  farfar  var 
en  skott,  ok  bodde  vid  et  berg,  ther  fick  nan  se  mitt  pa  dagen  sitjande  en  vacker 
piga  pa  en  sten,  ther  med  at  ianga  henne,  kastade  han  stal  emellan  berget  ok  henne, 
hvarpa  hennes  far  gasmade  eller  log  in  i  berget,  ok  opnade  bergets  dorr,  tilfragandes 
honom,  om  han  vill  ha  bans  dotter?  Hvilket  han  med  ja  besvarade,  ok  efter  lion 
var  helt  naken,  tog  han  sina  klader  ok  holgde  ofver  henne,  ok  lat  cbristna  henne. 
Vid  aftradet  sade  hennes  far  til  honom  :  '  nar  tu  skalt  ha  brollup,  skalt  tu  laga  til 
12  tunnor  61  ok  baka  en  hop  brod  ok  kiott  efter  4  stutar,  ok  kiora  til  jordlwgen  eller 
berget,  ther  jag  haller  til,  ok  nar  brudskiinken  skall  utdelas,  skall  jag  val  ge  min  ' ; 


ELVES,    DWARFS.  467 

legend  from  Dorste  near  Osterode,  it  will  be  seen,  transfers  to 
dwarfs  what  the  Kinderrmirchen  No.  46  relates  of  a  sorcerer  : — 
Et  was  enmal  en  maken  int  holt  nan  arberen  egan,  da  keirnen  de 
twarge  un  neiment  mee.  Da  se  na  orerhiilen  keimen,  da  verleifde 
sek  de  eine  twarg  in  se,  un  da  solle  se  one  ok  frien,  awer  iest 
(erst)  wollen  de  twarge  de  andern  twarge  taur  hochtit  bidden, 
underdes  solle  dat  rnaken  in  huse  alles  reine  maken  un  taur  hochtit 
anreien.  Awer  dat  niaken,  dat  wolle  den  twarg  nich  frien,  da 
wollet  weglopen,  awer  dat  se't  nich  glik  merken,  tug  et  sin  teug 
ut  un  tug  dat  ne  strawisch  an,  un  da  sach  et  ne  tunne  vul  hunig, 
da  krup  et  rinder  (hinein),  un  da  sach  et  ok  ne  tunne  vul  feddern, 
un  da  krup  et  ok  rinder,  un  da  et  wedder  ruter  karu,  was  et  gans 
vul  feddern,  un  da  leip  et  weg  un  steig  upn  hoagen  boam.  Da 
keirnen  de  twarge  derbunder  (darunter)  vorbi,  un  da  se't  seichen, 
meinen  se,  et  wore  en  vugel,  da  reipen  se't  an  un  seen : 

'  Wohen,  woher  du  sckoiiue  feddervugel  ?  ' 
'  Ek  kome  ut  der  twarges  hillc.' 
1  Wat  maket  de  schoane  junge  brut  ?  ' 
'Dei  steit  metn  bessen  un  keret  dat  hus.' 
'  Juchhei !  sau  wil  wie  ok  hen/ 

Und  da  se  hen  keirnen,  seen  se  taur  brut  ( guen  niorgen/  an 
seen  noch  mehr  dertau  ;  awer  da  se  nich  antwure,  sleuchten  se'r 
hinder  de  aren,  un  da  fell  se  hen1  (see  Suppl.). 

hvilket  ok  skedde.  Ty  nar  de  andre  gafvo,  lyfte  han  up  tacket  ok  kastade  ensa  star 
penningeposse  ther  igenom,  at  biinken  sa  nar  gidt  af,  ok  sade  thervid  :  '  ther  ar  min 
ekiiuk !  '  ok  sade  ytterligare  :  '  nar  tu  skal  ha  tin  hemmagifta,  skaltu  kiora  med  I 
hiistar  hit  til  berget  ok  fa  tin  andel.'  Ta  han  sedermera  efter  bans  begiiran  kom 
tit,  fik  han  kopparkattlar,  then  ene  storre  an  then  andre,  tils  then  yttersta  storate 
kattelen  blef  upfyld  med  andra  mindre ;  item  brandcreatur,  som  voro  hielmeta,  af 
hvilkeu  f;irg  ok  creaturslag,  som  tiro  stora  ok  frodiga,  the  an  ha  qvar  pa  rik,  i 
Tanums  gall  beliiget.  Thenne  mannen  Reors  far  i  Foglekarsten  beniimd,  atiade  en 
hop  barn  med  thenna  sin  saledes  fi-an  berget  afhiimtade  hnstru,  bland  hvilka  var 
namnemannen  Reor  pa  Hogen  ;  so  bar  Ola  Stenson  i  stora  Rijk  varit  Reors  syster- 
pou,  hvilken  i  forledit  ar  med  doden  afgik.  [Epitome  : — Reor's  fatbers  dwelt,  etc. 
One,  an  archer,  lived  near  a  hill,  saw  one  day  at  noon  v.  fine  <jirl  sitting  on  u  stone  : 
to  get  her,  he  threic  steel  between  her  and  the  hill.  Her  father  opened  the  door  of 
the  hill,  asked  him  if  he  wanted  his  daughter.  He  answered  yes,  and  as  she  was 
naked,  threw  some  of  his  clothes  over  her  ;  had  her  christened.  Father:  'At  thy 
wedding  bring  ale,  bread  and  horseflesh  to  my  hill,  and  I  will  give  thee  a  wedding 
gift.'  This  being  done,  he  lifted  their  roof  and  threw  in  a  great  sum  of  money. 
'  Now  for  house-furniture,  come  here  with  four  horses.'  The  man  did  so,  and  re- 
ceived copper  kettles  of  all  sizes,  one  inside  the  other,  etc.,  etc.  By  this  wife,  tlm< 
fetched  from  the  hill,  he  had  many  children ;  one  was  Reor,  whose  nephew  0.  S. 
died  only  last  year.] 

1  Translation  : — Once  a  girl  had  gone  into  the  wood  after  strawberries,  when  the 


468  WIGHTS   AND   ELVES. 

They  abstract  well-shaped  children  from  the  cradle,  and  sub- 
stitute their  own  ugly  ones,  or  even  themselves.  These  sup- 
posititious creatures  are  called  changelings,  cambiones  (App., 
Superst.  E.) ;  OHGr.  wihselinga  (N.  Ps.  17,  46.  Cant.  Deuteron. 
5),  our  wechselbalge ;  Swed.  bytingar,  Dan.  bittinger;  also  our 
kielkropfe,  dickkopfe  from  their  thick  necks  and  heads.  (Stories 
about  them  in  Thiele  1,  47.  3,  1.  Faye  p.  20.  Ir.  Elfenm. 
xli.-xlv.  cv.  Deut.  sag.  nos.  81-2,  87-90. )l  So  early  as  in  the 
poem  'Zeno'  (Bruns  p.  27  seq.)  it  is  the  devil  that  fills  the 
place  of  a  stolen  child.  The  motive  of  the  exchange  seems  to  be, 
that  elves  are  anxious  to  improve  their  breed  by  means  of  the 
human  child,  which  they  design  to  keep  among  them,  and  for 
which  they  give  up  one  of  their  own.  A  safeguard  against  such 
substitution  is,  to  place  a  key,  or  one  of  the  father's  clothes,  or 


dwarfs  came  and  carried  her  off.  When  they  got  to  their  cave,  one  dwarf  fell  in 
love  with  her,  and  she  was  to  marry  him  ;  but  first  the  dwarfs  were  going  to  bid  the 
other  dwarfs  to  the  wedding,  in  the  meantime  the  girl  was  to  make  the  house  clean 
and  prepare  it  for  the  wedding.  But  the  girl,  she  did  not  want  to  marry  the  dwarf, 
so  she  would  run  away ;  but  that  they  might  not  notice  it  at  once,  she  pulled  her 
dress  off  and  put  it  round  a  bundle  of  straw  ;  then  she  saw  a  tub  full  of  honey  and 
crept  into  it,  and  then  she  saw  a  tub  full  of  feathers  and  crept  into  that  also,  and 
when  she  came  out  again,  she  was  all  over  feathers ;  then  she  ran  away,  and  climbed 
up  a  high  tree.  Then  the  dwarfs  came  past  under  it,  and  when  they  saw  her,  they 
thought  she  was  a  bird,  and  called  to  her  and  said  :  'Whither  and  whence,  thou 

pretty  feathered  bird  ? ' '  I  come  out  of  the  dwarf's  hole' 'What  does  the 

pretty  young  bride  ? ' '  She  stands  with  a  besom  and  sweeps  the  house.' 

'  Hurra  !  then  we'll  go  there  too.' And  when  they  got  there,  they  said  to  the 

bride  '  good  morning,'  and  said  other  things  too  ;  but  as  she  never  answered,  they 
boxed  her  ears,  and  down  she  fell. 

Assuredly  the  dwarfs  in  this  story  are  genuine  and  of  old  date.  Besides,  it  can 
be  supplemented  from  Kinderm.  3,  75,  where  the  returning  dwarfs  are  preceded  by 
foxes  and  bears,  who  also  go  past  and  question  the  '  Fitcher's  fowl.'  There  the 
tub  of  honey  in  the  dwarf's  house  is  a  cask  of  blood,  but  both  together  agree  wonder- 
fully with  the  vessels  which  the  dwarfs  Fialar  and  Galar  keep  filled  with  Kvasi's 
precious  blood  and  with  honey.     Sn.  83.  84. 

1  Dresd.  saml.  no.  15,  of  the  '  rnullers  sun.'  A  foolish  miller  begs  a  girl  to  teach 
him  the  sweetness  of  love.  She  makes  him  lick  honey  all  night,  he  empties  a  big 
jar,  gets  a  stomach-ache,  and  fancies  himself  about  to  become  a  parent.  She  sends 
for  a  number  of  old  women  to  assist  him  :  '  da  fragt  er,  war  sein  kind  wer  komen 
(what's  come  of  the  baby)  ?  sie  sprachen  :  hastu  nit  vernommen  ?  ez  was  ain  rehter 
wislonbalk  (regular  changeling),  und  tett  als  ein  guoter  schalk :  da  er  erst  von 
deinem  leib  kam  (as  soon  as  born),  da  fuer  ez  paid  hin  und  entran  hin  uff  zuo  dem 
fiirst  empor.     Der  miiller  sprach  :  paid  hin  uff  daz  spor  !  vachent  ez  (catch  him) ! 

pringent  ez  mir  herab  ! '     They  bring  him  a  swallow  in  a  covered  pot. Again  a 

Hessian  folk-tale  :  A  woman  was  cutting  corn  on  the  Dosenberg,  and  her  infant  lay 
beside  her.  A  wiehtel-wife  crept  up,  took  the  human  child,  and  put  her  own  in  its 
place.  When  the  woman  looked  for  her  darling  babe,  there  was  a  frightful  thick- 
head staring  in  her  face.  She  screamed,  and  raised  such  a  hue  and  cry,  that  at  last 
the  thief  came  back  with  the  child ;  but  she  would  not  give  it  up  till  the  woman 
had  put  the  wiclitelbalg  to  her  breast,  and  nourished  it  for  once  with  the  generous 
milk  of  human  kind. 


ELVES,   DWARFS.  4G9 

steel  and  needles  in  the  cradle  (App.,  Superst.  Germ.  484.  744. 
Swed.  118). * 

One  of  the  most  striking  instances  of  agreement  that  I  know 
of  anywhere  occurs  in  connection  with  prescriptions  for  getting 
rid  of  your  changeling. 

In  Hesse,  when  the  wichtelmann  sees  water  boiled  over  the 
fire  in  eggshells,  he  cries  out :  '  Well,  I  am  as  old  as  the  Wester- 
wold,  but  I  never  saw  anything  boiled  in  eggshells ; '  Km.  no. 
39.  In  Denmark  a  pig  stuffed  with  skin  and  hair  is  set  before 
the  changeling  :  '  Now,  I  have  seen  the  wood  in  Tiso  young  three 
times  over,  but  never  the  like  of  this  ' :  Thiele  1,  48.  Before 
an  Irish  changeling  they  also  boil  eggshells,  till  he  says  :  '  I've 
been  in  the  world  1500  years,  and  never  seen  that';  Elfenm.  p. 
38.  Before  a  Scotch  one  the  mother  puts  twenty-four  eggshells 
on  the  hearth,  and  listens  for  what  he  will  say  ;  he  says  :  '  I  was 
seven  before  I  came  to  my  nurse,  I  have  lived  four  years  since, 
and  never  did  I  see  so  many  milkpans ; '  Scott's  Mintrelsy  2, 
174.  In  the  Breton  folksong  (Villemarque  1,  29)  he  sees  the 
mother  cooking  for  ten  servantmen  in  one  eggshell,  and  breaks 
out  into  the  words  :  '  I  have  seen  the  egg  hefore  [it  became]  the 
white  hen,  and  the  acorn  hefore  the  oak,  seen  it  acorn  and  sapling 
and  oak  in  Brezal  wood,  but  never  aught  like  this/  This  story 
about  the  changeling  is  also  applied  to  Dame  Gauden's  little  dog, 
chap.  XXXI.  Villemarque  1,  32,  quotes  in  addition  a  Welsh 
legend  and  a  passage  from  Geoffrey  of  Monmouth,  in  which  the 
Breton  and  Welsh  formula  for  great  age  is  already  put  into 
the  mouth  of  Merlin  the  wild ;  in  each  case  an  ancient  forest  is 
named.  In  all  these  stories  the  point  was,  by  some  out-of-the- 
way  proceeding,  to  get  the  changeling  himself  to  confess  his  age, 
and  consequently  the  exchange.  Such  traditions  must  have 
been  widely  spread  in  Europe  from  the  earliest  times;  and  it  was 
evidently  assumed,  that  elves  and  korred  had  a  very  different 
term  of  life  assigned  them  from  that  of  the  human  race  (see 
Suppl.). 

All  elves  have  an  irresistible  fondness  for  music  and  dancing. 
By  night  you  see  them  tread  their  round  on  the  moonlit  meadows, 

1  The  Finns  call  a  changeling  luoti :  monstrnm  necnon  infans  matre  dormiente 
a  magis  suppositus,  quales  putant  esse  infantern  rachitide  laborantem  (Renvall).  A 
Breton  story  of  the  korrigan  changing  a  child  is  in  Villein  arque  1,  2a. 


470  WIGHTS  AND   ELVES. 

and  at  dawn  perceive  their  track  in  the  dew  :  Dan.  cdledands, 
Swed.  alfdands,  Engl,  fairy  rings,  fairy  green.  The  sight  of 
mountain-spirits  dancing  on  the  meadows  betokens  to  men  a 
fruitful  year  (Deut.  sag.  no.  298).  An  Austrian  folk-song  in 
Schottky,  p.  102,  has  :  '  und  duiirt  drobn  afm  beargl,  da  danzn 
zwoa  zweargl,  de  danzn  so  rar/  In  Laurin's  mountain,  in 
Venus's  mountain,  there  murmurs  a  gay  seductive  music,  dances 
are  trod  in  them  (Laurin,  24)  ;  in  the  Ortnit  (Ettm.  2,  17)  there 
is  'ein  smalez  pfat  getreten  mit  Jcleinen  fiiezen/  a  small  path 
trod  by  little  feet.  Songs  of  elfins  allure  young  men  up  the 
mountain,  and  all  is  over  with  them  (Svenska  fornsanger  2,  305. 
Danske  viser  1,  235-240). 1  This  performance  is  called  eljfrus  leh, 
elfvelek.  The  ordinary  fornyrbalag 2  bears  among  Icelandic  poets 
the  name  liiiflingslag  (carmen  genii),  Olafsen  p.  56 ;  in  Norway 
that  kind  of  sweet  music  is  called  huldresldt  (supra,  p.  271). 
One  unprinted  poem  in  MHG.  (Cod.  pal.  341.  357a)  contains 
the  remarkable  passage  :  '  there  sat  fiddlers,  and  all  fiddled  the 
albleich  (elf-lay)  ' ;  and  another  (Altd.  bl.  2,  93)  speaks  of 
'  seiten  spil  und  des  wihtels  schal'  :  it  must  have  been  a  sweet 
enchanting  strain,  whose  invention  was  ascribed  to  the  elves.3 
Finn  Magnusen  derives  the  name  of  the  dwarf  Haugspori  (Sasni. 
2b)  from  the  footmarks  printed  on  grass  by  an  elf  roaming  over 
the  hills  at  night.  And  a  song  in  Villemarque  1,  39  makes  the 
dwarfs  dance  themselves  out  of  breath  (see  Suppl.) . 

This  fondness  of  elves  for  melody  and  dance  links  them  with 
higher  beings,  notably  with  half-goddesses  and  goddesses.  In 
the  ship  (of  Isis)  songs  of  joy  resound  in  the  night,  and  a  dancing 
multitude  circles  round  it  (p.  258).  In  Dame  Holda's  dwelling, 
in  Dame  Venus's  mountain,  are  the  song  and  the  dance.  Celtic 
traditions  picture  the  fays  as  dancing  (Mem.  de  l'acad.  celt.  5, 
108) ;  these  fays  stand  midway  between  elfins  and  wise  women.4 
The  Hymn  to  Aphrodite  260  says  of  the  mountain-nymphs : 

Bnpbv  fxev  ^coovgl  fcai  afxfiporov  el8ap  eSovai, 
Kal  re  jxer   aOavdroicri  ko\ov  x°Pov  ^ppaxravro. 

1  Folk-tale  of  the  Hanebierg  in  the  Antiqvariske  Annaler  1,  331-2. 

2  Forn-yr'Sa-lag,  ancient  word-lay,  the  alliterative  metre  of  narrative  verse,  in 
which  the  poems  of  the  Elder  Edda  are  written. — Trans. 

3  Conf.  Ir.  Elfenm.  lxxxi.-lxxxiii.,  and  the  wihtel-show  above,  p.  441  note  ;  Eire 
sub  v.  alfiians ;  Arndt's  Journey  to  Sweden  3,  16. 

4  Like  the  Servian  v'dy,  who  lioid  their  dance  on  mountain  and  mead,  p.  4oC. 


ELVES,    DWARFS.  471 

(On  deathless  food  they  feed,  and  live  full  long,  And  whirl  with 
gods  through  graceful  dance  and  song.)  No  wonder  our  sage 
elves  and  dwarfs  are  equally  credited  with  having  the  gift  of 
divination.  As  such  the  dwarf  Andvari  appears  in  the  Edda 
(Saem.  181a),  and  still  more  Alvts  (all-wise)  ;  dwarf  Eugel  (L. 
Germ.  Ogel)  prophesies  to  Siegfried  (Hiirn.  Sifr.  46,  4.  162,  1), 
so  does  Grripir  in  the  Edda,  whose  father's  name  is  Eylimi;  in 
the  OFr.  Tristran,  the  nains  (nanus)  Frocin  is  a  devins  (diviuator), 
he  interprets  the  stars  at  the  birth  of  children  (11.  318-326.  632). 
When,  in  legends  and  fairy  tales,  dwarfs  appear  singly  among 
men,  they  are  sage  counsellors  and  helpful,  but  also  apt  to  fire  up 
and  take  offence.  Such  is  the  character  of  Elberich  and  Oberon ; 
in  a  Swiss  nursery- tale  (no.  165),  'e  chlis  isigs  mandle'  (a  little 
ice-grey  mannikin),  ce  chlis  mutzigs  mandle'  (stumpy  m.),  ap- 
pears in  an  Msige  chliiidle '  (grey  coat),  and  guides  the  course 
of  events ;  elves  forewarn  men  of  impending  calamity  or  death 
(Ir.  Elfenm.  lxxxvi.).  And  in  this  point  of  view  it  is  not  without 
significance,  that  elves  and  dwarfs  ply  the  spinning  and  weaving 
so  much  patronized  by  Dame  Holda  and  Frikka.  The  flying  gos- 
samer in  autumn  is  in  vulgar  opinion  the  thread  spun  by  elves  and 
dwarfs;  the  Christians  named  it  Marienfaden  (-thread),  Marien- 
sommer,  because  Mary  too  was  imagined  spinning  and  weaving. 
The  Swed.  dverg  signifies  araneus  as  well  as  nanus,  and  dvergs-ndt 
a  cobweb.1  The  ON.  saga  of  Samson  hinn  fagri  mentions  in  cap. 
17  a  marvellous  f  skickja,  sem  dlfkonurnar  hofSu  ofit'  mantle  that 
elfins  had  woven.  On  a  hill  inhabited  by  spirits  you  hear  at 
night  the  elfin  (which  '  troldkone '  here  must  mean)  spinning, 
and  her  wheel  humming,  says  Thiele  3,  25.  Melusina  the  fay  is 
called  alvinne  in  a  Mid.  Nethl.  poem  (Moneys  Niederl.  Volkslit. 

p.  75). On  the  other  hand,  the  male  dwarfs  forge  jewels  and 

arms  (supra,  p.444-7,  and  in  fuller  detail  in  Ir.  Elfenm.  lxxxviii.).3 

1  So  the  Breton  horr  is  both  dwarf  and  spider. 

2  Here  is  one  more  legend  from  Odmau's  Bahuslan,  p.  79  : Thessutan  har 

man  atskillige  beriittelser  ok  sagor  om  smedar,  sa  i  hiigar  som  biirg,  sasom  har  i 
Fossumstorp  hogar,  hvarest  man  hordt,  at  the  siuidt  liksom  i  en  annan  smidja  oro 
aftonen  efter  solenes  nedergdng,  ok  eljest  mitt  pa  hoga  middagen.  For  80  in-  sedan 
p;ik  Olas  fadar  i  Surtuug,  beniimd  Ola  Simunsson,  har  i  forsamlingen  Mn  Slangevald 
bafvandes  med  sig  en  hund,  hvilken  ta  ban  blef  varse  mitt  pa  dagen  bdrgsmannen, 
som  ta  smidde  pd  en  star  sten,  skialde  ban  pa  bonom,  hvar  pa  bargsmeden,  som  hade 
on  liusgrd  rdk  ok  bldvulen  hatt,  begynte  at  snarka  at  bunden,  som  tillika  med  1ms 
bonden  funno  rMeligast,  at  lemna  bonom  i  fred.  Tbet  gifvas  ok  iinnu  ibland 
gemene  man  sma  crucifixer  af  metall,  som  gemenbgen  balles  fore  vara  i  fordna 

VOL.  II.  D 


472 


WIGHTS   AND   ELVES. 


To  bring  pig-iron  to  dwarfs,  and  find  it  the  next  morning  outside 
the  cave,  ready  worked  for  a  slight  remuneration,  is  a  feature  of 
very  ancient  date;  the  scholiast  on  Apollon.  Rhod.  (Argon.  4, 
761)  illustrates  the  a/cftoves  'Hfyalaroio  (anvils  of  H.)  by  a  story 
of  the  volcanic  isles  about  Sicily  taken  from  Pytheas's  Travels : 
to  be  iraXatov  iXeyero  tov  j3ov\6ixevov  apybv  atBr/pov  dirocpepetv 
/cat,  £7Ti  T7)v  avpiov  eXOovra  \ap,{3dveiv  rj  £t</>o<?  rj  et  rt  aWo  i]6eke 
KaraaKevdaai,  KcnafiakovTa  paadov  (see  Suppl.). 

What  I  have  thus  put  together  on  the  nature  and  attributes  of 
elves  in  general,  will  be  confirmed  by  an  examination  of  particular 
elvish  beings,  who  come  forward  under  names  of  their  own. 

Among  these  I  will  allot  the  first  place  to  a  genius,  who  is 
nowhere  to  be  found  in  the  Norse  myths,  and  yet  seems  to  be 
of  ancient  date.     He  is  mentioned  in  several  MHGr.  poems  : 

Sie  wolten  daz  kein  pilwiz 

si  da  schiizze  durch  diu  knie.     Wh.  324,  8. 

Er  solde  sin  ein  guoter 

und  ein  ip  Hew  is  geheizen, 

davon  ist  daz  in  reizen 

die  iibeln  ungehiure.     Riiediger  von  zwein  gesellen  (Cod. 

regimont.)  15b. 
Da  kom  ich  an  bulweclisperg  gangen, 
da  schoz  mich  der  bulweclis, 
da  schoz  mich  die  bulwechsin, 

da  schoz  mich  als  ir  ingesind.     Cod.  vindob.  2817.      71a. 
Von  schrabaz  pilwihten.     Titur.  27,  299  (Halm  4116). 
Sein  part  het  manchen  pnlbiszoteu.     Casp.  von  der  Ron. 

heldenb.  156b. 

Out  of  all  these  it  is  hard  to  pick  out  the  true  name.     Wolfram 

tider  smidde  i  btirg,  hvilka  the  oforstandkre  bruka  at  hanga  pa  boskap,  som  hastigt 
fadt  oudt  ute  pi  marken,  eller  som  sages  blifvit  vaderslagne,  hvarigeuom  tro  them 
bli  helbregda.  Af  sadana  bargsmiden  bar  jag  ok  nyligen  kommit  ofver  ett,  som 
aunu  ar  i  forvar,  ok  pa.  ofvanuamde  satt  gik  i  Ian  at  bota  siukdommar.      [Epitome : 

Many  stories  of  smiths  in  the  mountains,  who  worked  as  at  any  other  smithy, 

after  sunset  or  else  at  high  noon.  Eighty  years  ago  Ola  Simunsson  was  coming, 
etc.  ;  had  with  him  a  dog,  which,  on  seeing  a  hill-man  forging  on  a  great  stone, 
barked  at  him  ;  but  the  hill-smith,  who  wore  a  light-grey  coat  and  blue  woollen  cap, 
snarled  at  the  dog,  etc.  There  are  small  metal  crucifixes  held  to  have  been  forged 
in  the  hills  in  former  times,  which  simple  folk  still  hang  on  cattle  hurt  in  the  field 
or  weather-stricken,  whereby  they  trow  them  to  get  healed.  Of  such  hill-wrought 
things  I  have  lately  met  with  one,  that  used  to  be  lent  out  to  cure  sicknesses.] 


PILWIZ,    BILWIT.  473 

makes  pilwiz  (var.  pilbiz,  bilwiz,  bilwitz)  rhyme  with  biz  (inorsus), 
where  the  short  vowel  in  the  last  syllable  seems  to  point  to 
pilwiht;  the  same  with  bilbis  in  another  poem,  which  would  have 
spelt  it  bilbeis  if  it  had  been  long ;  so  that  we  cannot  connect  it 
with  the  OS.  balowis,  nor  immediately  with  the  bilwis  and  balwis 
contrasted  on  p.  374.  The  varying  form  is  a  sign  that  in  the 
13-14th  century  the  word  was  no  longer  understood;  and  later 
on,  it  gets  further  distorted,  till  bulwechs  makes  us  think  of  a 
totally  unconnected  word  balwahs  (hebes).1  A  confession-book 
of  the  first  half  of  the  15th  century  (Hoffmann's  Monatschr.  753) 
has  pelewysen  synonymous  with  witches,  and  Colerus's  Hausbuch 
(Mainz  1056),  p.  403,  uses  bihlweisen  in  the  same  sense;  several 
authorities  for  the  form  pUbis  are  given  in  Schm.  4,  188.  We 
welcome  the  present  Westph.  Nethl.  belewitten  in  the  Teutonista, 
where  Schuiren  considers  it  equivalent  to  guecle  holden  and  witte 
vrouwen  (penates).  Kilian  has  belewitte  (lamia);  and  here  come3 
in  fitly  a  passage  from  Gisb.  Vcetius  de  miraculis  (Disput.,  torn. 
2,  1018):  '  De  illis  quos  nostrates  appellant  becldwit  et  blinde 
belien,  a  quibus  nocturna  visa  videri  atque  ex  iis  arcana  revelari 
putant.'  Belwit  then  is  penas,  a  kindly  disposed  home-sprite, 
a  guote  liable  (supra,  p.  206),  what  Riiediger  calls  '  ein  guoter 
und  ein  pilewiz.'  Peculiar  to  AS.  is  an  adj.  bilwit,  b  Hew  it, 
Casdm.  53,  4.  279,  23,  which  is  rendered  mansuetus,  simplex,  but 
might  more  exactly  mean  aequus,  Justus.  God  is  called  'btlewit 
iseder '  (Andr.  1996),  Boeth.  metr.  20,  510.  538  ;  and  is  also 
addressed  as  such  in  Cod.  exon.  259,  6;  again,  '  bilwitra  breoste  ' 
(bonorum,  aequorum  pectus),  Cod.  exon.  343,  23.  The  spelling 
bilehwit  (Beda  5,  2,  13,  where  it  translates  simplex)  would  lead 
to  hwit  (albus),  but  then  what  can  bil  mean  ?  I  prefer  the  better 
authorized  bilewit,  taking  'wit'  to  mean  scius,  and  bilwit,  OHG. 
pilawiz,  pilwiz  ?  to  mean  aequutn2  sciens,  aequus,  bonus,  although 

1  Fundgr.  1,  3-43,  where  palwasse  rhymes  with  vahse,  as  MHG.  often  has  'wans 
for  acutus,  when  it  should  be  '  was,'  OHG.  huas,  AS.  hwass,  ON.  hvass  ;  thus  the 
OHG.  palohuas  =  badly  sharp,  i.e.  blunt,  ON.  bolhvass?  just  as  palotat  =  baleful 
deed.     A  later  form  biilwachs  in  Schm.  4,  15. 

2  The  simple  bil  seems  of  itself  to  be  aequitas,  jus,  and  mythic  enough  (p.  37C). 
MHG.  billieh  (aequus),  Diut.  3,  38.  Fundgr.  ii.  56,  27.  01,  23.  00,  19.  Reinh. 
354.  Iw.  1030.  5244.  5730.  0842.  Ls.  2,  329.  billichcn  (jure),  Nib.  150,  2.  dtr 
biUich  (aequitas),  Trist.  0429.  9374.  10002.  13772.  18027.  An  OHG.  billih  I  only 
know  from  W.  lxv.  27,  where  the  Leyden  MS.  has  bilithlich.  As  the  notions 
'  aequus,  aequalis,  similis'  lie  next  door  to  each  other,  piladi,  bilidi  (our  bild)  is 
really  aequalitas,  similitudo,  the  ON.  likneski  (imago).  The  Celtic  bil  also  mi  ana 
good,  mild ;  and  Leo  (Malb.  Gl.  38)  tries  to  explain  bilwiz  from  bilbheith,  bilbhitb. 


474  WIGHTS   AND   ELVES. 

an  adj.  '  vit,  wiz '  occurs  nowhere  else  that  I  know  of,  the  ON. 
vitr  (gen.  vitrs)  being  provided  with  a  suffix  -r.  If  this  etymology 
is  tenable,  hilwiz  is  a  good  genius,  but  of  elvish  nature  ;  he  haunts 
mountains,  his  shot  is  dreaded  like  that  of  the  elf  (p.  460),  hair 
is  tangled  and  matted  by  him  as  by  the  alp  (p.  464).  One 
passage  cited  by  Schm.  4,  ]  88,  deserves  particular  notice  :  '  so 
man  ain  kind  oder  ain  gewand  opfert  zu  aim  pilbispawm/  if  one 
sacrifice  a  child  or  garment  to  a  pilbis-tree,  i.e.  a  tree  supposed 
to  be  inhabited  by  the  pilwiz,  as  trees  do  contain  wood-sprites 
and  elves.  Bonier' s  Legends  of  the  Orlagau,  p.  59.  62,  name  a 
witch  Bilbze.  The  change  of  hilwiz,  bilwis  into  bilwiht  was  a  step 
easily  taken,  as  in  other  words  also  s  and  h,  or  s  and  lit  inter- 
change (lios,  lioht,  Gramm.  1,  138),  also  st  and  lit  (forest,  foreht, 
Gramm.  4,  416)  ;  and  the  more,  as  the  compound  bihuilit  gave 
a  not  unsuitable  meaning,  'good  wight.-'  The  Grl.  bias.  87a  offer 
a  wihsilstein  (penas),  nay,  the  varying  form  of  our  present  names 
for  the  plica  (p.  464),  weicliselzopf,  wichselzopf,  wichtelzopf  (bieh- 
telzopf)  makes  the  similar  shading  off  of  bilweichs,  bilweclis,  bil- 
wicht  probable :  I  have  no  doubt  there  is  even  a  bilweicliszopf, 
bilwizzopf  to  be  found.1 

Popular  belief  in  the  last  few  centuries,  having  lost  the  old  and 
higher  meaning  of  this  spiritual  being,  has  retained,  as  in  the  case 
of  the  alb,  of  Holla  and  Berhta,  only  the  hateful  side  of  its  nature  : 
a  tormenting  terrifying  spectre,  tangling  your  hair  and  beard, 
cutting  up  your  corn,  it  appears  mostly  in  a  female  form,  as  a 
sorceress  and  witch.  Martin  von  Amberg's  Mirror  of  Confession 
already  interprets  pilbis  by  devil,  as  Kilian  does  belewitte  by 
lamia,  strix.     The  tradition  lingers  chiefly  in  Eastern  Germany, 


1  Another  Polish  name  for  plica,  beside  koltun,  is  wieszczyce  (Linde  6,  227),  and 
vulgar  ojiinion  ascribes  it  to  the  magic  of  a  wieszczka  wise  woman,  witch.  This 
wieszczyce  agrees  with  our  weichsel-zo-pf,  and  also  with  the  -tviz,  -weis  in  bilwiz. 
If  we  conld  point  to  a  compound  bialowieszczka  (white  witch,  white  fay  ;  but  I 
nowhere  find  it,  not  even  among  other  Slavs),  there  would  arise  a  strong  suspicion 
of  the  Slavic  origin  of  our  biliriz ;  for  the  present  its  German  character  seems  to 
me  assured  both  by  the  absence  of  siich  Slavic  compound,  and  by  the  AS.  bilwit 
and  Nethl.  belwitte  :  besides,  our  wiz  comes  from  wizan,  and  the  Pol.  wieszcz  from 
wiedzie6  [O.S1.  vedeti,  to  wit] ,  and  the  kinship  of  the  two  words  can  be  explained 
without  any  thought  of  borrowing.  Of  different  origin  seem  to  me  the  Sloven, 
paglawitz,  dwarf,  and  the  Lith.  Pilvitus  (Lasicz  54)  or  Pilwite  (Narbutt  1,  52),  god 
or  goddess  of  wealth.  [The  Buss,  veshch  (shch  pron.  as  in  parish-church)  has  the 
same  sound  as  wieszcz,  but  means  thing,  Goth,  vaiht-s  ;  for  kt,  ht  becomes  shch, 
as  in  noshch,  night.  I  am  not  sure  therefore  that  even  wieszczka  may  not  be 
"  little  wiht." — Trans.] 


PILWIZ,    BILWIT.  475 

in  Bavaria,  Franconia,  Vogtland  and  Silesia.  H.  Sachs  uses 
bilbitzen  of  matting  the  hair  in  knots,  pilmitz  of  tangled  locks : 
'  ir  liar  verbilbltzt,  zapfet  und  stroblet,  als  ob  sie  hab  der  rab 
gezoblet/  i.  5,  309b.  ii.  2,  100d  ;  ' pilmitzen,  zoten  und  fasen/  iii. 
3,  12a.  In  the  Ackermann  von  Bohmen,  cap.  6,  pilwis  means 
the  same  as  witch;  ' pielweiser,  magician,  soothsayer,'  Bohme's 
Beitr.  zum  schles.  recht  6,  69.  'an.  1529  (at  Schweidnitz),  a 
2>ielweiss  buried  alive/  Hoffmann's  Monatschr.  p.  247.  '  1582 
(at  Sagan),  two  women    of  honest  carriage  rated  for  pilweissen 

and ,'  ibid.   702.     '  du  pileweissin  ! '     A.  Gryphius,   p.  828. 

'  Las  de  deine  bilbezzodn  auskampln'  says  the  angry  mother  to 
her  child,  f  i  den  MlmezscJiedl  get  nix  nei/  get  your  b.  clots 
combed  out,  you  don't  come  in  in  that  shaggy  scalp,  Schm.  1, 
168.  pilmesland,  a  curse  like  devil's  child,  Delling's  Bair.  idiot. 
1,  78.  On  the  Saale  in  Thuriugia,  bulmuz  is  said  of  unwashed 
or  uncombed  children  ;  while  b lib ezscl mitt,  bllwezschnltt,  bilfez- 
schnitt,  pilmasschnid  (Jos.  Rank.  Bohmerwald,  p.  274)  denotes  a 
cutting  through  a  field  of  corn,  which  is  regarded  as  the  work 
of  a  spirit,  a  witch,  or  the  devil. 

This  last-mentioned  belief  is  also  one  of  long  standing. 
Thus  the  Lex  Bajuvar.  12  (13),  8:  '  si  quis  messes  alterius 
initiaverit  maleficis  artibus,  et  inventus  fuerit,  cum  duodecim 
solidis  componat,  quod  aranscarti1  dicunt/  I  dare  say  such  a 
delinquent  was  then  called  a  piliwiz,  pilawiz  ?  On  this  passage 
Mederer  remarks,  p.  202-3  :  An  honest  countryman  told  me 
about  the  so-called  bilmerschnitt,  bilberschnitt,  as  follows  :  '  The 
spiteful  creature,  that  wants  to  do  his  neighbour  a  rascally  mis- 
chief, goes  at  midnight,  stark  naked,  with  a  sickle  tied  to  his  foot, 
and  repeating  magic  spells,  through  the  middle  of  a  field  of  corn 
just  ripe.  From  that  part  of  the  field  that  he  has  passed  his 
sickle  through,  all  the  grains  fly  into  his  barn,  into  his  bin.' 
Here  everything  is    attributed  to  a  charm    practised  by   man.2 

1  Goth,  asans  (messis),  OHG.  aran,  am. 

"  Can  this  magic  be  alluded  to  so  early  as  in  the  Kaiserchronik  (2130-37)  ? 


din  muoter  heizit  Eachel, 
diu  hat  in  geleret : 
swenne  sie  in  hiez  sniden  gtin, 
sin  limit  incom  nle  ddr  an, 


sin  sichil  sneit  schiere 

lin'i"  dan  andere  viere  ; 

wil  er  durch  einin  berc  vara, 

der  stot  immer  iner  ingegen  ira  uf  getan. 


(His  mother  R.  taught  him  :  when  she  bade  him  go  cut,  he  never  put  his  hand  to 
it,  his  sickle  soon  cut  more  than  any  other  four  ;  if  he  will  drive  through  a  hill,  it 
opens  before  him.) 


47C  WIGHTS   AND   ELVES. 

Julius  Schmidt  too  (Reichenfels,  p.  119)  reports  from  the  Vogt- 
land  :  The  belief  in  bilsen-  or  bilver-schnitter  (-reapers) :  is  toler- 
ably extensive,  nay,  there  seem  to  be  certain  persons  who  believe 
themselves  to  be  such  :  in  that  case  they  go  into  the  field  before 
sunrise  on  St.  John's  day,  sometimes  on  Walpurgis-day  (May  1), 
and  cut  the  stalks  with  small  sickles  tied  to  their  great  toes,  step- 
ping slantwise  across  the  field.  Such  persons  must  have  small 
three-cornered  hats  on  (bilsenschnitter-hiitchen) ;  if  during  their 
walk  they  are  saluted  by  any  one,  they  must  die  that  year. 
These  bilsenschnitter  believe  they  get  half  the  produce  of  the 
field  where  they  have  reaped,  and  small  sickle-shaped  instru- 
ments have  been  found  in  some  people's  houses,  after  their  death. 
If  the  owner  of  the  field  can  pick  up  any  stubble  of  the  stalks 
so  cut,  and  hangs  it  in  the  smoke,  the  bilsenschnitter  will  gra- 
dually waste  away  (see  Suppl.). 

According  to  a  communication  from  Thuringia,  there  are  two 
ways  of  baffling  the  bilms-  or  binsenschneider  (-cutter),1  which- 
ever he  is  called.  One  is,  ou  Trinity  Sunday  or  St.  John's  day, 
when  the  sun  is  highest  in  the  sky,  to  go  and  sit  on  an  elderbush 
with  a  looking-glass  on  your  breast,  and  look  round  in  every 
quarter,  then  no  doubt  you  can  detect  the  binsenschneider,  but 
not  without  great  risk,  for  if  he  spies  you  before  you  see  him, 
you  must  die  and  the  binsenschneider  remain  alive,  unless  he 
happen  to  catch  sight  of  himself  in  the  mirror  on  your  breast, 
in  which  case  he  also  loses  his  life  that  year.  Another  way  is, 
to  carry  some  ears  that  the  binsenschneider  has  cut  to  a  newly 
opened  grave  in  silence,  and  not  grasping  the  ears  in  your  bare 
hand  ;  if  the  least  word  be  spoken,  or  a  drop  of  sweat  from  your 
hand  get  into  the  grave  with  the  ears,  then,  as  soon  as  the  ears 
rot,  he  that  threw  them  in  is  sure  to  die. 

What  is  here  imputed  to  human  sorcerers,  is  elsewhere  laid 
to  the  devil  (Superst.  no.  523),  or  to  elvish  goblins,  who  may  at 
once  be  known  by  their  small  hats.  Sometimes  they  are  known 
as  bilgensclineider,  as  jpilver-  or  hilperts-schnitter,  sometimes  by 
altogether  different  names.  Alberus  puts  sickles  in  the  hands  of 
women  travelling  in  Hulda's  host  (supra,  p.  269  note).  In  some 
places,  ace.  to  Schm.  1,  151,  they  say   bockschnitt,  because  the 

1  Bilse  is  henbane,  and  binse  a  rush,  which  plants  have  no  business  here.    They 
are  merely  an  adaptation  of  bilwiz,  when  this  had  become  unintelligible. — Trans. 


ROGGEN-MUHME,    CORN-MAMMY.  477 

goblin  is  supposed  to  ride  through  the  cornfield  on  a  he-goat, 
which  may  well  remind  us  of  Dietrich  with  the  boar  (p.  214).  The 
people  about  Osnabriick  believe  the  tremsemutter  walks  about  in 
the  corn  :  she  is  dreaded  by  the  children.  In  Brunswick  she  is 
called  kornwif :  when  children  are  looking  for  cornflowers,  they 
will  not  venture  too  far  into  the  green  field,  they  tell  each  other 
of  the  cornwife  that  kidnaps  little  ones.  In  the  Altmark  and 
Mark  Brandenburg  they  call  her  roggenmblime  (aunt  in  the  rye), 
and  hush  crying  children  with  the  words  :  '  hold  your  tongue, 
or  roggenmbJtme  with  the  long  black  teats  will  come  and  drag 
you  away  ! ' l  Others  say  '  with  her  long  iron  teats/  which 
recals  iron  Berhta :  others  again  name  her  rochenmor,  because 
like  Holla  and  Berhta,  she  plays  all  manner  of  tricks  on  idle 
maids  who  have  not  spun  their  distaffs  clear  during  the  Twelves. 
Babes  whom  she  puts  to  her  black  breast  are  likely  to  die.  Is 
not  the  Bavarian  preinscheuhe  the  same  kind  of  corn-spectre  ? 
In  the  Schrackengast,  Ingolst.  1598,  there  are  coupled  together 
on  p.  73,  'preinscheuhen-  und  meerwunder/  and  p.  89  'wilde 
larvenschopper  und  preinscheuhen.'  This  prein,  brein,  properly 
pap  (puis),  means  also  grain-bearing  plants  like  oats,  millet, 
panicum,  plantago  (Schm.  1,  256-7)  ;  and  breinscheuhe  (-scare) 
may  be  the  spirit  that  is  the  bugbear  of  oat  and  millet  fields  ? 

In  all  this  array  of  facts,  there  is  no  mistaking  the  affinity 
of  these  bilwisses  with  divine  and  elvish  beings  of  our  heathenism. 
They  mat  the  hair  like  dame  Holla,  dame  Berhta,  and  the  alb, 
they  wear  the  small  hat  and  wield  the  shot  of  the  elves,  they 
have  at  last,  like  Holla  and  Berhta,  sunk  into  a  children's 
bugbear.  Originally  '  gute  holden/  sociable  and  kindly  beings, 
they  have  twisted  round  by  degrees  into  uncanny  fiendish  goblins, 
wizards  and  witches.  And  more,  at  the  back  of  these  elvish 
beings  there  may  lurk  still  higher  divine  beings.  The  Romans 
worshipped  a  Robigo,  who  could  hinder  blight  in  corn,  and  per- 
haps, if  displeased,  bring  it  on.  The  walking  of  the  bilwiss,  of 
the  Boggenmuhme  in  the  grain  had  at  first  a  benevolent  motive  : 
as  the  names  mutter,  muhme,  mbr  teach  us,  she  is  a  motherly 


1  Conf.  Dent,  sagen,  no.  89.    Kuhn,  p.  373.    Temmc's  Sagen,  p.  80.  82,  of  the 
Altmark.     The  Baden  legend  makes  of  it  a  rockert-weibeU  and  an  enoh 
countess  of  Eberstein,  who  walks  about  iu  a  wood  named  liockert  (Mono's  Anzeiger, 
3,  H5). 


478  WIGHTS   AND   ELVES. 

guardian  goddess  of  spindle  and  seedfield.  Fro  upon  his  boar 
must  have  ridden  through  the  plaius,  and  made  them  productive, 
nay,  even  the  picture  of  Siegfried  riding  through  the  corn  I 
incline  to  refer  to  the  circuit  made  by  a  god ;  and  now  for  the 
first  time  I  think  I  understand  why  the  Wetterau  peasant  to  this 
day,  when  the  corn-ears  wave  in  the  wind,  says  the  boar  walks  in 
the  corn.  It  is  said  of  the  god  who  causes  the  crops  to  thrive. 
Thus,  by  our  study  of  elves,  with  whom  the  people  have  kept  up 
acquaintance  longer,  we  are  led  up  to  gods  that  once  were.  The 
connexion  of  elves  with  Holla  and  Berhta  is  further  remarkable, 
because  all  these  beings,  unknown  to  the  religion  of  the  Edda, 
reveal  an  independent  development  or  application  of  the  heathen 
faith  in  continental  Germany  (see  Suppl.).1 

What  comes  nearest  the  hairy  shaggy  elves,  or  bilwisses,  is  a 
spirit  named  scrat  or  scrato  in  OHG.  documents,  and  pilosus  in 
contemporary  Latin  ones.  The  Gl.  mons.  333  have  scratun 
(pilosi)  ;  the  Gl.  herrad.  200b  waltschrate  (satyrus) ;  the  Sumerlat. 
10,  66  srate  (lares  mali) ;  so  in  MHG.  scraz  •  Reinh.  597  (of  the 
old  fragment),  'em  wilder  waltschrat;'  Barl.  251,  11.  Aw.  3, 
226.  Ulr.  Lanz.  437  has  'von  dem  schraze  '  =  dwarf ;  'sie  ist 
villihte  ein  schrat,  ein  geist  von  helle ; '  Albr.  Titur.  1,  190 
(Hahn  180).  That  a  small  elvish  spirit  was  meant,  is  plain 
from  the  dimin.  schretel,  used  synonymously  with  wihtel  in  that 
pretty  fable,  from  which  our  Irish  elf-tales  gave  an  extract,  but 
which  has  since  been  printed  entire  in  Mone's  treatise  on  heroic 
legend,  and  is  now  capped  by  the  original  Norwegian  story  in 
Asbiornsen  and  Moe,  No.  26  (one  of  the  most  striking  examples 

1  The  Slavs  too  have  a  field-spirit  who  paces  through  the  corn.  Boxhorn's  Resp. 
Moscov.,  pars  1,  p. ...  :  "  Daemonem  quoque  meridianum  Moscovitae  metuunt  et 
colunt.  Ille  enim,  dum  jam  maturae  resecantur  fruges,  habitu  viduae  lugentis  ruri 
obambulat,  operariisque  uni  vel  pluribus,  nisi  protinus  viso  spectro  in  terram  proni 
concidant,  brachia  frangit  et  crura.  Neque  tamen  contra  banc  plagarn  remedio 
destituuntur.  Habent  enim  in  vicina  silva  arbores  religione  patrum  cultas  :  harum 
cortice  vulneri  superimposito,  ilium  non  tantum  sanant,  sed  et  dolorem  loripedi 
eximunt."  Among  the  Wends  tbis  corn-wife  is  named  lyshipolnitza  [prop,  prepoln., 
from  polno,  full,  i.e.  full  noon] ,  at  the  hour  of  noon  she  creeps  about  as  a  veiled 
rooman.  If  a  Wend,  conversing  with  her  by  the  hour  on  flax  and  flax-dressing,  can 
manage  to  contradict  everything  she  says,  or  keep  saying  tbe  Lord's  prayer  back- 
wards without  stumbling,  he  is  safe  (Lausitz.  monatsschr.  1797,  p.  7-44).  The  Bohe- 
mians call  her  baba  (old  woman),  or  polednice,  poludnice  (meridiana),  the  Poles 
dziewatma,  dziewice  (maiden),  of  whom  we  shall  have  to  speak  more  than  once,  conf. 
chap.  XXXVI.  Here  also  there  are  plainly  gods  mixed  up  with  the  spirits  and 
goblins. 


SCKAT.  479 

of  the  tough  persistence  of  such  materials  in  popular  tradition)  ; 
both  the  schretel  and  the  word  wazzerbern  answer  perfectly  to 
the  trold  and  the  hvidbiorn.  Vintler  thiuks  of  the  schrdttlin  as  a 
spirit  light  as  wind,  and  of  the  size  of  a  child.  The  Vocab.  of 
1482  has  schretlin  (penates)  ;  Dasypodius  nachtschrettele  (ephi- 
altes)  ;  later  ones  spell  it  sckrdttele,  schrattel,  schrettele,  sckrotle, 
conf.  Staid.  2,  350.  Schmid's  Schwab,  wortb.  478.  In  the  Sette 
comm.  schrata  or  schretele  is  a  butterfly,  Schm.  3,  519.  A 
Thidericus  Scratman  is  named  in  a  voucher  of  1244  ;  Spilcker  2, 
84.  A  district  in  Lower  Hesse  is  called  the  Scltratwe<j,  Wochenbl. 
1833,952.  984.  1023.  And  other  Teutonic  dialects  seem  to 
know  the  word  :  AS.  scritta,  Eng.  scrat  (hermaphroditus),1  ON. 
skratti  (malus  genius,  gigas)  ;  a  rock  on  the  sea  is  called 
skrattasker  (geniorum  scopulus),  Fornm.  sog.  2,  142.  Compar- 
ing these  forms  with  the  OHG.  ones  above,  we  miss  the  usual 
consonant-change  :  the  truth  is,  other  OHG.  forms  do  shew  a 
z  in  place  of  the  t:  scraz,  Gl.  fuld.  14;  screza  (larvae,  lares  nutli), 
Gl.  lindenbr.  996b;  '  srezze  vel  strate '  (not:  screzzol  scraito), 
Sumerlat.  10,  66;  f  unreiner  sclirdz,'  Altd.  w.  3,  170  (rhymes 
vraz).2  And  Upper  Germ,  dictionaries  of  the  lGth  cent,  couple 
schretzel  with  alp;  HOfer  3,  114,  has  '  der  schretz,'  and  Schm. 
3,  552,  'der  schretzel,  das  schrefzlein.'  According  to  Mich. 
Beham  8.  9  (Mone's  Anz.  4,  450-1),  every  house  has  its  scltrez- 
lebi ;  if  fostered,  he  brings  you  goods  and  honour,  he  rides  or 
drives  the  cattle,  prepares  his  table  on  Brecht-night,  etc.3 

The  agreement  of  Slavic  words  is  of  weight.  O.  Boh.  scret 
(daemon),  Hanka's  Zbirka  6b;  screti,  screttl  (penates  intimi  et 
secretales),  ibid.  16b;  Boh.  skret,  skrjteJc  (penas,  idolumj ;  Pol. 
shrzot,  skrzitek  ;  Sloven,  zhltrdt,  zhkrdtiz,  zhkrdlclj  (hill-mannikin). 
To  the  Serv.  and  Russ.  dialects  the  word  seems  unknown. 

I  can  find  no  satisfactory  root  for  the  German  form.1     In  Slavic 

1  Already  in  Sachsensp.  1,  4  altvile  and  dverge  side  by  side  ;  conf.  KA.  410. 

2  A  contraction  of  schrawaz  ?  Gudr.  448,  schrawaz  und  merwunder  ;  Albr.  Titur. 
27,  299  has  schrabaz  together  with  pilwiht;  schrawatzen  und  merwunder,  Gasp,  von 
der  lion's  Wolfdietericn  195.  Wolfd.  und  Sauen  496.  ['  Probably  of  different 
origin,'  says  Suppl.] 

3  Mucbar,  Komisches  Noricum  2,  37,  and  Gastcin  147,  mentions  a  capricious 
mountain-spirit,  sehranel. 

4  Tbe  ON.  skratti  is  said  to  mean  terror  also.  The  Swed.  skratta,  Dan.  skratte, 
is  to  laugh  loud.  Does  the  AS.  form  scritta  allow  us  to  compare  the  Gr.  a-Kipros, 
a  hopping,  leaping  goblin  or  satyr  (from  ffKiprdco,  I  bound)  ?      Lobeck's  Aglaoph., 


480  WIGHTS  AND   ELVES. 

skryti  (celare,  occulere)  is  worth  considering.  [A  compound  of 
kryti,  to  cover,  root  kry,  krov,  Kpv-mw.  If  Slav,  skry,  why  not 
AS.  scriid,  shroud  ?] . 

Going  by  the  sense,  schrat  appears  to  be  a  wild,  rough,  shaggy 
wood-sprite,  very  like  the  Lat.  faun  and  the  Gr.  satyr,  also  the 
Roman  silvanus  (Livy  2,  7)  ;  its  dimin.  schratlein,  synonymous 
with  wichtel  and  alp,  a  home-sprite,  a  hill-mannikin.  But  the 
male  sex  alone  is  mentioned,  never  the  female ;  like  the  fauns, 
therefore,  they  lack  the  beauty  of  contrast  which  is  presented  by 
the  elfins  and  bilwissins.  We  may  indeed,  on  the  strength  of 
some  similarity,  take  as  a  set-off  to  these  schrats  those  wild  women 
and  wood-minnes  treated  of  at  the  end  of  chapter  XVI.  The 
Greek  fiction  included  mountain-nymphs  (vvficfxit,  bpeaKcpoi)  and 
dryads  (8pvd8e<;,  Euglished  wuducelfenne  in  AS.  glosses),  whose 
life  was  closely  bound  up  with  that  of  a  tree  (loc.  princ,  Hymn 
to  Aphrodite  257-272  ;  and  see  Suppl.). 

Another  thing  in  which  the  schrats  differ  from  elves  is,  that 
they  appear  one  at  a  time,  and  do  not  form  a  people. 

The  Fichtelberg  is  haunted  by  a  wood-sprite  named  the  Katzen- 
veit,  with  whom  they  frighten  children  :  '  Hush,  the  Katzenveit 
will  come  !  '  Similar  beings,  full  of  dwarf  and  goblin-like 
humours,  we  may  recognise  in  the  Gilbich  of  the  Harz,  in  the 
Biibezal  of  Eiesengebirge.  This  last,  however,  seems  to  be  of 
Slav  origin,  Boh.  Rybecal,  Bybrcol.1  In  Moravia  runs  the  story 
of  the  seehirt,  sea-herd,  a  mischief-loving  sprite,  who,  in  the  shape 
of  a  herdsman,  whip  in  hand,  entices  travellers  into  a  bog  (see 
Suppl.).3 

The  gloss  in  Hanka  7b.  lla  has  '  vilcodlac  faunus,  vilcodlaci 
faunificarii,  incubi,  dusii ' ;  in  New  Boh.  it  would  be  wlkodlak, 
wolf-haired;  the  Serv.  vuTiodlac  is  vampire  (Vuk  sub  v.).  It  is 
not  surprising,  and  it  offers  a  new  point  of  contact  between  elves, 
bilwisses,  and  schrats,  that  in  Poland  the.  same  matting  of  hair  is 
ascribed  to  the  shrzot,  and  is  called  by  his  name,  as  the  shfjteh  is 
in  Bohemia ;  3  in  some  parts  of  Germany  schrotleinzopf . 

1  In  Slav,  ryba  is  fish,  but  cal,  or  col  (I  think)  has  no  meaning.  The  oldest 
Germ.  docs,  have  Eube-zagil,  -zagel,  -zagl  (-tail) ;  Rube  may  be  short  for  the 
ghostly  '  knecht  Ruprecht,'  or  Robert.  Is  Rubezagel  our  bobtail,  of  which  I  have 
seen  no  decent  etymology? — Trans. 

2  Sagen  aus  der  vorzeit  Mahrens  (Brunn,  1817).  pp.  136-171. 

3  The  plica  is  also  called  koltun,  and  again  koltki  are  Polish  and  Russian  home- 
sprites. 


SCRAT   (PILOSUS).  481 

People  iu  Europe  began  very  early  to  think  of  daemonic  beings 
as  pilosi.  The  Vulgate  has  '  et  pilosi  saltabunt  ibi/  Isaiah  13, 
21,  where  the  LXX.  had  Saifxovia  e/cet  opyj]<jovTai,  couf. 
34,  14. l  Isidore's  Etym.  8,  cap.  ult.  (and  from  it  Gl.  Jun. 
399)  :  'pilosi  qui  graece  panitae,  latine  incubi  nominantur, — 
hos  daemones  Galli  dusios  nuncupant.2  Quem  autem  vulgo 
incubonem  vocant,  hunc  Rornani  faunum  dicunt.'  Burcard  of 
Worms  (App.  Superst.  C)  is  speaking  of  the  superstitious  custom 
of  putting  playthings,  shoes,  bows  and  arrows,  in  cellar  or 
barn  for  the  home-sprites,3  and  these  genii  again  are  called 
'  satyri  vel  pilosi.'  The  monk  of  St.  Gall,  in  the  Life  of  Charles 
the  Great  (Pertz  2,741),  tells  of  a  pilosus  who  visited  the  house 
of  a  smith,  amused  himself  at  night  with  hammer  and  anvil, 
and  filled  the  empty  bottle  out  of  a  rich  man's  cellar  (conf.  Ir. 
elfenm.  cxi.  cxii.).  Evidently  a  frolicking,  dancing,  whimsical 
homesprite,  rough  and  hairy  to  look  at,  '  eislich  getan/  as  the 
Heidelberg  fable  says,  and  rigged  out  in  the  red  little  cap  of  a 
dwarf,  loving  to  follow  his  bent  in  kitchens  and  cellars.  A  figure 
quite  in  the  foreground  in  Cod.  palat.  324  seems  to  be  his  very 
portrait. 

Only  I  conceive  that  in  earlier  times  a  statelier,  larger  figure 
■was  allowed  to  the  schral,  or  wood-schrat,  then  afterwards  the 
merrier,  smaller  one  to  the  schrettel.  This  seems  to  follow  from 
the  ON.  meaning  of  slcratti  gigas,  giant.  These  woodsprites  must 
have  been,  as  late  as  the  G-7th  cent.,  objects  of  a  special  worship  : 
there  were  trees  and  temples  dedicated  to  them.  Quotations  in 
proof  have  already  been  given,  pp.  58.  68:  '  arbores  daemoni 
dedicatae/  and  among  the  Warasken,  a  race  akin  to  the  Bavarian, 
'  agrestium  fana,  quos  vulgus /«*mo.s  vocat.' 

Some  remarkable  statements  are  found  in  Eckehart's  W  alt- 
harius.  Eckevrid  of  Saxony  accosts  him  with  the  bitter  taunt 
(761): 

1  Lntlier  translates  feldteufel ;  the  Heb.  sagnir  denotes  a  shaggy,  goat-like 
being.  Radevicus  frising.  2,  1:5,  imitates  the  whole  passage  in  the  prophel  :  '  alulae, 
upupae,  bubones  toto  anno  in  ectis  funebria  personautes  lugubri  voce  aures  om- 
nium repleverunt.  Pilosi  quos  satijros  vocant  in  domibus  plerunque  auditi.'  Again 
2,  24  :  '  in  aedibus  tuis  lugubri  voce  respondeaut  alulae,  saltent  pilosis 

2  '  Daemones  quos  duscios  Galli  nuncupant.'  Augustine,  Civ.  Dei,  c.  23.  The 
name  duz  still  lives  in  Bretagne,  dimin.  duzik  (Yillemarque  1,  42). 

J  In  the  same  way  the  jiidel  (I  suppose  giii  /.  /.  the  same  as  guote  holde)  has 
toys  placed  for  him,  Superst.  I,  no.  G2  ;  conf.  infra,  the  homesprites. 


482  WIGHTS   AND   ELVES. 

Die,  ait,  an  corpus  vegetet  ti'actabile  teinet, 
sive  per  aerias  fallas,  maledide,  figuras  ? 
saltibus  assuetus  f annus  mihi  quippe  videris. 

Walthari  replies  in  mockery  (765)  : 

Celtica  lingua  probat  te  ex  ilia  gente  creatum, 
cui  natura  dedit  reliquas  ludendo  praeire; 
at  si  te  propius  venientem  dextera  nostra 
attingat,  post  Saxonibus  memorare  valebis, 
te  nunc  in  Vosago  fauni  fantasma  videre. 

If  you  come  within  reach  of  my  arm,  I  give  you  leave  then 
to  tell  y,our  Saxon  countrymen  of  the  '  schrat '  you  now  see  in 
the  Wasgau  (Vosges).  When  Eckevrid  has  hurled  his  spear  at 
him  in  vain,  Walthari  cries  : 

Haec  tibi  silvanus  transponit  munera  faunus. 

Herewith  the  '  wood-schrat '  returns  you  the  favour.1 

Here  the  faun  is  called  fantasma,  phantom  ;  OHG.  giscin,  T. 
81  (Matt.  xiv.  26),  otherwise  scinleih  (monstrum),  Gl.  hrab.  9G9b. 
Jun.  214;  AS.  scinlac  (portentuin)  ;  or  gltroc,  p.  464.  Phan- 
tasma  vagabundum  (Vita  Lebuini,  Pertz  2,  361) ;  'fantasma  vult 
nos  pessundare '  (Hroswitha  in  Dulcicius)  ;  'fantasia  quod  in 
libris  geniiMxxm.  faiuius  solet  appellari/  Mabillon,  Analect.  3,  352. 
A  '  municipium/  or  '  oppidum  mons  fauni,'  in  Ivonis  Carnot. 
epist.  172,  and  conf.  the  doc.  quoted  in  the  note  thereon,  in 
which  it  is  monsfaunum.  Similarly  in  OFr.  poems  :  ' fantosme 
nous  va  faunoiant'  Meon  4,  138;  fantosme  qui  me  desvoie, 
demaine/  ibid.  4,  140.  4.  402.  A  passage  from  Girart  de 
Rossillon  given  in  Mone's  Archiv  1835.  210  says  of  a  moun- 
tain :  '  en  ce  mont  ha  moult  de  grans  secrez,  trop  y  a  de  fantomes.' 
Such  are  the  fauni  ficarii  and  silvestres  homines,  with  whom 
Jornandes  makes  his  Gothic  aliorunes  keep  company  (p.  404). 
Yet  they  also  dip  into  the  province  of  demigod  heroes.  Miming 
silvarum  satyrus,  and  Witugouwo  (silvicola)  seem  to  be  at  once 
cunning  smith-schrats  and  heroes  (pp.  376-379).  A  valkyr  unites 
herself  with  satyr-like  Volundr,  as  the  aliorunes  did  with  fauns. 
The  wild  women,  wood-minne   (pp.   432-4),   and  the  wilde  man 

i  The  dialogue  is  obscure,  and  in  the  printed  edition,  p.  86,  I  have  endeavoured 
to  justify  the  above  interpretation. 


SCRAT    (FAUNUS).      WOOD-FOLK.  483 

(Wigamur  203)  come  together.  \Vigal.  6286  has  wlldez  wip,  and 
6602  it  is  said  of  the  dwarf  Karri  6  z  : 

Sia  muoter  was  ein  wildez  wip  His  mother  was  a  wild  woman, 

da  von  was  sin  knrzer  lip  therefrom  was  his  short  body 

aller  ruck  unde  stark,  all  over  hairy  and  strong, 

sin  gebein  was  ane  mark  his     bones     without     marrow 

(solid) 

nach  dem  geslehte  der  muoter  sin,  after  his  mother's  stock, 

deste  sterker  muoser  sin.  the  stronger  must  he  be. 

In  the  Wolfdietrich  a  wild  man  like  this  is  called  waltluoder,  and 
in  Laurin  173.  183  waltmann.  The  ON.  mythology  knows  of 
wild  wood-wives  by  the  names  ivicfjur,  Sasm.  88a.  119b,  &a&iarn- 
vidjnr,  Sn.  13.  About  the  ividja  we  find  at  the  beginning  of  the 
Hrafnagaldr  the  obscure  statement  '  elr  ivroja/  alit,  auget,  parit, 
gignit  dryas ;  ividja  is  derived  from  a  wood  or  grove  ivi&r,  of 
which  the  Voluspa  la  makes  mention:  fnio  man  ek  heima,  nio 
iviffi' ;  so  iarnvicfja  from iarnvi&r,  iron  wood  (see  Suppl.).1 

I  cannot  properly  explain  these  ON.  ivrSjur  and  iarnviojur. 
The  popular  belief  of  to-day  in  South-eastern  Germany  presents 
in  a  more  intelligible  shape  the  legend  of  the  wild-folk,  forest-folk, 
wood-folk,  moss-folk,  who  are  regarded  as  a  people  of  the  dwar 
kind  residing  together,  though  they  come  up  singly  too,  and  in 
that  case  the  females  especially  approximate  those  higher  beings 
spoken  of  on  p.  432.  They  are  small  of  stature,  but  somewhat 
larger  than  elves,  grey  and  oldish-looking,  hairy  and  clothed  in 
moss :  '  ouch  waren  ime  diu  uren  als  eime  walttdren  vennieset,' 
his  ears  like  a  forest-fool's  bemossed  (?),  Iw.  440.  Often  holz- 
weibel  alone  are  mentioned,  seldomer  the  males,  who  are  supposed 
to  be  not  so  good-natured  and  to  live  deeper  in  the  woods,  wear- 
ing green  garments  faced  with  red,  and  black  three-cornered  hats. 
H.  Sachs  1,  407a  brings  up  holzmanner  and  holzfrauen,  and  gives 
1,  348c  the  lament  of  the  ivild  woodfolh  over  the  faithless  world. 
Schmidt's  lleichenfels,  pp.  140-8  tells  us  the  Voigtland  tradition, 
and  Burner,  pp.  188-242  that  of  the  Orlagau;  from  them  I  borrow 
what  is  characteristic.  The  little  wood-wives  come  up  to  wood- 
cutters, and  beg  for  something  to  eat,  or  take  it  themselves  out 

1  Afzelius  2,  145-7,  mentions  Swed.  VHfjershar,  leaf-maids,  forest-maids,  and 

compares  them  with  Laufey  (p.  246),  but  the  people  have  httle  to  say  about  them. 


484  WIGHTS  AND  ELVES. 

of  their  pots ;  but  whatever  they  have  taken  or  borrowed  they 
make  good  in  some  other  way,  not  seldom  by  good  advice.  At 
times  they  help  people  in  their  kitchen  work  and  at  washing, 
but  always  express  a  great  fear  of  the  wild  huntsman  that  pursues 
them.  On  the  Saale  they  tell  you  of  a  bush-grandmother  and  her 
moss-maidens ;  this  sounds  like  a  queen  of  elves,  if  not  like  the 
'weird  lady  of  the  woods'  (p.  407).  The  little  wood-wives  are 
glad  to  come  when  people  are  baking,  and  ask  them,  while  they 
are  about  it,  to  bake  them  a  loaf  too,  as  big  as  half  a  millstone, 
and  it  must  be  left  for  them  at  a  specified  place  ;  they  pay  it  back 
afterwards,  or  perhaps  bring  some  of  their  own  baking,  and  lay 
it  in  the  furrow  for  the  ploughmen,  or  on  the  plough,  being 
mightily  offended  if  you  refuse  it.  At  other  times  the  wood-wife 
makes  her  appearance  with  a  broken  little  wheelbarrow,  and  begs 
you  to  mend  the  wheel ;  then,  like  Berhta  she  pays  you  with  the 
fallen  chips,  which  turn  into  gold;  or  if  you  are  knitting,  she 
gives  you  a  ball  of  thread  which  you  will  never  have  done  un- 
winding. Every  time  a  man  twists  (driebt,  throws)  the  stem  of 
a  young  tree  till  the  bark  flies  off,  a  wood- wife  has  to  die.  When 
a  peasant  woman,  out  of  pity,  gave  the  breast  to  a  crying  wood- 
child,  the  mother  came  up  and  made  her  a  present  of  the  bark  in 
which  the  child  was  cradled ;  the  woman  broke  a  splinter  off  and 
threw  it  in  to  her  load  of  wood,  but  when  she  got  home  she  found 
it  was  of  gold  (see  Suppl). 

Wood-wives,  like  dwarfs,  are  by  no  means  satisfied  with  the 
ways  of  the  modern  world ;  but  to  the  reasons  given  on  p.  459 
they  add  special  ones  of  their  own.  There's  never  been  a  good 
time  since  people  took  to  counting  the  dumplings  they  put  in  the 
pot,  the  loaves  they  put  in  the  oven,  to  '  pipping '  their  bread 
and  putting  caraway-seeds  in  it.     Hence  their  maxim : 

Schiil  keinen  baum,  No  tree  ever  shell, 

erzahl  keinen  traum,  no  dream  ever  tell, 

back  keinen  kiimmel  ins  brot,        bake  in  thy  bread  no  cummin- 
seed, 
so  hilft  dir  Gott  aus  aller  noth.     and  God  will  help  in  all  thy 

need. 

The  third   line  may  be    'pip  kein   brod/    don't  pip  a  loaf.     A 


WOOD-FOLK.  485 

wood-wife,  after  tasting  some  newly-baked  bread,  ran  off  to  the 
forest,  screaming  loud : 

Sie  liaben  mir  gebacken  kiimmelbrot, 
das  bringt  diesem  hause  grosse  noth ! 

(They've  baked  me  caraway-bread,  it  will  bring  that  house  great 
trouble).  And  the  farmer's  prosperity  soon  declined,  till  he  was 
utterly  impoverished.  To  '  pip '  a  loaf  is  to  push  the  tip  of  your 
finger  into  it,  a  common  practice  in  most  places.  Probably  the 
wood-wives  could  not  carry  off  a  pricked  loaf,  and  therefore 
disliked  the  mark  ;  for  a  like  reason  they  objected  to  counting. 
Whether  the  seasoning  with,  cummin  disgusted  them  as  an  inno- 
vation merely,  or  in  some  other  connection,  I  do  not  know.  The 
rhyme  runs  thus  :  '  kiimmelbrot,  unser  tod  ! '   the  death  of  us ; 

or — '  kiimmelbrot  macht  angst  und  noth.' Some  wood-manni- 

kins,  who  had  long  done  good  service  at  a  mill,  were  scared  away 
by  the  miller's  men  leaving  out  clothes  and  shoes  for  them,  Jul. 
Schmidt,   p.   146  (see  Suppl.).1     It  is  as  though,  by  accepting 

i  This  agrees  wonderfully  with  what  Reusch,  pp.  53-5,  reports  from  Prussian 

Samland  : A  householder  at  Lapohnen,  to  whom  the  subterraneans  had  done 

many  services,  was  grieved  at  their  having  such  poor  clothes,  and  asked  his  wife  to 
put  some  new  little  coats  where  they  would  find  them.  Well,  they  took  their  new 
outfit,  but  their  leave  at  the  same  time,  crying,  '  paid  up,  paid  up  ! '  Another  time 
they  had  been  helping  a  poor  smith,  had  come  every  night  and  turned  out  a  set  of 
little  pots,  pans,  plates  and  kettles  as  bright  as  could  be ;  the  mistress  would  set  a 
dish  of  milk  for  them,  which  they  fell  upon  like  wolves,  and  cleared  to  the  last  drop, 
washed  up  the  plates  and  then  set  to  work.  The  smith  having  soon  become  a  rich 
man,  his  wife  sewed  them  each  a  pretty  little  red  coat  and  cap,  and  left  them  lying. 
'  Paid  up,  paid  up  ! '  cried  the  undergrounders,  then  quickly  slipt  into  their  new 
finery,  and  were  off,  without  touching  the  iron  left  for  them  to  work  at,  or  ever 

coming  back. Another  story  of  the  Seewen-weiher  (-pond),  near  Eippoldsau,  in 

the  Black  Forest  (Mone's  Anz.  6,  175)  : — A  lake-maunikin  liked  coming  to  tlio 
folks  at  Seewen  farm,  would  do  jobs  there  all  day,  and  not  return  into  his  lake  till 
evening;  they  used  to  serve  him  up  breakfast  and  dinner  by  himself.  If  in  giving 
out  tasks  they  omitted  the  phrase  '  none  too  much  and  none  too  little,'  he  turned 
cross,  and  threw  all  into  confusion.  Though  his  clothes  were  old  and  shabby,  he 
never  would  let  the  Seewen  farmer  get  him  new  ones  ;  but  when  this  after  all  was 
done,  and  the  new  coat  handed  to  the  lake-mannikin,  one  evening,  he  said,  '  When 
one  is  paid  off  one  must  go  ;  beginning  from  to-morrow,  I  come  to  you  no  more  ;' 

and  in  spite  of   all  the  farmer's  apologies  he  was  never  seen  again. Jos.  Bank's 

Bohmerwald,  p.  217,  tells  a  pretty  story  of  a  wasehweiberl  (wee  washerwife),  for  whom 
the  people  of  the  house  wanted  to  have  shoes  made,  but  she  would  not  hold  out  her 
little  foot  to  be  measured.  They  sprinkled  the  floor  with  flour,  and  took  the 
measure  by  her  footprints.  When  the  shoes  were  made  and  placed  on  the  bench 
for  her,  she  fell  a-sobbing,  turned  her  little  smock-sleeves  down  agaiu,  unlooped 
the  skirt  of  her  frock,  then  burst  away,  lamenting  loudly,  and  was  seen  no  more.' 
That  is  to  say,  the  wee  wife,  on  coming  into  the  house,  had  turned  up  the  sleeyi  a 
of  her  smock,  and  looped  up  her  frock,  that  she  might  the  more  easily  do  any  kind 
of  work.  Similar  tales  are  told  of  the  brownie,  It.  Chambers,  p.  33.  And  the  same 
idea  lies  at  the  bottom  of  the  first  story  about  wiehtelruannerchen  in   Kinderm.  39. 


486  WIGHTS   AND   ELVES. 

clothes,  the  spirits  were  afraid  of  suddenly  breaking  off  the 
relation  that  subsisted  between  themselves  and  mankind.  We 
shall  see  presently  that  the  home-sprites  proper  acted  on  different 
principles,  and  even  bargained  for  clothes. 

The  more  these  wood-folk  live  a  good  many  together,  the  more 
do  they  resemble  elves,  wichtels,  and  dwarfs  ;  the  more  they 
appear  singly,  the  nearer  do  the  females  stand  to  wise  women  and 
even  goddesses,  the  males  to  gigantic  fauns  and  wood-monsters, 
as  we  saw  in  Katzenveit,  Giibich  and  Rubezahl  (p.  480).  The 
salvage  man  with  uprooted  fir-tree  in  his  hand,  such  as  supports 
the  arms  of  several  princes  in  Lower  Germany,  represents  this 
kind  of  faun  ;  it  would  be  worth  finding  out  at  what  date  he  is 
first  mentioned.  Grinkenschmied  in  the  mountain  (Deut.  sag.  1, 
232)  is  also  called  e  der  wilde  man.' 

In  the  Romance  fairy-tales  an  old  Roman  god  has  assumed 
altogether  the  nature  of  a  wood-sprite ;  out  of  Orcus l  has  been 
made  an  Ital.  orco,  Neapol.  hnorco,  Fr.  ogre  (supra,  p.  314)  :  he 
is  pictured  black,  hairy,  bristly,  but  of  great  stature  rather  than 
small,  almost  gigantic;  children  losing  their  way  in  the  wood 
come  upon  his  dwelling,  and  he  sometimes  shews  himself  good- 
natured  and  bestows  gifts,  oftener  his  wife  (orca,  ogresse)  pro- 
tects and  saves.3  German  fairy-tales  hand  over  his  part  to  the 
devil,  who  springs  even  more  directly  from  the  ancient  god  of 
the  lower  world.  Of  the  invisible-making  helmet  the  orco  has 
nothing  left  him,  on  the  other  hand  a  dsemonic  acuteness  of 
scent  is  made  a  characteristic  feature,  he  can  tell  like  a  sea- 
monster  the  approach  of  human  flesh  :  '  je  sens  la  chair  fraiche/ 
'ich  rieche,  rieche  menschenfieisch/  'ich  wittere,  wittere 
menschenfieisch/  fi  schmoke  ne  Crist/  'I  smell  the  blood/ 
'  jeg  lugter  det  paa  min  hoire  haand  (right  hand)/  'her  lugter 
saa  kristen  mands  been/  3  exactly  as  the  meerminne  already  in 

It  is  a  common  characteristic,  that  holds  good  of  wichtels,  of  suhterraneans,  of  lake- 
sprites  and  of  wood-folk,  but  chiefly  of  male  ones  who  do  service  to  mankind. 
[Might  the  objection  to  shewing  their  feet  arise  from  their  being  web-footed,  like 
the  Swiss  ha'rdmandle, especially  in  the  case  of  water-sprites?] 

1  See  App.,  Superst.  A,  '  Orcum  invocare'  together  with  Neptune  and  Diana ; 
Superst.  G,  extr.  fromVintler,  1.  83  :  '  er  hab  den  orken  gesechen.'  Beow.  224  has 
orcneas,  pi.  of  orcne. 

2  Pentamerone,  for  the  orco  1, 1.  1,5.  2,3.  3,10.  4,8.  For  the  orca  2, 1. 
2,  7.     4,  6.     5,  4. 

3  Perrault's  Petit  poucet ;  Kinderm.  1,  152.  179.  2,  350.  3,  410;  Musams  1, 
21  ;  Danske  viser  1,  220  ;  Norske  folkeeventyr,  p.  35. 


SCUOHISAL.  487 

Morolt  3924  says :  '  ich  smacke  diutsche  iserngewant/  coats 
of  mail  (see  Suppl.).  The  Ital.  however  has  also  an  uom  foresto, 
Pulci's  Morgante  5,  38. 

The  Gothic  neut.  slwhsl,  by  which  Ulphilas  renders  SaifMovtov, 
Matth.  8,  31.  Lu.  8,  27  (only  in  margin;  text  reads  unhul]>6). 
1  Cor.  10,  20.  21,  I  am  disposed  to  explain  by  supposing  a  sMhs, 
gen.  skohis,  or  rather  skogs  (the  h  being  merely  the  g  softened 
before  si).  It  would  answer  to  the  ON.  skogr  (silva) ;  in  all  our 
Gothic  fragments  the  word  for  forest  never  occurs,  so  that  in 
addition  to  a  vidus  (p.  376)  we  may  very  well  conjecture  a  skogs. 
In  Sweden  the  provincialisms  skogsnerte,  sJwgsnufva l  are  still 
used ;  suerte  appears  to  contain  snert  gracilis,  and  snufva  to 
mean  anh elans.2  Now  if  skohsl  is  wood-sprite,3  there  may  have 
been  associated  with  it,  as  with  Satfxovcov,  the  idea  of  a  higher 
being:,  semi-divine  or  even  divine.  When  we  call  to  mind  the 
sacred,  inviolable  trees  inhabited  by  spirits  (chap.  XXI,  and 
Snperst.  Swed.  no.  110,  Dan.  no.  162),  and  the  forest- worsliip  of 
the  Germani  in  general  (pp.  54-58.  97-8)  ;  we  can  understand 
why  wood-sprites  in  particular  should  be  invested  with  a  human 
or  divine  rather  than  elvish  nature. 

Water-sprites  exhibit  the  same  double  aspect.  Wise-women, 
valkyrs,  appear  on  the  wave  as  swans,  they  merge  into  prophetic 
merwomen  and  merminnes  (p.  434).  Even  Nerthns  and  dame 
Holla  bathe  in  lake  or  pool,  and  the  way  to  Holla's  abode  is 
through  the  well,  Kinderm.  24.  79. 

Hence  to  the  general  term  holde  or  guoter  hohle  (genius,  bonus 
genius)  is  added  a  wazzerholde  (p.  266),  a  brunnenJwlde  (p.  268)  ; 
to  the  more  general  minni  a  meriminni  and  marmenniU  (p.  433). 
Other   names,    which    explain    themselves,    are:     MHG.    wildiu 

1  Linnaeus' s  Gothlandske  resa,  p.  312.     Faye,  p.  42. 

2  In  1298  TorkelKnutson  founded  on  the  Neva  a  stronghold  against  the  Russians, 
called  Landskrona.  An  old  folk-tale  says,  there  was  heard  in  the  forest  near  the 
rivi  i  a  continual  knocking,  as  of  a  stone-cutter.  At  last  a  peasant  took  courage  and 
penetrated  into  the  forest ;  there  he  found  a  wood-sprite  hewing  at  a  stone,  who,  on 
being  asked  what  that  should  mean,  answered  :  '  this  stone  shall  be  the  boundary 
between  the  lands  of  the  Swedes  and  Moskovites.'  Forsell's  Statistik  von  Schwe- 
den,  p.  1. 

3  To  make  up  anOHG.  skuoh  and  skuohisal  is  doubtless  yet  more  of  a  venture. 
Our  tcheuaal  (monstrum),  if  it  comes  from  scheuen  (sciuhan),  to  shy  at,  has  quite 
another  fundamental  vowel ;  it  may  however  be  a  corruption.  The  only  very  old 
form  I  know  is  the  schusel  given  in  the  foot-note  on  p.  269.  But  the  Vocab.  of  1482 
has  scheuhe  (larva). 

VOL.  II.  E 


£88  WIGHTS   AND   ELVES. 

merkint,  wildiu  merwunder,  Gudrun  1 09,  4.  112,3.  wildez  merwij), 
Osw.  653.  673 ;  Mod.  HG.  meerwunder,  wassermann  (Slav. 
vodnik),  seejungfer,  nieerweib  ;  ON.  Iiaf-fru,  ces-kona,  hafgygr,  mar- 
gijgr ;  Dan.  havmand,  brondmand  (man  of  the  burn  or  spring), 
Molb.  Dial.  p.  58 ;  Swed.  liafsman,  hafsfru,  and  more  particularly 
stromkarl  (river  sprite  or  man).  Wendish  vodny  muz,  water  man. 
The  notion  of  a  water-king  shews  itself  in  water  conink,  Melis 
Stoke  2,  96.  Certain  elves  or  dwarfs  are  represented  as  water- 
sprites  :  Andvari,  son  of  Oin,  in  the  shape  of  a  pike  inhabited 
a  fors,  Ssem.  180-1  ;  and  Alfrikr,  ace.  to  Vilk.  saga,  cap.  34, 
haunted  a  river  (see  Suppl.). 

The  peculiar  name  of  such  a  watersprite  in  OHG.  was  nihhus, 
nichus,  gen.  nichuses,  and  by  this  term  the  glossists  render  croco- 
dilus,  Gl.  mons.  332,  412.  Jun.  270.  Wirceb.  978b;  the  Physio- 
logus  makes  it  neuter  :  daz  nihhus,  Diut.  3,  25.  Hoffm.  Fundgr. 
23.  Later  it  becomes  niches,  Gl.  Jun.  270.  In  AS.  I  find,  with 
change  of  s  into  r,  a  masc.  nicor,  pi.  niceras,  Beow.  838.  1144. 
2854,  by  which  are  meant  monstrous  spirits  living  in  the  sea, 
conf.  nicorhus,  Beow.  2822.  This  AS.  form  agrees  with  the  M. 
Nethl.  nicker,  pi.  nickers,  (Horae  Belg.  p.  119);  Reinaert  prose 
MIIIIP  has  '  nickers  ende  wichteren';  necker  (Neptunus),  Diut. 
2,  224b.  'heft  mi  die  necker  bracht  hier  ?  '  (has  the  devil  brought 
me  here  ?),  Mone's  Ndrl.  volkslit.  p.  140.  The  Mod.  Nethl. 
nikker  means  evil  spirit,  devil,  f  alle  nikkers  uit  de  hel ; '  so  the 
Engl.  '  old  Nick.'  We  have  retained  the  form  with  s,  and  the 
original  sense  of  a  watersprite,  a  male  nix  and  a  female  nixe,  i.e., 
niks  and  nikse,  though  we  also  hear  of  a  nickel  and  nickelmann. 
In  MHG.  Conrad  uses  wassernixe  in  the  sense  of  siren  :  '  heiz  uns 
leiten  uz  dem  bade  der  vertanen  (accursed)  wasseruixen,  daz  uns 
ir  gedcene  (din)  iht  schade '  (MS.  2,  2001').1 

The  ON.  nikr  (gen.  niks  ?)  is  now  thought  to  mean  hippo- 
potamus only  ;  the  Swed.  ndk,  nek,  and  the  Dan.  nok,  nok,  nocke, 
aanycke  (Molb.  Dial.  p.  4)  express  exactly  our  watersprite,  but 
always  a  male  one.  The  Danish  form  comes  nearest  to  a  Mid. 
Lat.  nocca,  spectrum  marinum   in  stagnis  et  fluviis  ;  the  Finn. 

1  Grypliius  (mihi  743)  has  a  rhyme :  '  die  wasserliiss  auf  erden  mag  nicht 
so  schone  werdeu,'  apparently  meaning  a  water-wife  or  nixe.  In  Ziska's  Ostr. 
volksm.  54  a  kind  ivassemix,  like  dame  Holla,  bestows  wishing-gifts  on  the 
children. 


NICHUS,    NIX. 


489 


nakki,  Esth.  nek  (watersprite)  seera  borrowed  from  the  Swedish. 
Some  have  brought  into  this  connexion  the  much  older  neha 
nehalennia  (pp.  257,  419),  I  think  without  good  reason:  the 
Latin  organ  had  no  occasion  to  put  h  for  c,  and  where  it  does 
have  an  h  in  German  words  (as  Vahalis,  Naharvali),  we  have  no 
business  to  suppose  a  tenuis  ;  besides,  the  images  of  Nehalennia 
hardly  indicate  a  river-goddess. 

I  think  we  have  better  reason  for  recognising  the  water-sprite 
in  a  name  of  OSinn,  who  was  occasionally  conceived  of  as  Nep- 
tune (p.  148),  and  often  appears  as  a  sailor  and  ferryman  in  his 
bark.  The  AS.  Andreas  describes  in  detail,  how  God  Himself,  in 
the  shape  of  a  divine  shipman  escorts  one  over  the  sea ;  in  the 
Legenda  Aurea  it  is  only  an  angel.  OSinn,  occording  to  Sn.  3,  is 
called  Nikarr  or  Hnikarr,  and  Nikuz  or  Enikudr.  In  Seem.  46a>  b 
we  read  Hnikarr,  Hnikuffr,  and  in  91a  184a>  b  Hnikarr  again. 
Nikarr  would  correspond  to  AS.  Nieor,  and  Nikuz  to  OHG. 
Nichus.  Snorri's  optional  forms  are  remarkable,  he  must  have 
drawn  them  from  sources  which  knew  of  both;  the  prefixing 
of  an  aspirate  may  have  been  merely  to  humour  the  metre.  Finn 
Magnusen,  p.  438,  acutely  remarks,  that  wherever  OSinn  is  called 
Hnikarr,  he  does  appear  as  a  sea-sprite  and  calms  the  waves. 
For  the  rest,  no  nickar  (like  alfar  and  dvergar)  are  spoken  of  in 
either  Edda.  Of  the  metamorphoses  of  the  nickur  (hippop.)  the 
ON.  uses  the  expression  "  nykrat  e'Sa  finngalkat,"  Sn.  317  (see 
Suppl.). 

Plants  and  stones  are  named  after  the  nix,  as  well  as  after 
gods.  The  nyinphasa  {vv^aia  from  vvfxjin)  we  still  call  ni,f- 
blume  as  well  as  seeblume,  seelilie,  Swed.  nackblad,  Dan.  nbk- 
kibhnnster,  nokkerose ;  the  conferva  rupestris,  Dan.  nokkeskag 
(nix-beard) ;  the  haliotis,  a  shellfish,  Swed.  ndckora  (nix-ear)  ; 
the  crumby  tufa-stone,  tophus,  Swed.  ndckebrod,  the  water- 
sprite's  bread.  Finn,  ndkinkenka  (mya  margaritifera)  ndkin 
waltikka  (typha  angustifolia)  ;  the  Lausitz  Wends  call  the  blos- 
soms or  seedpods  of  certain  reeds  c  vodneho  mvzha  porsty, 
potaczky  [piorsty,  perczatky  ?],  lohszy/  water-man's  fingers  or 
gloves.  We  ourselves  call  the  water-lily  ivassenndnnlein,  but 
also  mummel,  milmmeh-hen,  =  miiemel,  aunty,  water-aunt,  as  the 
merminne  in  the  old  lay  is  expressly  addressed  as  Morolt's 
'liebe    muome/  and  in  Westphalia  to  this  day  ivatermome  is  a 


490  WIGHTS  AND  ELVES. 

ghostly  being;  in  Nib.  1479,  3  Siglint  the  one  merwoinan  says 
of  Hadburc  the  other  : 

Durch  der  waste  liebe  hat  min  muome  dir  gelogen, 

'tis  through  love  of  raiment  (weeds)  mine  aunt  hath  lied  to  thee; 
these  merwomen  belong,  as  swan-maidens,  to  one  sisterhood  and 
kindred  (p.  428),  and  in  Oswald  673-9  fein  ander  merwip '  is 
coupled  with  the  first.  Several  lakes  inhabited  by  nixes  are 
called  mummelsee  (Deut.  sag.  nos.  59.  331.  Mone's  Anz.  3,  92), 
otherwise  meumke-loch,  e.g.,  in  the  Paschenburg  of  Schaumburg. 
This  explains  the  name  of  a  little  river  Milmling  in  the  Oden- 
wald,  though  old  docs,  spell  it  Mimling.  Mersprites  are  made  to 
favour  particular  pools  and  streams,  e.g.,  the  Saale,  the  Danube, 
the  Elbe,1  as  the  Romans  believed  in  the  bearded  river-gods 
of  individual  rivers;  it  may  be  that  the  name  of  the  Neckar 
(Nicarus)  is  immediately  connected  with  our  nicor,  nechar  (see 
Snppl.). 

Biorn  gives  nennir  as  another  ON.  name  for  hippopotamus, 
it  seems  related  to  the  name  of  the  goddess  Nanna  (p.  310).2 
This  nennir  or  nikur  presents  himself  on  the  sea-shore  as  a  hand- 
some dapple-grey  horse,  and  is  to  be  recognised  by  his  hoofs 
looking  the  wrong  way ;  if  any  one  mounts  him,  he  plunges  with 
his  prey  into  the  deep.  There  is  a  way  however  to  catch  and 
bridle  him,  and  break  him  in  for  a  time  to  work.3  A  clever  man 
at  Morland  in  Balms  fastened  an  artfully  contrived  bridle  on  him, 
so  that  he  could  not  get  away,  and  ploughed  all  his  land  with 
him;  but  the  bridle  somehow  coming  loose,  the  'neck'  darted 
like  fire  into  the  lake,  and  drew  the  harrow  in  after  him.4  In 
the  same  way  German  legends  tell  of  a  great  hulking  black  horse, 
that  had  risen  out  of  the  sea,  being  put  to  the  plough,  and  going 
ahead  at  a  mighty  pace,  till  he  dragged  both  plough  and  plough- 
man over  the   cliff.5     Out  of  a  marsh  called  the   '  taufe/   near 

1  The  Elbjungfer  and  Saalweiblein,  Deut.  sag.  no.  60 ;  the  river-sprite  in  the 
Oder,  ibid.  no.  62. 

2  Muchar,  in  Norikum  2,  37,  and  in  Gastein  p.  145,  mentions  an  Alpine 
sprite  Donanadel ;  does  nadel  here  stand  for  nandel  ?  A  misprint  for  madel  (girl) 
is  scarcely  conceivable. 

3  Landnamabok,  2,  10  (Islend.  sog.  1,  74).  Olafsen's  Eeise  igiennem  Island, 
1,  55.     Sv.  vis.  3,  128. 

4  P.  Kalm's  Westgota  och  Bahuslandska  resa,  1742,  p.  200. 

5  Letzner's  Dasselsche  chronik  5,  13. 


NICHTJS,    NIX.  491 

Scheuen  in  Lower  Saxony,  a  wild  bull  comes  up  at  certain  times, 
and  goes  with  the  cows  of  the  herd  (Harry's  Sagen,  p.  79). 
When  a  thunderstorm  is  brewing,  a  great  horse  with  enormous 
hoofs  will  appear  on  the  water  (Faye,  p.  55).  It  is  the  vulgar 
belief  in  Norway,  that  whenever  people  at  sea  go  down,  a 
soedrouen  (sea  sprite)  shews  himself  in  the  shape  of  a  headless 
old  man  (Sommerfelt,  Saltdalens  priistegjeld,  Trondhjem  1827,  p. 
119).  In  the  Highlands  of  Scotland  a  water-sprite  in  the  shape 
of  a  horse  is  known  by  the  name  of  water-kelpie  (see  Suppl.). 

Water-sprites  have  many  things  in  common  with  mountain- 
sprites,  but  also  some  peculiar  to  themselves.  The  males,  like 
those  of  the  schrat  kind,  come  up  singly  rather  than  in  companies. 
The  water  man  is  commonly  represented  as  oldish  and  with  a 
long  beard,  like  the  Roman  demigod  out  of  whose  urn  the  river 
spouts;  often  he  is  many-headed  (conf.  p.  387),  Faye  p.  51.  In 
a  Danish  folk-song  the  nokke  lifts  his  beard  aloft  (conf.  Svenska 
visor  3,  127.  133),  he  wears  a  green  hat,  and  when  he  grins  you 
see  his  green  teeth  (Deut.  sag.  no.  52).  He  has  at  times  the 
figure  of  a  wild  bog  with  shaggy  hair,  or  else  with  yellow  curls 
and  a  red  cap  on  his  head.1  The  niikki  of  the  Finns  is  said  to 
have  iron  teeth.2  The  nixe  (fem.),  like  the  Romance  fay  and  our 
own  wise-women,  is  to  be  seen  sitting  in  the  sun,  combing  her 
long  hair  (Svenska  vis.  3,  148),  or  emerging  from  the  waves  with 
the  upper  half  of  her  body,  which  is  exceedingly  beautiful.  The 
lower  part,  as  with  sirens,  is  said  to  consist  of  a  fish-like  tail ; 
but  this  feature  is  not  essential,  aud  most  likely  not  truly 
Teutonic,  for  we  never  hear  of  a  tailed  nix,3  and  even  the  nixe, 
when  she  comes  on  shore  among  men,  is  shaped  and  attired  like 
the  daughters  of  men,  being  recognised  only  by  the  wet  skirt  of 

1  The  small  size  is  implied  in  the  popular  rhyme  :  '  Nix  in  der  grube  (pit),  du 
bist  eiu  boser  bube  (bad  boy)  ;  wasch  dir  deine  beinchen  (little  legs)  mit  rothen 
ziegelsteinchen  (red  brick).' 

2  On  the  grass  by  the  shore  a  girl  is  seized  by  a  pretty  boy  wearing  a  handsome 
peasant's  belt,  aud  is  forced  to  scratch  his  head  for  him.  While  she  is  doing  so,  he 
slips  a  girdle  round  her  unperceived,  and  chains  her  to  himself ;  the  continued 
friction,  however,  sends  him  to  sleep.  In  the  meantime  a  woman  comes  up,  and 
asks  the  girl  what  she  is  about.  She  tells  her,  and,  while  talking,  releases  herself 
from  the  girdle.  The  boy  was  more  sound  asleep  than  ever,  and  his  lips  stood 
pretty  wide  apart ;  then  the  woman,  coming  up  closer,  cried  out :  '  why,  that's  a 
neck,  look  at  his  fish's  teeth  ! '  In  a  moment  the  neck  was  gone  (Etwas  iiber  die 
Ehsten,  p.  51). 

3  But  we  do  of  nixes  shaped  like  men  above  and  like  horses  below  ;  one  water- 
sprite  takes  his  name  from  his  slit  ears,  Deut.  sag.  no.  63. 


492  WIGHTS   AND   ELVES. 

her  dress,  the  wet  tips  of  her  apron.1  Here  is  another  point  of 
contact  with  swan -maidens,  whose  swan-foot  betrays  them  :  and 
as  they  have  their  veils  and  clothes  taken  from  them,  the  nixe 
too  is  embarrassed  by  the  removal  and  detention  of  her  gloves 
in  dancing  (Deut.  sag.  nos.  58.  60).  Among  the  Wends  the 
water-man  appears  in  a  linen  smockfrock  with  the  bottom  of  its 
shirt  wet ;  if  in  buying  up  grain  he  pays  more  than  the  market 
price,  a  dearth  follows,  and  if  he  buys  cheaper  than  others,  prices 
fall  (Lausitz.  monatschr.  1797,  p.  750).  The  Russians  name 
their  water-nymphs  rusdlki:  fair  maidens  with  green  or  gar- 
landed hair,  combing  themselves  on  the  meadow  by  the  waterside, 
and  bathing  in  lake  or  river.  They  are  seen  chiefly  on  Whit- 
sunday and  in  Whitsun-week,  when  the  people  with  dance  and 
song  plait  garlands  in  their  honour  and  throw  them  into  the 
water.  The  custom  is  connected  with  the  German  river-worship 
on  St.  John's  day.  Whitsun-week  itself  was  called  by  the 
Russians  rusaldnaya,  in  Boh.  rusadla,  and  even  in  Wallachian 
rusalie.2 

Dancing,  song  and  music  are  the  delight  of  all  water-sprites,  as 
they  are  of  elves  (p.  470).  Like  the  sirens,  the  nixe  by  her 
song  draws  listening  youth  to  herself,  and  then  into  the  deep. 
So  Hylas  was  drawn  into  the  water  by  the  nymphs  (Apollod. 
i.  9,  19.  Apollon.  rhod.  1,  131).  At  evening  up  come  the  dam- 
sels from  the  lake,  to  take  part  in  the  human  dance,  and  to  visit 
their  lovers.3  In  Sweden  they  tell  of  the  stromkarVs  alluring 
enchanting  strain  :  the  strornkarls-lag  (-lay)  is  said  to  have 
eleven  variations,  but  to  only  ten  of  them  may  you  dance, 
the  eleventh  belongs  to  the  night-spirit  and  his  band;    begin 

1  In  Olaf  the  Saint's  saga  (Fornm.  sog.  4,  56.  5,  162)  a  mar gygr  is  pictured  as  a 
beautiful  woman,  from  the  girdle  downward  ending  in  a  fish,  lulling  men  to  sleep 
with  her  sweet  song ;  evidently  modelled  on  the  Roman  siren.  Pretty  stories  of 
nixes  are  told  in  Jul.  Schmidt's  Reichenfels,  p.  150  (where  the  word  docken  =  dolls, 
puppets)  and  151.  Water-wives  when  in  labour  send  for  human  assistance,  like 
she-dwarfs  (p.  457).  '  They  spake  at  Dr.  M.  L.'s  table  of  spectra  and  of  changelings, 
then  did  Mistress  Luther,  his  goodwife,  tell  an  history,  how  a  midwife  at  a  place 
was  fetched  away  by  the  devil  to  one  in  childbed,  with  whom  the  devil  had  to  do, 
and  that  lived  in  a  hole  in  the  water  in  the  Mulda,  and  the  water  hurt  her  not  at 
all,  but  in  the  hole  she  sat  as  in  a  fair  chamber.'     Table-talk  1571.  440b. 

2  Schafarik  in  the  Casopis  cesk.  mus.  7,  259  his  furnished  a  full  dissertation  on 
the  rusalky  [from  rusy,  blond  ;  but  there  is  also  ruslo,  river's  bed,  deepest  part] . 

3  Hebel  doubtless  founds  on  popular  tradition  when  (p.  281)  he  makes  the 
'  jungfere  usem  see  '  roam  through  the  fields  at  midnight,  probably  like  the  roggen- 
muhme  to  make  them  fruitful.  Other  stories  of  the  meerweiblein  in  Mone's  Anz.  8, 
178,  and  Bechstein's  Thiir.  sagen  3,  236. 


NICHUS,   NIX.  493> 

to  play  that,  and  tables  and  benches,  cup  and  can,  gray-beards- 
and  grandmothers,  blind  and  lame,  even  babes  in  the  cradle 
would  be«-in  to  dance.1  This  melodious  stromkarl  loves  to  linger 
by  mills  and  waterfalls  (conf.  Andvari,  p.  488).  Hence  his 
Norwegian  name  fossegrim  (fos,  Swed.  and  ON.  fors,  waterfall). 
On  p.  52  it  was  cited  as  a  remnant  of  heathen  sacrifices,  that  to 
this  demonic  being  people  offered  a  black  lamb,  and  were  taught 
music  by  him  in  return.  The  fossegrim  too  on  calm  dark 
evenings  entices  men  by  his  music,  and  instructs  in  the  fiddle 
or  other  stringed  instrument  any  one  who  will  on  a  Thursday 
evening,  with  his  head  turned  away,  offer  him  a  little  white  he-goat 
and  throw  it  into  a  '  forse '  that  falls  northwards  (supra,  p.  34) . 
If  the  victim  is  lean,  the  pupil  gets  no  farther  than  the  tuning  of 
the  fiddle  ;  if  fat,  the  fossegrim  clutches  hold  of  the  player's  right 
hand,  and  guides  it  up  and  down  till  the  blood  starts  out  of  all 
his  finger-tips,  then  the  pupil  is  perfect  in  his  art,  and  can  play 
so  that  the  trees  shall  dance  and  torrents  in  their  fall  stand  still 
(see  Suppl.).2 

Although  Christianity  forbids  such  offerings,  and  pronounces 
the  old  water-sprites  diabolic  beings,  yet  the  common  people 
retain  a  certain  awe  and  reverence,  and  have  not  quite  given  up 
all  faith  in  their  power  and  influence  :  accursed  beings  they 
are,  but  they  may  some  day  become  partakers  of  salvation.  This 
is  the  drift  of  the  touching  account,  how  the  stromkarl  or  neck 
wants  you  not  only  to  sacrifice  to  him  in  return  for  musical 
instruction,  but  to  promise  him  resurrection  and  redemption.3. 
Two  boys  were  playing  by  the  riverside,  the  neck  sat  there 
touching  his  harp,  and  the  children  cried  to  him  :  f  What  do  you 
sit  and  play  here  for,  neck  ?  you  know  you  will  never  be  saved/ 
The  neck  began  to  weep  bitterly,  threw  his  harp  away,  and  sank 
to  the  bottom.     When  the  boys  got  home,  they  told  their  father 

1  Arndt's  Eeise  nach  Schweden  4,  241 ;  similar  dances  spoken  of  in  Herrauds- 
saga,  cap.  11.  pp.  49 — 52. 

2  Faye  p.  57.     Conf.  Thiele  1,  135  on  the  kirkegrim. 

3  Odman's  Babusliin,  p.  80  :  Om  spelemiin  i  hogar  ok  forsar  liar  man  ok 
atskilliga  sagor ;  for  15  ar  tilbacka  bar  man  bar  uti  hdgen  under  Giiren  i  Tanums 
gall  belagit  hort  spela  som  the  baste  musicanter.  Then  som  har  viol  ok  vill  Era 
spela,  blir  i  ognableket  lard,  allenast  ban  lofvar  vpstdndelse ;  en  som  ej  lofte  thet, 
tick  bora  bum  the  i  hogen  slogo  sonder  sina  violcr  ok  greto  bitterliga.  (He  that  has 
a  fiddle  and  will  learn  to  play,  becomes  in  a  moment  learned,  only  he  promises 
resurrection  ;  one  who  promised  not  that,  did  hear  how  they  in  the  hill  beat 
asunder  their  fiddles  and  wept  bitterly.) 


494  WIGHTS   AND   ELVES. 

what  had  happened.  The  father,  who  was  a  priest,  said  fyou 
have  sinned  against  the  neck,  go  back,  comfort  him  and  tell  him 
he  may  be  saved/  When  they  returned  to  the  river,  the  neck 
sat  on  the  bank  weeping  and  wailing.  The  children  said :  '  Do 
not  cry  so,  poor  neck,  father  says  that  your  Redeemer  liveth  too/ 
Then  the  neck  joyfully  took  his  harp,  and  played  charmingly  till 
long  after  sunset.1  I  do  not  know  that  anywhere  in  our  legends 
it  is  so  pointedly  expressed,  how  badly  the  heathen  stand  in  need 
of  the  Christian  religion,  and  how  mildly  it  ought  to  meet 
them.  But  the  harsh  and  the  compassionate  epithets  bestowed 
on  the  nixes  seem  to  turn  chiefly  upon  their  unblessedness,  their 
damnation.2 

But  beside  the  freewill  offering  for  instruction  in  his  art,  the 
nix  also  exacted  cruel  and  compulsory  sacrifices,  of  which  the 
memory  is  preserved  in  nearly  all  popular  tradition.  To  this  day, 
when  people  are  drowned  in  a  river,  it  is  common  to  say  :  '  the 
river-sprite  demands  his  yearly  victim/  which  is  usually  'an 
innocent  child.'  3  This  points  to  actual  human  sacrifices  offered 
to  the  nichus  in  far-off  heathen  times.  To  the  nix  of  the  Diemel 
they  throw  bread  and  fruit  once  a  year  (see  Suppl.). 

On  the  whole  there  runs  through  the  stories  of  water-sprites  a 
vein  of  cruelty  and  bloodthirstiness,  which  is  not  easily  found  among 
daamons  of  mountains,  woods  and  homes.  The  nix  not  only  kills 
human  beings  who  fall  into  his  clutches,  but  wreaks  a  bloody 
vengeance  on  his  own  folk  who  have  come  on  shore,  mingled 
with  men,  and  then  gone  back.  A  girl  had  passed  fifteen  years 
in  the  sea- wife's  house  (i  haf-fruns  gard),  and  never  seen  the  sun 
all  that  time.  At  last  her  brother  ventures  down,  and  brings 
his  beloved  sister  safely  back  to  the  upper  world.  The  hafstru 
waited  her  return  seven  years,  then  seized  her  staff,  and  lashing 
the  water  till  it  splashed  up  high,  she  cried  : 

1  Sv.  visor  3, 128.  Ir.  Elfenm.  p.  24;  similar  Irish,  Scotch,  and  Danish  tra- 
ditions, pp.  200-2.  Conf.  Thiele  4,  14.  Holberg's  Julestue  sc.  12 :  '  Nisser  og 
underjorske  folk,  drive  store  fester  bort  med  klagen  og  hylen,  eftersom  de  ingen  del 
har  derudi '  (because  they  have  no  part  therein). 

2  '  Vertane  wassernixe,'  fordone,  done  for  (p.  488) ;  '  den  fula  stygga  necken,' 
Sv.  vis.  3,  147  ;  '  den  usle  havfrue,  usle  marernind,'  '  den  arme  niareviv,'  '  du  fide 
og  lede  spaaqvinde  ! '  Danske  visor  1,  110.  119.  125.  Holberg's  Melampus  3,  7 
cites  a  Danish  superstition  :  '  naar  en  tisker  ligger  hos  sin  fiskerinde  paa  soen, 
saa  foder  hun  en  havfrue.' 

3  Deut.  sag.,  nos.  61.  62.  Faye,  p.  51.  The  Kiver  Saale  yearly  demands  her 
victim  on  Walburgis  or  St.  John's  day,  and  on  those  days  people  avoid  the  river. 


NICHUS,   NIX.  495 

Hade  jag  trott  att  du  varit  sa  falsk, 

Sa  skulle  jag  kuackt  dig  din  tiufvekals  ! 

(bad  I  trowed  thou  wert  so  false,  I'd  have  nicked  thy  thievish 
neck),  Arvidsson  2,  320-3.  If  the  sea-maidens  have  stayed  too 
long  at  the  dance,  if  the  captive  Christian  have  born  a  child  to 
the  nix,  if  the  water-man's  child  is  slow  in  obeying  his  call,  one 
sees  a,  jet  of  blood  shoot  up  from  the  water's  bed  in  sign  of  the 
vengeful  deed.1     As  a  rule,  there  was  likewise  a  favourable  sign 

1  Deut.  sag.,  nos.  49.  58-9.  60.  304-6.  318,  1.     Here  I  give  another  Westphalian 

legend,  written  down  for  me  by  Hr  Seitz,  of  Osnabriick  : Donken  von  den  smelt 

upjm  Darmssen.  Dicbte  bei  Brauruske  liggt  en  liitken  see,  de  Darmssen  ;  do  stond 
vorr  aulen  tien  (olden  tide)  en  klauster  ane.  de  nhonke  aber  in  den  klauster  liabeden 
nig  na  Goddes  willen  ;  drumrne  gonk  et  unner.  Nig  lange  na  hiar  horden  de  buren 
in  der  nauberskup,  in  Epe,  olle  nacbte  en  kloppen  un  liarmen  bi  den  Darmssen,  osse 
wenn  me  upn  ambold  slet,  und  wecke  Kie  seigen  wott  (some  folk  saw  somewhat) 
midden  up  den  Darmssen.  Se  sgeppeden  drup  to  ;  da  was  et  n  smett,  de  bet  ant  lif 
(bis  an's  leib)  inn  ivater  seit,  mitn  hamer  in  de  fust,  d&mit  weis  he  jiimmer  up  den 
ambold,  un  bedudde  (bedeutete)  de  buren,  dat  se  em  wot  to  smien  bringen  sollen. 
Sit  der  tit  brochten  em  de  liie  ut  der  burskup  jiimmer  isen  to  smien  (iron  to  forge), 
un  ninminske  badde  so  goe  plogisen  (good  ploughshares)  osse  de  Eper.  Ens  wol 
Koatman  to  Epe  ret  (reed)  ut  den  Darmssen  halen,  do  feind  he  n  liitk  kind  annen 
bwer,  dat  was  ruw  upn  ganssen  liwe*  Do  sgreggede  de  smett:  'nimmmi  meinen 
suennen  nig  weg ! '  aber  Koatman  neim  dat  kind  inn  back  full,  un  lop  dermit  na 
huse.  Sit  der  tit  was  de  smett  nig  mehr  to  sehn  or  to  boren.  Koatman  farde 
(futterte)  den  ruwwen  up,  un  de  word  sin  beste  un  flitigste  knecht.  Osse  he  aber 
twintig  jar  ault  wor,  sia  he  to  sinen  buren  :  '  bur,  ik  mot  von  ju  gaun,  min  vdr  het 
mi  ropen.'  '  Dat  spit  mi  je,'  sia  de  bur,  '  gift  et  derm  gar  nin  middel,  dat  du  bi  mi 
bliwen  kannst  ? '  'Ik  will  es  (mal)  sehn,'  sia  dat  waterkind,  '  gat  erst  es  (mal)  no 
Braumske  un  halt  mi  en  niggen  djangen  (degn) ;  mer  ji  injot  do  forr  giebn  wot  de 
kaujjmann  hebben  will,  un  jau  niks  afhanneln.'  De  bur  gonk  no  Braumske  un 
kofde  en  djangn,  hannelde  aber  doch  wot  af.  Nu  gongen  se  to  haupe  no'n  Darmssen, 
do  sia  de  ruwwe  :  'Nu  passt  upp,  wenn  ik  int  water  slae  un  et  kiimmt  blot,  dann 
mot  ik  weg,  kiimmt  wjalke,  dann  darf  ik  bi  ju  bliwwen.'  He  slog  int  water,  da 
kwanmi  kene  mjalke  un  auk  ken  blod.  gans  iargerlik  sprak  de  ruwwe  :  '  jihebt  mi 
wot  wis  maket,  un  wot  afhannelt,  doriimme  kommt  ken  blod  un  kene  mjalke.  spot 
ju,  un  kaupet  in  Braumske  en  annern  djangn.'  De  bur  gong  weg  un  kweiin  wir  ; 
aber  erst  dat  driidde  mal  brachte  he  en  djangen,  wa  he  niks  an  awwehannelt  hadde. 
Osse  de  ruwwe  da  mit  int  water  slog,  do  was  et  so  raut  osse  blod,  de  ruwwe  stortede 

sik  in  den  Darmssen,  un  ninminske  hef  en  wier  sehn. [Epitome  : — The  smith  in 

Darmssen  lake.  Once  a  monastery  there;  bad  monks,  put  down.  Peasants  at  Epe 
heard  a  hammering  every  night,  rowed  to  middle  of  lake,  found  a  smith  sitting 
up  to  Ids  waist  in  water;  he  made  them  signs  to  bring  him  work,  they  did  so 
constantly,  and  the  Epe  ploughshares  were  the  best  in  the  country.  Once  farmer 
Koatman  found  a  child  on  the  bank,  all  over  hairy.  Smith  cried,  'don't  take  my 
son ' ;  but  K.  did,  and  reared  him.  Smith  never  seen  again.  The  Shaggy  one,  when 
aged  20,  said,  'I  must  go,  father  has  called  me.'— '  Can't  you  stay  anyhow?'— 
'  Well,  I'll  see  ;  go  buy  me  a  new  sword,  give  the  price  asked,  don't  beat  down.'  K. 
bought  one,  but  cheapened.  They  go  to  the  Darmssen  ;  says  Shag,  '  Watch,  when 
I  strike  the  water ;  if  blood  comes,  I  mustgo,  if  milk,  I  may  stay.'  But  neither  came: 
'  You've  cheapened  !  go  buy  another  sword.'  K.  cheapened  again,  but  the  third  time 
he  did  not.  Shag  struck  the  water,  it  was  red  as  blood,  and  be  plunged  into  the 
Darmssen.] The  same  sign,  of  milk  or  blood  coming  up,  occurs  in  another  folk- 
tale, which  makes  the  water-nymphs  into  white-veiled  nuns,  Mone'a  Anz.  3,  93. 

*  So  in  Casp.  von  der  Bon,  pp.  224-5  the  meerwunder  is  called  'der  rauhe,  der 
rauc/tt'.'     Conf.  supra,  pp.  481.  491. 


496  WIGHTS   AND   ELVES. 

agreed  upon  (a  jet  of  milk,  a  plate  with  an  apple) ,  but  withheld 
in  such  a  case  as  this. 

And  here  is  the  place  to  take  up  Grendel  again,  whom  we 
likened  (p.  243)  to  the  malicious  god  Loki,  though  Loki,  even 
apai't  from  that,  seemed  related  to  Oegir.  Grendel  is  cruel  and 
bloodthirsty  :  when  he  climbs  out  of  his  marsh  at  night,  and 
reaches  the  hall  of  the  sleeping  heroes,  he  clutches  one  and  drinks 
the  blood  out  of  another  (Beow.  1478).  His  mother  is  called  a 
merewif  (8037),  brimwylf  (she-wolf  of  the  breakers,  3197),  and 
grundwyrgen  (3036)  which  means  the  same  thing  (from  wearg, 
lupus,  comes  wyrgen,  lupa).  This  pair,  Grendel  and  mother,  have 
a  water-house,  which  is  described  (3027  seq.)  almost  exactly  as 
we  should  imagine  the  Norse  Oegir's  dwelling,  where  the  gods 
were  feasted :  indoors  the  water  is  excluded  by  walls,  and  there 
burns  a  pale  light  (3033).1  Thus  more  than  one  feature  leads  on 
to  higher  beings,  transcending  mere  watersprites  (see  Suppl.). 

The  notion  of  the  nix  drawing  to  him  those  who  are  drowning 
has  its  milder  aspect  too,  and  that  still  a  heathen  one.  We  saw 
on  p.  311  that  drowned  men  go  to  the  goddess  Ban;  the  popular 
belief  of  later  times  is  that  they  are  received  into  the  abode  of  the 
nix  or  nixe.  It  is  not  the  river-sprite  kills  those  who  sink  in  the 
element  of  water ;  kindly  and  compassionately  he  bears  them  to 
his  dwelling,  and  harbours  their  souls.2  The  word  ran  seems  to 
have  had  a  more  comprehensive  meaning  at  first :  '  mgela  rein  ok 
regin '  was  to  invoke  all  that  is  bad,  all  evil  spirits,  upon  one.  It 
has  occurred  to  me,  whether  the  unexplained  Swed.  rd  in  the 
compounds  sjora  (nix),  skogsrd  (schrat),  tomtva  (homesprite),  which 
some  believe  to  be  ra,  angulus,  or  a  contraction  of  radande,  may 
not  have  sprung  from  this  ran,  as  the  Scandinavian  tongue  is  so 
fond  of  dropping  a  final  n.  Dame  Wdcldlt  too  (p.  434)  is  a 
succouring  harbouring  water-wife.  The  water  man,  like  Hel  and 
Ran,  keeps  with  him  the  souls  of  them  that  have  perished  in  the 
water,  '  in  pots  turned  upside  down/  to  use  the  naive  language  of 
one  story  (no.  52)  ;  but  a  peasant  visiting  him  tilts  them  up,  and 
in  a  moment  the  souls  all  mount  up  through  the  water.     Of  the 

i  Conf.  the  dolphin's  house  in  Musiius's  marchen  of  the  Three  Sisters. 

2  Probably  there  were  stories  also  of  helpful  succouring  river-gods,  such  as  the 
Greeks  and  Romans  told  of  Thetis,  of  Ino-Leucothea  (Od.  5,  333-353),  Albunea, 
Matuta. 


NIX.      WATER- SPRITE.  497 

drowned  they  say  f  the  nix  has  drawn  them  to  him/  or  'has  sucked 
them/  because  bodies  found  in  the  water  have  the  nose  red.1 
'  Juxta  pontem  Mosellae  quidam  puerulus  naviculam  excidens 
submersus  est.  quod  videns  quidam  juvenis  vestibus  abjectis  aquae 
insilivit,  et  inventum  extrahere  volens,  maligno  spiritu  retrahente, 
quern  Neptunum  vocant,  semel  et  secundo  perdidit;  tertio  cum 
nomen  apostoli  invocasset,  mortuum  recepit.'  Miracula  S.  Mat- 
thiae,  cap.  43.  Pez,  Thes.  anecd.  2,  3,  pag.  26.  Rollenhagen  in 
the  Froschmeuseler  (Nn  IP)  : 

'  das  er 
elend  im  wasser  wer  gestorben, 
da  die  seel  mit  dem  leib  verdorben, 
oder  beim  geist  blieb,  der  immer  frech 
den  ersofnen  die  Jiels  abbrech.' 

(that  he  had  died  miserably  in  the  water,  and  his  soul  had  per- 
ished with  the  body,  or  abode  with  the  spirit  that  ever  without 
ado  breaketh  the  necks  of  the  drowned).  The  Swedish  supersti- 
tion supposes  that  drowned  men  whose  bodies  are  not  found  have 
been  drawn  into  the  dwelling  of  the  lutfsfru  (Sv.  vis.  3,  148). 
In  some  German  fairy-tales  (no.  79)  children  who  fall  into  the 
well  come  under  the  power  of  the  water-nixe  ;  like  dame  Holla, 
she  gives  them  tangled  flax  to  spin. 

Faye.  p.  51,  quotes  a  Norwegian  charm,  to  be  repeated  on  the 
water  against  the  nix  : 

vyh,  nyTc,  naal  i  vatn  ! 

jomfru  Maria  kastet  staal  i  vatn : 

du  siik,  iik  flyt.3 

(nick,  nick,  needle  in  water  !  Virgin  casteth  steel  in  water. 
Thou  sink,  and  I  flee).  A  similar  one  for  bathers  is  given  in 
Superst.  Swed.  no.  71  [with  the  addition  :  '  thy  father  was  a 
steel-thief,  thy  mother  was  a  needle-thief/  etc.] .  Steel  stops  a 
spirit's  power  to  act  upon  you  (supra,  p.  466-7  n.). 

A  sepulchral  cry  of  the  nix,  similar  to  death  groans,  is  said  to 
portend  drowning  (Faye,  p.  51).     Some  very  old  writings  ascribe 

1  Dan.  '  nokken  bar  taget  ham,'  '  nokken  har  suet  dem,'  Tullin's  Skrifter  2,  13. 
-  So  Brynhildr  calls  out  at  last  to  the  giantess :  'seykstu,  gvgjar  kyu  !  '     Sam. 
229*. 


498  WIGHTS   AND   ELVES. 

to  watersprites  in  general  wailing  voices  and  doleful  speeches,  that 
resound  from  lakes  and  pools  :    they  tell    each    other    of   their 
baffled  schemes,  or  how  they  have  to  vacate  the  land  before  the 
christians.      Gregory   of  Tours,  in  De  glor.  confess,  cap.  31,  re- 
members an  incident  of  his  young  days  '  apud  Arvernos  gestum/ 
A  man  setting  out   early  to   the   forest  has    his  morning    meal 
blessed   before    he   takes   it :    Cumque    ad  amnem  adhuc  ante- 
lucanum    venisset,    imposito    plaustro    cum   bobus  in    ponte   qui 
super  navem   locatus   erat,  alterum  transmeare  coepit  in   littus. 
Verum  ubi  in  medium   amnis    devenit,  audivit   vocem    dicentis 
'  merge,  merge,  ne  moreris  !'     Cui  respondens  vox  alia  ait :  '  sine 
tua  etiam  admonitione  quae  proclamas  fecissem,  si  res  sacra  meis 
conatibus  non  obstaret;  nam  scias  eum  eulogiis  sacerdotis  esse 
muuitum,    ideo    ei    nocere   non    possum '    (see    Suppl.) — In   the 
Vita  Godehardi  Hildesiensis  (first  quarter  of  11th  cent.),  cap.  4 
(Leibn.  1,  492),  we  read:  Erat  etiam  in  orientali  parte  civitatis 
nostrae    (Hildenes-hem)     pains    horrified    et    circummanentibus 
omnino  plurali  formidine  invisa,  eo  quod  ibi,  ut  opinabantur,  tarn 
meridiano  quam  et  nocturno  tempore  illusiones  quasdam  horri- 
biles  vel  audireut  vel  viderent,  quae  (sc.  palus)   a  fonte  salsuginis 
quae  ibidem  in  medio  bulliebat  Suiza  dicitur.     Qua  ille  (Gode- 
hardus)  spectata,  et  illusione  etiam  phantastica,  qua  bruta  plebs 
terrebatur,  audita,  eandem  paludem  secundo  sui  adventus  anno 
cum  cruce  et  reliquiis  sanctorum  invasit,  et  habitationem  suam 
ibidem  aptavit,  et  in   medio  periculo  oratorium  in  honorem    S. 
Bartholomaei  apostoli  fundavit,  quo  sequenti  anno  consummato  et 
dedicato,  omne  daemonum  phantasma  (conf.  p.  482)  exinde  fundi- 
tus  extirpavit,  et   eundem    locum    omnibus    commorantibus   vel 
advenientibus  gratum    et    sine    qualibet   tentatione   habitabilem 
reddidit. — My  third  quotation  is    a    continuation  of  that  given 
on  p.  108  from  the  Vita  S.  Galli  (Pertz  2,  7)  :  Volvente  deinceps 
cursu  temporis  electus  Dei  Gall  us  retia  lymphae  laxabat  in  silentio 
noctis,  sed  inter  ea  audivit  demonem  de  culmine  montis  pari  suo 
clamantem,  qui  erat  in  abditis  maris.     Quo  respondente  '  adsum/ 
montanus   econtra :  'Surge'  inquit   f  in   adjutoinum  mihi.     Ecce 
peregrini  venerunt,  qui  me  de  templo  ejecerunt  (nam  deos  con- 
terebaut  quos  incolae  isti  colebant,  insuper  et  eos  ad  se  conver- 
tebant)  ;  veni,  veni,  adjuva  nos  expellere  eos  de  terris.'     Marinus 
demon  respondit : 


WATER-SPRITE.      HOME-SPRITE.  499 

'  En  unus  eorum  est  in  pel  a  go, 
cui  nunquarn  nocere  potero, 
volui  enim  retia  sua  ledere, 
sed  me  victum  proba  lugere  : 
signo  orationis  est  semper  clausus, 
nee  umquam  somno  oppressus.' 

Electus  vero  Gallus  haec  audiens  munivit  se  undiqne  signaculo 
Christi,  dixitque  ad  eos  : 

1  In  nomine  Jesu  Christ!  praecipio  vobis, 
ut  de  locis  istis  recedatis, 
nee  aliquem  hie  ledere  presumatis  ! ' 

et  cum  festinatione  ad  littus  rediit,  atque  abbati  suo  quae  audierat 
recitavit.1  Quod  vir  Dei  Columbanus  audiens,  convocavit  fratres 
in  ecclesiam,  solitum  signum  tangens.  O  mira  dementia  diaboli ! 
voces  servorum  Dei  praeripuit  vox  fantasmatica,  cum  hejulatus 
atque  ululatus  dirce  vocis  audiebatur  per  cuhnina. — Read  further 
on  (2,  9)  the  story  of  two  lake-women  who  stand  naked  on  the 
shore  and  throw  stones.  Everywhere  we  see  the  preachers  con- 
front the  pagan  daemons  with  cross  and  holy  spell,  as  something 
real ;  the  mournful  howl  of  the  spirits  yields  to  the  ringing  of 
bells.  Gods  and  spirits  are  not  distinguished :  the  god  cast  out 
of  the  temple,  whose  image  has  been  broken,  is  the  elf  or  nix 
meditating  revenge.  It  is  remarkable,  too,  that  mountain  and 
water  sprites  are  set  before  us  as  fellows  (pares) ;  in  folk-tales  of 
a  later  time  their  affinity  to  each  other  seems  abundantly  estab- 
lished. 

We  have  now  considered  genii  of  mountains,  of  woods  and  of 
rivers ;  it  remains  to  review  the  large  and  variously  named  group 
of  the  friendly  familiar  Home-sprites. 

They  of  all  sprites  stand  nearest  to  man,  because  they  come 
and  seek  his  fellowship,  they  take  up  their  abode  under  his  very 
roof  or  on  his  premises. 

Again,  it  is  a  feature  to  be  marked  in  home-sprites,  that  they 
are  purely  male,  never  female ;  there  appears  a  certain  absence 
of  sex  in  their  very  idea,  and  if  any  female  beings  approach  this 

1  Conf.  the  conversations  of  trolls  overheard  by  two  of  St.  Olaf's  men,  Foinm. 
sog.  1,  185-188. 


500  WIGHTS   AND   ELVES. 

goblin  kind,  it  is  former  goddesses  who  have  come  down  in  the 
world.1 

What  the  Romans  called  lar,*2  lar  familiar  is  (see  the  prologue 
to  Plautus's  Aulularia)  and  penas,  is  named  in  our  older  speech 
husing  or  stetigot  (genius  loci)  ;  conf. '  husinga  (penates)  '  in  Not- 
ker's  Capella  51.  In  Cap.  142  N.  renders  lares  by  '  ingoumen 
(hiusero  aide  burgo)';  the  literal  meaning  of  ingoumo  would  be 
guard  of  the  interior.  In  Cap.  50  he  uses  ingeside  for  penates,  i.e. 
our  ingesinde,  inmates,  domestics;  the  form  continued  to  be  used 
inMHG.  :  daz  liebeheilige  ingeside,  Rol.  115,  1.  226,  18.  Simi- 
larly the  Span,  duende,  duendecillo  (goblin)  seems  derivable  from 
domus,  dueiio  is  house-owner  (dominus,  distinct  from  don,  p.  299 
note),  and  duendo  domestic,  retired.  The  ON.  toft,  Swed.  tomt, 
means  area,  domus  vacua,  and  the  home-sprite's  name  is  in  Swed. 
tomtekarl,  tomtegubbe  (old  fellow  on  the  premises),  tomtra,  tomte- 
biss,  som  styr  i  kiillrars  rike  (Hallman,  p.  73)  :  Norw.  tomtevatte, 
toftvatte.  Another  ON.  name  is  skurgocf,  p.  112.  We  can  trace 
in  them  a  peculiar  connexion  with  the  hearth  of  the  house ;  they 
often  come  out  from  under  it  (p.  456  n.),  it  seems  to  be  the  door,  as 
it  were,  to  their  subterranean  dwelling  :  they  are  strictly  hearth- 
gods.  Here  and  there  in  Germany  we  also  meet  with  the  name 
gesell,  fellow  (supra,  p.  464,  selle,  selke),  gutgesell,  nachbar,  lieber 
nachbar,  in  the  Netherlands  goede  hind  (Horae  Belg.  119),  in 
England  goodfellow,  in  Denmark  god  dreng,  good  boy,  Mare 
qranne,  dear  neighbour,  (conf.  bona  socia,  p.  283-8,  and  guote 
holde,  p.  266).  The  Eng.  puck  we  may  indeed  connect  with  the 
Ir.  phuka,  Wei.  pwcca,9,  but  with  more  justice  perhaps  with  the 
Dan.  pog  (lad),  which  is  simply  the  Swed.  pojke,  ON.  puki  (puer), 
and  comes  from  Finn,  poica  (filius)  ;  in  Lower  Germany  too  they 
say  pook  for  a  puny  stunted  man  (Brem.  wb.  3,  349).  Heim- 
reich's  Nordfries.  chron.  2,  348  has  huspuke  (see  Suppl.). 

From  the  13th  century  (and  possibly  earlier,  if  only  we  had 
authorities) i  down  to  the  present  time  the  name  kobold  has  been 

1  Holla,  Berhta,  Werra,  Stemjic.  Female  are  the  Gr.  Mop/j.u>  and  Aa/xla,  the 
Bom.  Lamia,  Mania,  Maniola.  The  Poles  too  have  a  fern.  Omacnica  :  '  Aniculae 
vetant  pueros  edere  in  tenebris,  ne  spectrum  hoc  devorent,  quod  eos  insatiabiles 
reddat,'  Linde  sub  v.  '  omacac,'  to  burden.     OHG.  agenggun  lamiae,iGraff  1,  132. 

-  Larva  (spectre,  daemon)  is  conn,  with  lar,  as  arvum,  arvus  with  arare.  The 
Monachus  Sangall.  calls  the  pilosus  (p.  481)  larva. 

3  Croker's  Fairy  legends  3,  230-2.  262. 

4  '  Ace.  to  Falke,  a  Koboltesdorp  (ann.  9-46),  Trad.  corv.  ;  Adalpertus  chobolU 
kobolt  (ann.  1185),  MB.  27,  36.  42.' Extr.  from  Suppl. 


HOME-SPRITE.      KOBOLD.  501 

in  use.  A  doc.  of  1250  in  Bohmer's  Cod.  francof.  1,  83  lias  a 
'  Heinricus  dictus  Coboldus.'  Even  before  that  date  coboldus 
occurs  (Zeitschr.  des  Hess,  vereins  3,  64).  Conrad  of  Wurzbnrg, 
MS.  2,  206%  has:  'inir  ist  ein  loser  hoveschalk  als  ein  kobolt 
von  buhse/  no  better  than  a  k.  of  boxwood ;  and  the  Misnaere 
(Amgb.  48a)  :  c  we  den  kobolden,  die  alsus  erstummen  (are  so 
struck  dumb) !  mir  ist  ein  holzin  (wooden)  bischof  vil  lieber 
dan  ein  stummer  herre.'  The  notions  of  kobold,  dwarf,  thumb- 
kin,  piqipet,  idol  largely  run  into  one  another  (conf.  supra,  malik, 
p.  104  note).  It  seems,  they  used  to  carve  little  home-sprites 
of  boxwood  and  set  them  up  in  the  room  for  fun,  as  even  now 
wooden  nutcrackers  and  other  mere  playthings  are  cut  in  the 
shape  of  a  dwarf  or  idol ;  yet  the  practice  may  have  had  to  do 
with  an  old  heathen  worship  of  small  lares,  to  whom  a  place  was 
assigned  in  the  innermost  part  of  the  dwelling ;  in  time  the 
earnest  would  turn  into  sport,  and  even  christian  sentiment  tole- 
rate the  retention  of  an  old  custom.1  They  must  also  have  tied 
rags  and  shreds  into  dolls,  and  set  them  up.  The  dumb  wooden 
kobold  is  kept  in  countenance  by  the  ' wooden  bishop7  mentioned 
immediately  after  by  the  Misnsere.2  In  the  oft-quoted  poem  of 
Eiiediger  we  find  (17dof  the  Konigsb.MS.)  'in  koboldes  sprache/ 
[i.e.,  speaking  low] .  In  Altd.  w.  2,  55  '  einen  kobold  von  wahse 
machen,'  one  of  wax.  Hoffmann's  Fundgruben  give  us  in  the 
Glossary  386,  from  a  Vocab.  of  the  14th  century,  opold  for 
kopold.  Hugo  von  Trimberg  has  several  allusions  to  kobolds  : 
line  5064,  f  und  lern  einander  goukelspil,  unter  des  mantel  er 
kobolte  mache,  der  (whereat)  manic  man  tougen  (secretly)  mit  im 
lache ' ;  5576,  '  der  male  ein  andern  kobolt  dar,  der  ungessen  bi 
im  sitze  ' ;  10277,  '  einer  siht  den  andern  an,  als  kobolt  hern  tater- 
man' ;  10843,  '  ir  abgot  (the  heathens'  gods),  als  ich  gelesen 
han,  daz  waren  kobolt  und  taterman' ;  11527, 'Got  mohte  wol 
lachen,  solte  ez  sin,  wan  sine  tatermennelin  (same  in  Roth's 
Fragment,  p.  65)  so  wunderlich  uf  erden  leben,'  God  might 
laugh  to  see  his  little  mannikins  behave  so  strangely.     Jugglers 

1  One  ought  to  search  out  the  age  and  design  of  the  various  gear  that  is  set  out 
(as  mere  ornament  this  long  while)  on  shelves  and  tables  ;  from  this  and  from 
long-established  moulds  for  pastry,  we  may  arrive  at  some  conclusions  about  the 
heathen  custom  of  carving  or  '  doughing  '  idols  (conf.  pp.  15.  105.  112.  114)  :  teig 
(dough)  including  any  soft  substance,  clay,  wax  or  tlour-paste. 

2  On  •  papa  salignus  '  conf.  Reinh.  p.  xciv. 


502  WIGHTS   AND   ELVES. 

bring  kobolds  out  from  under  their  cloak,  kobolds  are  painted 
on  the  wall,  the  heathen  gods  wei*e  nothing  but  kobolds  and 

tatermen,  to  stare  at  each  other  like  kobold  and  taterman, 

all  through,  the  kobold  appears  as  the  tiny  tricky  home-sprite. 
In  writers  of  the  17th  century  I  find  the  remarkable  phrase  '  to 
laugh  like  a  kobold,'  Ettner's  Unwiird.  doct.  p.  340,  and  App.  p. 
53  ;  '  you  laugh  as  though  you'd  empty  yourself,  like  a  kobolt' 
Eeimdich  p.  149.  This  must  either  mean,  to  laugh  with  mouth 
agape,  like  a  carved  kobold,  who  may  have  been  so  represented, 
or  simply  to  laugh  loud  and  heartily.1  Again,  c  to  laugh  like  a 
hampelmann,'  Deutschfranzos  p.  274;  fho,  ho,  ho!  the  loud 
laugh  of  Robin  Goodfellow/  Anecd.  and  Trad.,  ed.  by  W.  J. 
Thorns,  Lond.  1839,  p.  115.  In  the  poem  of  Zeno  867.  1027 
this  daemonic  laughter  is  expressed  by  skraken  (Brem.  wb.  4, 
686  schrachtern).  Schweinichen  1,  260  tells  of  an  unquiet  spirit 
laughing  loud  and  shrill ;  it  may  be  a  laugh  of  mirth  or  mockery. 

In  the  Netherlands  too  we  find  at  an  early  time  the  form 
konbout  (pi.  coubouten,  Horae  Belg.  1,  119)  ;  now  kabout,  and  in 
Belgium  kabot,  kabotermanneken?  The  Scandinavian  languages 
have  not  the  word. 

It  is  a  foreign  word,  sprung  no  doubt  from  the  Gr.  rcoftaXos 
(rogue),  Lat.  cobalus,3  with  a  t  added,  as  our  language  is  partial 
to  forms  in  -olt  for  monstrous  and  ghostly  beings.  From  cobalus, 
in  Mid.  Lat.  already  gobelinus,  the  Fr.  has  formed  its  gobelin, 
whence  the  Engl,  goblin,  strengthened  into  hobgoblin.  Hanka's 
O.  Boh.  glosses  render  79b  gitulius  (getulius,  gaetulius)  by  kobolt, 
and  directly  after,  aplinus  (1.  alpinus,  i.e.  alphinus,  the  'fool* 
or  queen  in  chess)  by  tatrman  :  here  are  kobolt  and  tatrman 
together,  just  as  we  saw  them  staring  at  each  other  in  the 
Renner;  hence  also  the  Cod.  pal.  311,  126c  speaks  of  l  einen 
taterman  malen/  painting  a  t.,  and  the  Wahtelmaere  140  of 
guiding  him  with  strings,  '  rihtet  zuo  mit  den  sniieren  die  tater- 

1  '  Hlabtar  Uscutitaz,'1  laughed  till  he  shook,  K.  24\  Notk.  Cap.  33  has  :  '  taz 
lahter  scutta  sia  ;  Petronius,  cap.  24,  '  risu  dissolvebat  ilia  sua';  Reinardus  3, 
1929,  '  cachimius  viscera  fissurus';  or,  as  we  say,  to  split  with  laughing,  laugh 
yourself  double,  short  and  small,  to  pieces,  to  a  holzlin  (Gryphius  p.  m.  877),  brown, 
out  of  your  senses  ;  '  einen  schiibel  voll  lachen  ' ;  perish,  die  with  laughing,  MHG. 
'  man  swindet  under  lachen,'  Ben.  330.  A  Breton  song  in  Villemarque  1,  39  speaks 
of  the  loud  laugh  of  the  korred  (see  Suppl.). 

2  Schayes  sur  les  usages  et  traditions  des  Beiges.     Louvain  1834,  p.  230. 

»  Lobeck's  Aglaoph.  1308-1328. 


GOBLIN.      TATEEMAN.  503 

marine3  (supra,  p.  410  g.).  To  explain  this  taterman  by  the 
Engl,  tatter  has  some  plausibility,  but  then  our  HG.  ought 
to  have  had  zaterman  (conf.  OHG.  zata,  zatar,  Graff  5,  632-3, 
with  AS.  tasttera,  panniculus).  The  glossist  above  may  have 
meant  by  gaetulius  an  African  savage,  by  alpinus  a  Tartar  (MHG. 
tater,  tateler),  or  still  better,  a  fool;1  the  word  taterman  occurs 
in  other  0.  Boh.  documents  besides,  and  signifies  doll  and  idol 
(Jungmann  3,  554b) ;  foreign  to  all  other  Slavic  dialects,  it  seems 
borrowed  from  German.2  Its  proper  meauing  can  only  be  re- 
vealed by  a  fuller  insight  into  the  history  of  puppet-shows.  Per- 
haps the  Hung,  tatos  (juggler)  has  a  claim  to  consideration.3 

Several  MSS.  however  and  the  first  printed  edition  of  the 
Renner  have  not  taterman  at  all,  but  katerman  (Cod.  francof. 
164b  reads  verse  10843  kobiilde  unde  katirman),  which  is  not 
altogether  to  be  rejected,  and  at  lowest  offers  a  correct  secondary 
sense.  Katerman,  derived  from  kater  (tom-cat),  may  be  com- 
pared with  heinzelman,  hinzelman,  hinzemdnnchen,  the  name  of 
a  home-sprite,4  with  Winze  the  cat  in  Reineke,  and  the  wood- 
sprite  Katzenveit  (p.  480) .  The  puss-in-boots  of  the  fairy-tale  plays 
exactly  the  part  of  a  good-natured  helpful  kobold ;  another  one 
is  called  stiefel  (boot,  Deut.  sag.  no.  77),  because  he  wears  a 
large  boot :  by  the  boot,  I  suppose,  are  indicated  the  gefeite 
schuhe  (fairy  shoes)  of  older  legend,  with  which  one  could  travel 
faster  on  the  ground,  and  perhaps  through  the  air ;  such  are  the 
league-boots  of  fairy-tales  and  the  winged  shoes  of  Hermes.  The 
name  of  Ileinze  is  borne  by  a  mountain-sprite  in  the  Frosch- 
meuseler.  Heinze  is  a  dimin.  of  Heinrich,  just  as  in  Lower 
Germany  another  noisy  ghost  is  called  Chimke,  dimin.  of  Joachim 
(conf.  'dat  gimken,'  Brem.  wb.  5,  379)  :  the  story  of  Chimmeken 

1  There  is  in  the  kobold's  character  an  unmistakable  similarity  to  the  witty 
court-fool ;  hence  I  feel  it  significant,  that  one  described  in  Schweinichen  1,  2(50-2 
expressly  carries  a  bawble.  The  Engl,  hobgoblin  means  the  same  as  cloumgoblin 
(Nares  sub  v.  hob). 

2  Hanusch  (Slav.  myth.  299)  takes  the  taterman  (he  says,  hasterman  also  occurs) 
for  a  water-sprite. 

3  '  In  Tyrol  tatterman— scarecrow,  coward,  kobold,  from  tattern,  zittern,  to  quake, 
skedaddle  ;  Frommann  2,  327.  Leoprechting  p.  177  says,  tattern  to  frighten  ;  at 
Gratz  in  Styria,  the  night  before  solstice,  tattermann,  a  bugbear,  is  carried  round 
and  set  on  fire  in  memory  of  extirpated  heatbenism.' — Extr.  from  Suppl. 

4  Deut.  sag.  no.  75 ;  the  story  is  100  years  later  than  the  composition  of  the 
Eeineke.  Hinzelmann  leaves  a  dint  in  the  bed,  as  if  a  cat  had  lain  in  it.  Luther's 
Table-talk  (ed.  1571,  p.  l-H")  had  previously  related  the  like  concerning  a  spirit 
Heinzlin. 

VOL.    II.  F 


504  WIGHTS  AND   ELVES. 

(of  about  1327)  is  to  be  found  in  Kantzow's  Pomerania  1,  333. 
The  similar  and  equally  Low-German  name  WolterJcen  seems 
to  have  a  wider  circulation.  Samuel  Meiger  in  his  Panurgia 
lamiarum  (Hamb.  1587.  4),  bok  3  cap.  2,  treats  '  van  den  laribus 
domesticis  edder  husknechtkens,  de  men  ok  Wolterken  unde 
Chimken  an  etliken  orden  nomet^  These  Wolterkens  are  also 
mentioned  by  Arnkiel  (Cimbr.  heidenth.  1,  49)  ;  in  the  Nether- 
lands they  are  called  Wouters,  Wouterken,  and  Tuinman  2,  201 
has  a  proverb  '  't  is  een  wilde  Wouter,'  though  incorrectly  he 
refers  it  to  wout  (silva).  Wouter,  Wolter  is  nothing  but  the 
human  proper  name  Walter  bestowed  on  a  home-sprite.  It  is 
quite  of  a  piece  with  the  familiar  intercourse  between  these  spirits 
and  mankind,  that,  beside  the  usual  appellatives,  certain  proper 
names  should  be  given  them,  the  diminutives  of  Henry,  Joachim, 
Walter.  Not  otherwise  do  I  understand  the  Robin  and  Nisse?i  in 
the  wonted  names  for  the  English  and  Danish  goblins  Robin 
goodfellow  and  Nissen  god  dreng.  Robin  is  a  French-English 
form  of  the  name  Robert,  OHG.  Hruodperaht,  MHG.  Ruotperht, 
our  Ruprecht,  Rupert,  Ruppert ;  and  Robin  fellow  is  the  same 
home-sprite  whom  we  in  Germany  call  Tcnecht  Ruprecht,  and 
exhibit  to  children  at  Christmas,  but  who  in  the  comedies  of  the 
16-1 7th  centuries  becomes  a  mere  Riipel  or  Riippel,  i.e.  a  merry 
fool  in  general.1  In  England,  Robin  Goodfellow  seems  to  get 
mixed  up  with  Robin  Hood  the  archer,  as  Hood  himself  reminds 
us  of  Hodeken  (p.  463)  ;  and  I  think  this  derivation  from  a 
being  of  the  goblin  kind,  and  universally  known  to  the  people, 
is  preferable  to  the  attempted  historical  ones  from  Rubertus 
a  Saxon  mass-priest,  or  the  English  Robertus  knight,  one 
of  the  slayers  of  Thomas  Becket.  Nisse,  Nissen,  current  in 
Denmark  and  Norway,  must  be  explained  from  Niels,  Nielsen, 

1  Ayrer's  Fastnachtspiele  73d  confirms  the  fact  of  Riipel  being  a  dimin.  of 
Kuprecht.  Some  dialects  use  Riipel,  Riepel  as  a  name  for  the  tom-cat  again  ;  in 
witch-trials  a  little  young  devil  is  named  Rub  el.     Ace.  to  the  Leipzig  Avanturier  1, 

22-3,  knecht  Ruprecht  apjDears  in  shaggy  clothes,  sack  on  back  and  rod  in  hand. 

[If  Hob  in  hobgoblin  stands  for  Eobert,  it  is  another  instance  of  the  friendly  or  at 
least  conciliatory  feeling  that  prompted  the  giving  of  such  names.  In  Mids.  N. 
Dream  ii.  1,  the  same  spirit  that  has  just  been  called  Robin  Goodfellow,  is  thus 
addressed : 

Those  that  .Hofc-goblin  call  you,  and  sweet  Puck, 
You  do  their  work,  and  they  shall  have  good  luck. 

Of  course  Hob  as  a  man's  name  is  Eobert,  as  Hodge  is  Eoger. — Trans.] 


HOME-SPRITE.  505 

i.e.  Nicolaus,  Niclas,1  not  from  our  HGr.  common  noun  (  nix  ' 
the  watersprite,  which  is  in  Danish  nok,  nok  (p.  488),  and  has 
no  connexion  with  Nisse ;  and  the  Swed.  form  is  also  Nilson.  I 
find  a  confirmation  of  this  in  our  habit  of  assigning  to  Niclaus, 
Glaus  or  Clobes  the  selfsame  part  that  in  some  districts  is  played 
by  Ruprecht.  To  this  latter  I  am  inclined  to  refer  even  the 
words  of  so  early  a  writer  as  Ofterdingen,  MS.  2,  2b  :  '  Rupreht 
mhi  hneclit  muoz  iuwer  har  gelich  den  toren  schern/  R.  my  man 
must  shear  your  hair  like  that  of  fools.  A  home-sprite  Rudy  (for 
Rudolf)  in  Mone's  Anz.  3,  365. 

Another  set  of  names  is  taken  from  the  noises  which  these 
spirits  keep  up  in  houses  :  you  hear  them  jumping  softly,  knock- 
ing at  walls,  racketing  and  tumbling  on  stairs  and  in  lofts. 
Span,  trasgo  (goblin),  and  trasguear  (to  racket)  ;  Fr.  soterai, 
sotret  (jumper),  Mem.  de  l'acad.  celt.  4,  91 ;  ekerken  (eichhorn- 
chen,  squirrel),  Deut.  sag.  no.  78;  poltergeist,  rumpelgeist,  rum- 
pelstih  in  the  Kindermarchen  no.  55,  rumpelstilt  in  Fischart ; 2 
one  particular  goblin  is  called  klopfer,  knocker  (Deut.  sag.  no. 
76),  and  it  may  be  in  this  connexion  that  hdmmerlein,  hemerlein 
(supra,  p.  182)  has  come  to  be  applied  to  home-sprites  of  diabolic 
nature.  Nethl.  bullman,  bullerman,  bullerkater,  from  bullen, 
bullern,  to  be  boisterous.  Flem.  boldergeest,  and  hence  'bi 
holder  te  bolder/  our  'holter  die  polter/  helter-skelter.  A  pop- 
hart,  identical  with  rumpelstilt  in  Fischart,  is  to  be  derived 
from  popeln,  popern,  to  keep  bobbing  or  thumping  softly  and 
rapidly;3  a  house-goblin  in  Swabia  was  called  the  poppele ;  in 
other  parts  popel,  popel,  popelmann,  popanz,  usually  with  the  side- 
meaning  of  a  muffled  ghost  that  frightens  children,  and  seldom 
used  of  playful  good-humoured  goblins.  At  the  same  time  popel 
is  that  which  muffles  (puppt)  itself:  about  Henneberg,  says 
Reinwald  2,  78,  a  dark  cloud  is  so  called ;  it  contains  the  notion 

1  Not  only  Nielsen,  but  Nissen  is  a  family  name  in  Denmark,  and  can  only 
mean  the  same,  by  no  means  nix  or  goblin.  [I  suppose  Niels  is  rather  Nigellus, 
Nigel,  which  breaks  down  the  connexion  with  Nicolas  or  Claus  ;  still  the  two  can 
stand  independently. — Tkans.] 

2  Is  stilt,  stilz  the  old  stalt  in  compounds?  Gramm.  2,  527.  What  the  fairy- 
tale says  of  Rumpelstilt,  and  how  his  name  has  to  be  guessed,  other  stories  tell  of 
EisenhUtel  or  Hopfenhiltel  (who  wear  an  iron  hat  or  one  wreathed  with  hop-leaves), 
Kletke's  Alman.  v.  volksm.  67  ;  or  of  the  dwarf  Holzruhrlein,  Bonnefiihrlein,  Harrys 
1,  18  [piKnirfiker,  Gebhart,  Tepentiren,  Mullenh.  306-8,  of  Titteli  Ture,  Sv.  folkv. 
1,  171. — Suppl.]  ;  and  we  shall  meet  with  the  like  in  giant-stories. 

3  Staid.  1,  204.     Schm.  1,  2<J3.  323. 


506  WIGHTS   AND  ELVES. 

of  mask  and  tarnkappe  (p.  333).     In  connexion  with  Holda,  a 
Hollepopel,  Hollepeter  is  spoken  of. 

The  same  shifting  of  form  appears  in  the  words  mumhart 
(already  in  Caesarius  heisterb.  7,  46:  'uiummart  momordit  me'), 
mummel,  mummelmann,  mummanz,1  which  express  the  very  same 
notion,  c  mummen,  mummeln  '  signifying  to  mumble,  to  utter  a 
muffled  sound.  Or  can  we  connect  it  with  mumel,  muomel,  the 
name  of  the  watersprite  (p.  490)  ?  In  that  case,  vermuramen 
(to  disguise),  mummerei  (mumming,  larva)  would  seem  to  mean 
acting  like  the  spectre,  instead  of  the  spectre  having  taken  his 
name  from  mumming  (see  Suppl.). 

The  word  butze  as  far  back  as  the  12th-13th  century  had  the 
same  meaning  as  mummart  and  poppart  :  a  place  called  Puzi- 
prunnun,  Puciprunnen,  MB.  6,  60.  62.  9,  420  (12th  century), 
unless  puzi  =  puteus  be  meant,  might  take  its  name  from  a  well, 
haunted  by  such  a  home-sprite.  '  Ein  ungehiurer  (uncanny) 
butze,'  Martina  116°  224a;  '  si  sehent  mich  nicht  mer  an  in  butzen 
wis/  they  look  at  me  no  more  in  butze  wise,  Walth.  28,  37  ;  '  in 
butzenwise  gehn,'  Oberlin  sub  v. ;  '  den  butzen  vorht  er  kleine, 
als  man  do  seit  von  kinden/  he  little  fears  the  b.,  as  we  say  of 
children,  Albr.  Tit.  x.  144  (Hahn  1275)  ;  butzengriul,  -horror, 
Walth.  140,  2.  MsH.  3,  45 la;  'geloub  ich  daz,  so  biz  mich 
butze,'  b.  bite  me  if  I  believe  it,  Hatzlerin  287a,  which  agrees  with 
'mummart  momordit  me'  above;  'ein  Jcinderbutze,'  Ls.  1,  617; 
'  forht  ich  solchen  biitzel,'  Ls.  1,  380,  where  a  wihtel  is  spoken 
of.  So,  to  frighten  with  the  butze,  to  tear  off  the  butze  (mask) ; 
butzen  antliit  (face)  and  butzen  kleider  (clothes)  =darva  in 
Kaisersperg  (Oberlin  209)  ;  winterbutz  in  Brant's  Narrenschiff 
129  (winterbutte  in  the  Plattdeutsch  translation  140b).  I  do 
not  understand  the  butzenhansel  in  Weisth.  1,  691.  All  over 
Germany  almost,  we  hear  to  this  day  :  'der  butz  kommt,'  2  or  'der 
butmemann,  butzelmann,'  and  in  Elsass  butzmummel,  the  same  as 
butz  or  mummel  alone,  buz,  Jager's  Ulm,  p.  522.  butzenmann, 
Fischart's  Bienkorb  194a.  butz,  Garg.  231a.  butzemann,  Simpl. 
2,  248.  In  Bavaria,  fasnachtbutz,  Shrovetide  b.,  buzmann,  buzi- 
bercht,  b.  coupled  with  the  Bercht  or  Berchta  of  our  pp.  272-9  ; 

1  For  mum  bans  (muffle-jack),  as  popanz  is  for  pop-hans  (bob-jack),  and  as 
there  were  likewise  blindhans,  grobhaus,  karsthaus,  scharrbans,  etc. 
-  In  Normandy  :  'bush,  the  gobelin  will  eat  you  up.' 


HOME-SPRITE.  507 

butzwinkel,  lurking-place,  butzlfinster,  pitch-dark,  wncn  the  ap- 
parition is  most  to  be  dreaded ;  ( the  putz  would  take  ns  over 
hill  and  dale/  Schra.  1,  229.  230;  the  butz  who  leads  travellers 
astray  (Muchar's  Gastein,  p.  145).  In  Swabia  butzemnaukler 
(from  maucheln,  to  be  sly),  butzenbrecht,  butzenravle,  butzenrolle, 
rollputz,  butzenbell  (because  his  rattle  rolls  and  his  bell  tinkles), 
Schmid  111.  About  Hanau  I  have  heard  the  interjection,  katza- 
butza-rola  !  the  'katze-butze'  bringing  up  the  connexion  between 
cat  and  goblin  (p.  503)  in  a  new  form.  In  Switzerland  bootzi,  bozl, 
St.  1,  204.  Here  several  meanings  branch  out  of  one  another : 
first  we  have  a  monstrous  butz  that  drags  children  away,  then  a 
tiny  biitzel,  and  thence  both  biltzel  and  butz-igel  (-urchin)  used 
contemptuously  of  little  deformed  creatures.  In  like  manner  but 
in  Low  Germ,  stands  for  a  squat  podgy  child ;  butten,  verbutten 
is  to  get  stunted  or  deformed,  while  the  bugbear  is  called  butte, 
butke,  budcle,  buddeke :  fdat  di  de  butke  nig  bit/  (that  thee  the 
bogie  bite  not !)  is  said  satirically  to  children  who  are  afraid  of 
the  dark,  Brem.  wb.  1,  173-5;  and  here  certainly  is  the  place 
for  the  watersprite  butt  or  buttje  in  the  Kindermarchen  no.  19, 
the  name  having  merely  been  transferred  to  a  blunt-headed  fish, 
the  rhombus  or  passer  marinus.1  There  is  also  probably  a  butte- 
maim,  buttmann,  but  more  commonly  in  the  contracted  form 
bit-man  (Br.  wb.  1,  153).  Nethl.  bytebauw,  for  buttebauw,  which 
I  identify  with  Low  Germ,  bu-ba  (Br.  wb.  1,  152).  The  Dan. 
bussemand,  bussegroll,  bussetrold  (Molbech,  p.  60)  seems  to  be 
formed  on  the  German  (see  Suppl.). — The  origin  of  this  butze, 
butte  is  hard  to  ascertain :  I  would  assume  a  lost  Goth,  biuta 
(tundo,  pulso),  baut,  butum,  OHG.  piuzu,  poz,  puzum,  whence 
OHG.  anapoz,  our  amboss,  anvil,  MHG.  bozen  (pulsare),  and 
gebiuze,  thumping,  clatter  [Engl,  to  butt?],  conf.  Lachmann 
on  Nib.  1823,  2.  Fragm.  40,  186;  butze  would  be  a  thumping 
rapping  sprite,  perfectly  agreeing  with  mumhart  and  pophart,- 
and    we    may    yet    hear    of  a    bozhart    or   buzhart.       But,    like 

1  Homesprite  and  water-sprite  meet  in  this  soothsaying  wish-granting  fish. 
The  story  of  the  butt  has  a  parallel  in  the  OFr.  tale  of  an  elvish  spirit  and  en- 
chanter Merlin,  who  keeps  fulfilling  the  growing  desires  of  the  charcoal  burner,  till 
they  pass  all  bounds,  then  plunges  him  back  into  his  original  poverty  (Meon,  nouv. 
rec.  2,  242-252.     Jubinal  1,  128-135. 

2  As  the  monstrous  includes  the  repulsive  and  unclean,  it  is  not  surprising  that 
both  butze  and  popcl  signify  mucus,  filth  (Oberlin  210.  Schm.  1,  291).  The  same 
with  Swiss  boog,  St.  1,  203. 


508  WIGHTS   AND   ELVES. 

butzenhiinsel,  there  is  also  a  Icanselmann  used  for  spiritus 
familiaris  (Phil.  v.  Sittew.  5,  328,  ed.  Lugd.),  and  the  similar 
hampelmann  for  goblin,  puppet  and  mannequin  (  =  manneke, 
mannikin).  Bavar.  hdmpel,  haimpel,  both  devil  and  simpleton 
(Schm.  2,  197),  Austr.  henparl  (Hofer  2,  46). 

The  Fr.  fullet,  It.  foletto,  is  a  diminuitive  of  fol,  fou;  which, 
like  follis  (bellows),  seems  to  be  derived  from  an  obsolete  follere 
(to  move  hither  and  thither),  and  brings  us  to  a  fresh  contact 
of  the  home-sprite  with  the  fool.1  Then  lutin,  also  luton,  perhaps 
from  the  Lat.  luctus :  a  sprite  who  wails  and  forebodes  sorrow  ? 
Lithuan.  bildukkas,  bildunas,  bildziuks  (noisy  sprite),  from 
bildenti  (to  racket,  rattle) ;  grozdunas  from  grodzia  (there  is  a 
racket  made).  Sloven,  ztrazhnih,  Serv.  strashilo,  Boh.  strasidlo, 
Pol.  straszydlo,  from  strasiti  (terrere) ;  Boh.  bubdJc  (noisy  sprite) . 
Somewhat  stronger  is  the  Pol.  dzieciojad,  child-eater,  like  the 
Lat.  manducus.  Irish  home-sprites  are  called  Cluricauns  (Elfenm. 
p.  85-114),  Leprechaun,  Logheriman  (Keightley  2,  179;  and  see 
Suppl.). 

But  enough  of  these  names  :  no  doubt  many  more  could  be 
added.  It  is  time  to  consider  the  nature  and  functions  of  these 
Home-sprites. 

In  stature,  appearance  and  apparel  they  come  very  near  to 
elves  and  dwarfs ;  legend  loves  to  give  them  red  hair  or  a 
red  beard,  and  the  pointed  red  hat  is  rarely  missing.  Hutchen 
(Hodeke,  Hoidike),  the  Hildesheim  goblin,  and  Hopfeuhuteh 
Eisenhiltel  take  their  names  from  it.  A  broad-topped  mushroom 
is  in  Dan.  called  nissehat.  The  Norwegian  Nissen  is  imagined 
small  like  a  child,  but  strong,  clothed  in  grey,  with  a  red  peaky 
cap,  and  carrying  a  blue  light  at  night.2  So  they  can  make 
themselves  visible  or  invisible  to  men,  as  they  please.  Their  fairy 
shoes  or  boots  have  been  noticed,  p.  503 ;  with  these  they  can  get 
over  the  most  difficult  roads  with  the  greatest  speed  :  it  was  just 
over  mountains  and  forests  that  Hiitchen's  rennpfad  extended 
(Deut.  sag.  1,  100),  and  the  schratweg  (p.  479)   means  much  the 

i  Katherius,  ed.  Ballerini,  p.  314  :  'merito  ergo  follis  latiali  rusticitate  vocaris, 
quoniam  veritate  vacuus.'  Wilhelni.  nietens.  ep.  3 :  'follem  me  rustico  verbo 
appellasti.' 

2  J.  N.  Wilse's  Beskrivelse  over  Spydeberg,  Christiana  1779,  p.  418.  Conf.  the 
blue  light  of  the  black  rnannikin,  Kinderm.  no.  116. 


HOME-SPRITE.  509 

same.1  With  this  walking  apparatus  and  this  swiftness  there  is 
associated  now  and  then  some  animal's  form  and  name  :  Heinze, 
Hemzelruann,  polterkater,  katermann,  boot-cat,  squirrel ;  their 
shuffling  and  bustling  about  the  house  is  paralleled  by  the  nightly 
turbulence  of  obstreperous  cats.2  They  like  to  live  in  the  stable, 
bam  or  cellar  of  the  person  whose  society  they  have  chosen, 
sometimes  even  in  a  tree  that  stands  near  the  house  (Swed.  bo-trii, 
dwelling-tree).  You  must  not  break  a  bough  off  such  a  tree,  or 
the  offended  goblin  will  make  his  escape,  and  all  the  luck  of  the 
house  go  with  him ;  moreover,  he  cannot  abide  any  chopping  in 
the  yard  or  spinning  on  a  Thursday  evening  (Superst.  Swed.  no. 
HO).3  In  household  occupations  they  shew  themselves  friendly 
and  furthersome,  particularly  in  the  kitchen  and  stable.  The 
dwarf-king  Goldemar  (pp.  453.  466)  is  said  to  have  lived  on  in- 
timate terms  with  Neveling  of  Hardenberg  at  the  Hardenstein, 
and  often  shared  his  bed.  He  played  charmingly  on  the  harp, 
and  got  rid  of  much  money  at  dice  ;  he  called  Neveling  brother- 
in-law,  and  often  admonished  him,  he  spoke  to  everybody,  and 
made  the  clergy  blush  by  discovering  their  secret  sins.  His 
hands  were  lean  like  those  of  a  frog,  cold  and  soft  to  the  grasp  ; 
he  would  allow  himself  to  be  felt,  but  never  to  be  seen.  After  a 
stay  of  three  years  he  made  off  without  injuring  any  one.  Other 
accounts  call  him  king  Vollmar,  and  they  say  the  room  he  lived 
in  is  called  Volhiiar's  hammer  to  this  day  :  a  place  at  table  had 
to  be  kept  for  him,  and  one  in  the  stable  for  his  horse ;  meats, 
oats  and  hay  were  consumed,  but  of  horse  or  man  you  saiv  nothing 
but  the  shadow.  Once  an  inquisitive  man  having  sprinkled  ashes 
and  peas  to  make  him  fall  and  to  get  sight  of  his  footprints,  he 
sprang  upon  him  as  he  was  lighting  the  fire,  and  chopped  him  up 
into  pieces,  which  he  stuck  on  a  spit  and  roasted,  but  the  head 
and  legs  he  thought  proper  to  boil.  The  dishes,  when  ready, 
were  carried  to  Vollmar's  chamber,  and  one  could  hear  them 
being  consumed  with  cries  of  joy.     After  this,  no  more  was  heard 

1  So  a  chemin  de  fees  is  spoken  of  in  Mom.  celt.  4,  240,  and  a  trollaskeid 
(curriculum  gigantum)  'in  Laxd.  saga  66. 

-  Witches  and  fays  often  assume  the  shape  of  a  cat,  and  the  cat  is  a  creature 
peculiarly  open  to  suspicions  of  witchcraft. 

3  Wilse,  ubi  supra,  entirely  agrees  :  '  tomtegubben  skal  have  sin  til  hold  unde 
gamle  triier  ved  stuehuset  (boetriier),  og  derfor  har  man  ej  tordet  falde  disse  gaud- 
ske.'  To  this  connexion  of  home-sprites  with  tree-worship  we  shall  have  to  return 
further  on. 


510  WIGHTS  AND   ELVES. 

of  king  Vollmar ;  but  over  his  chamber-door  it  was  found  written, 
that  from  that  time  the  house  would  be  as  unlucky  as  it  had  been 
prosperous  till  then,  and  the  scattered  estates  would  never  come 
together  again  till  there  were  three  Hardenbergs  of  Hardenstein 
living  at  once.  Both  spit  and  gridiron  were  long  preserved,  till 
in  1651  they  disappeared  during  the  Lorrain  war,  but  the  pot  is 
still  there,  let  into  the  kitchen  wall.1  The  home-sprite's  parting 
prophecy  sounds  particularly  ancient,  and  the  grim  savagery  of 
his  wrath  is  heathen  all  over.  Sam.  Meiger  says  of  the  wolter- 
Jcens  :  '  Se  vinden  sik  gemeinichlich  in  den  hiiseren,  dar  ein  god 
vorrad  (store)  van  alien  dingen  is.  Dar  scholen  se  sik  bedenst- 
haftigen  (obsequious)  anstellen,  waschen  in  der  koken  up,  boten 
voir  (beet  the  fire),  schiiren  de  vate,  schrapen  de  perde  im  stalle, 
voderen  dat  quik,  dat  it  vet  und  glat  herin  geit,  theen  (draw) 
water  und  dragent  dem  vehe  (cattle)  vor.  Men  kan  se  des 
nachtes  horen  de  ledderen  edder  treppen  (or  stairs)  up  und  dal 
stigen,  lachen,  wen  se  den  megeden  efte  knechte  de  decken 
aftheen  (pull  off),  se  richten  to,  houwen  in,  jegen  (against)  dat 
geste  kamen  scholen,2  smiten  de  ware  in  dem  huse  umme,  de  den 
morgen  gemeinliken  darna  verkoft  wert/  The  goblin  then  is  an 
obliging  hardworking  sprite,  who  takes  a  pleasure  in  waiting  on 
the  men  and  maids  at  their  housework,  and  secretly  dispatching 
some  of  it  himself.  He  curries  the  horse?;  combs  out  their 
manes,3  lays  fodder  before  the  cattle,4  draws  water  from  the  well 
and  brings  it  them,  and  cleans  out  the  stable.  For  the  maids  he 
makes  up  fire,  rinses  out  the  dishes,  cleaves  and  carries  wood, 
sweeps  and  scrubs.  His  presence  brings  prosperity  to  the  house, 
his  departure  removes  it.  He  is  like  the  helpful  earth-mannikins 
who  lend  a  hand  in  field  labour  (p.  451  n.).  At  the  same  time  he 
oversees  the  management  of  the  house,  that  everything  be  done 
orderly;  lazy  and  careless  workers  get  into  trouble  with  him  (as 
with  Holla  and  Berhta,  pp.  269.  273),  he  pulls  the  coverlets  off 

1  Von  Steinen's  Westph.  gesch.  pp.  777-9. 

2  When  the  cat  trims  her  whiskers,  they  say  it  is  a  sign  of  guests. 

3  Like  the  white  lady  (Berhta),  whose  nightly  visits  are  indicated  the  nest 
morning  by  the  wax  that  hasdropt  from  her  taper  on  the  manes  (Deut.  sag.  no.  122). 
In  Wales  the  people  believe  that  goats  have  their  beards  combed  out  every  Friday 
night  by  the  elves  (Croker  3,  204). 

4  Hence  the  name  futtermannchen,  (confounded  at  times  with  Peter  mannchen) ; 
but  often  he  has  one  favourite  horse  that  he  pays  special  attention  to,  taking  hay 
out  of  the  others'  cribs  to  bring  to  him.    Faye  p.  44. 


HOME-SPRITE.  511 

the  beds  of  sluggards,  blows  their  light  out,  turns  the  best  cow's 
neck  awry,  kicks  the  dawdling  milkmaid's  pail  over,  and  mocks 
her  with  insulting  laughter  j  his  good-nature  turns  into  worrying 
and  love  of  mischief,  he  becomes  a  '  tormenting  spirit/  Agenvund 
in  the  Eeinardus  4,  859-920  seems  to  me  no  other  than  a  house- 
doemon,  distorted  and  exaggerated  by  the  poet,  disturbing  the 
maid  in  her  sleep,  her  milking  and  churning  (see  Suppl.).1 

Servants,  to  keep  on  good  terms  with  him,  save  a  little  potful 
of  their  food  on  purpose  for  him,  which  is  surely  a  vestige  of  little 
sacrifices  that  were  offered  him  of  old  (p.  448).  That  is  probably 
why  one  Swiss  goblin  bears  the  name  Napfhans,  Potjack.  But 
in  many  cases  it  is  only  done  on  holidays,  or  once  a  week.  The 
sprite  is  easily  satisfied,  he  puts  up  with  a  saucerful  of  porridge, 
a  piece  of  cake  and  a  glass  of  beer,  which  are  left  out  for  him 
accordingly ;  on  those  evenings  he  does  not  like  any  noisy  work 
to  be  going  on,  either  in  or  out  of  doors.  This  they  call  in 
Norway 'at  holde  qvelvart  (qvellsvart),'  to  hold  evening  rest. 
Those  who  desire  his  goodwill,  give  him  good  words :  '  Icidre 
granne,  gior  det ! '  dear  neighbour,  do  this ;  and  he  replies  con- 
formably. He  is  said  at  times  to  carry  his  preference  for  the 
goodman  so  far  as  to  pilfer  hay  and  straw  from  other  farmers' 
barns  or  stables,  and  bring  it  to  him  (see  Suppl.). 

The  Nissen  loves  the  moonlight,  and  in  wintertime  you  see 
him  merrily  skipping  across  the  farmyard,  or  skating.  He  is  a 
good  hand  at  dancing  and  music,  and  much  the  same  is  told  of 
him  as  of  the  Swedish  stromkarl  (p.  493),  that  for  a  grey  sheep 
he  teaches  people  to  play  the  fiddle.2 

The  home-sprite  is  contented  with  a  trifling  wage  :  a  new  hat,  a 
red  cap,  a  parti-coloured  coat  with  tinkling  bells  he  will  make 
shift  with.  The  hat  and  cap  he  has  in  common  with  dwarfs 
(p.  463),  and  therefore  also  the  power  to  make  himself  invisible. 
Petronius  (Satir.  cap.  38)  shows  it  was  already  a  Roman  super- 
stition :  *  sed  quomodo  dicunt,  ego  nihil  scivi,  sed  audivi,  quo- 
modo  incuboni  pileam  rapuisset,  et  thesaurum  invenit.'     Home- 

1  The  description  of  his  figure  (a  horse's  mane,  hawk's  bill,  cat's  tail,  peat's 
beard,  ox's  horns  and  cock's  feet)  can  hardly  have  been  all  invented  there  and  then. 

2  Unless  Wilse  (Beskriv.  over  Spyd.  419)  has  confounded  Nissen  with  nocken  ; 
yet  the  German  goblin  Goldemar  was  likewise  musical  (Ir.  Elfenm.  lxxxiii.).  W  Use, 
and  Faye,  pp.  43-45,  give  the  best  account  of  the  Norwegian  Nissen,  and  Tliiele  i. 
134-5  of  the  Danish. 


512  WIGHTS  AND  ELVES. 

sprites  guard  treasures,  and  in  Nib.  399  Siegfried  becomes 
master  of  the  hoard  as  soon  as  he  has  taken  Alberich's  tarakappe 
from  him.  In  Calderon's  Dama  duende  the  little  goblin  wears  a 
large  hat :  'era  unfraijle  tamanito,  y  tenia  un  cucurucho  tamano.' 
The  Swedish  '  tomte  i  garden '  looks  like  a  year-old  child,  but 
has  an  old  knowing  face  under  his  red  cap.  He  shews  himself  at 
midday  (see  chap.  XXXVI.,  daemon  meridianus)  in  summer  and 
autumn,  slow  and  panting  he  drags  a  single  straw  or  an  ear 
(p.  459) ;  when  the  farmer  laughed  and  asked,  '  What's  the 
odds  whether  you  bring  me  that  or  nothing  ?  '  he  quitted  the 
farm  in  dudgeon,  and  went  to  the  next.  From  that  time  pros- 
perity forsook  the  man  who  had  despised  him,  and  went  over  to 
his  neighbour.  The  farmer  who  respected  the  busy  tomte  and 
cared  for  the  tiniest  straw,  became  rich,  and  cleanliness  and 
order  reigned  in  his  household.  Many  Christians  still  believe  in 
such  home-sprites,  and  present  them  an  offering  every  year,  '  pay 
them  their  wage '  as  they  call  it.  This  is  done  on  the  morn  of 
Yule,  and  consists  of  grey  cloth,  tobacco  and  a  shovelful  of  earth, 
Afzelius  2,  169.  A  puck  served  the  monks  of  a  Mecklenburg 
monastery  for  thirty  years,  in  kitchen,  stall  and  elsewhere ;  he 
was  thoroughly  good-natured,  and  only  bargained  for  e  tunicam 
de  diversis  coloribus,  et  ti/ntinnabulis  pleriam.'1  In  Scotland  there 
lived  a  goblin  Shellycoat,  and  we  saw  (p.  465)  that  the  dwarfs 
of  the  Mid.  Ages  also  loved  bells  [schellen ;  and  schellenkappe  is 
Germ,  for  cap  and  bells] .  The  bells  on  the  dress  of  a  fool  still 
attest  his  affinity  to  the  shrewd  and  merry  goblin  (fol,  follet)  ; 
see  Suppl. 

He  loves  to  play  merry  pranks,  and  when  he  has  accomplished 
one,  he  is  fain  to  laugh  himself  double  for  delight :  hence  that 
goblin  laughter  (p.  502)  and  chuckling.  But  also  when  he  sulks, 
and  means  mischief  to  those  who  have  brought  him  into  trouble 
and  difficulty,  he  utters  a  scornful  laugh  at  the  top  of  his  voice.2 

As  henchman  true,  he  abides  by  the  master  he  once  takes  up 
with,  come  weal  come  woe.  But  his  attachment  is  often  found 
irksome,  and  one  cannot  be  rid  of  him  again.     A  farmer  set  fire 

1  The  story  (as  written  down  in  1559)  is  given  in  Em.  Joach.  Westphal's  Speci- 
men docuinentorurn  ineditorum,  Rostock  1726,  pp.  156-166. 

-  Scott's  Minstrelsy  I.  civ.  mentions  a  North  English  Brag  or  Barguest :  'he 
usually  ended  his  mischievous  frolics  with  a  horselaugh.''  Conf.  Hone's  Tablebook 
2,  656. 


HOME-SPRITE.  513 

to  his  barn,  to  burn  the  goblin  that  haunted  it ;  when  it  is  all 
ablaze,  there  sits  the  sprite  at  the  back  of  the  cart  in  which  they 
were  removing  the  contents  (Deut.  sag.  no.  72). ]  In  Moneys 
Anzeiger  1835,  312  we  read  of  a  little  black  man  that  was 
bought  with  a  chest,  and  when  this  was  opened,  he  hopped  out 
and  slipped  behind  the  oven,  whence  all  efforts  to  rout  him  out 
were  fruitless ;  but  he  lived  on  excellent  terms  with  the  house- 
hold, and  occasionally  shewed  himself  to  them,  though  never  to 
strangers.  This  black  figure  reminds  one  both  of  the  Scandi- 
navian  dwarfs,  and  of  the  devil.  Some  thoroughly  good  goblin - 
stories  are  in  Adalb.  Kuhn's  collection,  pp.  42.  55.  84.  107.  159. 
191-3.  372.2 

There  are  also  goblins  who,  like  nix  and  watersprite,  are 
engaged  in  no  man's  service,  but  live  independently  ;  when  such 
a  one  is  caught,  he  will  offer  you  gifts  or  tell  your  fortune,  to  be 
set  at  liberty  again.     Of  this  sort  is  the  butt  in  the  nursery-tale 


1  Very  similar  stories  in  Euhn,  no.  103,  Thiele  1,  136,  and  the  Irish  tale  of  the 
cluricaun  (pp.  92.  213  of  the  transl.).  Also  a  capital  Polish  story  about  Iskrzycki, 
in  Woycicki's  Klechdy  1,  198  :  An  unknown  person,  who  called  himself  Iskrzycki 
[flinty,  from  iskra  =  spark,  says  Grimm ;  there  is  also  a  Slav.  iskri  =  near,  iskrenny 
=  neighbour,  friendly]  came  and  offered  his  services  to  a  man  of  noble  family. 
The  agreement  was  drawn  up,  and  even  signed,  when  the  master  observed  that  Isk- 
rzycki had  horse's  feet,  and  gave  him  notice  of  withdrawal.  But  the  servant  stood 
on  his  rights,  and  declared  his  intention  of  serving  his  master  whether  he  would 
or  no.  He  lived  invisible  by  the  fireplace,  did  all  the  tasks  assigned  him,  and  by 
degrees  they  got  used  to  him ;  but  at  last  the  lady  pressed  her  husband  to  move, 
and  he  arranged  to  take  another  estate.  The  family  all  set  out  from  the  mansion, 
and  had  got  through  the  better  part  of  the  way,  when,  the  log-road  being  out  of 
repair,  the  carriage  threatens  to  upset,  and  the  lady  cries  out  in  alarm.  Suddenly 
a  voice  from  the  back  of  the  carriage  calls  out:  Never  fear,  my  masters!  Iskrzycki 
is  with  you  (nie  boj  si§,  pani ;  Iskrzycki  z  warni).  The  '  masters  '  then  perceiving 
that  they  could  not  shake  him  off,  turned  back  to  their  old  house,  and  lived  at 
peace  with  the  servant  until  his  term  expired.      [English  readers  will  remember 

Tennyson's  '  Yes,  we're  flitting,  says  the  ghost.'] The  alraun  or  gallows-maiy 

nikin  in  Deutsche  sagen  nos.  83.  8-1  is  not  properly  a  kobold,  but  a  semi-diabolic 
being  carved  out  of  a  root,  and  so  diminutive  that  he  can  be  kept  in  a  glass ;  like 
an  idol,  he  has  to  be  bathed  and  nursed.  In  one  thing  however  he  resembles  the 
home-sprite,  that  he  will  not  leave  his  owner,  and  even  when  thrown  away  he 
always  comes  back  again,  unless  indeed  he  be  sold  [orig.  'bought']  for"  less  than 
he  cost.  The  last  purchaser  has  to  keep  him.  Simpliciss.  2,  181.  203.  Conf. 
Schm.  3,  9(3-7.  [Home-sprites  can  be  bought  and  sold,  but  the  third  buyer  must 
keep  him,  Mullenhoff  p.  322.  With  ref.  to  the  '  idol  (gotze) ' :  As  the  figure  of  the 
child  Jesus  has  its  shirt  washed  (Sommer,  pp.  38.  173),  so  the  heckmdnnchen  must 
be  dressed  up  anew  at  a  certain  time  every  year,  10  Ehen,  p.  235. — Extr.  from 
Suppl.] 

2  To  escape  the  futtermannchen,  a  farmer  built  a  new  house,  but  the  day  before 
he  moved,  he  spied  the  f.  dipping  his  grey  coat,  in  the  brook  :  '  My  little  coat  here 
I  swill  and  souse,  To-morrow  we  move  to  a  fine  new  house.'  Bbrner's  Orlagau, 
p.  246.  Whoever  has  the  kobold  must  not  wash  or  comb  himself  (Sommer  p.  171. 
Miillenh.  209) ;  so  in  the  case  of  the  devil,  oh.  XXXIII.— Extr.  from  Suppl. 


514  WIGHTS  AND   ELVES. 

(p.  507),  likewise  the  folet  in  Marie  de  Fr.  2,  140,  who  grants 
three  wishes  (oremens).  And  the  captive  marmennill  (p.  434), 
or  the  sea-wife,  does  the  same. 

The  unfriendly,  racketing  and  tormenting  spirits  who  take  pos- 
session of  a  house,  are  distinguished  from  the  friendly  and  good- 
natured  by  their  commonly  forming  a  whole  gang,  who  disturb 
the  householder's  rest  with  their  riot  and  clatter,  and  throw  stones 
from  the  roof  at  passers  by.  A  French  comedy  of  the  16th 
century,  ( Les  Esprits/  1  represents  goblins  racketing  in  a  house, 
singing  and  playing  at  night,  and  aiming  tiles  at  passers  by  in 
the  daytime ;  they  are  fond  of  fire,  but  make  a  violent  uproar 
every  time  the  master  spits.3  In  Gervase  of  Tilbury,  cap.  18, 
the  folleti  also  pelt  with  stones,  and  this  of  stone-throwing  is 
what  we  shall  meet  with  in  quite  early  stories  of  devils ;  al- 
together the  racketing  sprites  have  in  this  respect  more  of  the 
devil  or  spectre  in  them  than  of  the  elf :  it  is  a  darkening  and 
distortion  of  their  original  nature  in  accordance  with  Christian 
sentiment. 

So  it  becomes  clear,  at  last,  how  the  once  familiar  and  faith- 
ful friend  of  the  family  under  heathenism  has  gradually  sunk 
into  a  bugbear  or  a  taunt  to  children  :  a  lot  which  he  shares  with 
goddesses  and  gods  of  old.  As  with  Holle  and  Berhte,  so  people 
are  threatened  with  the  Lamia,  the  Oniacmica,  the  manducus  and 
goblin  (pp.  500.  507)  :  '  le  gobelin  vous  mangera,  le  gobelin 
vous  attrapera !  '  Little  butzel  no  more,  but  a  frightful  butze- 
mann  or  katzenveit,  in  mask  (strawbeard)  or  with  sooty  visage 
he  scares  (like  the  roggenmuhme,  p.  477).  And  it  is  worth 
remarking  how,  in  some  districts  at  least,  hnecht  Ruprecht,  hnecht 
Nicolas,  appear  at  Christmas-time    not  by    themselves,    but   in 


1  Comedies  facecieuses  de  Pierre  de  l'Arivey,  champenois,  Lyon  1597.  Eouen, 
1611,  p.  242  seq. 

2  Legenda  aurea,  cap.  177  :  Hujus  Ludovici  tempore,  anno  Domini  856,  ut  in 
quadam  chronica  habetur,  in  parochia  Maguntina  malignus  spiritus  parietes  domo- 
rum  quasi  malleis  pulsando  et  manifeste  loquendo  et  discordias  seminando  adeo  honi- 
inis  infestabat,  ut  quocumque  intrasset,  statim  ilia  domus  exurereter.  Presbyteris 
autem  letanias  agentibus  et  aquam  benedictain  spargentibus  inimicus  lapides  jact- 
abat  et  multos  cruentabat.  Tandem  aliquando  conquiescens  confessus  est  se,  quando 
aqua  spargebatur,  sub  capa  talis  sacerdotis  quasi  familiaris  sui  latuisse,  accusans 
eum  quod  cum  filia  procuratoris  in  peccatum  lapsus  fuerit.  [This  incident,  said  to 
have  occurred  at  Capmunti  (Kembden)  near  Bingen,  is  derived  from  Rudolf!  Ful- 
densis  Annal.  ann.  858,  in  Pertz  1,  372,  where  further  details  are  given. — Extr. 
from  Suppl. 


HOME -SPRITE.  515 

attendance  on  the  real  gift-giver,  the  infant  Christ  or  dame 
Berhta  :  while  these  dole  out  their  favours,  those  come  on  with 
rod  and  sack,  threatening  to  thrash  disobedient  children,  to 
throw  them  into  the  water,  to  puff  their  eyes  out  (Rockenphilos. 
6,  353).  Their  pranks,  their  roughness,  act  as  foil  to  the  gracious 
higher  being  from  whom  the  gifts  proceed;  they  are  almost  as 
essential  to  the  festival  as  Jackpudding  to  our  old  comedy.  I 
can  well  imagine  that  even  in  heathen  times  the  divinity,  whose 
appearing  heralded  a  happy  time,  had  at  his  side  some  merry  elf 
or  dwarf  as  his  attendant  embodying  to  the  vulgar  eye  the  bless- 
ings that  he  brought.1  Strongly  in  favour  of  this  view  are  the 
North  Franconian  names  Eullepopel  (Popowitsch  522),  Hollepeter 
(Schm.  2,  174),  the  Bavarian  Semper,  of  whom  they  say  he  cuts 
naughty  children's  bodies  open  and  stuffs  them  with  pebbles 
(Schm.  3,  12.  250),  exactly  after  the  manner  of  Holla  and  Berhta 
(p.  273)2;  and  consider  faithful  Eckart,  who  escorts  Holla. 
In  Christian  times  they  would  at  first  choose  some  saint  to 
accompany  the  infant  Christ  or  the  mother  of  God  in  their  dis- 
tribution of  boons,  but  the  saint  would  imperceptibly  degenerate 
into  the  old  goblin  again,  but  now  a  coarser  one.  The  Christmas 
plays  sometimes  present  the  Saviour  with  His  usual  attendant 
Peter,  or  else  with  Niclas,  at  other  times  however  Mary  with 
Gabriel,  or  with  her  aged  Joseph,  who,  disguised  as  a  peasant, 
acts  the  part  of  knecht  Ruprecht.  Nicolaus  again  has  converted 
himself  into  a  '  man  Clobes '  or  Rupert ;  as  a  rule,  it  is  true, 
there  is  still  a  Niclas,  a  saintly  bishop  and  benevolent  being, 
distinct  from  the  '  man '  who  scares  children  ;  but  the  characters 
get  mixed,  and  Clobes  by  himself  acts  the  'man'  (Tobler  105b, 
106a);  the  Austrian  Grampus  (Hofer  1,  313.  Schm.  2,  110), 
Kra/mpus,  Krambas,  is  possibly  for  Hieronymus,  but  how  to  ex- 
plain the  Swiss  Schmutzli  (Staid.  2,  337)  I  do  not  rightly  know, 
perhaps  simply  from  his  smutty  sooty  aspect  ?  Instead  of  Grampus 
there  is  also  in  Styria  a  Barthel  (pointing  to  Berhta,  or  Bartho- 
lomew ?)   Schmutzbartel 3  and  Klaubauf,  who  rattles,  rackets,  and 

1  Ileinrich  and  Ruprecht  were  once  common  names  for  serving-men,  as  Hans 
and  Claus  are  now. 

2  Zember  about  Eger  in  German  Bohemia  (Popowitsch  523)  ;  at  the  same  time 
the  Lauaitz  idol  Sompar  (supra,  p.  71  note)  is  worth  considering. 

3  The  phrase  '  he  knows  where  Barthel  pets  his  must,'  notwithstanding  other 
explanations,  may  refer  to  a  home-sprite  well-known  in  the  cellar. 


516  WIGHTS   AND   ELVES. 

throws  nuts  (Denis,  Lesef'r.  1, 131 ;  see  Suppl.).  Further,  on  this 
point  I  attach  weight  to  the  Swedish  jullekar,  Dan.  juleleger, 
yule-lays,  undoubtedly  of  heathen  origin,  which  at  Christmas- 
time present  Christ  and  certain  saints,  but  replace  our  man 
Ruprecht  by  a  julbock,  julebuk,  i.e.  a  manservant  disguised  as 
a  goat.1  This  interweaving  of  jackpudding,  fool,  Klobes  and 
Riipel,  of  the  yule-buck  and  at  last  of  the  devil  himself,  into  the 
rude  popular  drama  of  our  Mid.  Ages,  shows  what  an  essential 
part  of  it  the  wihtels  and  tatermans  formerly  were,  how  ineradi- 
cable the  elvish  figures  and  characters  of  heathenism.  The 
Greeks  enlivened  the  seriousness  of  their  tragedy  by  satyric 
plays,  in  which  e.g.  Proteus,  similar  to  our  sea-sprite  (p.  434), 
played  a  leading  part.2 

There  is  yet  another  way  in  which  a  former  connexion  between 
gods,  wise-women  and  these  genii  now  and  then  comes  to  light. 
The  elf  who  showers  his  darts  is  servant  or  assistant  to  the  high 
god  of  thunder,  the  cunning  dwarf  has  forged  his  thunderbolts 
for  him ;  like  gods,  they  wear  divine  helmets  of  invisibility,  and 
the  home-sprite  has  his  feet  miraculously  shod  as  well ;  water- 
sprites  can  assume  the  shape  of  fishes  and  sea-horses,  and  home- 
sprites  those  of  cats.  The  weeping  nix,  the  laughing  goblin  are 
alike  initiated  in  the  mystery  of  magic  tones,  and  will  even  un- 
veil it  to  men  that  sacrifice.  An  ancient  worship  of  genii  and 
daemons  is  proved  by  sacrifices  offered  to  spirits  of  the  mountain, 
the  wood,  the  lake,  the  house.  Goblins,  we  may  presume,  ac- 
companied the  manifestation  of  certain  deities  among  men,  as 
Wuotan  and  Holda,  and  both  of  these  deities  are  also  connected 
with  watersprites  and  swan-maids.  Foreknowledge  of  the  future, 
the  gift  of  prophecy,  was  proper  to  most  genii ;  their  inexhaust- 
ible cheerfulness  stands  between  the  sublime  serenity  of  gods 


1  Read  Holberg's  Julestue,  and  look  up  julvalten  in  Finn  Magn.  lexicon,  p.  326 
note. 

2  They  frightened  children  with  sooty  Cyclops,  and  ace.  to  Calliinachus  (Hymn 
to  Diana  66-71),  Hermes,  like  our  Ruprecht  blackened  with  soot,  struck  terror 
into  disobedient  daughters  even  of  gods  : 

a\\    ore  Kovpduv  tls  aireidea  pLTjrepi  revxoi, 
p-y)T-r)p  /xrjv  KUK\w7ras  ey  eVi  iraidl  KaXtaTpei 
"Apyrjv  r)  "Zrepdv-qv  '  6  5e  8wp.aros  £k  [ivxcltoio 
2pXCTa.t.  'EppLelrjs,  cnroSii]   K€xpv^vo^  <*'#?7i 
avTiKa.  tvjv  Kovp-qv  p.opp.v(Tff€Tai *  17  5e  reKovar/s 
bvvei  Zcrti)  koXttovs  defievt]  iirl  (paeai  xe'PaS- 


SPRITES.      GENII.  517 

and  the  solemn  fates  of  mortals.  They  feel  themselves  drawn  to 
men,  and  repelled  by  them.  The  downfall  of  heathenism  must 
have  wrought  great  changes  in  the  old-established  relationship  : 
the  spirits  acquired  a  new  and  terrible  aspect  as  ministers  and 
messengers  of  Satan.1  Some  put  on  a  more  savage  look  that 
savours  of  the  giant,  especially  the  woodsprites.  Grendel's 
nature  borders  on  those  of  giants  and  gods.  Not  so  with  the 
females  however  :  the  wild  women  and  female  nixes  drop  into 
the  class  of  fortune-telling  swan-maids  who  are  of  human  kind, 
while  the  elfins  that  present  the  drinking-horn  melt  into  the 
circle  of  valkyrs  ;  and  here  again  we  recognise  a  general  beauty 
pervading  all  the  female  spirits,  and  raising  them  above  the 
males,  whose  characteristics  come  out  more  individually.  In 
wichtels,  dwarfs  and  goblins,  especially  in  that  children's  bugbear 
the  man  Ruprecht,  there  shews  itself  a  comic  faculty  derived 
from  the  oldest  times. 

Through  the  whole  existence  of  elves,  nixes,  and  goblins  there 
runs  a  low  under-current  of  the  unsatisfied,  disconsolate  :  they 
do  not  rightly  know  how  to  turn  their  glorious  gifts  to  account, 
they  always  require  to  lean  upon  men.  Not  only  do  they  seek 
to  renovate  their  race  by  intermarriage  with  mankind,  they  also 
need  the  counsel  and  assistance  of  men  in  their  affairs.  Though 
acquainted  in  a  higher  degree  than  men  with  the  hidden  virtues 
of  stones  and  herbs,  they  yet  invoke  human  aid  for  their  sick 
and  their  women  in  labour  (pp.  457.  492),  they  borrow  men's 
vessels  for  baking  and  brewing  (p.  454  n.),  they  even  celebrate 
their  weddings  and  hightides  in  the  halls  of  men.  Hence  too 
their  doubting  whether  they  can  be  partakers  of  salvation,  and 
their  unconcealed  grief  when  a  negative  answer  is  given. 

1  Brttder  Bansch  (friar  Rush)  a  veritable  goblin,  is  without  hesitation  [described 
as  being]  despatched  from  hell  among  the  monks ;  his  name  is  to  be  derived  from 
russ  =  fuligo  (as  kohlrausch  was  formerly  spelt  kolruss). 


CHAPTER    XVIII. 

GIANTS. 

The  relation  in  which  giants  stand  to  dwarfs  and  men  has 
been  touched  upon  in  p.  449.  By  so  much  of  bodily  size  and 
strength  as  man  surpasses  the  elf  or  dwarf,  he  falls  short  of  the 
giant ;  on  the  other  hand,  the  race  of  elves  and  dwarfs  has  a 
livelier  intellect  and  subtler  sense  than  that  of  men,  and  in  these 
points  again  the  giants  fall  far  below  mankind.  The  rude  coarse- 
grained giant  nature  is  defiant  in  its  sense  of  material  power  and 
might,  the  sly  shy  dwarf  is  conscious  of  his  mental  superiority. 
To  man  has  been  allotted  a  happy  mean,  which  raises  him  above 
the  giant's  intractableness  and  the  dwarf's  cunning,  and  betwixt 
the  two  he  stands  victorious.  The  giant  both  does  and  suffers 
wrong,  because  in  his  stupidity  he  undervalues  everybody,  and 
even  falls  foul  of  the  gods  ; 1  the  outcast  dwarf,  who  does  discern 
good  and  evil,  lacks  the  right  courage  for  free  and  independent 
action.  In  order  of  creation,  the  giant  as  the  sensuous  element 
came  first,  next  followed  the  spiritual  element  of  elvish  nature, 
and  lastly  the  human  race  restored  the  equilibrium.  The  abrupt- 
ness of  these  gradations  is  a  good  deal  softened  down  by  the 
giants  or  dwarfs  forming  frequent  alliances  with  men,  affording 
clear  evidence  that  ancient  fiction  does  not  favour  steep  contrasts  : 
the  very  earliest  giants  have  sense  and  judgment  ascribed  to 
them  (see  Suppl.). 

On  one  side  we  see  giants  forming  a  close  tie  of  brotherhood 
or  servile  dependence  with  human  heroes,  on  the  other  side 
shading  off  into  the  type  of  schrats  and  woodsprites. 

There  is  a  number  of  ancient  terms  corresponding  in  sense  to 
our  present  word  riese  (giant)  .2 

1  Not  a  trace  of  the  finer  features  of  gods  is  to  be  seen  in  the  Titans.    0.  Muller's 
Proleg.  373. 

2  Some  are  mere  circumlocutions  (a  counterpart  to  those  quoted  on  p.  450) :  der 
groze  man,  Er.  5380.     der  michel  man,  Er.  5475.     der  michel  knabe,  Iw.  5056. 

518 


EZAN,   EOTEN.  519 

The  oldest  and  most  comprehensive  term  in  Norse  is  iotunn, 
pi.  iotuar  (not  jotunn,  jotnar)  ;  it  is  backed  up  by  an  AS.  eoten, 
pi.  eotenas,  Beow.  223  (eotena  cyn,  836.  eotonisc,  5953),  or 
eten,  Lye  sub  v.;  OE.  etin,  ettin,  Nares  sub  v.;  Scot,  ettyn, 
eyttyn,  Jamieson  sub  v. ;  an  OS.  etan,  eten  can  be  inferred  with 
certainty  from  the  name  of  a  place  in  old  docs.,  Etanasfeld, 
Etenesfeld  (campus  gigantis),  Wigand's  Archiv  i.  4,  85.  Moser 
nos.  2.  13.  18.  19.  And  what  is  more,  the  word  must  have  lived 
on  in  later  times,  down  to  the  latest,  for  I  find  the  fern,  eteninne 
(giantess)  preserved  at  least  in  nursery-tales.  Laurenberg  (ed. 
Lappenberg,  p.  26) l  has  '  de  olde  eteninne,'  and  another  Rostock 
book  of  the  beginning  of  the  18th  century  2  '  die  alte  eteninne' ; 
I  should  like  to  know  whence  Adelung  sub  v.  mummel  gets  the 
fact,  that  in  Westphalia  a  certain  terrible  female  with  whom  they 
frighten  children  is  called  etheninne  ?  I  have  no  doubt  it  is 
correct.  The  Saxon  etan  warrants  us  in  conjecturing  an  OHG. 
ezan,  ezzan,  a  Goth,  itans,  having  for  root  the  ON.  eta,  AS.  etan, 
OHG.  ezzan,  Goth,  itan  (edere),  and  for  meaning  edo  (gen. 
edonis),  manducus,  iroXvfa'vyos,  devourer.  An  AS.  poem  in  Cod. 
exon.  425,  26  says  :  'ic  mesan  mteg  meahtelicor  and  efn  etan 
ealdum  hyrre/  I  can  chew  and  eat  more  mightily  than  an  old 
giant.  Now  the  question  arises,  whether  another  word,  which 
wants  the  suffix  -n,  has  any  business  here,  namely  the  ON.  iotr* 
AS.  eot,  now  only  to  be  found  in  the  compound  Forniotr,  Forneot 
(p.  240)  and  the  national  name  Iotar,  the  Jutes  ?  One  thing 
that  makes  for  it  is  the  same  omission  of  -n  in  the  Swed.  jatte 
(gigas),  Dan.  jette,  pi.  jetter;  then,  taking  iotnar  as  =  iotar 
(Goth.  itan6s  =  i'tos),  we  should  be  justified  in  explaining  the 
names  Jotar,  Jotland  by  an  earlier  (gigantic  ?)  race  whom  the 
advancing  Teutons  crowded  out  of  the  peninsula.1  In  that 
case  we  might  expect  an  OS.  et,  etes,  an  OHG.  ez,  ezes,  with  the 


1  Johann  Laurenberg,  a  Rostock  man,b.  1590,  d.  1658.  The  first  ed.  of  his  poem 
appeared  1652. 

2  Ern.  Joach.  Westphal,  De  consuetudine  ex  sacco  et  libro,  Rost.  1726.  8.  pp. 
221-5;  the  catalogue  there  given  of  old  stories  of  women  is  copied  in  Joh.  Pet. 
Schmidt's  Fastelabendssamlungen,  Rostock  (1742)  4.  resp.  1752,  p.  22,  but  here 
incorrectly  '  von  der  Ardcn  Inn  '  instead  of  WestphaTs  'von  der  alten  Eten  Inne.' 

5  For  iotr,  as  miolk  for  miolk,  see  Gramni.  1,  451.     482. 

4  Beda  1, 15  has  Juti,  which  the  AS.  version  mistakenly  renders  Ge/itas  (the  ON. 
Gautar),  though  at  4,  16  it  more  correctly  gives  Eotaland  for  Jutorum  terra,  am- 
ine Sax.  Chron.  (Ingr.  p.  14)  has  Ioturn  for  Iutis,  Iutnacynn  for  Iutorum  gens. 

VOL.    II.  G 


520  GIANTS. 

meaning  of  giant.1  Possibly  there  was  beside  iotunn,  also  an 
ON.  iotull,  OHG.  ezal  (edax) ; 3  that  would  explain  the  present 
Norwegian  term  for  giant :  jotul,  jut  id,  Hallager  52.  Faye  7 
(see  Suppl.).3 

Our  second  term  is  likewise  one  that  suggests  the  name  of 
a  nation.  The  ON.  purs  seems  not  essentially  different  from 
iotunn  ;  in  Sn.  6  Ymir  is  called  ancestor  of  all  the  hrimjmrses,  in 
Sasm.  118a  all  the  iotnar  are  traced  up  to  him.  In  particular 
songs  or  connexions  the  preference  is  given  to  one  or  the  other 
appellative  :  thus  in  the  enumeration  of  dialects  in  the  Alvismal 
the  giants  are  always  iotnar,  never  bursar,  and  there  is  no 
Thursaheimr  in  use  for  Iotunheimr,  Iotnaheimr;  but  Thrymr, 
though  dwelling  in  Iotnaheimr,  is  nevertheless  called  bursa 
drottinn  (Sasm.  70.  71)  and  not  iotna  drottinn,  but  he  summons 
the  iotnar  (73a),  and  is  a  iotunn  himself  (74a).  In  Seem.  85b 
both  iotnar  and  hrirnbursar  are  summoned  one  after  the  other, 
so  there  must  be  some  nice  distinction  between  the  two,  which 
here  I  would  look  for  in  the  prefix  hrim :  only  hrirnbursar,  no 
hrimiotnar,  are  ever  met  with  ;  of  this  hriinburs  an  explanation 
will  be  attempted  further  on.  Instead  of  Jmrs  there  often  occurs, 
especially  at  a  later  stage  of  the  language,  the  assimilated  form 
puss,  particularly  in  the  pi.  Jmssar,  hriinjmssar;  a  daemonic  being 
in  the  later  sagas  is  called  Thusselin  (Miiller's  Sagab.  1,  3G7-8), 
nay,  the  Danish  tongue  has  retained  the  assimilation  in  its  tosse, 
clumsy  giant,  dolt  (a  folk-song  has  tossegrefve)  *  and  a  Norwegian 
dasmon  bears  the  name  tussel.  The  ON.  ]mrs,  like  several  names 
of  gods,  is  likewise  the  title  of  a  rune-letter,  the  same  that  the 
Anglo-Saxons  called  born  (conf.  '  hurs  rista/  Sasm.  86a)  :  a 
notable  deviation,  as  the  AS.  tongue  by  no  means  lacks  the 
word;  in  Beow.  846  we  find  fiyrs,  and  also  in  the  menology  in 


1  Can  the  witch  Jettha  of  the  Palatinate  (p.  96  note)  be  a  corruption  of  Eta,  Eza  ? 
Anyhow  the  Jettenbiihel  (Jettha;  collis)  reminds  us  of  the  Bavarian  Jettcnberg 
(Mon.  boica  2,  219,  ann.  1317),  and  Mount  Jetten  in  Eeinbote's  Georg  1717,  where 
it  is  misprinted  Setten.  Near  WiUingshausen  in  Hesse  is  another  Jettenberg,  see 
W.  Grimm  On  the  runes,  p.  271. 

1  The  ruined  Weissenstein,  by  Werda  near  Marburg,  was  ace.  to  popular  legend 
the  abode  of  a  giant  named  Essel  (ezzal?),  and  the  meadow  where  at  the  fall  of  his 
castle  he  sank  its  golden  door  in  the  R.  Lahn,  is  still  called  Esselswerd. 

3  Isidore's  glosses  render  the  Gallic  name  of  a  people  ambro  by  devorator,  which 
agrees  with  the  OHG.  transl.  manezo,  man-eater  (Graff  1,  528),  the  well-known 
MHG.  manezze. 

*  Rr.  ihp,  Dan.  fos,  fossen,  for  the  ON.  fnrs. 


DUES,   THURS.  521 

Hickes  (Gramin.  AS.  p.  207)  :  '  fiyrs  sceal  on  fenne  gewunian/ 
and  elsewhere  pyrs,  pi.  hyrsas,  renders  the  Lat.  cyclops,  orcus. 
The  passage  already  given  from  the  Cod.  exon.  425,  28  has  fiyrre 
with  the  s  assimilated,  as  in  irre  for  irse.  And  we  find  an 
Engl,  thurst  surviving  in  holthurst  (woodsprite),  conf.  hobgoblin 
p.  502  [hob  o'  t'  hurst  ?]  The  OHG.  form  ought  to  be  durs,  pi. 
dursa,  or  dun's,  gen.  durises,  which  last  does  occur  in  a  gloss  for 
the  Lat.  Dis,  Ditis  (Schra.  1,  458),  and  another  gloss  more  Low 
Germ,  gives  thuris  for  orcus  (Fr.  ogre) ;  yet  Notker  ps.  17,  32 
spells  it  turs  (daemonium),  pi.  tursa,  and  MHG.  has  turse,  gen. 
tursen  (Aw.  3,  179),  perhaps  turse,  tiirsen  (as  in  Massm.  deukm. 
109  tiirsen  rhymes  kiirsen),  and  even  tiirste,  gen.  tiirsten  (MS.  2, 
205a) ;  on  the  other  hand,  Albr.  Tit.  24,  47  has  f  spil  von  einem 
diirsen'  (Hahn  3254  tursen)  =play  of  a  d.,  from  which  passage  we 
gather  that  tiirse-shows  as  well  as  wihtel-shows  (p.  441n.)  were 
exhibited  for  pastime  :  Ls.  3,  564  says,  alluding  to  a  well-known 
fable,  '  des  kunt  der  diirsch,  und  sprichet  schuo  ! '  the  d.  knows 
that,  etc.,  where  the  notion  of  satyr  and  wild  man  (p.  482) 
predominates.  The  Latin  poem  of  Wilten  monastery  in  Tyrol, 
which  relates  the  story  of  the  giant  Haimo,  names  another  giant 
Thyrsis,  making  a  proper  name  of  the  word  : 

Forte  habitabat  in  his  alius  truculentior  oris 

Cyclops,  qui  dictus  nomine  Thyrsis  erat, 
Thyrsis  erat  dictus,  Seveldia  rura  colebat.1 

The  name  of  a  place  Tarsinriut,  Tursenriut  (Doc.  of  1218-9  in 
Lang's  Reg.  2,  88.  94)  2  contains  our  word  unmistakably,  and  so 
to  my  thinking  does  the  earlier  Tuzzinwanc  near  Neugart,  stand- 
ing for  Tussiuwanc,  Tursinwanc  (campus  gigantis),  the  present 
Dussnang.  Nor  does  it  seem  much  more  hazardous  to  explain 
Strabo's  Govave\6a  (7,  1.  Tzsch.  2,  328)  by  Thurshilda,  Thuss- 
hilda,  Thursinhilda,3  though  I  cannot  produce  an  ON.  Thurshildr. 
In  Switzerland  to  this  day  durst  is  the  Wild  Hunter  (St.  1,  329), 
on  the  Salzburg  Alp  dusel  is  a  night-spirit  (Muchar's  Gasteiu, 
p.  145),  and  in  Lower  Germany  dros  or  drost  is  devil,  dolt,  giant.1 

1  Mone's  Untersuchung,  pp.  288-9. 

2  Now  Tirsehenreit,  Tirschengereith.  Schmeller's  birthplace  in  the  Up.  Pala- 
tinate, Schm.  1,  458.     So  Tiirschenwald,  Thyrsentritt,  Tiirstwiukel,  et  .— Suppl. 

s  Conf.  Pharaildis,  Verelde,  p.  284-5;  Grimild  for  Griniliil d. 

4  Brem.  \vb.  1,  257.    Richey  sub  v.  diaus,  Schiitze  sub  v.  drost,  Strodtmann  sub 


522  GIANTS. 

Whether  Thorsholt,  TJwshoJt,  the  name  of  a  place  in  Oldenburg1, 
is  connected  with  ]?urs,  I  cannot  tell. — In  Gothic  the  word 
would  have  to  be  J?aurs,  pi.  haiirsos  (or  ]>aiirsis,  pi.  ]?aiirsj6s  ? 
haiirsus,  J?aiirsjus  ?  J?aursja,  haursjans  ?) ;  and  of  these  forms  the 
derivation  is  not  far  to  seek.  The  Goth.  haursus  means  dry, 
baiirsjan  to  thirst,  Jmiirstei  thirst ;  Jmirsus,  haiirsis  becomes  in 
OHG.  durri  for  dursi  (as  airzis  becomes  irri  for  irsi),  while  the 
noun  durst  (thirst)  retains  the  s,  and  so  does  our  durs  (giant) 
and  the  ON.  Jmrs  by  the  side  of  the  adjective  ]mrr  (dry).  So  that 
paurs,  purs,  durs  signify  either  fond  of  wine,  thirsty,  or  drunken, 
a  meaning  which  makes  a  perfect  pair  with  that  we  fished  out  of 
itans,  iotunn.  The  two  words  for  giant  express  an  inordinate 
desire  for  eating  and  drinking,  precisely  what  exhibits  itself  in 
the  Homeric  cyclop.  Herakles  too  is  described  as  edax  and 
bibax,  e.g.  in  Euripides' s  Alcestis ;  and  the  ON.  giant  Suttungr 
(Ssem.  23.  Sn.  84)  apparently  stands  for  Suptungr  (Finn  Magn. 
p.  738),  where  we  must  presuppose  a  noun  supt  =  sopi,  a  sup 
or  draught. 

Now,  as  the  Jutes,  a  Teutonic  race,  retained  the  name  of  the 
former  inhabitants  whom  they  had  expelled,1  these  latter  being 
the  real  Iotnar  or  Itanos ;  so  may  the  Jmrsar,  dursa,  in  their  mythic 
aspect  [as  giants]  be  connected  with  a  distant  race  which  at  a 
very  early  date  had  migrated  into  Italy.  I  have  already  hinted 
(p.  25)  at  a  possible  connexion  of  the  haiirsos  with  the  Tvparjvoi, 
Tvpfjrjvoi,  Tusci,  Etrusci :  the  consonant-changes  are  the  very 
thing  to  '  be  expected,  and  even  the  assimilations  and  the 
transposition  of  the  r  are  all  found  reproduced.  Niebuhr  makes 
Tyrrhenians  distinct  from  Etruscans,  but  in  my  opinion  wrongly  ; 
as  for  the  Ovpaos  carried  in  the  Bacchic  procession,  it  has  no  claim 
to  be  brought  in  at  all  (see  Suppl.). 

There  is  even  a  third  mode  of  designating  giants  in  which  we 
likewise  detect  a  national  name.  Lower  Germany,  Westphalia 
above  all,  uses  hune  in  the  sense  of  giant ;  the  word  prevails  in 
all  the  popular  traditions  of  the  Weser  region,  and  extends  as  far 
as  the  Groningen   country  and  E.  Drenthe  ;  giants'  hills,  giants' 

v.  droost :  '  dat  di  de  droost  sla  ! '  may  the  d.  smite  thee  ;  in  the  Altmark  :  '  det  di 
de  druse  hal  (fetch) ! '  and  elsewhere  '  de  dros  in  de  helle.'  At  the  same  time  the 
HG.  druos,  truos  (plague,  blain)  is  worth  considering. 

1  A  case  that  often  occurs  ;  thus  the  Bavarians,  a  Teutonic  people,  take  their 
name  from  the  Celtic  Boh.     [And  the  present  Bulgarians,  a  Slav  race,  etc.] 


HUN. 


523 


tombs  are  called  hunebedde,  hunebedden,  bed  being  commonly 
used  for  grave,  the  resting-place  of  the  dead.  '  Grot  as  en  hune' 
expresses  gigantic  stature.  Schiiren's  Teutonista  couples  '  rese ' 
with  Jmyne.  Even  H. Germ,  writers  of  the  lGth-1  7th  centuries, 
though  seldomer,  use  heune;  Mathesius  :  'Goliath  der  grosse 
hcunc;'  the  Vocab.  of  1482  spells  hewne.  Hans  Sachs  1,  453a 
uses  heunisch  (like  entisch)  for  fierce,  malignant.  But  the  word 
goes  back  to  MHG.  too;  Herbort  1381  :  '  groz  alsam  ein  hune,' 
rhym.  '  mit  starkem  gelune ; '  Trist.  4034  :  '  an  geliden  und  an 
geliune  gewahsen  als  ein  hiune.'1  In  OHG.  writings  I  do  not  find 
the  word  in  this  sense  at  all.  But  MHG.  has  also  a  Hiune  (gen. 
Hiunen)  signifying,  without  any  reference  to  bodily  size,  a  Hun- 
garian, in  the  Nibelunge  a  subject  of  Efczel  or  Attila  (1110,  4. 
1123,4.  1271,3.  1824,3.  1829,1.  1831,1.  1832,  1),  which 
in  Lat.  writings  of  the  Mid.  Ages  is  called  Hunnas,  more  exactly 
Hunus,  Chunus.  To  this  Hiune  would  correspond  an  OHG. 
Hunio ;  I  have  only  met  with  the  strong  form  Hun,  pi.  Huni, 
gen.  Hunio,  Hiineo,2  with  which  many  names  of  places  are  com- 
pounded, e.g.  Huniofeld,  a  little  town  in  Fulda  bishopric,  now 
Hiinfeld;  also  names  of  men,  Hiinolt,  Hunperht  (Humprecht),  Hun- 
rat,  Altlmn,  Folchuu,  etc.  The  AS.  Hthia  cyning  (Beda  1,  13) 
requires  a  siug.  Him;  but  to  the  ON.  nom.  pi.  Hiinar  there  is  said 
to  belong  a  weak  sing.  Huni  (Gl.  Edd.  havn.  2,  881).  It  is  plain 
those  Huni  have  a  sense  that  shifts  about  pretty  much  with  time 
and  place,  now  standing  for  Pannonians,  then  for  Avars,  then 
again  for  Vandals  and  Slavs,  always  for  a  nation  brought  into 
frequent  contact  with  Germany  by  proximity  and  wars.  The 
lliunenlant  of  the  loth  century  (Nib.  1106,  3.  1122,  3)  cannot 
possibly  be  the  Eunaland  which  the  Eddie  lays  regard  as  SigurS's 
home  (Deutsche  heldens.  6.  9).  At  the  time  when  proper  names 
like  Hunrat,  Hunperht  first  arose,  there  could  hardly  as  yet  be 
any  thought  of  an  actual  neighbouring  nation  like  Pannonians 
or  Wends  j  but  even  in  the  earliest  times  there  might  circulate 
talk  and  tale  of  a  primitive  mythic  race  supposed  to  inhabit  some 
uncertain  region,  much  the  same  aslotnar  and  Thursar.    I  incline 

1  Wolfdietr.  661  has,  for  giaut,  heme  rhym.  sehoene,  but  only  in  the  place  of  the 
ancient  casura,  so  that  the  older  reading  was  most  likely  hiune. 

-  In  Hildeb.  lied  '  Hiineo  truhtin  (lord  of  Huns),  and  '  alter  Hun  ; '  Diut.  2,  182 
Huni  (Pannonii) ;  2,  353''  Huni  for  Him  (Hunus) ;  2,  370  Huni  (Vaudali). 


524  GIANTS. 

therefore  to  guess,  that  the   sense  of '  giant/  which  we  cannot 
detect  in  Hun  till  the  13th  century,  must  nevertheless  have  lain 
in  it  long  before  :  it  is  by  such  double  meaning  that  Hadubrant's 
exclamation  'alt^rHun!'    first    acquires    significance.      When 
Gotfried  used  hiune  for  giant,  he  must  have  known  that  Hiune 
at  that  time  also  meant  a   Hungarian ;    and  as  little  does  the 
distinctness  of  the  nationality  rendered   Himi  in  OHG.   glosses 
exclude  the  simultaneous  existence  of  a  mythic   meaning  of  the 
word.     It  may  have  been  vivider  or  fainter  in  this  place  or  that : 
thus,  the  ON.  himar  is  never  convertible  with  iotnar  and  )mrsar.  • 
I  will  not  touch  upon  the  root  here  (conf.  p.  529  note),  but  only 
remark  that  one  Eddie  name  for  the  bear  is  linnn,  Sn.  179.  222% 
and  ace.  toBiorn  nun  and  hunbiom  =  catulus  ursinus  (see  Suppl.). 
One  AS.  term  for  giant  is  ent,  pi.  entas  :  iElfred  in  his  Orosius 
p.  48  renders  Hercules  gigas  by  f  Ercol  se  ent.'     The  poets  like 
to  use  the  word,  where  ancient  buildings  and  works  are  spoken 
of:  '  enta  geweorc,  enta  sergeweorc   (early  work  of  giants),  eald 
enta  geweorc/  Beow.  3356.    5431.    5554.     Cod.  exon.   291,  24. 
476,  2.     So  the  adj.  :  'entisc helm/  Beow.  5955  ;  Lipsius's  glosses 
also  give  eintisc  avitus,  what  dates  from  the  giants'  days  of  yore. 
Our  OHG.  entisc  antiquus  does  not  agree  with  this  in  consonant- 
gradation  [t  should  be  z]  j  it  may  have  been  suggested  by  the 
Latin  word,  perhaps  also  by  the  notion   of  enti   (end)  ;  another 
form  is  antrisc  antiquus  (Graff  1,  387),  and  I  would  rather  asso- 
ciate it  with  the  Eddie  *  inn  aldni  iotunn'  (grandaevus  gigas),  Sasm. 
23a  46b  84b  1 89b.     The  Bavarian  patois  has  an  intensive  prefix 
enz,  enzio  (Schmeller  ,  188),  but  this  may  have  grown  out  of  the 
gen.  of  end,  ent  (Schm.  1,  77)  ;  or  may  we  take  this  ent-  itself  in 
the  sense  of  monstrous,  gigantic,  and  as  an  exception  to  the  law 
of  consonant-change?     They  say  both  enterisch  (Schm.  1,  77)  and 
enzerisch  for  monstrous,  extraordinary.     And  was  the  Enzenberc, 
MS.  2,  10b  a  giant's  hill  ?  l  and  is  the  same  root  contained  in 
the  proper  names  Anzo,  Enzo,  Enzinchint  (Pez,  thes.  iii.  3,  689°), 
Enzawip    (Meichelb.     1233.     1305),   Enzeman    (Ben.   325)  ?      If 
Huni  alluded  to  Wends  and  Slavs,  we  may  be  allowed  to  identify 
entas  with  the   ancient  Antes ;  as  for  the   Indians,  whom  Mone 

i  The  present  Inselberg  near  Schmalkalden  ;  old  docs.,  however,  spell  it  Emise- 
herc,  named  apparently  from  the  brook  Emise,  Emse,  which  rises  on  it.  Later 
forms  are  Enzelberg,  Einzelberg,  Einselberg. 


ENT.      GIGANT.      RISO.  525 

(Adz.  1836,  1.  2)  would  bring  in,  they  may  stay  outside,  for  in 
OHG.  itself  antisc,  entisc  (antiquus)  is  distinct  from  indisc  (In- 
dicus),  Graff  1,  385-G  ;  and  see  Suppl. 

The  AS.  poets  use  also  the  Greek,  Latin,1  and  Romance  appel- 
lative gigant,  pi.  gigantas,  Beow.  225.  giganta  cyn  3379.  gigant- 
msecg,  Ca^dm.  76,  36 ;  conf.  Ital.  Span,  gigante,  Prov.  jayan 
(Ferab.  4232),  O.Fr.  gaiant  (Ogier  8092.  8101),  Fr.  giant,  Eng. 
giant;  also  OHG.  gigant  (0.  iv.  12,  61),  MHG.  gigante  die 
mdren  (Diut.  3,  60),2  M.  Nethl.  gigant  The  ON.  word  which  is 
usually  compared  with  this,  but  which  wants  the  nt,  and  is  only 
used  of  giantesses,  seems  to  me  unconnected  :  fem.  gijgr,  gen. 
gygjar,  Seem.  39,  Sn.  66.  68;  a  Swed.  folk-song  still  has 'den 
leda  gijger,'  Arvidsson,  2,  302.  It  is  wanting  in  the  other  Teut. 
dialects,  but  if  translated  into  Gothic  it  would  be  giugi  or  giugja; 
I  trace  it  to  the  root  giugan,  and  connect  it  with  the  words  quoted 
in  my  Gramm.  2,  50  no.  536  (see  Suppl.). 

Our  riese  is  the  OHG.  risi  (O.  iv.  12,  61)  or  riso  (N.  ps.  32,  16), 
MHG.  rise,  MLG.  rese  (En.  7096),  ON.  risi  (the  elder  Edda  has 
it  only  in  Grottas.  12),  Swed.  rese,  Dan.  rise,  M.  Nethl.  rese,  rose 
(Huyd.  op  St.  3,  33.  306),  now  reus.  To  these  would  correspond 
a  Gothic  vrisa,  as  may  be  gathered  from  the  OS.  form  wriso  which 
I  confidently  infer  from  the  adj.  wrisilie  giganteus,  Hel.  42,  5. 
The  Anglo-Saxons  seem  to  have  had  no  analogous  wrisa,  as  they 
confine  themselves  to  ]?yrs,  gigant  [and  ent] .  The  root  of  vrisa 
is  unknown  to  me  j  it  cannot  belong  to  reisan  surgere,  therefore 
the  OHG.  riso  does  not  mean  elatus,  superbus,  excelsus.3 

Again,  lubbe,  liibbe  seems  in  parts  of  Lower   Saxony  to  mean 

1  Strange  that  the  Latin  language  has  no  word  of  its  own  for  giant,  hut  must 
horrow  the  Greek  gigas,  titan,  cyclops  ;  yet  Italy  has  indigenous  folk-tales  of  Cam- 
panian  giants. 

-  The  Biblical  view  adopted  in  the  Mid.  Ages  traced  the  giants  to  Cam,  or  at  least 
to  mixture  with  his  family  :  '  gig  antes,  quales  propter  iracundiam  Dei  per  tilios  Beth 
de  filialus  Cain  narrat  scriptura  procreatos,'  Pertz  2,  755.  For  in  Genesis  6,  4  it 
is  said  :  '  gigantes  autem  erant  super  tcrram  in  diebus  illis  ;  postquam  enim  ingressi 
sunt  filii  Dei  ad  filias  hominum,  illreque  genuerunt,  isti  sunt  potentes  a  seculo  viri 
famosi.'  The  same  view  appears  in  Caedni.  76.  77  ;  in  Beow.  213Grendel's  descent 
is  derived  from  Caines  cynne,  on  whom  God  avenged  the  murder  of  Abel :  thence 
sprang  all  the  umtydrai  (neg.  of  tudor  proles,  therefore  misbirths,  evil  brood |.  eotenat, 
ylfe,  orcneaa  and  gigantas  that  war  against  God.  This  partly  tits  in  with  some 
heathen  notions  of  cosmogony. 

a  Mone  in  Anz.  8, 183,  takes  wrise  toxfrise,  and  makes  Frisians  and  Persians  out 
of  it.  [What  of '  writhe,  wris-t,  wrest,  wrestle,'  (as  wit,  wis-t  becomes  wise)  ?  Or 
Slav,  vred-iti,  to  hurt,  AS.  wretfe?  A  Euss.  word  for  giant  is  verzilo,  supposed  to 
be  from  verg-;iti,  to  throw.] 


526  GIANTS. 

unwieldy  giant,  lubben-stones  are  shown  on  the  Corneliusbei'g 
near  Helmstadt,  and  lubbe  ace.  to  the  Brem.  wb.  3,  92  means  a 
slow  clumsy  fellow;  it  is  the  Engl,  lubber,  lobber,  and  Michel 
Beham's  liipel  (Mone's  Anz.  1835,  450b),  conf.  ON.  lubbi  (hir- 
sutus).  To  this  add  a  remarkable  document  by  Bp.  Gebhard  of 
Halberstadt,  bewailing  as  late  as  1462  the  heathenish  worship  of 
a  being  whom  men  named  den  guden  lubben,  to  whom  they  offered 
bones  of  animals  on  a  hill  by  Schochwitz  in  the  county  of  Mans- 
feld.  Not  only  have  such  ancient  bone-heaps  been  discovered  on 
the  Lujpberg  there  (conf.  the  Augsburg  perleich,  p.  294),  but  in 
the  church  of  the  neighbouring  Miillersdorf  an  idol  image  let  into 
the  wall,  which  tradition  says  was  brought  there  from  the  Lup- 
berg  (see  Suppl.).1 

The  ON.  has  several  words  for  giantess,  beside  the  gygr  men- 
tioned above:  skass,  neut.,  Seem.  144b  154b,  and  skessa,  fern. ; 
grid')-  f.,  mella  f . ;  gifr  f.,  Seem.  143b,  Norweg.  jyvri  (Hallag.  53) 
or  gijvri,  gurri,  djurre  (Faye  7.  9.  10.  12).  This  gifr  seems  to 
mean  saucy,  defiant,  greedy. 

Troll  neut.,  gen.  trolls  (Sasm.  6a),  Swed.  troll,  Dan.  trold, 
though  often  used  of  giants,  is  yet  a  more  comprehensive  term, 
including  other  spirits  and  beings  possessed  of  magic  power,  and 
equivalent  to  our  monster,  spectre,  unearthly  being.  By  trold 
the  Danish  folk-tales  habitually  understand  beings  of  the  elf  kind. 
The  form  suggests  a  Gothic  trallu  ;  does  our  getralle  in  Renner 
1365,  'der  gebure  ein  getralle/  rhyni.  f  alle/  mean  the  same 
thing  ?  (see  Suppl.). 

Giant  is  in  Lith.  milzinas,  milzinis,  Lett,  milsis ,  milsenis  ;  but 
it  would  be  overbold  to  connect  with  it  German  names  of  places, 
Milize  (Trad.  fuld.  2,  40),  Milsenburg,  Melsungen.  The  Slovak 
obor,  Boh.  obr,  0.  Pol.  obrzym,2  Pol.  olbrzym,  is  unknown  to  the 
South  Slavs,  and  seems  to  be  simply  Avarus,  Abarus.  Nestor 
calls  the  Avars  Obri  (ed.  Schlozer  2,  112-7).  The  '  Grascus 
Avar '  again  in  the  legend  of  Zisa   (p.  292-5)   is  a  giant.     Now, 

1  Neue  mitth.  des  thiir.  sacks,  vereins  3,  130-6.  5,  2.  110-132.  6,  37-8.  The 
picture,  however,  contains  nothing  giant-like,  but  rather  a  goddess  standing  on  a 
wolf.  Yet  I  remark,  that  a  giant's  tomb  on  Mt.  Blanc  is  called  '  la  tombe  du  bon 
homme,  de  la  bonne  femme,'  an  expression  associated  with  the  idea  of  a  sacred  vene- 
rated man  (supra,  p.  89).  Conf.  also  godgubbe  used  of  Thorr,  p.  167,  and  godmor, 
p.  430. 

2  Psalter  of  queen  Margareta,  Vienna  1834,  p.l7b :  obrzim,  the  -im  as  in  oyczim, 
pielgrzyin. 


GIANTS.  527 

as  the  Avari  in  the  Mid.  Ages  are  =  Chuni,  the  words  hun  and 
obor  alike  spring  out  of  the  national  names  Hun  aud  Avar.1  To 
the  Slavs,  Tchud  signifies  both  Finn  and  giant,  and  the  Russ. 
ispolin  (giant)  might  originally  refer  to  the  'gens  Spalorum'  of 
Jornandes;  conf.  Schafarik  1,  286.  310.  So  closely  do  the 
names  for  giant  agree  with  those  of  ancient  nations  :  popular 
belief  magnified  hostile  warlike  neighbours  into  giants,  as  it 
diminished  the  weak  and  oppressed  into  dwarfs.  The  Sanskrit 
rdhshasas  can  have  nothing  to  do  with  our  riese,  nor  with  the 
OHG.  recchio,  MHG.  recke,  a  designation  of  human  heroes  (see 
Suppl.). 

We  find  plenty  of  proper  names  both  of  giants  and  giantesses 
preserved  in  ON".,  some  apparently  significant;  thus  Hrungnir 
suggests  the  Gothic  hrugga  (virga,  rod,  pole)  and  our  runge 
(Brem.  wb.  3,  558)  ;  Herbort  1385  :  ' groz  alsam  ein  runge.'  Our 
MHG.  poems  like  giant's  names  to  end  in  -olt,  as  Witolt,  Fasolt, 
Memerolt,  etc. 

A  great  stature,  towering  far  above  any  human  size,  is  ascribed 
to  all  giants :  stiff,  unwieldy,  they  stand  like  hills,  like  tall  trees. 
According  to  the  Mod.  Greeks,  they  were  as  tall  as  poplars,  and 
if  once  they  fell,  they  could  not  get  up  again  [like  Humpty 
Dumpty].  The  one  eye  of  the  Greek  cyclops  I  nowhere  find 
imputed  to  our  giants ;  but  like  them 2  and  the  ancient  gods, 
(p.  322),  they  are  often  provided  with  many  hands  and  heads. 
When  this  attribute  is  given  to  heroes,  gigantic  ones  are  meant, 
as  Heimo,  StarkaSr,  Asperian  (p.  387).  But  Saem.  85b  expressly 
calls  a  ]mrs  prihofdudr,  exactly  as  the  MHG.  Wahtelmasre  names 
a  drihouptigen  tursen  (Massm.  denkm.  109)  :  a  remarkable  in- 
stance  of  agreement.  In  Seem.  35a  appears  a  giant's  son  with 
six  heads,  in  56a  the  many-headed  band  of  giants  is  spoken  of, 
and  in  53  a  giantess  with  900  heads.  Brana's  father  has  three 
(invisible)  heads,  Fornald.  sog.  3,  574,  where  also  it  is  said  :   '  J?a 

1  Schafarik  explains  obor  by  the  Celtic  ambro  above  (p.  520n.) ;  but  in  that  case 
the  Polish  would  have  been  abr. 

2  Briareus  or  ^Egaion  has  a  hundred  arms  (<fKaTu7x«P0S>  II.  1,  402)  and  fifty 
heads,  Geryon  three  heads  and  six  hands;  in  Hesiod's  Theog.  150,  Kottus,  Gygea 
and  Briareus  have  one  hundred  arms  and  fifty  heads.  The  giant  in  the  Hebrew 
story  has  only  an  additional  finger  or  toe  given  to  each  hand  aud  foot :  vir  nut 
excelsus,  qui  senos  in  manibus  pedibusque  habebat  digitos,  i.e.  viginti  (juatuor 
(instead  of  the  human  twenty),  2  Sam.  21,  20.  Bertheau's  Israel,  p.  113.  O.  Fr. 
poems  give  the  Saracen  giant  four  anus,  two  uoses,  two  chins,  Ogier  'JH17. 


528  GIANTS. 

fell  margr  (many  a)  twhof&a&r  iotunn.'  Trolds  with  12  heads, 
then  with  5,  10,  15  occur  in  Norske  event,  nos.  3  and  24.  In 
Scotland  too  the  story  '  of  the  reyde  eyttyn  with  the  thre  heydis  ' 
was  known  (Complaynt,  p.  98),  and  Lindsay's  Dreme  (ed.  1592, 
p.  225)  mentions  the  '  history  of  reid  etin.'  The  fairy-tale  of 
Red  etin  wi'  three  heads  may  now  be  read  complete  in  Chambers,1 
pp.  56-58;  but  it  does  not  explain  whether  the  red  colour  in  his 
name  refers  to  skin,  hair  or  dress.  A  black  complexion  is  not 
attributed  to  giants,  as  it  is  to  dwarfs  (p.  444)  and  the  devil, 
though  the  half-black  Hel  (p.  312)  was  of  giant  kin.  Hrungnir, 
a  giant  in  the  Edda,  has  a  head  of  stone  (Seem.  76b,  Sn.  109), 
another  in  the  Fornald.  sog.  3,  573  is  called  larnhaus,  iron  skull. 
But  giants  as  a  rule  appear  well-shaped  and  symmetrical ;  their 
daughters  are  capable  of  the  highest  beauty,  e.g.  GeroV,  whose 
gleaming  arms,  as  she  shuts  the  house-door,  make  air  and  water 
shine  again,  Seem.  82a,  Sn.  39  (see  Suppl.). 

In  the  giants  as  a  whole,  an  untamed  natm^al  force  has  full 
swing,  entailing  their  excessive  bodily  size,  their  overbearing  in- 
solence, that  is  to  say,  abuse  of  corporal  and  mental  power,  and 
finally  sinking  under  its  own  weight.  Hence  the  iotunn  in  the 
Edda  is  called  slcrautgiarn  (fastosus),  Sasm.  1 1  7b  ;  sa  inn  amattki 
(praspotens)  41b  82h ;  storMgi  (magnanimus)  76b;  firungmo&gi 
(superbus)  77a;  hardracTr  (saavus)  54a;  our  derivation  of  the 
words  iotunn  and  ]?urs  finds  itself  confirmed  in  poetic  epithet  and 
graphic  touch  :  Tcostmodr  iotunn  (cibo  gravatus),  Seem.  56b;  '  blr 
(ebrius)  ertu  GeirroSr,  hefir  ]ni  ofdruccit  (overdrunk)'  47a  (see 
Suppl.). 

From  this  it  is  an  easy  step,  to  impute  to  the  giants  a  stupidity 
contrasting  with  man's  common  sense  and  the  shrewdness  of  the 
dwarf.  The  ON.  has  '  ginna  alia  sem  pussa '  (decipere  omnes 
sicut  thursos),  Nialssaga  p.  263.  Du?nm  in  our  old  speech  was 
mutus  as  well  as  hebes,  and  dumbr  in  ON.  actually  stands  for 
gigas;  to  which  dumbi  (dat.)  the  adj.  fiumbi  (hebes,  inconcinnus) 
seems  nearly  related.  A  remarkable  spell  of  the  11th  cent,  runs 
thus  :  '  tumbo  saz  in  berke  mit  tumbemo  kinde  in  arme,  tumb  hiez 
der  berc,  tumb  hiez  daz  kint,  der  heilego  tumbo  versegene  tisa 
wunda ! '   i.e.   dummy   sat  on  hill  with  d.  child  in  arm,  d.  was 

i  Popular  rhymes,  fireside  stories,  and  amusements  of  Scotland,  Edinb.  1S42. 


GIANTS.  529 

called  the  hill  and  d.  the  child,  the  holy  d.  bless  this  wound  away 
[the  posture  is  that  of  Humpty  Dumpty] .  This  seems  pointed 
at  a  sluo-o-ish  mountain-giant,  and  we  shall  sec  how  folk-tales  of 

DO  O  * 

a  later  period  name  the  giants  dnmme  dutten ;  the  term  lubbe, 
lilbbe  likewise  indicates  their  clumsy  lubberly  nature,  and  when 
we  nowadays  call  the  devil  durum  (stupid),  a  quondam  giant  is 
really  meant  (see  Suppl.).1 

Yet  the  Norse  lays  contain  one  feature  favourable  to  the  giants. 
They  stand  as  specimens  of  a  fallen  or  falling  race,  which 
with  the  strength  combines  also  the  innocence  and  wisdom  of 
the  old  world,  an  intelligence  more  objective  and  imparted  at 
creation  than  self-acquired.  This  half- regretful  view  of  giants 
prevails  particularly  in  one  of  the  finest  poems  of  the  Edda, 
the  HymisqvrSa.  Hymir  2  is  called  fom  iotunn  (the  old)  54%  as 
YloXvcpafios  in  Theocr.  11,9  is  apxaios,  and  another  giant,  from 
whom  gods  are  descended,  has  actually  the  proper  name  Forniotr, 
Forneot  (p.  240),  agreeing  with  the  '  aid  inn  iotunn '  quoted  on 
p.  524;  then  we  have  the  epithet  hundviss  (multiscius)  applied 
52b,  as  elsewhere  to  Lo-Sinn  (Stem.  145a),  to  GeirroSr  (Sn.  113), 
and  to  StarkaSr  (Fornald.  sog.  3,  15.  32).3  Oegir  is  called 
fiolkunnigr  (much-knowing),  Saem.  79,  and  bamteitr  (happy  as  a 
child)  52a;  while  Thrymr  sits  fastening  golden  collars  on  his 
hounds,  and  stroking  his  horses'  manes,  Sasm.  70b.  And  also  the 
faithfulness  of  giants  is  renowned,  like  that  of  the  men  of  old  : 
trolltryggr  (fidus  instar  gigantis),  Egilss.  p.  610,  and  in  the  Faroe 
dialect  '  trilr  sum  trddlir,'  true  as  giants  (Lyngbye,  p.  496).4 
Another  lay  is  founded  on  the  conversation  that  OSinn  himself 
is  anxious  to  hold  with  a  giant  of  great  sense  on  matters  of 
antiquity  (a  fornom  stcifum)  :  Vaf]>ru8nir  again  is  called  '  inn 
alsvinni  iotunn/  30a  35b  ;   Orgelmir  and  Bergelmir  'sa  inn  fr  6  (K 

1  The  familiar  fable  of  the  devil  being  taken  in  by  a  peasant  in  halving  the  crop 
between  them,  is  in  the  Danish  myth  related  of  a  trold  (Thiele  4,  122),  see  Chap. 
XXXIII. 

■  ON.  hum  is  crepusculum,  hfima  vesperascere,  hyma  dormiturire ;  is  Hymir  the 
sluggish,  sleepy?  OHG.  Hiumi?  Mow  if  tin-  MUG.  hiune  came  from  an  OHG. 
hiumi?  An  m  is  often  attenuated  into  n,  as  OHG.  sliumi,  sniumi  (celer),  MHG. 
sliune,  sliunic,  our  schleunig.  That  would  explain  why  there  is  no  trace  of  the 
word  hiune  in  ON.  ;  it  would  also  be  fatal  to  any  real  connexion  with  the  national 
name  Hun. 

3  Hund  (centum)  intensi6es  the  meaning  :  hundmargr  (pcrmultus),  hundgamall 
(old  as  the  hills). 

4  We  find  the  same  faithfulness  in  the  giant  of  Christian  legend,  St.  Christopher, 
and  in  that  of  Carolingian  legend,  Ferabras. 


530  GIANTS. 

iotunn/  Seem.  35a,b;  Fenja  and  Menja  are  framvisar  (Grottas.  1, 
13).  When  the  verb  }>reya,  usually  meaning  exspectare,  desi- 
derare,  is  employed  as  characteristic  of  giants  (Seem.  88a),  it 
seems  to  imply  a  dreamy  brooding,  a  half-drunken  complacency 
and  immobility  (see  Suppl.). 

Such  a  being,  when  at  rest,  is  good-humoured  and  unhandy,1 
but  when  provoked,  gets  wild,  spiteful  and  violent.  Norse  legend 
names  this  rage  of  giants  i'dtunmodr,  which  pits  itself  in  defiance 
against  asmoSr,  the  rage  of  the  gods :  f  vera  i  iotunmoSi/  Sn. 
150b.  When  their  wrath  is  kindled,  the  giants  hurl  rocks,  rub 
stones  till  they  catch  fire  (Roth.  1048),  squeeze  water  out  of 
stones  (Kinderm.  no.  20.  Asbiornsen's  Moe,  no.  6),  root  up 
trees  (Kinderm.  no.  90),  twist  fir-trees  together  like  willows  (no. 
1G6),  and  stamp  on  the  ground  till  their  leg  is  buried  up  to  the 
knee  (Roth.  913.  Yilk.  saga,  cap.  60)  :  in  this  plight  they  are 
chained  up  by  the  heroes  in  whose  service  they  are  to  be,  and 
only  let  loose  against  the  enemy  in  war,  e.g.  Witolt  or  Witolf 
(Roth.  760.  Vilk.  saga,  cap.  50).  One  Norse  giant,  whose  story 
we  know  but  imperfectly,  was  named  Beli  (the  bellower)  ;  him 
Freyr  struck  dead  with  his  fist  for  want  of  his  sword,  and  thence 
bore  the  name  of  '  bani  Belja/  Sn.  41.  71. 

Their  relation  to  gods  and  men  is  by  turns  friendly  and  hostile. 
Iotunheimr  lies  far  from  Asaheimr,  yet  visits  are  paid  on  both 
sides.  It  is  in  this  connexion  that  they  sometimes  leave  on  us 
the  impression  of  older  nature-gods,  who  had  to  give  way  to  a 
younger  and  superior  race ;  it  is  only  natural  therefore,  that  in 
certain  giants,  like  Ecke  and  Fasolt,  we  should  recognise  a  pre- 
cipitate of  deity.  At  other  times  a  rebellious  spirit  breaks  forth, 
they  make  war  upon  the  gods,  like  the  heaven- scaling  Titans, 
and  the  gods  hurl  them  down  like  devils  into  hell.  Yet  there 
are  some  gods  married  to  giantesses  :  Niorftr  to  Ska^i  the 
daughter  of  Thiassi,  Thorr  to  Iarnsaxa,  Freyr  to  the  beautiful 
GerSr,  daughter  of  Gymir.  GunnloS  a  giantess  is  OSin's  be- 
loved. The  asin  Gefiun  bears  sons  to  a  giant;  Borr  weds  the 
giant  Botyorn's  daughter  Bestla.  Loki,  who  lives  among  the 
ases,  is  son  to  a  giant  Farbauti,  and  a  giantess  AngrbotSa  is  his 

1  Unformed,  irtconcirmus  ;  MHG.  ungeviiege,  applied  to  giants,  Nib.  450,  1. 
Iw.  444.  £051.  6717.  der  ungeviiege  knabe,  Er.  5552;  '  knabe,'  as  in  '  der  michel 
kuabe,'  p.  518n. 


GIANTS.  531 

..ife.  The  gods  associate  with  Oegir  the  iotunn,  and  by  him 
are  bidden  to  a  banquet.  Giants  again  sue  for  asins,  as  Thryrar 
for  Freyja,  while  Thiassi  carries  off  ISunn.  Hrilngnir  asks  for 
Freyja  or  Sif,  Sn.  107.  Starkaftr  is  henchman  to  Norse  kings; 
in  Rother's  army  fight  the  giants  Asperian  (Asbiorn,  Osbern)  and 
Witolt.  Among  the  ases  the  great  foe  of  giants  is  Tliorr,  who 
like  Jupiter  inflicts  on  them  his  thunder- wounds ; 1  his  hammer 
has  crushed  the  heads  of  many :  were  it  not  for  Thorr,  says  a 
Scandinavian  proverb,  the  giants  would  get  the  upper  hand ; 2  he 
vanquished  Hriingnir,  Hymir,  Thrymr,  GeirroSr,  and  it  is  not  all 
the  legends  by  any  means  that  are  set  down  in  the  Edda  (see 
Suppl.).  St.  Olaf  too  keeps  up  a  hot  pursuit  of  the  giant  race  ; 
in  this  business  heathen  and  Christian  heroes  are  at  one.  In  our 
heroic  legend  Sigenot,  Ecke,  Fasolt  succumb  to  Dietrich's  human 
strength,  yet  other  giants  are  companions  of  Dietrich,  notably 
Wittich  and  Heime,  as  Asperian  was  Rother's.  The  kings 
Niblunc  and  Schilbunc  had  twelve  strong  giants  for  friends 
(Nib.  95),  i.e.  for  vassals,  as  the  Norse  kings  often  had  twelve 
berserks.  But,  like  the  primal  woods  and  monstrous  beasts  of 
the  olden  time,  the  giants  do  get  gradually  extirpated  off  the 
face  of  the  earth,  and  with  all  heroes  giant-fighting  alternates 
with  dragon-fighting.3 

King  FroSi  had  two  captive  giant-maidens  Fenja  and  Menja  as 
mill-maids ;  the  grist  they  had  to  grind  him  out  of  the  quern 
Grotti  was  gold  and  peace,  and  he  allowed  them  no  longer  time 
for  sleep  or  rest  than  while  the  gowk  (cuckoo)  held  his  peace  or 
they  sang  a  song.  We  have  a  startling  proof  of  the  former  pre- 
valence of  this  myth  in  Germany  also,  and  I  find  it  in  the  bare 
proper  names.  Managold,  Manigold  frequently  occurs  as  a  man's 
name,  and  is  to  be  explained  from  mani,  ON.  men  =  monile ; 
more  rarely  we  find  Fanigold,  Fenegold,  from  fani,  ON.  fen  = 
palus,  meaning  the  gold  that  lies  hidden  in  the  fen.  One  Trad, 
patav.  of  the  first  half  of  the  twelfth  cent.  (MB.  28b,  pp.  90-1) 

i  The  skeleton  of  a  giantess  struck  by  lightning,  hung  up  in  a  sacristy,  see  Wide- 
gren's  Ostergdtland  4,  527. 

2  Swed.  '  vore  ej  thorddn  (Thor-din,  thunder)  till,  lade  troll  verlden  ode.' 
s  In  British  legend  too  (seldomer  in  Caroliugian)  the  heroes  are  indefatigable 
giant-quellers.  If  the  nursery-tale  of  Jack  the  giantkiller  did  not  appear  to  be  of 
Welsh  origin,  that  hero's  deeds  might  remind  us  of  Tliur's;  he  is  equipped  with 
a  cap  of  darkness,  shoes  of  swiftness,  and  a  sword  that  cuts  through  anything,  as 
the  god  is  with  the  resistless  hammer. 


532  GIANTS. 

furnishes  both  names  Manegolt  and  Fenegolt  ouc  of  the  same 
neighbourhood.  We  may  conclude  that  once  the  Bavarians  well 
knew  how  it  stood  with  the  fanigold  and  nianigold  ground  out  by 
Fania  and  Mania  (see  Suppl.). 

Yrnir,  or  in  giant's  language  Orgelmir,  was  the  first-created, 
and  out  of  his  body's  enormous  bulk  were  afterwards  engendered 
earth,  water,  mountain  and  wood.  Ymir  himself  originated  in 
melted  hoarfrost  or  rime  (hrim),  hence  all  the  giants  are  called 
hrimpursar,  rime-giants,  Sn.  6.  Sasin.  85a'b;  hrimkaldr,  rime- 
cold,  is  an  epithet  of  p»urs  and  iotunn,  Saem.  33b  90a,  they  still 
drip  with  thawing  rime,  their  beards  (kinnskogr,  chin-forest)  are 
frozen,  Seem.  53b;  Hrimnir,  Hiimgrimr,  Hrimgercfr  are  proper 
names  of  giants,  Seem.  85a  86a  114.  145.  As  hrim  also  means 
grime,  fuligo,  Ymir  may  perhaps  be  connected  with  the  obscure 
MHG.  om,  ome  (rubigo),  see  Gramm.  3,  733.  At  the  same  time 
the  derivation  from  ymja,  umSi  (stridere)  lies  invitingly  near,  so 
that  Ymir  would  be  the  blustering,  noisy,  and  one  explanation  of 
Orgelmir  would  agree  with  this ;  conf.  chap.  XIX.  (see  Suppl.). 

Herbs  and  heavenly  bodies  are  named  after  giants  as  well 
as  after  gods  :  fiursaskegg,  i.e.  giant's  beard  (fucus  filiformis)  ; 
Norw.  tussegras  (paris  quadrifolia) ;  Bronugras  (satyrium,  the 
same  as  Friggjargras,  p.  302),  because  a  giantess  Brana  gave  it 
as  a  charm  to  her  client  Half  dan  (Fornald.  sog.  3,  576) ;  Forneotes 
folme,  p.  240 ;  OSinn  threw  Thiassi's  eyes,  and  Thorr  OrvandiVs 
toe,  into  the  sky,  to  be  shining  constellations,  Sn.  82-3.  111. 

Giants,  like  dwarfs,  shew  themselves  thievish.  Two  lays  of  the 
Edda  turn  upon  the  recovery  of  a  hammer  and  a  cauldron  which 
they  had  stolen. 

The  giants  form  a  separate  people,  which  no  doubt  split  into 
branches  again,  conf.  Rask's  Afhand.  1,  88.  Thrymr  is  called 
Jjursa  drottinn,  Saem.  70-74,  a  Jrwrsa  JjiocF  (nation)  is  spoken  of, 
107a,  but  iotunheimr  is  described  as  their  usual  residence.  Even 
our  poem  of  Bother  767  speaks  of  a  riesenlant.  On  the  borders 
of  the  giant  province  were  situate  the  griottuna  gar&ar,  Sn.  108-9. 
We  have  already  noticed  how  most  of  the  words  for  giant  coin- 
cide with  the  names  of  ancient  nations. 

Giants  were  imagined  dwelling  on  rocks  and  mountains,  and 
their  nature  is  all  of  a  piece  with  the  mineral  kingdom  :  they  are 
either  animated  masses  of  stone,  or  creatures  once  alive  petrified. 


GIANTS.  533 

Hrungnir  had  a  three-cornered  stone  heart,  his  head  and  shield 
were  of  stone,  Sn.  109.  Another  giant  was  named  Vagnhoffri 
(waggon-head),  Sn.  211a,  in  Saxo  Gram.  9.  10.  Dame  Hiltt  is  a 
petrified  queen  of  giants,  Deut.  sag.  no.  233. 

Out  of  this  connexion  with  mountains  arises  another  set  of 
names:  bergrisi,  Sn.  18.  26.  30.  45-7.  66.  Grdttas.  10.  21. 
Egilss.  22  j1  bergbui,  Fornald.  sog.  1,  412;  hraunbiii  (saxicola), 
Sasm.  57b  145a;  hraunhvalr  (-whale)  57b;  Jjwssin  af  biargi,  Fornald. 
sog.  2,  29  ;  bergdanir  (gigantes),  Sasm.  54b ;  bergrisa  brudr  (bride), 
mcer  bergrisa,  Grottas.  10.  24,  conf.  the  Gr.  bpeuis  :  on  this  side 
the  notion  of  giantess  can  easily  pass  into  that  of  elfin.  Thryni- 
heimr  lies  up  in  the  mountains,  Sn.  27.  It  is  not  to  be  over- 
looked, that  in  our  own  Heldenbuch  Dietrich  reviles  the  giants 
as  mountain-cattle  and  forest-boors,  conf.  bercrinder,  Laurin  2625, 
and  waltgeburen  534.  2624.  Sigenot  97.  walthunde,  Sigenot  13. 
114.  waldes  diebe  (thieves),  120.  waldes  tore  (fool),  waldes 
affe  (ape),  Wolfd.  467.  991  (see  p.  481-2  and  Suppl.). 

Proper  names  of  giants  point  to  stones  and  metals,  as  Iamsaxa 
(ironstony),  Tamhaus  (ironskull)  ;  possibly  our  still  surviving 
compound  steinalt,  old  as  stone  (Gramm.  2,  555),  is  to  be  ex- 
plained by  the  great  age  of  giants,  approaching  that  of  rocks  and 
hills ;  gifur  rata  (gigantes  pedes  illidunt  saxis)  is  what  they  say 
in  the  North. 

Stones  and  rocks  are  weapons  of  the  giant  race  j  they  use  only 
stone  clubs  and  stone  shields,  no  swords.  Hriingni's  weapon  is 
called  hem  (hone) ;  when  it  was  flung  in  mid  air  and  came  in 
collision  with  Thor's  hammer,  it  broke,  and  a  part  fell  on  the 
ground;  hence  come  all  the  '  heinberg/  whinstone  rocks,  Sn. 
108-9.  Later  legends  add  to  their  armament  stahelstangen  (steel 
bars)  24  yards  long,  Roth.  687.  1662.  Hurn.  Sifr.  62,  2.  68,  2. 
Sigenot  (Lassb.)  14,  (Hag.)  69.  75.  Iwein  5022  {-mote,  rod 
5058.  -Me, club  6682.  6726).  Trist.  15980.  16146;  isenstange, 
Nib.  460, 1.  Veldek  invests  his  Pandurus  and  Bitias  (taken  from 
Aen.  9,  672)  with  giant's  nature  and  iserne  kolven,  En.  7089  ; 
king  Gorhand's  giant  host  carry  holben  stahelin,  Wh.  35,  21. 
395,  24.  396,  13;  and  giant  Langben  a  staahtang  (Danske 
viser  1,  29).     We  are  expressly  told  in  Er.  5384,  '  wafens  waren 

1  In  the  case  of  mixed  descent:  Mlf  bergrisi,  h&lfrwi,  h&lftroll,  Egilss.  p.  22. 

Nialss.  ]).  164  ;  see  Grauiui.  2,  G33. 


534  GIANTS. 

si  bloz/  i.e.  bare  of  knightly  weapon,  for  they  carried  f  kolben 
swsere,  groze  uncle  lange.'  l  Yet  the  feald  siveord  eotonisc'  pro- 
bably meant  one  of  stone,  though  the  same  expression  is  used 
in  Beow.  5953  of  a  metal  sword  mounted  with  gold ;  even  the 
f  entisc  helm/  Beow.  5955  may  well  be  a  stone  helmet.  It  may 
be  a  part  of  the  same  thing,  that  no  iron  sword  will  cut  into 
giants ;  only  with  the  pommel  of  the  sword  can  they  be  killed 
(Ecke  178),  or  with  the  fist,  p.  530  (see  Suppl.). 

Ancient  buildings  of  singular  structure,  which  have  outlasted 
many  centuries,  and  such  as  the  men  of  to-day  no  longer  take  in 
hand,  are  vulgarly  ascribed  to  giants  or  to  the  devil  (conf.  p.  85, 
note  on  devil's  dikes)  :  '  burg  an  berge,  ho  holrnklibu,  wrisilic 
giwerc'  is  said  in  Hel.  42,  5  of  a  castle  on  a  rock  (risonburg, 
N.  Bth.  173) ;  a  Wrisberg,  from  which  a  Low  Saxon  family  takes 
its  name,  stood  near  the  village  of  Petze.  These  are  the  enta 
geweorc  of  AS.  poetry  (p.  524):  'efne  swa  wide  swa  wegas  to 
lagon  enta  cergeweorc  innan  burgum,  stnete  stanfdge/  Andr.  2466. 
'  stapulas  storme  bedrifene,  eald  enta  geweorc/  2986.  Our  Anno- 
lied  151  of  Semiramis  :  '  die  alten  Babilouie  stiphti  si  van  cigelin 
den  alten,  die  die  gigandi  branten,'  of  bricks  that  giants  burnt. 
And  Karlmeinet  35  :  'we  dise  burg  stichte?  ein  rise  in  den  alten 
ziden.'  In  0.  French  poems  it  is  either  gaiant  or  paian  (pagans) 
that  build  walls  and  towers,  e.g.  in  Gerars  de  Viane  1745  : 

Les  fors  tors,  ke  sont  dantiquitey, 
ke  paian  firent  par  lor  grant  poestey. 

Conf.  Mone's  Unters.  242-4-7.  250.  Whatever  was  put  together 
of  enormous  blocks  the  Hellenes  named  cyclopean  walls,  while  the 
modern  Greeks  regard  the  Hellenes  themselves  as  giants  of  the 
old  world,  and  give  them  the  credit  of  those  massive  structures.2 
Then,  as  ancient  military  roads  were  constructed  of  great  blocks 
of  stone  (strata  felison  gifuogid,  Hel.  164,  27),  they  also  were 
laid  to  the  account  of  giants  :  iotna  vegar  (vise  gigantum),  Sasm. 
23b;  '  usque  ad  giganteam  viam :  entisken  wee/  MB.  4,  22  (about 
1130).  The  common  people  in  Bavaria  and  Salzburg  call  such 
a  road,  which  to  them  is  world-old  and  uncanny,  enterisch  (Schm. 

i  Goliath  too,  1  Sam.  17,  7,  and  2  3am.  21, 19  is  credited  with  a  hastile  (spear- 
staff)  quasi  liciatorium  texentiurn  (like  a  weaver's  beam). 

2  Conf.  Niebuhr's  Rom.  Hist.  i.  192-3.  An  ancient  wall  is  in  Mod.  Greek  rb 
£\\t)vik6,  Ulrich's  Eeise  1,  182. 


GIANTS.  535; 

1,  1 1)  j  the  trbllaskeid  was  mentioned  p.  508-9,  and  trollahlad'  is 
septum  gigantum.  Some  passages  in  Fergiit  are  worthy  of 
notice  ;  at  ]576  : 

Die  roke  was  swert  ende  eiselike, 

want  wilen  er  en  gig  ant, 

hie  hieu  hare  ane  enen  cant 

en  padelkin  tote  in  den  top, 

daer  en  mach  ghen  paert  op, 

en  man  mochter  opgaen  te  voet. 
And   at   1C28   seq.   is  described  the  brazen  statue  of  a  dorper,1 
standing  outside  the  porch  of  a  door : 

het  dede  maken  en  gig  ant, 

die  daer  wilen  woende  int  lant  (see  Suppl.). 

Giant's-morintains,  giant' s-MUs,  hiinen-beds  may  be  so  named 
because  popular  legend  places  a  giant's  grave  there,  or  sees  in 
the  rock  a  resemblance  to  the  giant's  shape,  or  supposes  the 
giant  to  have  brought  the  mountain  or  hill  to  where  it  stands. 

We  have  just  had  an  instance  of  the  last  kind :  the  Edda 
accounts  for  all  the  hein-rocks  by  portions  of  a  giant's  club  having 
dropt  to  the  ground,  which  club  was  made  of  smooth  whinstone. 
There  is  a  pleasing  variety  about  these  folk-tales,  which  to  my 
thinking  is  worth  closer  study,  for  it  brings  the  living  conception 
of  giant  existence  clearly  before  us.  One  story  current  in  the 
I.  of  Hven  makes  Grimild  and  Hvenild  two  giant  sisters  living 
in  Zealand.  Hvenild  wants  to  carry  some  slices  of  Zealand  to 
Schonen  on  the  Swedish  side ;  she  gets  over  safely  with  a  few 
that  she  has  taken  in  her  apron,  but  the  next  time  she  carries  off 
too  large  a  piece,  her  apron-string  breaks  in  the  middle  of  the 
sea,  she  drops  the  whole  of  her  load,  and  that  is  how  the  Isle  of 
Hven  came  to  be  (Sjoborg's  Nomenkl.  p.  84).  Almost  the  same 
story  is  told  in  Jutland  of  the  origin  of  the  little  isle  of 
Worsoekalv  (Thiele  3,  G6).  Pomeranian  traditions  present  dif- 
ferences in  detail :  a  giant  in  the  Isle  of  Eiigen  grudges  having 
to  wade  through  the  sea  every  time  to  Pomerania;  he  will  build 
a  causeway  across  to  the  mainland,  so,  tying  an  apron  round  him, 
he  fills  it  with  earth.     When  he  has  got  past  Rodenkirchen  wit! 

1  This  dorper  gr6t  again  we  are  tempted  to  take  for  the  old  thundergod,  for  it 
says  :  '  hi  hilt  van  stale  (of  steel)  enen  hamer  in  sine  hant.' 

VOL.    II.  n 


536  GIANTS. 

his  load,  his  apron  springs  a  leak,  and  the  earth  that  drops  out 
becomes  the  nine  hills  near  Eambin.  He  darns  the  hole,  and 
goes  further.  Arrived  at  Gustow,  he  bursts  another  hole,  and 
spills  thirteen  little  hills  ;  he  reaches  the  sea  with  the  earth  that 
is  left,  and  shoots  it  in,  making  Prosnitz  Hook  and  the  peninsula 
of  Drigge.  But  there  still  remains  a  narrow  space  between 
Eiigen  and  Pomerania,  which  so  exasperates  the  giant  that  he 
is  struck  with  apoplexy  and  dies,  and  his  dam  has  never  been 
completed  (E.  M.  Arndt's  Marchen  1,  156).  Just  the  other  way, 
a  giant  girl  of  Pomerania  wants  to  make  a  bridge  to  Riigen,  '  so 
that  I  can  step  across  the  bit  of  water  without  wetting  my  bits 
of  slippers/  She  hurries  down  to  the  shore  with  an  apronful  of 
sand ;  but  the  apron  had  a  hole  in  it,  a  part  of  her  freight  ran 
out  Mother  side  of  Sagard,  forming  a  little  hill  named  Dubber- 
worth.  '  Dear  me  !  mother  will  scold/  said  the  hiine  maiden,  but 
kept  her  hand  under,  and  ran  all  she  could.  Her  mother  looked 
over  the  wood  :  '  Naughty  child,  what  are  you  after  ?  come,  and 
you  shall  have  the  stick/  The  daughter  was  so  frightened  she  let 
the  apron  slip  out  of  her  hands,  the  sand  was  all  spilt  about,  and 
formed  the  barren  hills  by  Litzow.1  Near  Vi  in  Kallasocken  lies 
a  huge  stone  named  Zechiel's  stone  after  a  giantess  or  merwoman. 
She  lived  at  Edha  castle  in  Hogbysocken,  and  her  sister  near  the 
Skaggentis  (shag-ness)  in  Smaland.  They  both  wished  to  build 
a  bridge  over  the  Sound;  the  Smaland  giantess  had  brought 
Skaggenas  above  a  mile  into  the  sea,  and  Zechiel  had  gathered 
stones  in  her  apron,  when  a  man  shot  at  her  with  his  shafts,  so 
that  she  had  to  sit  down  exhausted  on  a  rock,  which  still  bears 
the  impress  of  her  form.  But  she  got  up  again,  and  went  as  far 
as  Pesnassocken,  when  Thor  began  to  thunder  (da  hafver  gogubben 
begynt  at  aka) ;  she  was  in  such  a  fright  that  she  fell  dead, 
scattering  the  load  of  stones  out  of  her  apron  higgledy-piggledy 
on  the  ground  ;  hence  come  the  big  masses  of  rock  there  of  two 
or  three  men's  height.  Her  kindred  had  her  buried  by  the  side 
of  these  rocks  (Aklqvist's  Olaud,  2,  98-9).  These  giants'  dread 
of  Thor  is  so  great,  that  when  they  hear  it  thunder,  they  hide 
in  clefts  of  rocks  and  under  trees  :  a  hbgbergsgubbe  in  Gothland, 

i  Lothar's  Volhssagen,  Leipz.  1825,  p.  65.  Temme's  Pomm.  sagen,  nos.  190-1  ; 
see  Barthold's  Poinniern  1,  580,  who  spells  Dobbtrwort,  and  explains  it  by  the  Pol. 
wor  (sack). 


GIANTS.  537 

whom  a  peasant,  to  keep  hini  friendly,  had  invited  to  a  christen- 
ing, refused,  much  as  he  would  have  liked  to  share  in  the  feast, 
because  he  leaimt  from  the  messenger  that  not  only  Christ,  Peter 
and  Mary,  but  Thor  also  would  be  there  ;  he  would  not  face  him 
(Xyerup's  Morskabsliisning,  p.  243).  A  giant  in  Fladsoe  was  on 
bad  terms  with  one  that  lived  at  Nestved.  He  took  his  wallet  to 
the  beach  and  filled  it  with  sand,  intending  to  bury  all  Nestved. 
On  the  way  the  sand  ran  out  through  a  hole  in  the  sack,  giving 
rise  to  the  string  of  sandbanks  between  Fladsoe  and  Nestved. 
Not  till  he  came  to  the  spot  where  Husvald  then  stood,  did  the 
giant  notice  that  the  greater  part  was  spilt;  in  a  rage  he  flung 
the  remainder  toward  Nestved,  where  you  may  still  see  one  sand- 
bank by  itself  (Thiele  1,  79).  At  Sonnerup  lived  another  giant, 
Lars  Krands  by  name,  whom  a  farmer  of  that  place  had  offended. 
He  went  to  the  shore,  filled  his  glove  with  sand,  took  it  to  the 
farmer's  and  emptied  it,  so  that  the  farmhouse  and  yard  were 
completely  covered  ;  what  had  run  through  the  jive  finger  holes  of 
the  glove  made  five  hills  (Thiele  1,  33).  In  the  Netherlands  the 
hill  of  Hillegersberg  is  produced  by  the  sand  which  a  giantess 
lets  fall  through  een  schortehleed  (Westendorp's  Mythol.  p.  187). 
— And  these  tales  are  not  only  spread  through  the  Teutonic 
race,  but  are  in  vogue  with  Finns  and  Celts  and  Greeks.  Near 
Pajiindo  in  Hattulasocken  of  Tawastoland  there  stand  some  rocks 
which  are  said  to  have  been  carried  by  giant's  daughters  in  their 
aprons  and  then  tossed  up  (Ganander's  Finn.  myth.  pp.  29.  30). 
French  traditions  put  the  holy  Virgin  or  fays  (p.  4 13)  in  the  place 
of  giantesses.  Notre  dame  de  Clery,  being  ill  at  ease  in  the 
church  of  Mezieres,  determined  to  change  the  seat  of  her  adora- 
tion, took  earth  in  her  apron  and  carried  it  to  a  neighbouring 
height,  pursued  by  Judas  :  then,  to  elude  the  enemy,  she  took 
a  part  of  tlce  earth  up  again,  which  she  deposited  at  another  place 
not  far  off:  oratories  were  reared  on  both  sites  (Mem.  de  l'acad. 
celt.  2,  218).  In  the  Charente  country,  arrond.  Cognac,  comm. 
Saintfront,  a  huge  stone  lies  by  the  Ney  rivulet ;  this  the  holy 
Virgin  is  said  to  have  carried  on  her  head,  beside  four  other 
pillars  in  her  apron ;  but  as  she  was  crossing  the  Ney,  she  1 1  one 
pillar  fait  into  Saintfront  marsh  (Mem.  des  antiquaires  7,  31). 
According  to  a  Greek  legend,  Athena  was  fetching  a  mountaiu 
from  Pallene  to  fortify  the  Acropolis,,  but,  startled  at  the  ill  news 


538  GIANTS. 

brought  by  a  crow,  she  dropt  it  on  the  way,  and  there  it  remains 
as  Mount  Lykabettos.1  As  the  Lord  God  passed  over  the 
earth  scattering  stones,  his  bags  burst  over  Montenegro,  and  the 
whole  stock  came  down  (Vuk.  5). 

Like  the  goddess,  like  the  giants,  the  devil  takes  such  burdens 
upon  him.  In  Upper  Hesse  I  was  told  as  follows  :  between 
Gossfelden  and  Wetter  there  was  once  a  village  that  has  now 
disappeared,  Elbringhausen ;  the  farmers  in  it  lived  so  luxuriously 
that  the  devil  got  power  over  them,  and  resolved  to  shift  them 
from  their  good  soil  to  a  sandy  flat  which  is  flooded  every  year 
by  the  overflowing  Lahn.  So  he  took  the  village  up  in  his 
basket,  and  carried  it  through  the  air  to  where  Sarenau  stands  : 
he  began  picking  out  the  houses  one  by  one,  and  setting  them 
up  side  by  side ;  by  some  accident  the  basket  tipped  over,  and  the 
whole  lot  tumbled  pellmell  on  the  ground ;  so  it  came  about,  that 
the  first  six  houses  at  Sarenau  stand  in  a  straight  row,  and  all 
the  others  anyhow.  Near  Saalfeld  in  Thuringia  lies  a  village, 
Langenschade,  numbering  but  54  houses,  and  yet  a  couple  of 
miles  long,  because  they  stand  scattered  and  in  single  file.  The 
devil  flew  through  the  air,  carrying  houses  in  an  apron,  but  a 
hole  in  it  let  the  houses  drop  out  one  by  one.  On  looking  back, 
he  noticed  it  and  cried  '  there's  a  pity  (schade)  ! '   (see  Suppl.) . 

The  pretty  fable  of  the  giant's  daughter  picking  up  the  plough- 
ing husbandman  and  taking  him  home  to  her  father  in  her  apron 
is  widely  known,  but  is  best  told  in  the  Alsace  legend  of  Nideck 
castle  : 

Im  waldschloss  dort  am  wasserfall  In  forest-castle  by  waterfall 

sinn  d'ritter  rise  gsinn  (gewesen)  ;  the  barons  there  were  giants  ; 

;i  mol  (einmal)  kurnrnt's  friiule  hrab  ins  once  the  maiden  comes  down  into  the 

thai,  dale, 

unn  geht  spaziere  drinn.  and  goes  a-walking  therein, 

sie  thut  bis  scbier  noch  Haslach  gehn,  She  doth  as  far  as  Haslach  go  ; 

vorm  wald  im  ackerfeld  outside  the  wood,  in  the  cornfield 

do  blibt  sie  voll  verwundrung  stehn  she  stands  still,  full  of  wonder, 

unn  sieht,  wie's  feld  wurd  bestellt.  and  sees  how  the  field  gets  tilled, 

sie  liiegt  dem  ding  a  wil  so  zu ;  She  looks  at  the  thing  a  while, 

der  pflid,  die  ros,  die  liitt  the  plough,  the  horses,  the  men 

ischer  ebs  (ist  ihr  etwas)  neus  ;   sie  geht  are  new  to  her ;  she  goes  thereto 

derzu 

1  Antigoni  Carystii  hist,  mirab.  cap.  12,  Lips.  1791  p.  22  :  ttj  8e  'Adrjva,  cpepovay 
rb  6pos,  6  vvv  KaKelrai.  AvKa^rrbs,  Kopwv-qv  <py\a\v  i.iravrr\aai  koX  elTreiv,  oti  'Fipcxdivioi 
ev  (pavepip  '  Tr\v  Se  aKovaaaav  ptij/ai  to  8pos,  bnov  vvf  icrrf  rr\  Zl  Kopuvrj  oia  ttjv  Kanay- 
7e\:'ai'  direlv,  ws  eh  d.KpoiroXu'  ov  6ep.is  avry  eurai  dcpifciadai. 


GIANTS. 


539 


unn  denkt  '  die  nirnni  i  mit.' 

D'rno  huurt  sie  an  de  bode  Lin 

unn  spreit  ihrfiirti  uss, 

fangt  allea  mit  der  hand,  thut's  'niin, 

unn  lauft  gar  frok  nock  has. 

sie  springt  de  felswei  'nuf  ganz  frisch, 

dort  wo  der  berg  jetzt  isck  so  gab. 

unn  me  (man)  so  krattle  mus  in  d'kok, 

macht  sie  nur  eine  schritt. 

Der  ritter  sitzt  just  noch  am  tisch  : 

1  min  kind,  was  bringste  mit  ? 

d'  freud  liiegt  der  zu  de  auge  'nuss  ; 

se  kroni  nur  geschwind  din  fiirti  uss  ; 

was  hest  so  zawelichs  drin  ?  ' 

'  o  vatter,  spieldings  gar  ze  nett, 

i  ha  noch  nie  ebs  schons  so  g'hett,' 

unn  stelltem  (ikm)  alles  kin. 

Unn  uf  de  tisck  stellt  sie  den  pflui, 

(V  bare  unn  ikri  ros, 

lauft  drum  kerum  unn  lackt  derzu, 

ikr  freud  isck  gar  ze  gross. 

'  Ja,  kind,  diss  isck  ken  spieldings  nitt, 

do  kest  ebs  sckons  gemackt ' 

sakt  der  kerr  ritter  glick  und  lackt, 

'  gek  nimm's  nur  widder  mit ! 

die  bure  sorje  uns  fur  brot, 

sunsck  sterbe  mir  de  kungertod  ; 

trak  alles  widder  f  urt ! ' 

's  fxaule  krint,  der  vatter  sckilt : 

'  a  bur  mir  nitt  als  spieldings  gilt, 

i  kid  (ick  leide)  net  dass  me  rnurrt. 

pack  alles  sackte  widder  iin 

unn  trail's  ans  nainli  pliitzel  kin, 

wo  des  (du's)  gennmme  kest. 

baut  nit  der  bur  sin  ackerfeld, 

se  feklt's  bi  uns  an  brot  unn  geld 

in  unserin  felsennest.' 


and  tkinks  '  I'll  take  tkein  witk  me.' 

Tken  plumps  down  on  tke  ground 

and  spreads  her  apron  out, 

grasps  all  in  ker  kand,  pops  it  in, 

and  runs  rigkt  joyful  kome; 

leaps  up  tke  rock-patk  brisk, 

wkere  tbe  kill  is  now  so  steep 

and  men  must  scramble  up, 

ske  makes  but  one  stride. 

Tke  baron  sits  just  tken  at  table  : 

'  my  ckild,  wkat  bringst  witk  thee  ? 

joy  looks  out  at  tkine  eyes  ; 

undo  tkine  apron,  quick, 

wkat  kast  so  wonderful  tkerein  ? ' 

'  0  fatker,  playthings  quite  too  neat, 

I  ne'er  kad  augkt  so  pretty,' 

and  sets  it  all  before  kim. 

On  tke  table  ske  sets  tke  plough, 

tke  farmers  and  tkeir  horses, 

runs  round  tkem  and  laugks, 

ker  joy  is  all  too  great. 

'  Ak  ckild,  tkis  is  no  playtking, 

a  pretty  tking  tkou  kast  done  ! ' 

saitk  tke  baron  quick,  and  laugks, 

'  go  take  it  back  ! 

tbe  farmers  provide  us  witk  bread, 

else  we  die  tke  kunger-deatk ; 

carry  it  all  away  again.' 

Tke  maiden  cries,  tke  fatker  scolds  : 

'  a  farmer  skall  be  no  toy  to  me. 

I  will  kave  no  grumbling ; 

pack  it  all  up  softly  again 

and  carry  it  to  tke  same  place 

wkere  tkou  tookst  it  from. 

Tills  not  tke  farmer  kis  field, 

we  are  skort  of  bread  and  money 

in  our  nest  on  tke  rock.' 


Similar  anecdotes  from  the  Harz  and  the  Odenwald  are  given 
in  Deut.  sag.  nos.  319.  324.  In  Hesse  the  giant's  daughter 
is  placed  on  the  Hipporsberg  (betw.  Kolbe,  Wehrda  and  Goss- 
felden)  :  her  father  rates  her  soundly,  and  sets  the  ploughman 
at  liberty  again  with  commendations.  The  same  story  is  told  at 
Dittersdorf  near  Blankcnburg  (betw.  Rudolstadt  and  Saalfeld). 
Again,  a  hlinin  with  her  daughter  dwelt  on  Hunenkoppe  at  the 
entrance  of  the  Black  Forest.  The  daughter  fouud  a  peasant 
ploughing  on  the  common,  and  put  him  in  her  apron,  oxen,  plough 
aud  all,    then    went    and  showed    her    mother    'the  little  fellow 


540  GIANTS. 

and  his  pussy-cats.'  The  mother  angrily  bade  her  cany  man, 
beast  and  plough  directly  back  to  where  she  found  them  :  '  they 
belong  to  a  people  that  may  do  the  hiines  much  mischief.'  And 
they  both  left  the  neighbourhood  soon  after.1  Yet  again  :  when 
the  Griingrund  and  the  country  round  about  were  still  inhabited 
by  giants,  two  of  them  fell  in  with  an  ordinary  man  :  '  what  sort 
of  groundworm  is  this  ?  '  asked  one,  and  the  other  answered, 
'  these  groimdworms  will  make  a  finish  of  us  yet ! '  (Mone's  Anz. 
8,  64).  Now  sentiments  like  these  savour  more  of  antiquity  than 
the  fair  reasons  of  the  Alsatian  giant,  and  they  harmonize  with 
a  Finnish  folk-tale.  Giants  dwelt  in  Kernisocken,  and  twenty 
years  ago 2  there  lived  at  E-ouwwanjemi  an  old  woman  named 
Caisa,  who  told  this  tale  :  A  giant  maiden  (kalewan  tyttiiren) 
took  up  horse  and  'ploughman  and  plough  (bewosen  ja  kyntajan 
ja  auran)  on  her  lap,  carried  them  to  her  mother  and  asked, 
1  what  kind  of  beetle  (sontiainen)  can  this  be,  mother,  that  I  found 
rooting  up  the  ground  there  ?  '  The  mother  said,  '  put  them 
away,  child ;  we  have  to  leave  this  country,  and  they  are  to  live 
here  instead.'  The  old  giant  race  have  to  give  way  to  agri- 
cultural man,  agriculture  is  an  eye-sore  to  them,  as  it  is  to  dwarfs 
(p.  459).  The  honest  coarse  grain  of  gianthood,  which  looks 
upon  man  as  a  tiny  little  beast,  a  beetle  burrowing  in  the  mud, 
but  yet  is  secretly  afraid  of  him,  could  not  be  hit  off  more 
happily  than  in  these  few  touches.  I  believe  this  tradition  is 
domiciled  in  many  other  parts  as  well  (see  Suppl.). 

Not  less  popular  or  naive  is  the  story  of  the  giant  on  a  journey 
being  troubled  with  a  little  stone  in  his  shoe  :  when  at  last  he 
shakes  it  out,  there  is  a  rock  or  hill  left  on  the  ground.  The 
Brunswick  Anzeigen  for  1759  inform  us  on  p.  1636  :  (  A  peasant 
said  to  me  once,  as  I  travelled  in  his  company  past  a  hill  on  the 
R.  Elm:  Sir,  the  folk  say  that  here  a  hiine  cleared  out  his  shoe, 
and  that's  how  this  hill  arose.'  The  book  '  Die  kluge  trodelfrau ' 
by  E.  J.  0.  P.  N.  1682,  p.  14,  mentions  a  large  stone  in  the 
forest,  and  says :  '  Once  a  great  giant  came  this  way  with  a 
pebble  in  his  shoe  that  hurt  him,  and  when  he  untied  the  shoe, 
this  stone  fell  out.'  The  story  is  still  told  of  a  smooth  rock  near 
Goslar,  how  the  great  Christopher  carried  it  in  his  shoe,  till  he 

1  L.  A.  Walther's  Einl.  in  die  thiir.  schwarzb.  gesch.,  Budolst.  1788,  p.  52. 

2  In  Ganauder's  time  (Finn.  myth.  p.  30). 


•  GIANTS.  541 

felt  something  gall  his  foot;  ho  pulled  off  the  shoe  and  turned  if 
down,  when  the  stone  fell  where  it  now  lies.     Such  stones  are 
also   called  crumb-stones.     On  the   Soiling  near   Uslar  lie  some 
large  boundary-stones,  16  to  20  feet  long,  and  6  to  8  thick  :  time 
out  of  mind  two  giants  were  jaunting  across  country;  says  the 
one  to  the  other,  '  this  shoe  hurts  me,  some  bits  of  gravel  I  think 
it  must  be/  with  that  he  pulled  off  the  shoe  and  shook  these  stones 
out.     In  the  valley  above  Ilfeld,  close  to  the  Biihr,  stands  a  huge 
mass  of  rock,  which  a  giant  once  shook  out  of  Ills  shoe,  because 
the  grain  of  sand  galled  him.     I  am  confident  this  myth  also  has 
a  wide  circulation,  it  has  even  come  to  be  related  of  a  mere  set 
of  men :  '  The  men  of   Sauerland  in  Westphalia  are  fine  sturdy 
fellows  ;    they  say  one  of  them  walked  to  Cologne  once,  and  on 
arriving  at  the  gate,  asked  his  fellow-traveller  to  wait  a  moment, 
while  he  looked  in  his  shoe  to  see  what  had  been  teazing  him  so 
all  the  while.     "  Nay  "  said  the  other,  "  hold  out  now  till  we  get 
to  the  inn."     The  Sauerlander  said  very  well,  and  they  trudged 
up  and  down  the  long  streets.     But  at  the  market-place  he  could 
stand  it  no  longer,  he  took  the  shoe  off  and  threw  out  a  great  lump 
of  stone,  and  there  it  has  lain  this  long  while  to  prove  my  words/ 
A  Norwegian  folk-tale  is  given  by  Hammerich   (om  Ragnaroks- 
mythen,  p.  93)  :  a  jutel  had  got  something  into  his  eye,  that 
pricked  him  ;  he  tried  to  ferret  it  out  with  his  finger,  but  that 
was  too  bulky,  so  he  took  a  sheaf  of   corn,   and  with   that  he 
managed  the  business.     It  was  a  fir-cone,  which  the   giant  felt 
between  his  fingers,  and  said :  '  who'd  have  thought  a  little  thing 
like  that  would  hurt  you  so  ? '    (see  Suppl.). 

The  Edda  tells  wonderful  things  of  giant  Skrymir,1  in  the 
thumb  of  whose  glove  the  god  Thorr  found  a  night's  lodging. 
Skrymir  goes  to  sleep  under  an  oak,  and  snores ;  when  Thorr 
with  his  hammer  strikes  him  on  the  head,  he  wakes  up  and  asks 
if  a  leaf  has  fallen  on  him.  The  giant  lies  down  under  another 
oak,  and  snores  so  that  the  forest  roars;  Thorr  hits  him  a  harder 
blow  than  before,  and  the  giant  awaking  cries,  '  did  an  acorn  fill- 
on  my  face  ?  '  He  falls  asleep  a  third  time,  and  Thorr  repeats 
his  blow,  making  a  yet  deeper  dint,  but  the  giant  merely  strokes 
his  cheek,  and  remarks,  '  there  must  be  birds  roosting  in  those 

1  Iu   the  Favuc  dialect    Skrujmsli  (Lyngbye,  p.  -ISO).     ON.  skraumr  blatero, 
babbler. 


542  GIANTS. 

boughs;  I  fancied,  when  I  woke,  they  dropt  something  on  my 
head/  Sn.  51-53.  These  are  touches  of  genuine  gianthood, 
and  are  to  be  met  with  in  quite  different  regions  as  well.  A 
Bohemian  story  makes  the  giant  Scharmak  sleep  under  a  tower, 
which  his  enemies  undermine,  so  that  it  tumbles  about  his  ears ; 
lie  shakes  himself  up  and  cries  :  '  this  is  a  bad  place  to  rest  in, 
the  birds  drop  things  on  your  head.'  After  that,  three  men  drag 
a  large  bell  up  the  oaktree  under  which  Scharmak  is  asleep, 
snoring1  so  hard  that  the  leaves  shake  :  the  bell  is  cut  down,  and 
comes  crashing  on  the  giant,  but  he  does  not  even  wake.  A 
German  nursery-tale  (1,  307)  has  something  very  similar;  in 
another  one,  millstones  are  dropt  on  a  giant  in  the  well,  and  he 
calls  out,  '  drive  those  hens  away,  they  scratch  the  sand  up  there, 
and  make  the  grains  come  in  my  eyes  '  (2,  29) -1 

A  giantess  (gygr)  named  HyrroUn  (igne  fumata)  is  mentioned 
in  the  Edda,  Sn.  66  on  occasion  of  Baldr's  funeral :  nothing 
could  set  the  ship  Hringhorn,  in  which  the  body  lay,  in  motion ; 
they  sent  to  the  giants,  and  Hyrrokin  came  ridiDg  on  a  wolf, 
with  a  snake  for  bridle  and  rein  ;  she  no  sooner  stept  up  to  the 
vessel  and  touched  it  with  her  foot,  than  fire  darted  out  of  the 
beams,  and  the  firm  land  quaked.  I  also  find  in  a  Norwegian 
folk-tale  (Faye,  p.  14),  that  a  giantess  (djurre)  by  merely  kicking 
the  shore  with  her  foot  threw  a  ship  into  the  most  violent  agita- 
tion. 

Eabelais3  and  Fischart  have  glorified  the  fable  of  Gargantua. 
It  was,  to  begin  with,  an  old,  perhaps  even  a  Celtic,  giant-story, 
whose  genuine  simple  form  may  even  yet  be  recoverable  from 
unexpired  popular  traditions.3  Gargantua,  an  enormous  eater 
and  drinker,  who  as  a  babe  had,  like  St.  Christopher,  taxed 
the  resources  of  ten  wetnurses,  stands  with  each  foot  on  a  high 
mountain,  and  stooping  down  drinks  up  the  river  that  runs  between 

1  Conf.  the  story  of  the  giant  Audsch  in  Hammer's  Eosenol  1,  114.  _ 

2  Eabelais  took  his  subject-matter  from  an  older  book,  printed  already  in  the 
15th  century,  and  published  more  than  once  in  the  16th  :  Les  chroniques  admirables 
du  puissant  roi  Gargantua  s.  1.  et  a.  (gotbique)  8 ;  Lyon  1532.  4 ;  La  plaisante  et 
joyeuse  histoire  du  grand  Gargantua.  Valence  1547.  8;  at  last  as  a  chap-book: 
La  vie  du  fameux  Gargantua,  le  plus  terrible  geant  qui  ait  amais  paru  sur  la  terre. 
Conf.  Notice  sur  les  chroniques  de  Garg.,  par  l'auteur  des  nouv.  rech.  bibl.  Tans 

3  A  beginning  has  been  made  in  Traditions  de  l'ancien  duchS  de  Eetz,  sur  Garg. 
(Mem  de  l'acad.  celt.  5,  392-5),  and  in  Volkssagen  aus  dem  Greyersland  (Alpen- 
rosen  1824,  pp.  57-8).    From  the  latter  I  borrow  what  stands  in  the  test. 


GIANTS.  543 

(see  Suppl.).  A  Westphalian  legend  of  the  Weser  has  much  the 
same  tale  to  tell :  On  the  R.  Soiling,  near  Mt.  Eberstein,  stands 
the  Hiinenbrink,  a  detached  conical  hill  [brink  =  grassy  knoll]. 
When  the  hiine  who  dwelt  there  of  old  wanted  to  wash  his  face 
of  a  morning,  he  would  plant  one  foot  on  his  own  hill,  and  with 
the  other  stride  over  to  the  Eichholz  a  mile  and  a  half  away,  and 
draw  from  the  brook  that  flows  through  the  valley.  If  his  neck 
ached  with  stooping  and  was  like  to  break,  he  stretched  one  arm 
over  the  Burgberg  and  laid  hold  of  Lobach,  Negenborn  and 
Holenberg  to  support  himself. 

We  are  often  told  of  two  giant  comrades  or  neighbours,  living 
on  adjacent  heights,  or  on  two  sides  of  a  river,  and  holding  con- 
verse. In  Ostergotland,  near  Tumbo  in  Ydre-harad,  there  was  a 
jiitte  named  Tumme ;  when  he  wished  to  speak  to  his  chum  Oden 
at  Hersmala  two  or  three  miles  off,  he  went  up  a  neighbouring 
hill  Hogatoft,  from  which  you  can  see  all  over  Ydre  (Widegren's 
Ostergotland  2,  397).  The  first  of  the  two  names  is  apparently 
the  ON.  Jminbi  (stultus,  inconcinnus,  conf.  p.  528),  but  the  other 
is  that  of  the  highest  god,  and  was,  I  suppose,  introduced  in 
later  legend  by  way  of  disparagement.  German  folktales  make 
such  giants  throw  stone  hammers  and  axes  to  each  other  (Deut. 
sag.  no.  20),  which  reminds  one  of  the  thundergod's  hammer. 
Two  hiines  living,  one  on  the  Eberstein,  the  other  on  Homburg, 
had  but  one  axe  between  them  to  split  their  wood  with.  When 
the  Eberstein  hiine  was  going  to  work,  he  shouted  across  to 
Homburg  four  miles  off,  and  his  friend  immediately  threw  the  axe 
over ;  and  the  contrary,  when  the  axe  happened  to  be  on  the 
Eberstein.  The  same  thing  is  told  in  a  tradition,  likewise  West- 
phalian,  of  the  hiines  on  the  Hiinenkeller  and  the  Porta  throwing 
their  one  hatchet.1  The  hiines  of  the  Brunsberg  and  Wiltberg, 
between  Godelheim  and  Amelunxen,  played  at  bowls  together 
across  the  Weser  (Deut.  sag.  no.  16).  Good  neighbours  too  were 
the  giants  on  Weissenstein  and  Remberg  in  Upper  Hesse ;  they 
had  a  baking-oven  in  common,  that  stood  midway  in  the  field,  and 
when  one  was  kneading  his  dough,  he  threw  a  stone  over  as  a 
sign  that  wood  was  to  be  fetched  from  his  neighbour's  fort  to 
heat  the  oven.     Once  they  both  happened  to  be  throwing  at  the 

1  Ecdeker's  Westfiilische  sagen,  no.  3G. 


544  GIANTS. 

same  time,  the  stones  met  in  the  air,1  and  fell  where  tliey  now 
lie  in  the  middle  of  the  field  above  Michelbach,  each  with  the 
marks  of  a  big  giant  hand  stamped  on  it.  Another  way  of 
signalling  was  for  the  giant  to  scratch  Ids  body,  which  was  done 
so  loud  that  the  other  heard  it  distinctly.  The  three  very  ancient 
chapels  by  Sachsenheim,  Oberwittighausen  and  Grriinfeldhausen 
were  built  by  giants,  who  fetched  the  great  heavy  stones  in  their 
aprons.  When  the  first  little  church  was  finished,  the  giant 
flung  his  hammer  through  the  air :  wherever  it  alighted,  the  next 
building  was  to  begin.  It  came  to  the  ground  five  miles  off,  and 
there  was  erected  the  second  church,  on  completing  which  the 
giant  flung  the  hammer  once  more,  and  where  it  fell,  at  the  same 
distance  of  five  miles,  he  built  the  third  chapel.  In  the  one  at 
Sachsenheim  a  huge  rib  of  the  builder  is  preserved  (Mone's  Anz. 
8,63).  The  following  legends  come  from  Westphalia:  Above 
Nettelstadt-on-the-hill  stands  the  Hiinenbrink,  where  hiines  lived 
of  old,  and  kept  on  friendly  terms  with  their  fellows  on  the  Stell 
(2\  miles  farther).  When  the  one  set  were  baking,  and  the 
other  wanted  a  loaf  done  at  the  same  time,  they  just  pitched,  it 
over  (see  Suppl.).  A  hiine  living  at  Hilverdingsen  on  the  south 
side  of  the  Schwarze  lake,  and  another  living  at  Hille  on  the 
north  side,  used  to  bahe  their  bread  together.  One  morning  the 
one  at  Hilverdingsen  thought  he  heard  his  neighbour  emptying 
his  kneading-trough,  all  ready  for  baking  ;  he  sprang  from  his 
lair,  snatched  up  his  dough,  and  leapt  over  the  lake.  But  it  was 
no  such  thing,  the  noise  he  had  heard  was  only  his  neighbour 
scratcliing  liis  leg.  At  Altehiiffen  there  lived  hiinen,  who  had  but 
one  knife  at  their  service;  this  they  kept  stuck  in  the  trunk  of  a 
tree  that  stood  in  the  middle  of  the  village,  and  whoever  wanted 
it  fetched  it  thence,  and  then  put  it  back  in  its  place.  The  spot 
is  still  shown  where  the  tree  stood.  These  hiines,  who  were  also 
called  duties,  were  a  people  exceedingly  scant  of  wit,  and  to  them 
is  due  the  proverb  'Altehiiffen  dumme  dutten.'  As  the  surround- 
ing country  came  more  and  more  under  cultivation,  the  hiinen 
felt  no  longer  at  ease  among  the  new  settlers,  and  they  retired. 
It  was  then  that  the  duttes  of  Altehiiffen  also  made  up  their  minds 
to  emigrate;  but  what  they  wanted  was    to    go   and   find    the 

1  Like  Hrfmgni's  hein  and  Thur's  hammer,  p.  533. 


GIANTS.  545 

entrance  into  Leaven.  How  they  fared  on  the  way  was  never 
known,  but  the  joke  is  made  upon  them,  that  after  a  long  march 
they  came  to  a  great  calm,  clear  sheet  of  water,  in  which  the 
bright  sky  was  reflected ;  here  they  thought  they  could  plunge 
into  heaven,  so  they  jumped  in  and  were  drowned.1  From  so 
remarkable  a  consensus  2  we  cannot  but  draw  the  conclusion,  that 
the  giants  held  together  as  a  people,  and  were  settled  in  the 
mountains  of  a  country,  but  that  they  gradually  gave  way  to 
the  human  race,  which  may  be  regarded  as  a  nation  of  invaders. 
Legend  converts  their  stone  weapons  into  the  woodman's  axe  or 
the  knife,  their  martial  profession  into  the  peaceable  pursuit  of 
baking  bread.  It  was  an  ancient  custom  to  stick  swords  or 
knives  into  a  tree  standing  in  the  middle  of  the  yard  (Fornald. 
sog.  1,  120-1)  ;  a  man's  strength  was  proved  by  the  depth  to 
which  he  drove  the  hatchet  into  a  stem,  RA.  97.  The  jumping 
into  the  blue  lake  savours  of  the  fairy-tale,  and  comes  before  us 
in  some  other  narratives  (Kinderm.  1,  343.     3,  112). 

But,  what  deserves  some  attention,  Swedish  folktales  make  the 
divine  foe  of  giants,  him  that  hurls  thunderbolts  and  throws 
hammers,  himself  play  with  stones  as  with  balls.  Once,  as  Thor 
was  going  past  Linneryd  in  Smaland  with  his  henchman  (the 
Thialfi  of  the  Edda),  he  came  upon  a  giant  to  whom  he  was  not 
known,  and  opened  a  conversation  :  '  Whither  goes  thy  way  ?  ' 
'  I  go  to  heaven  to  fight  Thor,  who  has  set  my  stable  on  fire.' 
'  Thou  presumest  too  much ;  why,  thou  hast  not  even  the  strength 
to  lift  this  little  stone  and  set  it  on  the  great  one.'  The  giant 
clutched  the  stone  with  all  his  might,  but  could  not  lift  it  off  the 
ground,  so  much  weight  had  Thor  imparted  to  it.  Thor's  servant 
tried  it  next,  and  lifted  it  lightly  as  he  would  a  glove.  Then 
the  giant  knew  it  was  the  god,  and  fell  upon  him  so  lustily  that 
he  sank  on  his  knees,  but  Thor  swung  his  hammer  and  laid 
the  enemy  prostrate. 

All  over  Germany  there  are  so  many  of  these  stories  about 
stones  and  hammers  being  hurled,  and  giant's  fingers  imprinted 

1  The  last  four  tales  from  Redeker,  nos.  37  to  40.  Dutten  means  stulti,  and  is 
further  intensified  by  the  adj.  In  the  Teutonist  (/"</  =  gawk,  conf.  Riohthofen  sub 
v.  dud,  ami  supra,  p.  528  on  tumbo.  Similar  tales  on  the  Kkon  mts.,  only  with 
everything  giant-like  effaced,  about  the  tollen  dittisser  (Bechstein  pp.  81-91). 

'  I  do  not  know  that  any  tract  in  Germany  is  richer  in  giant-stories  than  West- 
phalia and  Hesse.  Conf.  also  Kuhn's  Markische  sagen,  nos.  22.  47.  107.  132.  141. 
14'J.  158.  202.     Temme's  Pommersche  sagen,  nos.  175-184.  187. 


546  GIANTS. 

on  hard  rock,  that  I  can  only  select  one  here  and  there  as  samples 
of  the  style  and  spirit  of  the  rest.  Rains  of  a  castle  near  Honi- 
berg  in  Lower  Hesse  mark  the  abode  of  a  giantess ;  five  miles 
to  one  side  of  it,  by  the  village  of  Gombet,  lies  a  stone  which 
she  hurled  all  the  way  from  Homberg  at  one  throw,  and  you  see 
the  fingers  of  her  hand  imprinted  on  it.  The  Scharfenstein  by 
Gudensberg  was  thrown  there  by  a  giant  in  his  rage.  On  the 
Tyrifjordensstrand  near  Bum  in  Norway  is  a  large  stone,  which 
one  jutul  fighting  with  another  is  said  to  have  flung  obliquely 
across  the  bay,  and  plain  marks  of  his  fingers  remain  on  the  stone 
(Faye,  p.  15).  Two  or  three  miles  from  Dieren  in  the  Meissen 
country  there  lie  a  block  of  quartz  and  one  of  granite  ;  the  former 
was  thrown  by  the  giant  of  Wantewitz  at  the  giant  of  Zadel,  the 
latter  by  the  Zadeler  at  the  Wantewitzer ;  but  they  both  missed, 
the  stones  having  fallen  wide  of  the  mark.1  So  two  combatants 
at  Refniis  and  Asniis  threw  enormous  stones  at  each  other,  one 
called  sortensteen,  the  other  blak,  and  the  latter  still  shews  the 
fingers  of  the  thrower  (Thiele  1,  47).  A  kind  of  slaty  stone  in 
Norway,  says  Hallager  53a,  is  called  jyvrikling,  because  the  jyvri 
(giantess)  is  said  to  have  smeared  it  over  with  butter,  and  you 
may  see  the  dint  of  her  fingers  on  it.  Two  giants  at  Nestved 
tried  their  hands  at  hurling  stones ;  the  one  aimed  his  at  Riislov 
church,  but  did  not  reach  it,  the  other  threw  with  such  force  that 
the  stone  flew  right  over  the  Steinwald,  and  may  still  be  seen 
on  the  high  road  from  Nestved  to  Ringsted  (Thiele  1,  80 ;  conf. 
176).  In  the  wood  near  Palsgaard  lies  a  huge  stone,  which  a 
jette  flung  there  because  the  lady  of  the  manor  at  Palsgaard, 
whom  he  was  courting,  declined  his  proposals ;  others  maintain 
that  a  jette  maiden  slung  it  over  from  Fiinen  with  leer  garter 
(Thiele  3,  65-6;  conf.  42). 

When  giants  fight,  and  one  pursues  another,  they  will  in  their 
haste  leap  over  a  village,  and  slit  their  great  toe  against  the 
church- spire,  so  that  the  blood  spirts  out  in  jets  and  forms  a 
pool  (Deut.  sag.  no.  325) ;  which  strikingly  resembles  Waina- 
moinen,  rune  3.  In  leaping  off  a  steep  cliff,  their  foot  or  their 
horse's  hoof  leaves  tracks  in  the  stone  (ibid.  nos.  318-9).  Also, 
when  a  giant  sits  down  to  rest  on  a  stone,  or  leans  against  a  rock, 

1  Freusker  in  Kruse's  Deutsch.  alteith.  iii.  3,  37. 


GIANTS.  547 

his  figure  prints  itself  on  the  hard  surface/  e.g.  Starcather's  in 
Saxo  Gram.  111. 

It  is  not  as  smiths,  like  the  cyclops,  that  giants  are  described 
in  German  legend,  and  the  forging  of  arms  is  reserved  for  dwarfs. 
Once  in  our  hero-legend  the  giant  Asprian  forges  shoes  (Roth. 
2029)  j  also  the  giant  Vade  makes  his  son  Velint  learn  smith- 
work,  first  with  Mimir,  then  with  dwarfs. 

As  for  smi&r  in  the  ON.  language,  it  does  not  mean  faber,  but 
artificer  in  genei'al,  and  particularly  builder;  and  to  be  accom- 
plished builders  is  a  main  characteristic  of  giants,  the  authors  of 
those  colossal  structures  of  antiquity  (p.  534).  On  the  nine  giant- 
pillars  near  Miltenberg  the  common  folk  still  see  the  handmarks 
of  the  giants  who  intended  therewith  to  build  a  bridge  over  the 
Main  (Deut.  sag.  no.  19). 

The  most  notable  instance  occurs  in  the  Edda  itself.  A  iutunn 
had  come  to  the  ases,  professing  to  be  a  smvSr,  and  had  pledged 
himself  to  build  them  a  strong  castle  within  a  year  and  a  half,  if 
they  would  let  him  have  Frcijja  with  the  sun  and  moon  into  the 
bargain.  The  gods  took  counsel,  and  decided  to  accept  his  offer, 
if  he  would  undertake  to  finish  the  building  by  himself  without 
the  aid  of  man,  in  one  winter;  if  on  the  first  day  of  summer 
anything  in  the  castle  was  left  undone,  he  should  forfeit  all  his 
claims.  How  the  '  smith/  with  no  help  but  that  of  his  strong 
horse  Sva&ilfari,  had  nearly  accomplished  the  task,  but  was 
hindered  by  Loki  and  slain  by  Thorr,  is  related  in  Sn.  46-7. 

Well,  this  myth,  obeying  that  wondrous  law  of  fluctuation  so 
often  observed  in  genuine  popular  traditions,  lives  on,  under  new 
forms,  in  other  times  and  places.  A  German  fairy  tale  puts  the 
devil  in  the  place  of  the  giant  (as,  in  a  vast  number  of  talcs,  it  is 
the  devil  now  that  executes  buildings,  hurls  rocks,  and  so  on, 
precisely  as  the  giant  did  before  him)  :  the  devil  is  to  build  a 
house  for  a  peasant,  and  get  his  soul  in  exchange ;  but  he  must 
have  done  before  the  cock  crows,  else  the  peasant  is  free,  and  the 
devil  has  lost  his  pains.  The  work  is  very  near  completion,  one 
tile  alone  is  wanting  to  the  roof,  when  the  peasant  imitates  the 

1  Herod.  4,  82  :  txvoz  "QpaxMos  (paivoven  iv  irtrpT)  eveov,  rb  ot/ce  fih  j3ri/j.a.Ti  dySpbt, 
tan  Si  rb  fieyaOos  Slir-qxv,  irapa  rbv  TOpr/v  wora/x^f,  in  Scytbia.  (Footprint  of 
Herakles  in  stone,  like  a  man's,  but  two  cubits  loug.) 


548  GIANTS. 

crowing  of  a  cock,  and  immediately  all  the  cocks  in  the  neigh- 
bourhood begin  to  crow,  and  the  enemy  of  man  loses  his  wager. 
There  is  more  of  the  antique  in  a  Norrland  saga  : l  King  Olaf  of 
Norway  walked  'twixt  hill  and  dale,  buried  in  thought ;  he  had 
it  in  his  heart  to  build  a  church,  the  like  of  which  was  nowhere 
to  be  seen,  but   the  cost   of  it  would  grievously  impoverish  his 
kingdom.    In  this  perplexity  he  met  a  man  of  strange  appearance, 
who  asked  him  why  he  was  so  pensive.     Olaf  declared   to  him 
his  purpose,  and  the  giant  (troll)  offered  to  complete  the  building 
by  his  single  self  within  a  certain  time ;  for  wages  he  demanded 
the  sun  and  moon,  or  St.  Olaf  himself.     To  this  the  king  agreed, 
but  projected  such  a  plan  for  the  church,  as  he  thought  impossible 
of  execution :    it   was  to  be  so   large,  that   seven  priests   could 
preach  in  it  at  once  without  disturbing  each  other ;  pillar  and 
ornament,  within  and  without,   must   be  wrought  of  hard  flint, 
and  so  on.     Erelong  such  a  structure   stood  completed,  all  but 
the  roof   and  spire.     Perplexed  anew  at  the   stipulated  terms, 
Olaf  wandered  over  hill  and  dale;  suddenly  inside  a  mountain  he 
heard  a  child  cry,  and  a  giant-woman  (jatteqvinna)  hush  it  with 
these  words :  '  tyst,   tyst   (hush)  ! 2  to-morrow  comes  thy  father 
Wind- and- Weather  home,  bringing  both  sun  and  moon,  or  saintly 
Olaf  s  self.''     Overjoyed  at   this   discovery,3   for  to  name  an  evil 
spirit  brings  his  power  to   nought,  Olaf  turned  home  :  all   was 
finished,  the  spire  was  just  fixed  on,  when  Olaf  cried  :   '  Vind  och 
Veder !  du  har   satt   spiran   sneder   (hast   set  the   spire   askew).5 
Instantly   the  giant,  with  a  fearful   crash,  fell  off  the   ridge   of 
the  church's  roof,  and  burst  into  a  thousand  pieces,  which  were 
nothing   but   flintstones.     According  to   different    accounts,    the 
jatte  was   named   Blaster,   and   Olaf  cried:   'Blaster,  satt  spiran 
vaster  (set  the  spire  west-er)  ! '  or  he  was  called  Slatt,  and  the 
rhyme  ran  :   '  Slatt,  satt  spiran  ratt  (straight)  !  '     They  have  the 
same  story  in  Norway  itself,  but  the  giant's  name  is  Skalle,  and 
he  reared  the   magnificent  church  at  Nidaros.     In  Schonen  the 
giant  is  Finn,  who  built  the  church  at  Lund,  and  was  turned  into 

1  Extracted,  from  Zetterstrom's  collection,  in  the  third  no.  of  the  Iduna,  2  ed. 
Stockh.  1816,  pp.  60-1.  Now  included,  with  others  like  it,  in  Afzelius's  Sago- 
hafder  3,  83-86. 

2  Conf.  the  interj.  '  ziss,  ziss  ! '  in  H.  Sachs  iv.  3,  3b. 

3  Almost  in  the  same  way,  and  with  similar  result,  the  name  of  Euinpelstilz  is 
discovered  in  Kmderm.  55;  conf.  3,  98,  and  supra  p.  505  n. 


GIANTS.  549 

stone  by  St.  Lawrence  (Finii  Magnusen's  Lex.  myth.  351-2  ;  and 
see  Suppl.). 

It  is  on  another  side  that  the  following  tale  from  Courland 
touches  the  stoiy  in  the  Edda.  In  Kintegesinde  of  the  Dzervens 
are  some  old  wall-stones  extending  a  considerable  lcno-th  and 
breadth j  and  the  people  say  :  Before  the  plague  (i.e.  time  out  of 
mind)  there  lived  in  the  district  of  Hasenpot  a  strong  man  (giant) 
of  the  name  of  Kinte.  He  could  hew  out  and  polish  huge  masses 
of  stone,  and  carted  even  the  largest  blocks  together  with  his 
one  white  mare.  His  dwelling-house  he  built  on  rocks,  his  fields 
he  fenced  with  stone  ramparts.  Once  he  had  a  quarrel  with  a 
merchant  of  Libau-  to  punish  him,  he  put  his  white  mure  to 
draw  a  stone  equal  to  twelve  cartloads  all  the  way  to  Libau, 
intending  to  drop  it  at  the  merchant's  door.  When  he  reached 
the  town,  they  would  not  let  him  cross  the  bridge,  fearing  it 
would  break  under  the  load,  and  insisted  on  his  removing  the 
stone  outside  the  liberties.  The  strong  man,  deeply  mortified, 
did  so,  and  dropt  the  stone  on  the  road  that  goes  to  Grobin  by 
Battenhof.  There  it  lies  to  this  day,  and  the  Lettons,  as  they 
pass,  point  to  it  in  astonishment.1  Kinte's  white  mare  may  stand 
for  the  Scandinavian  smith's  SvaSilfari ;  the  defeat  of  the  giant's 
building  designs  is  effected  in  a  different  way. 

King  Olaf  brooked  many  other  adventures  with  giants  and 
giantesses.  As  he  sailed  past  the  high  hills  on  the  Horns-herred 
coast,  in  which  a  giantess  lived,  she  called  out  to  him  : 

S.  Olaf  med  dit  rode  skiiig, 

du  seilar  for  nar  ved  min  kjeldervag  ! 

(St.  Olaf  with  thy  red  beard,  thou  sailest  too  near  my  cellar  wall). 
Olaf  was  angry,  and  instead  of  steering  his  vessel  between  the 
cliffs,  he  turned  her  head  on  to  the  hill,  and  answered  : 

hor  du  kjerling  med  rok  og  med  teen, 
her  skal  du  sidde  og  blive  en  steen  ! 

(hear,  thou  carlin  with  distaff  and  spool,  here  shalt  thou  sit  and 
become  a  stone).  He  had  scarce  finished  speaking,  when  the  hill 
split  open,  the  giantess  was  changed  into  a  stone,  and  you  still 
see   her   sitting  with  sj>indle  and  distaff  on  the  eastern  cliff;  a 

1  Cumuiuuic.  by  "Watson  iu  Jahresverhandl.  der  kurl.  gGicllscb.  2,  311-2. 


550  GIANTS. 

sacred  spring  issued  from  the  opposite  cliff.1  According  to  a 
Swedish  account,  Olaf  wished  to  sail  through  Viirmeland  and  by 
L.  Vaner  to  Nerike,  when  the  troll  shouted  to  him  : 

kong  Olaf  med  dit  pipuga  ski'tgg  (peaky  beard), 
du  seglar  for  nar  min  badstuguvagg  (bathroom  wall)  ! 
Olaf  replied  : 

du  troll  med  din  rak  och  ten 

skal  bli  i  sten 

och  aldrig  mer  gora  skeppare  men  ! 

(shalt  turn  to  stone,  and  never  more  make  skipper  moan).  The 
giantess  turned  into  stone,  and  the  king  erected  a  cross  at  Dalky 
church  in  Elfdals  herred.2  The  Danish  rhyme  is  also  quoted  as 
follows  : 

hor  du  Oluf  rodeskjag, 

hvi  seiler  du  igjennem  vor  stuevag  (through  our  chamber  wall)  ? 

And: 

stat  du  der  og  bliv  til  steen, 

og  (gjor)  ingen  dannemand  (no  Dane)  mere  til  meen  !  3 

In  Norway  itself  the  legend  runs  thus  :  The  Hornelen  Mountains 
in  Bremanger  were  once  connected  with  Maroe,  but  are  now 
divided  from  it  by  a  sound.  St.  Olaf  sailed  up  to  them,  and 
commanded  the  cliffs  to  part  and  let  him  pass  through.  They 
did  so,  but  instantly  a  giantess  leapt  out  of  the  mountain  and 
cried  : 

sig  (see),  du  mand  med  det  hvide  skiig  (white  beard), 
hvi  splitter  du  saa  min  klippeviig  ? 

Olaf: 

stat  (stand)  trold  nu  evig  der  i  steen, 

saa  gjor  du  ei  nogen  mand  (not  any  man)  meer  meen. 

His  word  came  to  pass,  and  the  stone  figure  stands  yet  on  the 
cliff  (Faye  124).  OlaPs  reel  heard  (like  those  of  our  hero-kings 
Otto  and  Friedrich)  reminds  us  of  Thorr  the  foe  of  giants  (p.  177) ; 
'pipuga  skiigg'  is  apparently  the  same  as  the  pipsMgg,  wedge- 

1  Danske  viser  2,  12-3.     Thiele  1,  32  ;  conf.  Faye,  118-9. 

2  Ferncw's  Varmeland,  p.  223. 

3  Nyerup's  Karakteristik  af  Christian  4,  p.  17. 


GIANTS.  551 

like  or  peaked  beard,  quoted  by  Hire ;  but  the  Norwegian  rhyme 
has  white  beard  (the  barbe  fleurie  of  Charlemagne).  Such 
divergences,  and  the  changes  rung  on  *  cellar  wall,  bathroom 
wall,  cliff  wall/  vouch  for  the  popular  character  of  the  tradition 
(see  Suppl.).  It  will  surprise  no  one,  if  I  produce  a  still  older 
type  of  the  whole  story  from  the  Edda  itself.  When  Brynhildr 
in  her  decorated  car  was  faring  the  '  hel-veg/  she  went  past 
the  dwelling  of  a  gygr  ;  the  giantess  accosts  her  with  the  words 
(Seem.  228a)  : 

skaltu  i  gognom  ganga  eigi 

grioti  studda  garSa  mina  ! 

(shalt  not  go  through  my  stone-built  house).  This  brings  on  a 
dialogue,  which  is  closed  by  Brynhildr  with  the  exclamation  : 
'  seykstu  gygjarkyn  ! '  (conf.  p.  497n.).  The  giantess's  house  is 
of  stones  skilfully  put  together,  and  the  later  rhymes  speak  of 
cellar  and  bathroom  :  she  herself  is  quite  the  housewife  with 
distaff  and  spindle.  The  sacred  rights  of  domesticity  are  in- 
fringed, when  strangers  burst  their  way  through.  There  are 
other  instances  in  which  the  giantess,  like  the  elfin,  is  described 
with  spindle  and  distaff:  '  tolv  trolclqvinder  (12  trold-women)  de 
stode  for  hannem  med  roh  og  ten'  (Danske  viser  1,  94)  .x 

Close  to  the  Romsdalshorn  in  Norway  is  a  mountain  called 
Troldtinder,  whose  jutting  crags  are  due  to  giants  whom  Olaf 
converted  into  stones,  because  they  tried  to  prevent  his  preaching 
Christianity  in  Romsdal.2 

It  would  appear,  from  Sasm.  145b,  that  giants,  like  dwarfs, 
have  reason  to  dread  the  daylight,  and  if  surprised  by  the  break 
of  day,  they  turn  into  stone  :  '  dagr  er  nil/  cries  Atli  to  HrimgerSr, 
'hafnar  mark  ]>yckir  hlcegeligt  vera,  pars  pu  i  stria*  liki  stendr.3 

Grotesque  humanlike  shapes  assumed  by  stalactite,  Hint  and 
flakestone  on  the  small  scale,  and  by  basalt  and  granite  rocks  on 
the  great,  have  largely  engendered  and  fed  these  fancies  about 


1  The  Celtic  fay  carries  huge  stones  on  her  spindle,  and  spins  on  as  she  walks, 
Keightley  2,  286.     Conf.  supra,  p.  413. 

2  Faye  121,  who  follows  Schoning's  Eeise  2,  128.  Sanct  Olafs  saga  pa  svenske 
rim,  ed.  Hadorph.  p.  37:  'ell  troll,  som  draap  X  man,  has  giordit  i  stena,  och 
Btander  an  ;  Mere  troll  han  och  bortdref,  sidan  folckit  i  frijd  blef.'  Certain  round 
pot-shaped  holes  found  in  the  mountains,  the  Norwegian  people  believe  to  be  the 
work  of  giants.  They  call  them  jattegryter,  troldgryter,  yet  also  S.  Oles  gryter 
(IhMager  53u). 

VOL.    II.  I 


552  GIANTS. 

petrified  giants.  Then  the  myth  about  stone-circles  accounts  for 
their  form  by  dances  of  giants  ; l  many  rocks  have  stories  attached 
to  them  of  wedding-folk  and  dancing  guests  being  turned  into 
stone  (see  Suppl.).  The  old  and  truly  popular  terminology  of 
mountains  everywhere  uses  the  names  of  different  parts  of  the 
body ;  to  mountains  are  given  a  head,  brow,  neck,  back,  shoulder, 
knee,  foot,  etc.  (RA.  541). 

And  here  we  come  across  numerous  approximations  and  over- 
lappings  between  the  giant-legend  and  those  of  dwarfs,  schrats 
and  watersprites,  as  the  comprehensive  name  troll  in  Scandinavian 
tradition  would  of  itself  indicate.  Dwarfs  of  the  mountains  are, 
like  giants,  liable  to  transformation  into  stone,  as  indeed  they 
have  sprung  out  of  stone  (p.  532-8).  Rosmer  havmand  (merman) 
springs  or  flies,  as  the  graphic  phrase  is,  into  stone? 

Then  on  the  other  side,  the  notion  of  the  giant  gets  a  good  deal 
mixed  up  with  that  of  the  hero,  usually  his  opposite.  Strong 
Jack  in  our  nursery- tales  assumes  quite  the  character  of  a  giant ; 
and  even  Siegfried,  pure  hero  as  he  is  in  the  Mid.  Age  poems, 
yet  partakes  of  giant  nature  when  acting  as  a  smith,  like  Wielant, 
who  is  of  giant  extraction.  Moreover,  both  Siegfried  slightly, 
and  Strong  Jack  more  distinctly,  acquire  a  tinge  of  that  Eulen- 
spiegel  or  Riibezahl  humour  (p.  486)  which  is  so  amusing  in  the 
Finnish  stories  of  Kalewa,  Hi  si,  and  especially  Soini  (conf. 
Kalewala,  rune  19).  This  Soini  or  Kullervo  bears  the  nickname 
of  Kalki  (schalk,  rogue) ;  when  an  infant  three  days  old,  he  tore 
up  his  baby-linen ;  sold  to  a  Carelian  smith,  and  set  to  mind  the 
baby,  he  dug  its  eyes  out,  killed  it,  and  burnt  the  cradle.  Then, 
when  his  master  ordered  him  to  fence  the  fields  in,  he  took  whole 
fir-trees  and  pines,  and  wattled  them  with  snakes ;  after  that,  he 


1  Stonehenge,  AS.  Stanhenge  (-hanging),  near  Salisbury,  in  Welsh  Choirgaur, 
Lat.  chorea  gigantum  :  ace.  to  Giraldus  Carnbr.  cap.  18,  a  cairn  brought  by  giants 
from  Africa  to  Spain  (Palgrave's  Hist,  of  AS.,  p.  50) ;  conf.  Diefenbach's  Celtica 
ii.  101.     In  Trist.  5887,  Gurmun  is  said  to  be  'born  of  Africa.' 

2  Danske  viser  1,  223  :  '  nan  sprang  saa  vildt  i  bjerget  om,  og  blev  til  flintesten 
sorte.'  1,  228  :  '  han  blev  til  en  kampesteen  graa.'  1,  233:  'saa  floj  han  bort  i 
roden  flint,  og  blev  saa  borte  med  alle.'  1,  185  of  a  cruel  stepmother  :  '  hun  sprang 
bort  i  flintesteen.'  But  H.  Sachs  too  has,  iii.  3,  31*.  426,  'vor  zorn  zu  einem  stein 
springen ; '  ib.  53b,  '  vor  sorg  zu  eim  stein  springen ; '  iv.  3,  97d,  '  vor  leid  wol  zu  eim 
stein  mocht  springen.''  Overpowering  emotions  make  the  life  stand  still,  and  curdle 
it  into  cold  stone.  Conf.  Chap.  XXXII.  on  the  heroes  entrapped  in  mountains,  and 
Suppl. 


GIANTS.  553 

had  to  pasture  the  flock,  but  the  goodwife  having  baked  a  stone 
in  his  bread,  Soini  was  in  such  a  rage  that  he  called  bears  and 
wolves  to  aid  him,  who  tore  the  woman's  legs  and  worried  the 
flock.  The  Esthonians  also  tell  of  a  giant's  son  (Kallewepoeg), 
who  furrowed  up  grassy  lands  with  a  wooden  plough,  and  not  a 
blade  has  grown  on  them  since  (see  Suppl.).  This  trickiness  of 
the  Finnish  giants  is  a  contrast  to  the  rough  but  honest  ways 
of  the  German  and  Scandinavian. 

Above  all,  there  is  no  clear  line  to  be  drawn  between  giants 
and  the  wild  hairy  woodsprites  dealt  with  in  pp.  478-486.  In  the 
woods  of  the  Binofenheim  Mark  are  seen  the  stone  seats  of  the 
wild  folk  (conf.  p.  432)  who  once  lived  there,  and  the  print  of 
their  hands  on  the  stones  (Deut.  sag.  no.  166).  In  the  vale  of 
Gastein,  says  Muchar,  p.  137,  wild  men  have  lived  within  the 
memory  of  man,  but  the  breed  has  died  out  since ;  one  of  them 
declared  he  had  seen  the  forest  of  Sallesen  near  Mt.  Stubner- 
kogel  get  ( mair '  (die  out  and  revive  again)  nine  times  :  he  could 
mind  when  the  Bocksteinkogl  was  no  bigger  than  a  kranawetvogl 
(crossbill  ?),  or  the  mighty  Schareck  than  a  twopenny  roll.  Their 
strength  was  gigantic:  to  hurl  a  ploughshare  the  whole  breadth 
of  the  valley  was  an  easy  throw  for  them.  One  of  these  '  men ' 
leant  his  staff  against  the  head  farmer's  house,  and  the  whole 
house  shook.  Their  dwelling  was  an  inaccessible  cavern  on  the 
left  bank  of  the  Ache,  at  the  entrance  to  the  Klamm ;  outside 
the  cave  stood  some  appletrees,  and  with  the  apples  they  would 
pelt  the  passers-by  in  fun  ;  remains  of  their  household  stuff  are 
still  to  be  seen.  To  the  inhabitants  of  the  valley  they  were 
rather  friendly  than  otherwise,  and  often  put  a  quantity  of  butter 
and  milk  before  their  house-doors.  This  last  feature  is  more  of  a 
piece  with  the  habits  of  dwarfs  and  elves  than  of  giants. 

Just  as  the  elves  found  the  spread  of  agriculture  and  the  clear- 
ing of  their  forests  an  abomination,  which  compelled  them  to 
move  out ;  so  the  giants  regard  the  woods  as  their  own  property, 
in  which  they  are  by  no  means  disposed  to  let  men  do  as  they 
please.  A  peasant's  son  had  no  sooner  begun  to  cut  down  a 
bushy  pinetree,  than  a  great  stout  trold  made  his  appearance 
with  the  threat :  '  dare  to  cut  in  my  wood,  and  I'll  strike  thee 
dead'  (Asbiurnsen's  Moe,  no.  6)  ;  the  Danish  folk-song  of  Elme 
af  Villenskov  is  founded  on  this,  D.V.  1,  175.     And  no  less  do 


554  GIANTS. 

giants  (like  dwarfs,  p.  459)  hate  the  ringing  of  bells,  as  in  the 
Swedish  tale  of  the  old  giant  in  the  mountain  (Afzelius  3,  88) ; 
therefore  they  sling  rocks  at  the  belfries.  Gargantua  also  carries 
off  bells  from  churches. 

In  many  of  the  tales  that  have  come  before  us,  giant  and  devil 
are  convertible  terms,  especially  where  the  former  has  laid  aside 
his  clumsiness.  The  same  with  a  number  of  other  resemblances 
between  the  two.  The  devil  is  described  as  many-headed  like 
the  giant,  also,  it  is  true,  like  the  dragon  and  the  hellhound. 
Wherever  the  deviPs  hand  clutches  or  his  foot  treads,  indelible 
traces  imprint  themselves  even  on  the  hardest  stone.  The  titans 
chased  from  Olympus  resemble  the  angels  thrust  out  of  heaven 
and  changed  into  devils.  The  abode  of  the  giants,  like  that  of 
heathens  and  devils  in  general  (p.  34),  is  supposed  to  be  in  the 
north  :  when  Freyr  looks  from  heaven  toward  Iotunheim  (Seem. 
81)  and  spies  the  fair  giantess,  this  is  expressed  in  Suorri  39  by 
'  Freyr  leit  i  norffrostt.'  In  the  Danish  folk-song  of  the  stolen 
hammer,  Thorr  appears  as  Tord  (thunder)  af  Hafsgaard  (sea- 
burgh),  while  the  giant  from  whom  Loke  is  to  get  the  hammer 
back  dwells  in  Nordenfjeld ;  the  Swedish  folk-song  says  more 
vaguely  '  trolltrams  gard.'  1 

But  what  runs  into  gianthood  altogether  is  the  nature  of  the 
man-eating  huorco  or  ogre  (p.  486).  Like  him  the  stone-hurling 
cyclops  in  the  Odyssey  hanker  after  human  flesh;  and  again  a 
Tartar  giant  Depeghoz  (eye  on  top  of  head)2  stands  midway  be- 
tween Polyphemus,  who  combs  with  a  harrow  and  shaves  with  a 
scythe  (Ov.  Metam.  13,  764),  and  Gargantua.  As  an  infant  he 
sucks  all  the  nurses  dry,  that  offer  him  the  breast ;  when  grown 
up,  the  Oghuzes  have  to  supply  him  daily  with  2  men  and  500 
sheep.  Bissat,  the  hero,  burns  out  his  eye  with  a  red-hot  knife  ; 
the  blinded  giant  sits  outside  the  door,  and  feels  with  his  hands 
each  goat  as  it  passes  out.  An  arrow  aimed  at  his  breast  would 
not  penetrate,  he  cried  ' what's  this  fly  here  teazing  me?'  The 
Laplanders  tell  of  a  giant  Stalo,  who  was  one-eyed,  and  went 
about  in  a  garment  of  iron.     He  was  feared  as  a  man-eater,  and 


1  To  wish  a  man  '  nordan  till  fjdlls '  (Arvidsson  2,  1G3)  is  to  wish  him  in  a 
disagreeable  quarter  (Germ,  'in  pepperland,'  at  Jericho). 

2  Diez  :  The  newly  discovered  Oghuzian  cyclop  compared  with  the  Homeric. 
Halle  &  Berlin  1815. 


GIANTS.  555 

received  the  by-name  of  yityatya  (Ni'lsson  4,  32).  The  Indian 
Mahabharata  also  represents  Hkllmbas  the  rakshasa  (giant)  l  as 
a  man-eater,  misshapen  and  red-bearded  :  man's  flesh  he  smells 
from  afar,2  and  orders  Hidimba  his  sister  to  fetch  it  him ;  but 
she,  like  the  monster's  wife  or  daughter  in  the  nursery-tales, 
pities  and  befriends  the  slumbering  hero  (see  Suppl.). 

Our  own  giant-stories  know  nothing  of  this  grim  thirst  for 
blood,  even  the  Norse  iotunn  is  nowhere  depicted  as  a  cannibal, 
like  the  Greek  and  Oriental  giants ;  our  giants  are  a  great  deal 
more  genial,  and  come  nearer  to  man's  constitution  in  their 
shape  and  their  way  of  thinking  :  their  savagery  spends  itself 
mainly  in  hurling  huge  stones,  removing  mountains  and  rearing 
colossal  buildings. 

Saxo  Gram.  pp.  10.  11  invests  the  giantess  Harthgrepa  with 
the  power  to  make  herself  small  or  large  at  pleasure.  This  is  a 
gift  which  fairy-tales  bestow  on  the  ogre  or  the  devil,  and  folk- 
tales on  the  haulemutter  (Harrys  2,  10  ;  and  Suppl.). 

It  is  in  living  legend  (folktale)  that  the  peculiar  properties  of 
our  native  giants  have  been  most  faithfully  preserved ;  the  poets 
make  their  giants  far  less  interesting,  they  paint  them,  espe- 
cially in  subjects  borrowed  from  Romance  poetry,  with  only 
the  features  common  to  all  giants.  Harpin,  a  giant  in  the 
Iwein,  demands  a  knight's  daughter,  hangs  his  sons,  and  lays 
waste  the  land  (4464.  4500)  :3  when  slain,  he  falls  to  the  ground 
like  a  tree  (5074)  .4  Still  more  vapid  are  the  two  giants  intro- 
duced at  6588  seq.  Even  in  the  Tristan,  the  description  of  giant 
Urgan  (15923)  is  not  much  more  vivid :  he  levies  blackmail  on 
oxen  and  sheep,  and  when  his  hand  is  hewn  off,  he  wants  to  heal 

1  Tevetat's  second  birth  (Reinhart  cclxxxi.)  is  a  rakshasi,  giantess,  not  a 
beast. 

3  '  Mightily  works  man's  smell,  and  amazingly  quickens  my  nostrils,'  Arjuna's 
Journey,  by  Bopp,  p.  18.  The  same  in  our  fairy-tales  (supra,  p.  48(3).  Epithets 
of  these  Indian  daemons  indicate  that  they  walk  about  by  night  (Bopp's  gloss. 
91.  97). 

3  One  giant  is  '  hagel  al  der  lande,'  hail-storm  to  all  lands,  Bit.  6482. 

4  N.B.,  his  bones  are  treasured  up  outside  the  castle-gate  (5881),  as  in  Fischart's 
Garg.  41a:  'they  tell  of  riesen  and  haunen,  shew  their  bones  in  churches,  under 
town  balls.'  So  there  hangs  in  a  church  the  skeleton  of  the  giantess  struck  by 
lightning  (p.  53]  n.),  the  heathen  maiden's  dripping  rift  (Deut.  sag.  140),  and  her  yellow 
locks  (ibid.  317);  in  the  castle  is  kept  the  giant's  bone  (ibid.  324).  At  Alpirsbach 
in  the  Black  Forest  a  giant's  skeleton  hangs  outside  the  gate,  and  in  Our  Lady's 
church  at  Arnstadt  the  '  riesenribbe,'  Bechst.  3,  129 ;  conf.  Jerichow  and  Werben 
in  Ail.  Kuhn,  no.  56.  The  horns  of  a  giant  ox  nailed  up  in  the  porch  of  a  temple 
(Xiebuhr's  Horn.  Hist.  1,  407). 


556  GIANTS. 

it  on  again  (16114)  ,a  The  giants  shew  more  colour  as  we  come 
to  poems  in  the  cycle  of  our  hero-legend.  Kuperan  in  the  Hiirn. 
Sifrit  (Ciiprian  of  the  Heldens.  171)  rules  over  1000  giants,  and 
holds  in  durance  the  captive  daughter  of  a  king.  The  Rother 
brings  before  us,  all  alive,  the  giants  Asprian,  Grimme,  Widolt, 
the  last  straining  like  a  lion  at  his  leash,  till  he  is  let  loose  for 
the  fight  (744.  2744.  4079)  ;  in  the  steel  bar  that  two  men  could 
not  lift  he  buries  his  teeth  till  fire  starts  out  of  it  (G50.  4653-74), 
and  he  smites  with  it  like  a  thunderbolt  (2734)  ;  the  noise  of  his 
moving  makes  the  earth  to  quake  (5051),  his  hauberk  rings 
when  he  leaps  over  bushes  (4201)  ;  he  pitches  one  man  over  the 
heads  of  four,  so  that  his  feet  do  not  touch  the  ground  (1718), 
smashes  a  lion  against  the  wall  (1144-53),  rubs  fire  out  of  mill- 
stones (1040),  wades  in  mould  (646.  678)  up  to  the  knee  (935), 
a  feature  preserved  in  Vilk.  saga,  cap.  60,  and  also  Oriental 
(Hammer's  Rosenol  1,  36).  Asprian  sets  his  foot  on  the  mouth 
of  the  wounded  (4275).  And  some  good  giant  traits  come  out  in 
Sigenot:  when  he  breathes  in  his  sleep,  the  boughs  bend  (60),2 
he  plucks  up  trees  in  the  fir-wood  (73-4),  prepares  lint-plugs 
(schiibel)  of  a  pound  weight  to  stuff  into  his  wounds  (113),  takes 
the  hero  under  his  armpit  and  carries  him  off  (110.  158.  Hag.  9, 
Lassb.).  A  giantess  in  the  Wolfdiet.  picks  up  horse  and  hero, 
and,  bounding  like  a  squirrel,  takes  them  350  miles  over  the 
mountains  to  her  giant  cell;  another  in  the  folk-song  (Aw.  1, 
161)  carries  man  and  horse  up  a  mountain  five  miles  high,  where 
are  two  ready  boiled  and  one  on  the  spit  (a  vestige  of  androphagi 
after  all)  ;  she  offers  her  daughter  to  the  hero,  and  when  he 
escapes,  she  beats  her  with  a  club,  so  that  all  the  flowers  and 
leaves  in  the  wood  quiver.  Giant  Welle's  sister  Riitze  in  the 
Heldenbuch  takes  for  her'  staff  a  whole  tree,  root  and  branch, 
that  two  waggons  could  not  have  earned ;  another  woman  '  of 
wild  kin  '  walks  over  all  the  trees,  and  requires  two  bullocks' 
hides  for  a  pair  of  shoes,  Wolfd.  1513.  Giant  Langbein  (Danske 
viser  1,  26)  is  asleep  in  the  wood,  when  the  heroes  wake  him  up 
(see  Suppl.). 

A  good  many  giant-stories  not  yet  discovered  and  collected 

1  The  Eomance  giants  are  often  porters  and  bridge-keepers,  conf.  the  dorper  in 
Fergut  (supra,  p.  535) ;  yet  also  in  Nib.  457,  4.     458,  1  :  '  rise  portenare.' 

2  The  same  token  of  gianthood  is  in  Vilk.  saga,  cap.  176,  and  in  a  Servian  lay. 


GIANTS.  557 

must  still  be  living  in  the  popular  traditions  of  Norway  and 
Sweden,1  and  even  we  in  Germany  may  gather  something  from 
oral  narration,  though  not  much  from  books.  The  monk  of  St. 
Gall  (Pertz  2,  75C)  has  an  Eishere  (i.e.  Egisheri,  terribilis)  of 
Thurgau,  but  he  is  a  giant-like  hero,  not  a  giant.2 

Of  sacrifices  offered  to  giants  (as  well  as  to  friendly  elves  and 
home-sprites),  of  a  worship  of  giants,  there  is  hardly  a  trace. 
Yet  in  Kormakssaga  242  I  find  blotrisi,  giant  to  whom  one 
sacrifices;  and  the  buttered  stone  (p.  546)  may  have  been  smeared 
for  the  giantess,  not  by  her,  for  it  was  the  custom  of  antiquity  to 
anoint  sacred  stones  and  images  with  oil  or  fat,  conf.  p.  63.  As 
to  the  '  gude  lubbe  '  whose  worship  is  recorded  by  Bp.  Gebhard 
(p.  526),  his  gianthood  is  not  yet  satisfactorily  made  out.  Fasolt, 
the  giant  of  storm,  was  invoked  in  exorcisms ;  but  here  we  may 
regard  him  as  a  demigod,  like  ThorgerSr  and  Irpa,  who  were 
adored  in  Scandinavia  (see  Suppl.). 

The  connexion  pointed  out  between  several  of  the  words  for 
giant  and  the  names  of  ancient  nations  is  similar  to  the  agree- 
ment of  certain  heroic  names  with  historic  characters.  Mythic 
traits  get  mysteriously  intergrown  with  historic,  and  as  Dietrich 
and  Charles  do  duty  for  a  former  god  or  hero,  Hungarians  and 
Avars  are  made  to  stand  for  the  old  notion  of  giants.  Only  we 
must  not  carry  this  too  far,  but  give  its  due  weight  to  the 
fact  that  iotunn  and  burs3  have  in  themselves  an  intelligible 
meaning. 

1  Hiilphers  3,  47  speaks  of  '  lojlige  berattelse  om  fordna  jfittar,'  without  going 
into  them. 

-  It  is  quite  another  thing,  when  in  the  debased  folktale  Siegfried  the  hero 
degenerates  into  a  giant  (Whs.  heldensage,  pp.  301-16),  as  divine  Oden  Liinixl f 
(p.  155)  and  ThOrr  are  degraded  into  diivels  and  dolts.  A  still  later  view  (Altd.  bl. 
1,  122)  regards  riese  and  recke  (hero)  as  all  one. 

3  Schafarik  (Slov.  star.  1,  258)  sees  nothing  in  them  but  Geta  and  Thyrsus ; 
at  that  rate  the  national  name  Thussagetse  must  include  both. 


CHAPTER   XIX. 
CREATION. 

Now  that  we  have  treated  of  gods,  heroes,  elves,  and  giants, 
we  are  at  length  prepared  to  go  into  the  views  of  ancient  times 
on  cosmogony.  And  here  I  am  the  more  entitled  to  take  the 
Norse  ideas  for  a  groundwork,  as  indications  are  not  wanting  of 
their  having  equally  prevailed  among  the  other  Teutonic  races. 

Before  the  creation  of  heaven  and  earth,  there  was  an  immense 
chasm  called  gap  (hiatus,  gaping),  or  by  way  of  emphasis  gap 
ginnunga  (chasm  of  chasms),  corresponding  in  sense  to  the  Greek 
ydoq}  For,  as  %ao?  means  both  abyss  and  darkness,  so  gin- 
nnnga-gap  seems  also  to  denote  the  world  of  mist,  out  of  whose 
bosom  all  things  rose.  How  the  covering  and  concealing  '  hel ' 
was  likewise  conceived  of  as  'nifl-keP  with  yawning  gaping  jaws, 
has  been  shewn  above,  pp.  312-314. 

Yet  this  void  of  space  had  two  extremities  opposed  to  one 
another,  muspell  (fire)  the  southern,  and  nifi  (fog)  the  northern ; 
from  Muspellsheim  proceed  light  and  warmth,  from  Niflheim 
darkness  and  deadly  cold.  In  the  middle  was  a  fountain  Hvergel- 
mir,  out  of  which  flowed  twelve  rivers  named  elivdga.r.  When 
they  got  so  far  from  their  source,  that  the  drop  of  fire  contained 

1  Xdos,  from  xatVw  =  OHG.  ginan,  ON.  gina  =  Lat.  hiare;  conf.  OHG.  ginunga, 
hiatus.  But  we  need  not  therefore  read  '  gap  ginunga,'  for  the  ON.  giuna,  which 
has  now  only  the  sense  of  allicere,  must  formerly  have  had  that  of  findere,  secare, 
which  is  still  found  in  OHG.  inginnan,  MHG.  enginuen  (see  above,  p.  403,  Ganna) : 
Otfried  iii.  7,  27  says  of  the  barleycorn,  '  thoh  iindu  ih  melo  thar  bine,  inthiu  ih 
es  biginne  (if  I  split  it  open);  inkinnan  (aperire),  Graff  4,  209;  ingunnen  (sectus), 
N.  Ar.  95.  So  in  MHG.,  'sin  herze  wart  ime  engunnen '  (fissum),  Fundgr.  2, 
268;  enginnen  (secare),  En.  2792.  5722;  engunnen  (secuerunt),  En.  1178.  Nearly 
related  is  ingeinan  (fissiculare),  N.  Cap.  136.  From  a  literal  '  splitting  open'  must 
have  arisen  the  more  abstract  sense  of  '  beginning,'  Goth,  duginnan,  AS.  onginnan, 
OHG.  inkinnan,  pikinnan.  Then  gina  hiare,  gin  hiatus,  further  suggest  gin 
(amplus),  and  ginregin  (p.  320).  Singularly  Festus,  in  discussing  inchoare,  comes 
upon  chaos,  just  as  '  begin  '  has  led  us  to  ginan.  Cohus,  from  which  some  derive 
incohare=  inchoare,  is  no  other  than  chaos.  Fest.  sub  v.  cohum.  [Nearly  all 
the  above  meanings  appear  in  derivatives  of  the  Mongol,  root  khag,  khog  to  crack, 
etc.,  including  khoghoson  empty,  chaos].  '  Beside  ginan,  the  OHG.  has  a  Chilian 
hiscere  (Graff  4,  450),  Goth,  keinan,  AS.  cine  (rirna,  chine,  chink).  The  AS.  has 
also  a  separate  word  dwolma  for  hiatus,  chaos. — Extr.  from  Suppl. 

553 


CREATION.  559 

ill  them  hardened,  like  the  sparks  that  fly  out  of  flame,  they 
turned  into  rigid  ice.  Touched  by  the  mild  air  (of  the  south), 
the  ice  began  to  thaw  and  trickle  :  by  the  power  of  him  who 
sent  tho  heat,  the  drops  quickened  into  life,  and  a  man  grew  out 
of  them,  Ymir,  called  Orgelmir  by  tho  Hrimburses,  a  giant  and 
evil  of  nature. 

Ymir  went  to  sleep,  and  fell  into  a  sweat,  then  under  his  left 
hand  grew  man  and  wife,  and  one  of  his  feet  engendered  with 
the  other  a  six-headed  son;  hence  are  sprung  the  families  of 
giants. 

But  the  ice  dripped  on,  and  a  cow  arose,  Au&umbla,  from 
whose  udder  flowed  four  streams  of  milk,  conveying  nourishment 
to  Ymir.  Then  the  cow  licked  the  salty  ice-rocks,  and  on  the 
evening  of  the  first  day  a  man's  hand  came  forth,  the  second 
day  the  man's  head,  the  third  day  the  whole  man ;  he  was  beau- 
tiful, large,  strong,  his  name  was  Burl,  and  his  son's  name  Borr 
(p.  349) -1  Borr  took  to  him  Bestla,  the  giant  Bolfiom's  daughter, 
and  begat  three  sons,  Offinn,  V'dl,  Ve  (p.  162),  and  by  them  was 
the  giant  Ymir  slain.  As  he  sank  to  the  ground,  such  a  quantity 
of  blood  ran  out  of  his  wounds,  that  all  the  giants  were  drowned 
in  it,  save  one,  Bergelmir*  who  with  his  wife  escaped  in  a  Ki5r 
(Seem.  35b,  Sn.  8),  and  from  them  is  descended  the  (younger) 
race  of  giants  (see  Supp].).s 

The  sons  of  Borr  dragged  the  dead  Ymir's  body  into  the  mid- 
dle of  ginnimga-gap,  and  created  out  of  his  blood  the  sea  and 
water,  of  his  flesh  the  earth,  of  his  bones  the  mountains,  of  his 
teeth  and  broken  bones  the  rocks  and  crags.  Then  they  took  his 
skull  and  made  of  it  the  sky,  and  the  sparks  from  Muspellsheim 
that  floated  about  free  they  fixed  in  the  sky,  so  as  to  give  light 
to  all.     The  earth  was   round,  and   encircled  by  deep  sea/*  on 


1  In  the  Zend  system,  the  firs  man  proceeds  from  the  haunch  of  the  primeval 
bull  Kayomer. 

•  Ymir,  i.e.,  Orgelmir,  begot  Thrti&gelmir,  and  ho  Bergelmir. 

3  The  meaning  of  liiffr  has  not  been  ascertained ;  elsewhere  it  stands  for 
culens,  tuba,  here  it  is  supposed  to  be  a  mill-chest.  The  OHG.  h'nhini  f.  menus 
a  cradle  (Graff  2,  201)  as  well  as  pannus,  involucrum  (swaddling-band),  and  this 
would  fit  remarkably  well,  as  some  accounts  of  the  Deluge  do  make  the  rescued 
child  float  iii  its  cradle.  True,  Snorri  speaks  nut  of  a  child,  hut  id'  a  grown-up 
giant,  who  sits  in  the  luo'r  witli  his  wife;  this  may  he  a  later  version.  [Slav,  I6t 
is  shallow  basket,  trough,  tray.] 

1  Snorri  at  all  events  conceived  the  earth  to  be  round,  he  says  p.  !l ':  'honei 
kringlutt  utan,  ok  J>ar  utau  um  liggr  hinn  diupi  shir.'     So  in  the  Lucidarius  :  '  diou 


560  CREATION. 

whose  shore  the  giants  were  to  dwell ;  but  to  guard  the  inland 
parts  of  the  earth  against  them,  there  was  built  of  Ymir's  brows 
a  castle,  Miffgarft.  The  giant's  brain  was  thrown  into  the  air. 
and  formed  the  clouds,  Sn.  8,  9. 

Ssemund's  account  45b  (conf .  33b)  differs  in  some  points  : 

or  Ymirs  holdi  var  iorS  um  scoput, 

enn  or  sveita  sser, 

biorg  or  beinom,  baSmr  or  ltdri, 

enn  or  hausi  hiniinn, 

enn  or  hans  brdm  gerSo  bliS  regin 

rurSp-arS  manna  sonom, 

enn  or  hans  heila  voro  ]mu  in  harSinoSgo 

sky  oil  um  scoput. 

Here  the  teeth  are  not  made  use  of,  but  we  have  instead  the 
formation  of  trees  out  of  the  giant's  hair. 

When  all  this  was  done,  the  sons  of  Borr  went  to  the  seashore, 
and  found  two  trees,  out  of  which  they  created  two  human  beings, 
Aslcr  and  Embla.  To  these  OSinn  gave  soul  and  life,  Vili  wit 
and  feeling  (sense  of  touch),  Ve  countenance  (colour?),  speech, 
hearing  and  sight,  Sn.  10.     More  exactly  in  Seem.  3b  : 

unz  ]n-ir  komo  or  bvi  liSi 

oflgir  ok  astgir  sesir  at  siisi  (uproar) . 

fundo  a  landi  litt  megandi 

Ash  ok  Emblo  orloglausa : 

ond  (spirit)  ]?au  ne  atto,  o'S  (mind)  hau  ne  hofSo, 

la  (blood)  ne  lseti,  ne  lito  (colours)  gtVSa. 

ond  gaf  OSinn,  65  gaf  Hoenir, 

la  gaf  LobV  ok  litu  gofta. 

In  this  account  the  three  ases  are  named  OSinn,  Hoenir,  LoSr 
(p.  241)  instead  of  OSinn,  Vili,  Ve  (p.  162)  ;  they  come  to  the 
roaring  (of  the  sea,  ad  aestum,  irapa  6lva  Tro\v(j)\ola/3oio  6a- 
\daar)<i),  and  find  Askr  and  Embla  powerless  and  inert.     Then 

welt  ist  sinwel  (spherical),  und  umbeflozzen  mit  dem  wendelmer,  darin  swebt  die 
erde  als  daz  tutter  in  dem  wizen  des  eiies  ist,'  conf.  Berthold  p.  287,  and  Wackern. 
Basel  MSS.  p.  20.  The  creation  of  heaven  and  earth  out  of  the  parts  of  an  egg  is 
poetically  painted  in  Kalewala,  rune  1  (see  Suppl.). — 'Indian  legend  has  likewise 
a  creation  out  of  the  egg,  heaven  and  earth  being  eggshells,  Somadeva  1,  10.  Conf. 
the  birth  of  Helen  and  the  Dioscuri  out  of  an  egg.'— Extr.  from  Suppl. 


CEEATION.  561 

OSinn  endowed  them  with  spirit,  Hcenir  with  reason,  Lo5r  with 
blood  and  complexion  (see  Suppl.). 

The  creation  of  dwarfs  is  related  in  two  passages  which  do  not 
altogether  agree.  Sn.  15  tells  us,  when  the  gods  sat  in  their 
chairs  judging,  they  remembered  that  in  the  dust  and  the  earth 
dwarfs  had  come  alive,  as  maggots  do  in  meat  (see  Suppl.). 
They  were  created  and  received  life  first  of  all  in  Ymir's  flesh. 
By  the  decree  of  the  gods  these  maggots  now  obtained  under- 
standing and  human  shape,  but  continued  to  live  in  the  earth 
and  in  stones.  Stein.  2  says  on  the  contrary,  that  the  holy  gods 
in  their  chairs  consulted,  who  should  make  the  nation  of  dwarfs 
out  of  Brimir's  flesh  and  his  black  bones ;  then  sprang  up 
Motsognir,  prince  of  all  dwarfs,  and  after  him  Durinn,  and  they 
two  formed  a  multitude  of  manlike  dwarfs  out  of  the  earth. 

Taking  all  these  accounts  together,  it  is  obvious  in  the  first 
place,  that  only  the  men  and  dwarfs  are  regarded  as  being 
really  created,  while  the  giants  and  gods  come,  as  it  were,  of 
themselves  out  of  chaos.  To  the  production  of  men  and  dwarfs 
there  went  a  formative  agency  on  the  part  of  gods ;  giants  and 
gods,  without  any  such  agency,  made  their  appearance  under  the 
mere  action  of  natural  heat  and  the  licking  of  a  cow.  Giants 
and  gods  spring  out  of  a  combination  of  fire  with  water,  yet 
so  that  the  element  converted  into  ice  must  recover  its  fluidity 
before  it  becomes  capable  of  production.  The  giant  and  the  cow 
drip  out  of  the  frost,  Buri  slowly  extricates  himself  in  three  days 
from  the  thawing  mass  of  ice.  This  dripping  origin  reminds  us 
of  some  other  features  in  antiquity  ;  thus,  OSinn  had  a  gold  ring 
Draupnir  (the  dripper),  from  which  every  ninth  night  there 
dripped  eight  other  rings  of  equal  weight  (Sa3m.  84a.  Sn.  GO). 
Sa3m.  195b  speaks,  not  very  lucidly,  of  a  hausi  HeiSdraupnis 
(cranio  stillantis)  ;  Styrian  legend  commemorates  a  giant's  rib 
from  which  a  drop  falls  once  a  year  (D.S.  no.  140).1  And  Eve 
may  be  said  to  drip  out  of  Adam's  rib.  With  the  giant's  birth 
out  of  ice  and  rime  we  may  connect  the  story  of  the  snow-child 
(in  the  Modus  Liebinc),  and  the  influence,  so  common  in  our 
fairy-tales,  of  snow  and  blood  on  the  birth  of  a  long  wished  for 
child.     All  this  seems  allied  to  heathen  notions  of  creation,  conf. 

1  No  doubt  the  familiar  name  Ribbentrop  is  founded  on  some  such  tradition. 


562  CREATION. 

Chap.  XXX.  Also  I  must  call  attention  to  the  terms  eitrdropi 
Sasm.  35%  eitrqvihja  Sn.  5,  qvikudropi  Sn.  6  :  it  is  the  vivifying 
fiery  drop,  and  we  do  bestow  on  fire  the  epithet  '  living.'  Eitr 
is  our  eiter,  OHG.  eitar,  AS.  ator,  coming  from  OHG.  eit,  AS. 
ad  ignis ;  and  its  derivative  sense  of  venenum  (poison,  (pdpfxatcov) 
seems  inapplicable  to  the  above  compounds. 

It  tallies  with  the  views  expressed  at  p.  316  on  the  gods  having 
a  beginning  and  an  end,  that  in  this  system  of  creation  too  they 
are  not  described  as  existing  from  the  first :  the  god  appears  in 
ginniingagap  after  a  giant  has  preceded  him.  It  is  true,  Snorri 
6  makes  use  of  a  remarkable  phrase :  '  sva  at  qviknaSi  me$ 
krapti  ]?ess  er  til  sendi  hitann/  the  quickening  is  referred  to  the 
might  of  him  that  sent  the  heat,  as  if  that  were  an  older  eternal 
God  who  already  ruled  in  the  chaos.  The  statement  would  have 
more  weight,  were  it  forthcoming  in  the  Voluspa  or  any  of  the 
Eddie  songs  themselves ;  as  it  is,  it  looks  to  me  a  mere  shift  of 
Snorri's  own,  to  account  for  the  presence  and  action  of  the  heat, 
and  so  on  a  par  with  the  formulas  quoted  in  pp.  22-3-4. 1  Buri, 
who  is  thawed  into  existence  out  of  ice,  to  set  limits  to  the  rude 
evil  nature  of  the  giant  that  was  there  before  him,  shews  himself 
altogether  an  ancestor  and  prototype  of  the  heroes,  whose  mission 
it  was  to  exterminate  the  brood  of  giants.  From  him  are  de- 
scended all  the  ases,  OSinu  himself  being  only  a  grandson. 

Again,  there  is  no  mistaking  the  distinct  methods  by  which 
giants,  gods  and  men  propagate  their  kind.  Only  one  giant  had 
sprung  out  of  ice,  he  has  to  beget  children  of  himself,  an  office 
performed  by  his  hands  and  feet  together,  as  in  other  ways  also 
the  hand  and  foot  are  regarded  as  akin  and  allied  to  one  another.2 
Ymir's  being  asleep  during  the  time  is  like  Adam's  sleep  while 
Eve  was  fashioned  out  of  his  rib  ;  Eve  therefore  takes  her  rise 
in  Adam  himself,  after  which  they  continue  their  race  jointly. 
How  Buri  begat  Borr  we  are  not  informed,  but  Borr  united  him- 
self to  a  giant's  daughter,  who  bore  him  three  sons,  and  from 
them  sprang  the  rest  of  the  ases.     It  was  otherwise  with  men, 


1  "We  might  indeed  imagine  that  regin  and  ginregin  ruled  before  the  arrival 
of  the  ases,  and  that  this  force  of  heat  proceeded  from  them.  But  the  Edda  must 
first  have  distinctly  said  so. 

2  Conf.  Haupt's  Zeitschr.  3,  156-7.  Brahma  too  makes  a  man  out  of  his  own 
arm,  Polier  1,  168. 


CREATION.  5G3 

who  were  not  created  singly,  like  the  giant  or  the  god,  but  two 
at  once,  man  and  wife,  and  then  jointly  propagate  their  species. 

While  the  huge  mass  of  the  giant's  body  supplied  the  gods 
with  materials,  so  that  they  could  frame  the  whole  world  out  of 
his  different  parts,  and  the  dwarfs  swarmed  in  the  same  giant's 
flesh  as  worms  ;  mankind  are  descended  from  two  trees  on  the 
seashore,  which  the  gods  endowed  with  breath  and  perfect  life. 
They  have  therefore  no  immediate  connexion  with  giants. 

In  the  uses  we  see  a  superior  and  successful  second  product, 
in  contrast  with  the  first  half-bungled  giant  affair.  On  the  giants 
an  undue  proportion  of  inert  matter  had  been  expended ;  in  the 
ases  body  and  soul  attained  a  perfect  equilibrium,  and  together 
with  infinite  strength  and  beauty  was  evolved  an  informing 
and  creative  mind.  To  men  belongs  a  less  full,  yet  a  fair, 
measure  of  both  qualities,  while  dwarfs,  as  the  end  of  creation, 
form  the  antithesis  to  giants,  for  mind  in  them  outweighs  the 
puny  body.  Our  Heldenbuch  on  the  contrary  makes  the  dwarfs 
come  into  being  first,  the  giants  next,  and  men  last  of  all. 

As  the  giants  originated  in  the  ice  of  streams  that  poured  out 
of  the  fountain  Huergelmir,  we  may  fairly  assume  some  connexion 
between  it  and  the  names  Orgelmir,  Thvu&gelmir,  B&rgehnir.  I 
derive  gelmir  from  gialla  (stridere),  and  connect  it  with  the 
OHG.  galm  (stridor,  sonitus).  Hvergelmir  will  therefore  mean  a 
roaring  cauldron ;  and  the  same  notion  of  uproar  and  din  is 
likely  to  be  present  in  the  giants'  names,  which  would  support 
the  derivation  of  Yrnir  from  ymja,  p.  532.  The  reading  Orgemlir 
would  indeed  accord  with  the  notion  of  great  age  associated  with 
the  giant  nature  (p.  524),  but  would  sever  the  link  between 
giants  and  the  cauldron  of  chaos. 

Thus  far  the  Scandinavian  theory  :  now  to  prove  its  general 
diffusion. 

Though  the  word  ginniingagap  has  no  exact  parallel  in  OHG. 
or  AS.,  it  may  for  all  that  be  the  thing  described  in  the  follow- 
ing verses  of  the  Wessobrunn  Prayer  : 

Dat  gafregin  ih  mit  firahim  firiwizzo  meista  (wisest  men), 
dat  ero  ni  was  noh  lifhimil  (earth  was  not,  nor  sky), 
noh  paum  (tree)   nohheinig  noh  pereg  (mountain)  ni  was, 
noh  sunna  ni  scein  [noh  sterno  ni  cleiz  (glistened)], 


564  CREATION. 

do  mano  (moon)  ni  liuhta  110I1  der  mareoseo  (sea). 

do  dar  niwiht  ni  was  enteo  ni  wenteo, 

enti  do  was  der  eino  ahnalitico  Cot  (Almighty  God  alone). 
The  last  line  may  sound  completely  christian,  and  the  preceding 
ones  may  have  nothing  directly  opposed  to  christian  doctrine  ; 
yet  the  juxtaposition  of  earth  and  heaven,  tree  and  mountain, 
sun  [and  star],  moon  and  sea,  also  the  archaic  forms  ero  (terra), 
ufhimil  (ccelum),  mareoseo  (mare,  Goth,  marisaivs),  which  must 
be  thrown  into  the  scale, — all  have  a  ring  of  the  Edcla  : 

Vara  sandr  ne  S93r,  ne  svalar  unnir, 
idi^S  fanz  seva  ne  upphiminn, 
gap  var  ginnimga,  enn  gras  hvergi. 
sol  ]>at  ne  vissi  hvar  hon  sali  atti, 
stiornor  ]?at  ne  visso  hvar  ]?Eer  stafti  atto, 
mani  ]?at  ne  vissi  hvat  hann  megins  atti. 

The  words  '  niwiht  ni  was  enteo  ni  wenteo  '  give  in  roundabout 
phrase  exactly  the  notion  of  ginnungagap.1 

These  hints  of  heathenism  have  gained  additional  force,  now 
that  OHG.  and  OS.  songs  are  found  to  retain  the  technical  term 
muspilli  =  ON.  muspell ;  the  close  connexion  between  nifl,  Nifl- 
heim,  and  the  Nibelungen  so  intergrown  with  our  epos  (p.  372)  does 
not  in  any  case  admit  of  doubt.  Now  if  these  two  poles  of  the 
Scandinavian  chaos  entered  into  the  belief  of  all  Teutonic  nations, 
the  notion  of  creation  as  a  whole  must  have  been  as  widely 
spread.  It  has  been  shewn  that  the  Old-German  opinion  about 
giants,  gods,  men  and  dwarfs  closely  agreed  with  the  Norse  ;  I 
am  now  able  further  to  produce,  though  in  inverted  order,  the 
same  strange  connexion  described  in  the  Edda  between  a  giant's 
body  and  the  world's  creation. 

Four  documents,  lying  far  apart  in  respect  of  time  and  place 
(and  these  may  some  day  be  reinforced  by  others)  transmit  to  us 
a  notable  account  of  the  creation  of  the  first  man.  But,  while 
the  Edda  uses  up  the  giant's  gutted  and  dismembered  frame  to 
make  a  heaven  and  earth,  here  on  the  contrary  the  whole  world 
is  made  use  of  to  create  man's  body. 

1  Conf.  also  Otfr.  ii.  1,3:  '  er  se  ioh  himil  wurti,  ioh  erda  ouli  so  herti,'  and 
the  description  of  chaos  in  Casdmon  7.  8,  particularly  the  term  heolxterseeadn  7, 
11 ;  though  there  is  little  or  nothing  opposed  to  Bible  doctrine.  Conf.  Aristoph. 
Aves  693-J:. 


CREATION.  565 

The  oldest  version  is  to  be  found  in  the  Rituale  ecclesiae 
Dunelmensis  (Lond.  1839),  in  which  a  scribe  of  the  10th  century- 
has  interpolated  the  following  passage,  an  AS.  translation  being 
interlined  with  the  Latin  : 

Octo  pondera,  de  quibus  factus  JElde  pundo,  of  ]nem  aworden 

est  Adam,     pondus   lirni,   inde  is  Adam,     pund  lames,  of  bon 

factus    (sic)    est   caro ;    pondus  aworden  is  flcesc;  pund   fires, 

ignis,  inde  rubens  est  sanguis  of  bon  read  is   blod  and   hat; 

et   calidus ;  pondus   salis,   inde  pund  saltes,  of  bon  sindon  salto 

sunt   salsae    lacrimae ;    pondus  teltero ;    pund   beawes,    of  bon 

roris,   unde    factus    est   sudor;  aworden  is  swat;  pund    blost- 

pondus  fioris,  inde  est  varietas  mes,  of  bon   is  fagung  egena; 

ocnlorum  ;   pondus  nubis,  inde  pund  wolcnes,  of  bon  is  onstyd- 

est  instabilitas  merit i um  ;  pon-  fullnisse  fiohta ;  pund    windes, 

dus  venti,  inde  est  anliela  fri-  of  bonis  orocFcald;  pund1  gefe, 

gida;  pondus1  gratiae,  inde  est  of  bon  is  fioht  monnes. 
sensus  hominis. 

A  similar  addition  is  made  to  a  MS.  of  the  Code  of  Emsig  (Richt- 
hofen,  p.  211): — 'God  scop  thene  eresta  meneska,  thet  was  Adam, 
fon  achta  wendem.  thet  benete  fon  tha  stene,  thet  flash  fon  there 
erthe,  thet  blod  fon  tha  wetere,  tha  herta  fon  tha  winde,  thene 
thochta  fon  tha  wolken,  thene  suet  fon  tha  dawe,  tha  lokkar  fon 
tha  gerse,  tha  dgene  fon  there  sunna,  and  tha  blerem  on  (blew 
into  him)  thene  helga  6m  (breath),  and  tha  scop  he  Eva  fon 
sine  ribbe,  Adames  liana/  The  handwriting  of  this  document 
is  only  of  the  15th  cent.,  but  it  may  have  been  copied  from  an 
older  MS.  of  the  Emsig  Code,  the  Code  itself  being  of  the  14th 
cent. 

1  This  '  pound  of  grace'  comes  in  so  oddly,  that  I  venture  to  guess  an  omission 
between  the  words,  of  perhaps  a  line,  which  described  the  8th  material.  The  two 
accounts  that  follow  next,  after  naming  eight  material  ingredients,  bring  in  the  holy 
breath  or  spirit  as  something  additional,  to  which  this  gift  of  '  grace  '  would  fairly 
correspond.  Another  AS.  version,  given  in  Scppl.,  from  the  Saturn  and  Solomon 
(Thorpe's  Anal.  p.  95,  ed.  Kemble  p.  180),  is  worth  comparing:  here  'foldaii 
pund'  becomes  'flasc,  fyres  pund  bifid,  windes  p.  ceSung,  wolcnes  p.  m  6 
staSelftestnes,  gyfe  p.  fat  and  gefiang,  bldstmena  p.  edgena  missenlicnist,  deawes 
p.  swdt,  sealtes  p.  teams.' — Here  'gyfe'  is  right  in  the  middle  of  tbe  sentence:  can 
it  be,  that  both  'gefe  '  and  'gyfe'  are  a  corruption  of  Geofon  the  sea  god,  gifen  the 
sea  (supra,  p.  239),  which  in  christian  times  had  become  inadmissible,  perhaps 
unintelligible  ?  It  would  be  strange  if  water,  except  as  dew,  were  made  no  a 
and  the  'sea  supplying  thought'  would  agree  with  the  French  account,  which 
ascribes  wisdom  to  him  that  has  an  extra  stock  of  sea  in  him. — Trans. 


566  CKEATION. 

The  third  passage  is  contained  in  a  poem  of  the  12th  cent, 
on  the  four  Gospels  (Diemer  320,  6-20  ;  conf.  the  notes  to  95, 
18.  27,  and  320,  6)  : 

Got  mit  siner  gewalt 

der  wrchet  zeichen  vil  manecvalt, 

der  worhte  den  inennischen  einen 

iizzen  von  aht  teilen  : 

von  dein  leime  gab  er  ime  daz  fleisch, 

der  tow  becechenit  den  sweihc  (sweat), 

von  dem  steine  gab  er  itn  daz  pein  (bone), 

des  nist  zwivil  nehein  (is  no  doubt), 

von  den  wrcen  (worts)  gab  er  ime  di  ddren  (veins), 

von  dem  grase  gab  er  ime  daz  liar, 

von  dem  mere  gab  er  ime  d^xz  plid  (blood), 

von  den  wolchen  (clouds)  daz  mut  (mood,  mind), 

du  habet  er  ime  begunnen 

der  ougen  (eyes)  von  der  sunnen. 

Er  verleh  ime  sinen  atem  (his  own  breath), 

daz  wir  ime  den  behilten  (keep  it  for  him) 

unte  sinen  gesin  (and  be  his) 

daz  wir  ime  imer  wuocherente  sin  (ever  bear  fruit) . 

Lastly,  I  take  a  passage  from  Godfrey  of  Viterbo's  Pantheon, 
which  was  finished  in  1187  (Pistorii  Scriptor.  2,53): — '  Cum 
legimus  Adam  de  limo  terrae  formatum,  intelligendum  est  ex 
quatuor  elementis.  mundus  enim  iste  major  ex  quatuor  elementis 
constat,  igne,aere,  aqua  et  terra,  humanum  quoque  corpus  dicitur 
microcosmus,  id  est  minor  mundus.  habet  namque  ex  terra 
carnem,  ex  aqua  humores,  ex  aere  flaturu,  ex  igne  calorem.  caput 
autem  ejus  est  rotundum  sicut  coelum,  in  quo  duo  sunt  ocidi,  tan- 
quam  duo  luminaria  in  coelo  micant.  venter  ejus  tanquam  mare 
continet  omnes  liquores.  pectus  et  pulmo  emittit  voces,  et 
quasi  coelestes  resonat  harmonias.  pedes  tanquam  terra  sustinent 
corpus  universum.  ex  igni  coelesti  habet  visum,  e  superiore  aere 
habet  auditum,  ex  inferiori  habet  olfactum,  ex  aqua  gustum,  ex 
terra  habet  tactum.  in  duritie  participat  cum  lapidibus,  in 
ossibus  vigorem  habet  cum  arboribus,  in  capillis  et  unguibus 
decorem  habet  cum  graminibus  et  fioribus.  sensus  habet  cum 
brutis  animalibus.     ecce  talis  est  hominis  substantia  corporea.' — 


CREATION.  567 

Godfrey,  educated  at  Bamberg1,  and  chaplain  to  German  kings, 
must  have  heard  in  Germany  the  doctrine  of  the  eight  parts  ;  he 
brings  forward  only  a  portion  of  it,  such  as  he  could  reconcile 
with  his  other  system  of  the  four  elements  ;  he  rather  compares 
particular  parts  of  the  body  with  natui'al  objects,  than  affirms 
that  those  were  created  out  of  these. 

Not  one  of  the  four  compositions  has  any  direct  connexion 
with  another,  as  their  peculiarities  prove ;  but  that  they  all  rest 
on  a  common  foundation  follows  at  once  from  the  '  octo  pondera, 
achta  wendem,  aht  teilen/  amoug  which  the  alleged  correspond- 
ences are  distributed.  They  shew  important  discrepancies  in 
the  details,  and  a  different  order  is  followed  in  each.  Only  three 
items  go  right  through  the  first  three  accounts,  namely,  that  lime 
(loam,  earth)  was  taken  for  the  flesh,  dew  for  the  sweat,  clouds 
for  the  mind.  But  then  the  MHG.  and  Frisian  texts  travel  much 
further  together ;  both  of  them  make  bone  spring  out  of  stone, 
hair  (locks)  from  grass,  eyes  from  the  sun,  blood  from  the  sea 
(water),  none  of  which  appear  in  the  AS.  Peculiar  to  the  MHG. 
poem  is  the  derivation  of  the  veins  from  herbs  (wiirzen),  and  to 
the  AS.  writer  that  of  the  blood  from  fire,  of  tears  from  salt,  of 
the  various  colours  in  the  eye  from  flowers,1  of  cold  breath  from 
wind,  and  of  sense  from  grace;  which  last,  though  placed 
beyond  doubt  by  the  annexed  translation,  seems  an  error  not- 
withstanding, for  it  was  purely  out  of  material  objects  that 
creation  took  place ;  or  can  the  meaning  be,  that  man's  will  is 
first  conditioned  by  the  grace  of  God  ?  Fitly  enough,  tears  are 
likened  to  salt  (salsae  lacrimae)  ;  somewhat  oddly  the  colours  of 
the  eye  to  flowers,  though  it  is  not  uncommon  to  speak  of  an 
opening  flower  as  an  eye.  The  creation  of  hearts  out  of  wind 
is  found  in  the  Frisian  account  alone,  which  is  also  the  only  one 
that  adds,  that  into  this  mixture  of  eiffht  materials  God  blew  his 
holy  breath,  and  out  of  Adam's  rib  created  his  companion  Eve 
[the  MHG.  has  :  '  imparted  his  breath ']  .3 

1  Variegated  eyes  are  the  oculi  varii,  Prov.  vain  hnelha  (Rayn.  sub  v.  var), 
O.Fr.  vain  iex  (Roquef.  sub  v.).  We  find  in  OHG.  bluom/e/j,  and  '  gevehet  nuh 
tien  bluomon,'  Graff  3,  426  ;  the  AS.  f&gung  above. 

-  Well,  here  is  already  our  fifth  version,  from  a  Paris  MS.  of  the  loth  century 
(Paulin  Paris,  MSS.  francais  de  la  bibl.  du  roi  4,  207)  :  '  Adam  fu  forme  ou  champ 
damacien,  et  fu  fait  si  comme  nous  trouvons  de  huit  parties  de  chases  :  du  Urn  m  de 
la  terre,  de  la  mer,  du  soleil,  des  nues,  du  vent,  des  pierrea,  du  saint  esprit,  et  de  la 
clarte  du  monde.  De  la  terre  fu  la  char,  de  la  mer  fu  le  sang,  du  sok.il  furent  les 
VOL.    II.  K 


568  CREATION. 

If  now  we  compare  all  the  statements  with  those  taken  from 
the  Edda,  their  similarity  or  sameness  is  beyond  all  question  : 
blood  with  sea  or  water,  flesh  with  earth,  bone  with  stone,  hair 
with  trees  or  grass,  are  coupled  together  in  the  same  way  here. 
What  weighs  more  than  anything  with  me  is  the  accordance  of 
f  brain  and  clouds '  with  '  thoughts  and  clouds/  The  brain  is  the 
seat  of  thought,  and  as  clouds  pass  over  the  sky,  so  we  to 
this  day  have  them  flit  across  the  mind  ;  '  clouded  brow '  we  say 
of  a  reflective  pensive  brooding  one,  and  the  Grimnismal  45b 
applies  to  the  clouds  the  epithet  harSinobagr,  hard  of  mood.  It 
was  quite  in  the  spirit  of  the  Edda  to  make  the  skull  do  for 
the  sky,  and  the  eyebrows  for  a  castle ;  but  how  could  sky  or 
castle  have  furnished  materials  for  the  human  frame  ?  That  the 
striking  correspondence  of  the  sun  to  the  eye  should  be  wanting 
in  the  Edda,  is  the  more  surprising,  as  the  sun,  moon  and  stars 
are  so  commonly  spoken  of  as  eyes  (Superst.  614),  and  antiquity 
appears  even  to  have  seen  tongues  in  them,  both  of  which  points 
fall  to  be  discussed  in  Chap.  XXII. ;  meanwhile,  if  these  enu- 
merations are  found  incomplete,  it  may  be  that  there  were  plenty 
more  of  such  correspondences  passing  current.  If  Tborr  flung 
a  toe  into  the  sky  as  a  constellation,  there  may  also  have  been 
tongues  that  represented  stars. 

The  main  difference  between  the  Scandinavian  view  and  all 
the  others  is,  as  I  said  before,  that  the  one  uses  the  microcosm  as 
material  for  the  macrocosm,  and  the  other  inversely  makes  the 
universe  contribute  to  the  formation  of  man.  There  the  whole 
of  nature  is  but  the  first  man  gone  to  pieces,  here  man  is  put 
together  out  of  the  elements  of  nature.  The  first  way  of  think- 
ing seems  more  congenial  to  the  childhood  of  the  world,  it  is  all 

yeulx,  des  nues  fureut  les  pensees,  du  vent  fureut  les  allaines,  des  pierres  furent  les 
oz,  du  saiut  esprit  fu  la  vie,  la,  clarte  du  monde  signifie  Crist  et  sa  creance.  Saichez 
que  se  il  y  a  en  l'omme  plus  de  limon  de  la  terre,  il  sera  paresceux  en  toutes  man- 
ieres ;  et  se  il  y  a  plus  de  la  mer,  il  sera  sage  ;  et  se  il  y  a  plus  de  soleil,  il  sera 
beau  ;  et  se  il  y  a  plus  de  nues,  il  sera  pensis ;  et  se  il  y  a  plus  du  vent,  il  sera 
ireux  ;  et  se  il  y  a  plus  de  pierre,  il  sera  dur,  avar  et  larron  ;  et  se  il  y  a  plus  de 
saint  esprit,  il  sera  gracieux ;  et  se  il  y  a  plus  de  la  clarte  du  monde,  il  sera  beaux 

et  amez.' These  eight  items  are  again  somewhat  different  from  the  preceding, 

though  six  are  the  same  :  earth,  sea,  cloud,  wind,  stone  and  sun  ;  the  Holy  Ghost 
and  the  light  of  the  world  are  peculiar,  while  veins,  hair,  tears,  and  motley  eyes 
arc  wanting.  The  '  champ  damacien  '  is  '  ager  plasmationis  Ada?,  qui  dicitur  ager 
damascenus,'1  conf.  Fel.  Fabri  Evagator,  2,  341.  [Is  '  du  monde'  the  mistranslation 
of  a  Germ.  '  des  mondes,'  the  moon's  ?  Like  the  sun,  it  bestows  '  beauty,'  and 
that  has  nothing  to  do  with  Christ,  who  is  however  '  the  light  of  the  world.' — Tk.J 


CREATION.  569 

in  keeping  to  explain  the  sun  as  a  giant's  eye,  the  mountains  as 
his  bones,  the  bushes  as  his  hair ;  there  are  plenty  of  legends 
still  that  account  for  particular  lakes  and  marshes  by  the 
gushing  blood  of  a  giant,  for  oddly-shaped  rocks  by  his  ribs 
and  marrow-bones  ;  and  in  a  similar  strain  the  waving  corn  was 
likened  to  the  hair  of  Sif  or  Ceres.  It  is  at  once  felt  to  be  more 
artificial  for  sun  and  mountain  and  tree  to  be  put  into  requisition 
to  produce  the  human  eye  and  bones  and  hair.  Yet  we  do  speak 
of  eyes  being  sunny,  and  of  our  flesh  as  akin  to  dust,  and  why 
may  not  even  the  heathens  have  felt  prompted  to  turn  that  cos- 
mogonic  view  upside  down  ?  Still  more  would  this  commend 
itself  to  Christians,  as  the  Bible  expressly  states  that  man  was 
made  of  earth  or  loam,1  without  enlarging  on  the  formation  of 
the  several  constituent  parts  of  the  body.  None  of  the  Fathers 
seem  to  be  acquainted  with  the  theory  of  the  eight  constituents 
of  the  first  man;  I  will  not  venture  to  decide  whether  it  was 
already  familiar  to  heathen  times,  and  maintained  itself  by  the 
side  of  the  Eddie  doctrine,  or  first  arose  out  of  the  collision  of 
this  with  christian  teaching,  and  is  to  be  regarded  as  a  fuller 
development  of  the  Adamic  dogma.  If  Adam  was  interpreted 
to  mean  clay,  it  was  but  taking  a  step  farther  to  explain,  more 
precisely,  that  the  flesh  only  was  borrowed  from  earth,  but 
the  bones  from  stones,  and  the  hair  from  grass.  It  is  almost 
unscriptural,  the  way  in  which  the  MHG.  poetizer  of  Genesis 
(Fundgr.  2,  15)  launches  out  into  such  minutia;  : — f  Duo  Got 
zeinitzen  stucchen  den  man  zesamene  wolte  rucchen,  duo  nam  er, 
sosich  wane,  einen  leim  zahe  (glutinous  lime),  da  er  wolte  daz 
daz  lit  zesamene  solte  (wished  the  limbs  to  come  together), 
streich  des  unterznisken  (smeared  it  between),  daz  si  zesamene 
mohten  haf ten  (stick),  denselben  letten  (clay)  tot  er  ze  adaren 
(made  into  veins),  uber  ieglich  lit  er  zoch  denselben  leim  zach, 
daz  si  vasto  chlebeten,  zesamene  sich  habeten.  liz  hertem  leime 
(hard  lime)  tet  er  daz  gebeine,  uz  pruder  erde  (crumbly  earth) 
hiez  er  daz  fleisk  werden,  liz  letten  deme  zdlien  machet  er  die 
adare.  duo  er  in  alien  zesamene  gevuocte,  duo  bestreich  er  in 
mit  einer  slute  (bedaubed  him  with  a  slime),  diu  selbe  slote  wart 
ze  dere  hute  (became  the  skin) .     duo  er  daz  pilede  (figure)  erlich 

1  '  Dio  leim\nen,i  the  loamen  folk,  Geo.  3-409,  is  said  of  men,  as  we  say  '  e  luto, 
ex  meliori  luto  licti.' 


570  CEEATION. 

gelegete  fare  sich,  duo  stuont  er  ime  werde  obe  der  selben  erde. 
sinen  geist  er  in  in  blies,  michelen  sin  er  ime  firliez,  die  adare 
alle  wurden  pluotes  folle,  ze  fleiske  wart  diu  erde,  ze  peine  der 
leim  herte,  die  adare  pugen  sich  swa  zesamene  gie  daz  lit  (blew 
bis  spirit  in,  imparted  mickle  sense,  the  veins  filled  with  blood, 

the  earth  became  flesh,   the   hard  lime   bone,    etc.).' These 

distinctions  between  lime,  clay,  earth  and  slime  have  a  tang  of 
heathenism  ;  the  poet  durst  not  entirely  depart  from  the  creation 
as  set  forth  by  the  church,  but  that  compoundiug  of  man  out  of 
several  materials  appears  to  be  still  known  to  him.  And  traces 
of  it  are  met  with  in  the  folk-poetry.1 

It  is  significant  how  Greek  and,  above  all,  Asiatic  myths  of 
the  creation  coincide  with  the  Norse  (and  what  I  believe  to  have 
been  once  the  universal  Teutonic)  view  of  the  world's  origin  out 
of  component  parts  of  the  human  body  :  it  must  therefore  be 
of  remote  antiquity.  The  story  lasts  in  India  to  this  day,  that 
Brahma  was  slain  by  the  other  gods,  and  the  sky  made  out  of  his 
skull :  there  is  some  analogy  to  this  in  the  Greek  notion  of  Atlas 
supporting  on  his  head  the  vault  of  heaven.  According  to  one 
of  the  Orphic  poets,  the  body  of  Zeus  is  understood  to  be  the 
earth,  his  bones  the  mountains^  and  his  eyes  the  sun  and  moon.2 
Cochin-Chinese  traditions  tell,  how  Buddha  made  the  world  out 
of  the  giant  Banio's  body,  of  his  skull  the  sky,  of  his  eyes  the 
sun  and  moon,  of  his  flesh  the  earth,  of  his  bones  rocks  and  hills, 
and  of  his  hair  trees  and  plants.  Similar  macrocosms  are  met 
with  in  Japan  and  Ceylon ;  Kalmuk  poems  describe  how  the 
earth  arose  from  the  metamorphosis  of  a  mountain-giantess,  the 
sea  from  her  blood  (Finn  Magn.  Lex.,  877-8,  and  Suppl.). 

But  Indian  doctrine  itself  inverts  this  macrocosm,  making  the 
sun  enter  into  the  eye,  plants  into  the  hair,  stones  into  the  bones, 
and  water  into  the  blood  of  created  man,  so  that  in  him  the 

1  The  giants  mould  a  man  out  of  clay  (leir),  Sn.  109.  The  Finnish  god  II- 
marinen  hammers  himself  a  wife  out  of  gold,  Rune  20.  Pintosmauto  is  baked  of 
sugar,  spice  and  scented  water,  his  hair  is  made  of  gold  thread,  his  teeth  of  pearls, 
his  eyes  of  sapphires,  and  his  lips  of  rubies,  Pentam.  5,  3.  In  a  Servian  song 
(Vuk  no.  110),  two  sisters  spin  themselves  a  brother  of  red  and  white  silk,  they 
make  him  a  body  of  boxwood,  eyes  of  precious  stones,  eyebrows  of  sea-urchins, 
and  teeth  of  pearls,  then  stuff  sugar  and  honey  into  his  mouth :  '  Now  eat  that, 
and  talk  to  us  (to  nam  yedi,  pa  nam  probesedi) !  '  And  the  myth  of  Pygmalion  is 
founded  on  bringing  a  stone  figure  to  life  (see  Suppl.). 

2  "O/xfiaTa  5'  tj^Xlos  re  ical  dcnowcra  creX^vr].  Euseb.  II/Doira/)acrK.  evayy.  3,  9. 
Lobeck,  De  microc.  et  macroc.  p.  4. 


CREATION.  571 

whole  world  is  mirrored  back.  According  to  a  Chaldean  cos- 
mogony, when  Belus  had  cut  the  darkness  in  twain,  and  divided 
heaven  from  earth,  he  commanded  his  own  head  to  be  struck  off, 
and  the  blood  to  be  let  run  into  the  ground;  out  of  this  arose 
man  gifted  with  reason.  Hesiod's  representation  is,  that  Pandora 
was  formed  by  Hephsestua  out  of  earth  mingled  with  water,  and 
then  Hermes  endowed  her  with  speech,  "TLpya  61-79.  The 
number  of  ingredients  is  first  reduced  to  earth  and  blood  (or 
water),  then  in  the  0.  T.  to  earth  alone. 

And  there  are  yet  other  points  of  agreement  claiming  our 
attention.  As  Ymir  engendered  man  and  wife  out  of  his  hand, 
and  a  giant  son  out  of  his  foot,  we  are  told  by  the  Indian  Manus, 
that  Brahma  produced  four  families  of  men,  namely  from  his 
mouth  the  first  brahman  (priest),  from  his  arm  the  first  kshatriya 
(warrior),  from  his  thigh  the  first  vizh  (trader  and  husbandman),1 
from  his  foot  the  first  sudra  (servant  and  artizan).  And  so,  no 
doubt,  would  the  Eddie  tradition,  were  it  more  fully  preserved, 
make  a  difference  of  rank  exist  between  the  offspring  of  Ymir's 
hand  and  those  of  his  foot ;  a  birth  from  the  foot  must  mean  a 
lower  one.  There  is  even  a  Caribbean  myth  in  which  Luguo, 
the  sky,  descends  to  the  earth,  and  the  first  parents  of  mankind 
come  forth  from  his  navel  and  thigh,  in  which  he  had  made  an 
incision.2  Reading  of  these  miraculous  births,  who  can  help 
thinking  of  Athena  coming  out  of  Zeus's  head  (rpLToyeveia),  and 
Dionysus  out  of  his  thigh  (^ripoppa^s)  ?  As  the  latter  was 
called  SifujTwp  (two-mothered),  so  the  unexplained  fable  of  the 
nine  mothers  of  Heimdallr  (p.  234)  seems  to  rest  on  some 
similar  ground  (see  Suppl.). 

From  these  earlier  creations  of  gods  and  giants  the  Edda  and, 
as  the  sequel  will  shew,  the  Indian  religion  distinguish  the  crea- 
tion of  the  first  human  pair.  As  with  Adam  and  Eve  in  Scrip- 
ture, so  in  the  Edda  there  is  presupposed  some  material  to  be 
quickened  by  God,  but  a  simple,  not  a  composite  one,.  Tre 
means  both  tree  and  wood,  askr  the  ash-tree  (fraxinus) ;  the 
relation  of  Askr  to  the  Isco  of  heroic  legend  has  already  been 
discussed,  p.  350.     If  by  the  side  of  Askr,  the  man,  there  stood 


1  E  femoribus  natus  =  uravya,  urnja,  Bopp's  Gloss.  54*. 

2  Major's  Mythol.  tascbenbucb  '2,  -i. 


572  CREATION. 

an  Eskja,  the  woman,  the  balance  would  be  held  more  evenly ; 
they  would  be  related  as  Meshia  and  Meshiane  in  the  Persian 
myth,  man  and  woman,  who  likewise  grew  out  of  plants.  But 
the  Edda  calls  them  Askr  and  Embla  :  embla,  emla,  signifies  a 
busy  woman,  OHG.  emila,  as  in  fiur-emila  (focaria),  a  Cinderella 
(Graff  1,  252),  from  amr,  ambr,  ami,  ambl  (labor  assiduus), 
whence  also  the  hero's  name  Amala  (p.  370).  As  regards  Askr 
however,  it  seems  worthy  of  notice,  that  legend  makes  the  first 
king  of  the  Saxons,  Aschanes  (Askanius),  grow  up  out  of  the 
Harz  rocks,  by  a  fountain-head  in  the  midst  of  the  forest.  See- 
ing that  the  Saxons  themselves  take  their  name  from  sahs  (saxum, 
stone),  that  a  divine  hero  bears  the  name  of  Sahsnot  (p.  203), 
that  other  traditions  derive  the  word  Gerinani  from  gerniinare, 
because  the  Germans  are  said  to  have  grown  on  trees ; 1  we  have 
here  the  possibility  of  a  complex  chain  of  relationships.  The 
Geogr.  of  Ravenna  says,  the  Saxous  removed  from  their  ancient 
seats  to  Britain  c  cum  principe  suo,  nomine  Anahis.'  This  may 
be  Hengist,  or  still  better  his  son  Oesc,  whom  I  have  identified 
with  Askr.3 

Plainly  there  existed  primitive  legends,  which  made  the  first 
men,  or  the  founders  of  certain  branches  of  the  Teutonic  nation, 
grow  out  of  trees  and  rocks,  that  is  to  say,  which  endeavoured 
to  trace  the  lineage  of  living  beings  to  the  half-alive  kingdom  of 
plants  and  stones.  Even  our  leut  (populus),  OHG.  Hut,  has  for 
its  root  liotan  (crescere,  pullulare),  OS.  liud,  liodan  ;  3  and  the 
sacredness  of  woods  and  mountains  in  our  olden  time  is  height- 
ened by  this  connexion.  And  similar  notions  of  the  Greeks  fit 
in  with  this.  One  who  can  reckon  up  his  ancestors  is  appealed 
to  with  the  argument  (Od.  19,  163)  : 

ov  <yap  cnrb  Spvos  eacn  7ra\aicf)dTov  ouS   tiTro  7rerp?;9  ■ 

for  not  of  fabled  oak  art  thou,  nor  rock;4  and  there  must  have 

1  D.  S.  no.  408.  Aventin  18b  ;  conf.  the  popular  joke,  prob.  ancient,  on  the 
origin  of  Swabians.  Franks  and  Bavarians,  Scbrn.  3,  524. 

2  In  the  Jewish  language,  both  learned  and  vulgar,  Ashlienaz  denotes  Ger- 
many or  a  German.  The  name  occurs  in  Gen.  10,  3  and  Jer.  51,  27  ;  how  early 
its  mistaken  use  began,  is  unknown  even  to  J.  D.  Michaelis  (Spicil.  geogr.  Hebr. 
1,  59) ;  it  must  have  been  by  the  15th  century,  if  not  sooner,  and  the  rabbis  may 
very  likely  have  been  led  to  it  by  hearing  talk  of  a  derivation  of  the  Germans  from 
an  ancestor  Askanius,  or  else  the  Trojan  one. 

3  Populus  however  is  unconn.  with  populus  a  poplar. 

4  Such  an  '  e  quercu  aut  saxo  natus,'  who  cannot  name  his  own  father,  is  vul- 


CEEATION.  573 

been  fairy  tales  about  it,  which  children  told  each  other  in  con- 
fidential chat  (oapi^e/jievac  curb  Spvbs  ?}5'  airb  irerp-q^,  II.  22,  120.1 
aXKa  Ti7)  fMOi  ravra  7repl  Spvv  r)  irepl  -ireTprjv;  Hes.  Theog.  35). 
In  marked  unison  with  the  myth  of  Askr  is  the  statement  of 
Hesiod,  that  Zeus  formed  the  third  or  brazen  race  out  of  ash- 
trees  (e'/c  fieXiav,  Op.  147)  ;  and  if  the  allusion  be  to  the  stout 
ashen  shafts  of  the  heroes,  why,  Isco  or  Askr  may  have  bran- 
dished them  too.  One  remembers  too  those  wood-wives  and  fays, 
who,  like  the  Greek  meliads  and  dryads,  had  their  sole  power  of 
living  bound  up  with  some  particular  oak  or  ash,  and,  unlike  the 
tree-born  man,  had  never  got  wholly  detached  from  the  material 
of  their  origin.  Then,  a  creation  out  of  stones  is  recorded  in 
the  story  of  Deucalion,  whom  after  the  deluge  Hermes  bade 
throw  stones  behind  his  back  :  those  that  he  threw,  all  turned 
into  men,  and  those  that  his  wife  Pyrrha  threw,  into  women.  As 
in  the  Edda,  after  the  great  flood  comes  a  new  creation  ;  only  in 
this  case  the  rescued  people  are  themselves  the  actors.2  Even 
the  Jews  appear  to  have  known  of  a  mythical  creation  out  of 
stones,  for  we  read  in  Matth.  3,  9  :  ore  Svvarac  6  @eo?  e'/c  rwv 
XiOcov  tovt(ov  eyelpai  riicva  ru>  Jiftpadfi  (see  Suppl.). 

The  creation  of  dwarfs  is  described  ambiguously  in  the  Edda  : 
according  to  one  story  they  bred  as  worms  in  the  proto-giant's 
flesh,  and  were  then  endowed  by  the  gods  with  understanding 
and  human  shape ;  but  by  the  older  account  they  were  created 
out  of  the  flesh  and  bones  of  another  giant  Brimir.  All  this  has 
to  do  with  the  black  elves  alone,  and  must  not  be  extended  to 
the  ligfht  ones,  about  whose  origin  we  are  left  in  the  dark.  And 
other  mythologies  are  equally  silent. 

It  is  important  and  interesting  to  get  a  clear  view  of  the  grada- 
tion and  sequence  of  the  several  creations.  That  in  the  Edda 
giants  come  first,  gods  next,  and  then,  after  an  intervening  deluge, 


garly  spoken  of  as  oue '  whose  father  got  drowned  on  the  apple  (or  nut)  tree.'_  Also, 
'  not  to  have  sprung  from  an  oak-stem,'  Etner's  Unw.  doct.  585.  '  Min  gof  ist  au 
nud  abbero  nossbom  aba  choh,'  '  and  my  dad  didn't  come  off  the  nut-tree,'  Tobler 
337b,  who  wrongly  refers  it  to  the  Christmas-tree. 

1  Homer's  phrase  is :  '  chat  from  oak  or  rock,  as  youth  and  maiden  do.'— 
Trans. 

-  As  Deucalion  and  Pyrrha  create  the  race  of  men,  so  (ace.  to  a  myth  in  th< 
Reinhartssage,  whose  source  I  never  could  discover)  do  Adam  and  Eve  create  that 
of  beasts  by  smiting  the  sea  with  rods.  Only,  Adam  makes  the  good  beasts,  Eve 
the  bad  :  so  inParsee  legend  Ormuzd  and  Ahriman  hold  a  creating  match. 


574  CEEATION. 

men  and  dwarfs  are  created,  appears  in  surprising  harmony  with 
a  theological  opinion  largely  adopted  throughout  the  Mid.  Ages, 
according  to  which,  though  the  0.  T.  begins  with  the  work  of 
the  six  days,  yet  the  existence  and  consequently  the  creation  of 
angels  and  the  apostasy  of  devils  had  gone  before,  and  then  were 
produced  heaven  and  earth,  man  and  all  other  creatures.1  After- 
wards, it  is  true,  there  comes  also  a  destructive  flood,  but  does 
not  need  to  be  followed  by  a  new  creation,  for  a  pious  remnant 
of  mankind  is  saved,  which  peoples  the  earth  anew.  The  Muham- 
medan  eblis  (by  aphseresis  from  dieblis,  diabolus)  is  an  apostate 
spirit  indeed,  but  created  after  Adam,  and  expelled  from  Para- 
dise. Our  Teutonic  giants  resemble  at  once  the  rebel  angels 
(devils)  and  the  sinful  men  swept  away  by  the  flood ;  here  deli- 
verance was  in  store  for  a  patriarch,  there  for  a  giant,  who  after 
it  continues  his  race  by  the  side  of  men.  A  narrative  preserved 
in  the  appendix  to  our  Heldenbuch  offers  some  fragments  of 
cosmogony  :  three  creations  follow  one  another,  that  of  dwarfs 
leading  the  way,  after  whom  come  giants,  and  lastly  men ;  God 
has  called  into  being  the  skilful  dwarfs  to  cultivate  waste  lands 
and  mountain  regions,  the  giants  to  fight  wild  beasts,  and  the 
heroes  to  assist  the  dwarfs  against  disloyal  giants ;  this  connexion 
and  mutual  dependence  of  the  races  is  worthy  of  note,  though  on 
the  manner  of  creating  there  is  not  a  word.  Lastly,  the  threefold 
arrangement  of  classes  instituted  by  Heimdallr  3  may,  I  think,  be 
regarded  as  a  later  act  in  the  drama  of  creation,  of  which  perhaps 
a  trace  is  yet  to  be  seen  even  in  modern  traditions  (p.  234)  .3 

Another  thing  I  lay  stress  on  is,  that  in   the  Edda  man  and 
woman  (Askr  and  Embla)  come  into  existence  together,  but  the 


1  Conf.  the  poetical  representations  in  Cadmon  and  Fundgr.  2,  11.  12;  of 
course  they  rest  on  opinions  approved  or  tolerated  by  the  church.  Scripture,  in  its 
account  of  the  creation,  looks  only  to  the  human  race,  leaving  angels  and  giants 
out  of  sight  altogether,  though,  as  the  narrative  goes  on,  they  are  found  existing. 

2  The  Mid.  Ages  trace  the  origin  of  freemen  to  Shem,  that  of  knights  and  serfs 
to  Japhet  and  Ham;  Wackern.  Bas.  MSS.  2,  20. 

3  I  have  since  lighted  on  a  Muhammedan  legend  in  Wolfg.  Menzel's  Mythol. 
forschungen  1,  40  :  Eve  had  so  many  children,  that  she  was  ashamed,  and  once, 
when  surprised  by  God,  she  hid  some  of  them  away.  God  then  called  the  children 
to  him,  and  divided  all  the  goods  and  honours  of  the  earth  among  them.  Those 
that  were  hidden  got  none,  and  from  them  are  descended  beggars  and  fakirs. 
Unfortunately  no  authority  is  given,  but  the  agreement  with  the  German  drama  of 
the  16th  cent,  is  undeniable,  and  makes  me  doubt  the  supposed  connexion  of  the 
latter  with  the  ON.  fable.  That  the  concealed  children  are  nbt  called  up,  is  at 
variance  with  all  German  accounts. 


CREATION.  575 

Bible  makes  two  separate  actions,  Adam's  creation  coming  first, 
and  Eve's  being  performed  afterwards  and  in  a  different  manner.1 
So,  by  Hesiod's  account,  there  already  existed  men  descended 
from  the  gods  themselves,  when  the  first  woman  Pandora,  the  all- 
gifted,  fair  and  false,  was  formed  out  of  earth  and  flood  (p.  571). 
It  is  difficult  to  arrive  at  the  exact  point  of  view  in  the  Hesiodic 
poems.  In  the  Theogony,  there  ascend  out  of  chaos  first  Gaia 
(earth)  the  giantess,  then  Erebus  (corresp.  to  Niflheim)  and 
Night ;  but  Gaia  by  herself  brought  forth  Urauus  (sky)  and  seas 
and  mountains,  then  other  children  by  Uranus,  the  last  of  them 
Kronus  the  father  of  Zeus  and  ancestor  of  all  the  gods.  As 
the  Edda  has  a  Buri  and  Borr  before  Oftinn,  so  do  Uranus  and 
Kronus  here  come  before  Zeus  ;  with  Zeus  and  OSinn  begins  the 
race  of  gods  proper,  and  Poseidon  and  Hades  complete  the  fra- 
ternal trio,  like  Vili  and  Ve.  The  enmity  of  gods  and  titan3  is 
therefore  that  of  ases  and  giants ;  at  the  same  time,  there  is  just 
as  much  resemblance  in  the  expulsion  of  the  titans  from  heaven 
(Theog.  813)  to  the  fall  of  the  rebel  angels  into  the  bottomless 
pit ;  so  that  to  the  giant  element  in  the  titans  we  may  add  a 
deemonic.  When  the  '  Works  and  Days'  makes  the  well-known 
five  races  fill  five  successive  ages,  the  act  of  creation  must  needs 
have  been  repeated  several  times  ;  on  which  point  neither  the 
poem  itself  nor  Plato  (Cratyl.  397-8,  Steph.)  gives  sufficient 
information.  First  came  the  golden  race  of  blissful  daimones, 
next  the  silver  one  of  weaker  divine  beings,  thirdly,  the  brazen 
one  of  warriors  sprung  from  ash-trees,  fourthly,  the  race  of 
heroes,  fifthly,  the  iron  one  of  men  now  living.  The  omission 
of  a  metal  designation  for  the  fourth  race  is  of  itself  enough  to 
make  the  statement  look  imperfect.  Dimmest  of  all  is  the  second 
race,  which  also  Plato  passes  over,  discussing  only  da3mons,  heroes 
and  men  :  will  the  diminutive  stature  of  these  shorter-lived  genii 
warrant  a  comparison  with  the  wights  and  elves  of  our  own 
mythology  ?  In  the  third  race  giants  seem  to  be  portrayed,  or 
fighters  of  the  giant  sort,    confronting  as  they  do  the  rightful 

1  The  rabbinic  myth  supposes  a  first  woman,  Lilith,  made  out  of  the  ground 
like  Adam.  [The  Bible,  wo  know,  has  two  different  accounts  of  man's  creation  : 
the  first  (Elohistic)  in  Gen.  1,  27,  '  male  and  female  created  he  them  ; '  the  second 
(Jehovistic)  in  Gen.  2,  7, '  formed  man  of  the  dust,'  and  in  w.  21.  22,  '  took  one  of 
his  ribs,  .  .  .  and  the  rib  .  .  .  made  he  a  woman'  The  first  account  seems  to 
imply  simultaneous  creations.— Teams.] 


576  CREATION.  . 

heroes  of  the  fourth.  The  latter  we  might  in  Mosaic  language 
call  sons  of  Elohim,  and  the  former  sons  of  men ;  at  the  same 
time,  their  origin  from  the  ash  would  admit  of  their  being  placed 
beside  the  first- created  men  of  the  Edda.  The  agreement  of  the 
myths  would  be  more  striking  if  we  might  bestow  the  name  of 
stone  race  on  the  third,  and  shift  that  of  brazen,  together  with 
the  creation  from  the  ash,  to  the  fourth ;  stones  being  the  natural 
arms  of  giants.  Apollodorus  however  informs  us  it  was  the 
brazen  race  that  Zeus  intended  to  destroy  in  the  great  flood  from 
which  Deucalion  and  Pyrrha  were  saved,  and  this  fits  in  with  the 
Scandinavian  overthrow  of  giants.  The  creation  of  Askr  and 
Etnbla  has  its  parallel  in  the  stone-throwing  of  the  Greek  myth, 
and  the  race  of  heroes  might  also  be  called  stone-created  (see 
Suppl.). 

It  will  be  proper,  before  concluding,  to  cast  a  glance  at  the 
Story  of  the  Deluge  :  its  diffusion  among  the  most  diverse  nations 
of  the  earth  gives  a  valuable  insight  into  the  nature  of  these 
myths.1 

From  the  sons  of  God  having  mingled  with  the  daughters  of 
men  sprang  robbers  and  wrongdoers ;  and  it  repented  Jehovah 
that  he  had  made  man,  and  he  said  he  would  destroy  everything 
on  earth.  But  Noah  found  favour  in  his  eyes,  and  he  bade  him 
build  a  great  ark,  and  enter  therein  with  his  household.  Then 
it  began  to  rain,  until  the  waters  rose  fifteen  cubits  above  the 
highest  mountains,  and  all  that  had  flesh  and  breath  perished, 
but  the  ark  floated  on  the  flood.  Then  Jehovah  stayed  the  rain, 
the  waters  returned  from  off  the  earth,  and  the  ark  rested  on  the 
mountains  of  Ararat.  But  Noah  let  out  first  a  raven,  then  a 
dove,  which  found  no  rest  for  her  foot  and  returned  into  the  ark  ; 
and  after  seven  days  he  again  sent  forth  a  dove,  which  came  back 
with  an  olive  leaf  in  her  mouth ;  and  after  yet  other  seven  days 
he  sent  forth  a  dove,  which  returned  not  any  more.2  Then  Noah 
came  out  on  the  dry  earth,  and  offered  a  clean  burntoffering,  and 


1  Ulph.  renders  Kara/cW/^s  by  midjasveipdins,  sveipan  meaning  no  doubt  the 
same  as  kXij^iv,  to  flush,  rinse,  conf.  AS.  swapan  verrere.  Diluvium  is  in  OHG. 
unmezfluot  or  sinfluot  (like  sinwaki  gurges,  MHG.  sinwsege) ;  not  so  good  is  the 
OHCt.'  and  MHG.  sintvluot,  and  our  siindfluth  (sin-flood)  is  a  blunder. 

2  Sailors  let  birds  fly,  Pliny  6,  22.   Three  ravens  fly  as  guides,  Landnamabok  1,  2. 


DELUGE,    SINFLUT.  577 

Jehovah  made  a  covenant  with  man,  and  set  his  bow  in  the  cloud 
for  a  token  of  the  covenant. 

After  this  beautiful  compact  picture  in  the  O.  T.,  the  Eddie 
narrative  looks  crude  and  unpolished.  Not  from  heaven  does  the 
flood  rain  down,  it  swells  up  from  the  blood  of  the  slain  giant, 
whose  carcase  furnishes  material  for  creating  all  things,  and  the 
human  race  itself.  The  insolence  and  violence  of  the  annihilated 
giants  resemble  those  of  the  sons  of  Elohim  who  had  mingled 
with  the  children  of  men  ;  and  Noah's  box  (kl(3<ot6s)  is  like 
Bergebm's  HtfSr.  But  the  epic  touches,  such  as  the  landing  on 
the  mountain,  the  outflying  dove,  the  sacrifice  and  rainbow,  would 
surely  not  have  been  left  out,  had  there  been  any  borrowing  here. 

In  the  Assyrian  tradition,1  Kronos  warns  Sisuthros  of  the 
coming  downpour,  who  thereupon  builds  a  ship,  and  embarks 
with  men  and  beasts.  Three  days  after  the  rain  has  ceased,  birds 
are  sent  out,  twice  they  come  flying  back,  the  second  time  with 
slime  on  their  feet,  and  the  third  time  they  staid  away.  Sisuthros 
got  out  first  with  his  wife  and  daughter  and  pilot,  they  prayed, 
sacrificed,  and  suddenly  disappeared.  When  the  rest  came  to 
land,  a  voice  sounded  in  the  air,  saying  the  devout  Sisuthros  had 
been  taken  up  to  the  gods ;  but  they  were  left  to  propagate  the 
human  race.  Their  vessel  down  to  recent  times  lay  on  the 
mountains  of  Armenia?  Coins  of  Apamea,  a  city  in  Phrygia, 
show  an  ark  floating  on  the  water,  with  a  man  and  woman  in  it ; 
on  it  sits  a  bird,  another  comes  flying  with  a  twig  iu  its  claws. 
Close  by  stand  the  same  human  pair  on  firm  land,  holding  up 
their  right  hands.  Beside  the  ark  appear  the  letters  Nil  (Noah), 
and  this  Apamea  is  distinguished  by  the  by-name  of  /a/Scoro?.3 

According  to  Greek  legend,  Zeus  had  determined  to  destroy 
mankind;  at  the  prompting  of  Prometheus,  Deucalion  built  an 
ark,  which  received  him  and  Pyrrha  his  wife.  Zeus  then  sent  a 
mighty  rain,  so  that  Hellas  was  flooded,  and  the  people  perished. 
Nine  days  and  nights  Deucalion  floated  on  the  waters,  then  landed 
on  Parnassus,  and  offered  sacrifice  to  Zeus;  we  have  seen  how 
this  couple  created  a  new  generation  by  casting  stones.  Plutarch 
adds,  that  when  Deucalion  let  a  dove  out  of  the  ark,  he  could  tell 

1  Buttmann  On  the  myth  of  the  Deluge,  p.  21. 

Oonf.  the  Annolied  308  seq.,  which  brings  the  Bavarians  from  Armenia. 
3  All  this  in  Buttmann,  pp.  21-27. 


578  CEEATION. 

the  approach,  of  storm  by  her  flying  back,  and  of  fair  weather  by 
her  keeping  away.  Lucian  (De  dea  Syria,  cap.  12.  13)  calls  him 
AevKaktoiva  rov  2fcv0ea  (the  Scythian)  ;  if  that  sprang  out  of 
'XiavOea,1  it  may  have  long  had  this  altered  form  in  the  legend 
itself.  Some  branches  of  the  Greek  race  had  their  own  stories 
of  an  ancient  flood,  of  which  they  called  the  heroes  Ogyges  and 
Ogygos  ;3  but  all  these  accounts  are  wanting  in  epic  details.3 

A  rich  store  of  these  opens  for  us  in  the  Indian  Mahabharata.4 
King  Manus  stood  on  a  river's  bank,  doing  penance,  when  he 
heard  the  voice  of  a  little  fish  imploring  him  to  save  it.  He 
caught  it  in  his  hand  and  laid  it  in  a  vessel,  but  the  fish  began  to 
grow,  and  demanded  wider  quarters.  Manus  threw  it  into  a  large 
lake,  but  the  fish  grew  on,  and  wished  to  be  taken  to  Ganga  the 
bride  of  the  sea.  Before  long  he  had  not  room  to  stir  even  there, 
and  Manus  was  obliged  to  carry  him  to  the  sea ;  but  when 
launched  in  the  sea,  he  foretold  the  coming  of  a  fearful  flood, 
Manus  was  to  build  a  ship  and  go  on  board  it  with  the  seven 
sages,  and  preserve  the  seeds  of  all  things,  then  he  would  shew 
himself  to  them  horned.  Manus  did  as  he  was  commanded,  and 
sailed  in  the  ship  ;  the  monster  fish  appeared,  had  the  ship 
fastened  to  his  horn  by  a  rope,  and  towed  it  through  the  sea  for 
many  years,  till  they  reached  the  summit  of  the  Himavdn,  there 
he  bade  them  moor  the  ship,  and  the  spot  to  which  it  was  tied 
still  bears  the  name  of  Naubandhanam  (ship-binding).  Then 
spake  the  fish  :  I  am  Brahma,  lord  of  created  things,  a  higher 
than  I  there  is  not,  in  the  shape  of  a  fish  have  I  delivered  you ; 

i  CKT9EA  from  CICT9EA  is  Buttmann's  acute  suggestion  ;  but  he  goes 
farther,  taking  this  Sisythes  or  Sisuthros  to  be  Sesothris,  Sothis,  Seth  ;  and  Noah 
to  be  Dionysos,  and  a  symbol  of  water. 

2  Buttm.  p.  45  seq.,  who  connects  it  with  Okeanos  and  Ogenos. 

3  It  is  remarkable,  that  in  a  beautiful  simile,  therefore  without  names  or  places, 
Homer  depicts  a  kind  of  Deluge,  II.  16,  384 : 

ws  5'  iiirb  \ai\airi  wacra  KeXcuvq  fteflpide  x®uv 
■fjfxa.T  owuipivQ),  ore  XaftpoTarov  %^a  iiSwp 
Tievs,  ore  5r}  p    &i>8peacri  Korea (T&fievos  ^aXe^i^r;, 
ot  fiiri  elv  dyopy  <r/co\tas  Kpivuicn  deputTras, 
eK  Se  Siktjv  eXacrwcrt,  6eu>v  6tuv  ovk  oKiyovres. 
fiLVvdei  5i  re  epy  dvdpum(i)i>. 

Even  as  crouches  the  darkening  land,  overcrowed  by  tbe  tempest,  All  on  a  summer's 
day,  when  Jove  doth  the  down-rushing  water  Suddenly  pour,  and  wreak  his  wrath 
on  the  proud  men,  Men  of  might,  who  sit  dealing  a  crooked  doom  in  the  folkmote, 
Forcing  justice  aside,  unheeding  of  gods  and  their  vengeance  ;  (rivers  swell,  etc.) 
and  the  works  of  man  are  all  wasted. 

4  Bopp's  Die  siindflut,  Berl.  1S29. 


DELUGE.  579 

now  shall  Manns  make  all  creatures,  gods,  asuris  and  men,  and 
all  the  worlds,  things  movable  and  immovable.  And  as  he  had 
spoken,  so  it  was  done. 

In  the  Bhagavatam,  Satydvratas  (supra,  p.  249)  takes  the  place 
of  Manus,  Vishnus  that  of  Brahma,  and  the  facts  are  embellished 
with  philosophy. 

The  Indian  myth  then,  like  the  Teutonic,  makes  the  Deluge 
precede  the  real  creation,  whereas  in  the  Mosaic  account  Adam 
lives  long  before  Noah,  and  the  flood  is  not  followed  by  a  new 
creation.  The  seven  rishis  in  the  ship,  as  Bopp  remarks,  are 
of  divine  rather  than  human  nature,  sons  of  Brahma,  and  of  an 
older  birth  than  the  inferior  gods  created  by  Manus  or  their 
enemies  the  asuris  (elsewhere  daityas  and  danavas  =  titans, 
giants).  But  it  is  a  great  point  gained  for  us,  that  Manus  (after 
whom  manushyas,  homo,  is  named)  comes  in  as  a  creator;  so 
that  in  our  German  Mannus  (whence  manna  and  manniskja, 
homo)  we  recognise  precisely  Borr  and  his  creator  sons  (p.  349). 
Askr  and  Embla  are  simply  a  reproduction  of  the  same  idea  of 
creation,  and  on  a  par  with  Deucalion  and  Pyrrha,  or  Adam  and 
Eve. 

I  must  not  pass  over  the  fact,  that  the  first  part  of  the  Indian 
poem,  where  Brahma  as  a  fish  is  caught  by  Manus,  and  then 
reveals  to  him  the  future,  lingers  to  this  day  in  our  nursery  tale 
of  the  small  all-powerful  turbot  or  pike,  who  gradually  elevates 
a  fisherman  from  the  meanest  condition  to  the  highest  rank';  and 
only  plunges  him  back  into  his  pristine  poverty,  when,  urged  by 
the  counsels  of  a  too  ambitious  wife,  he  desires  at  last  to  be 
equal  with  God.  The  bestowal  of  the  successive  dignities  is  in 
a  measure  a  creation  of  the  different  orders.1 

One  more  story  of  the  Deluge,  which  relates  the  origin  of  the 
Lithuanians,  deserves  to  be  introduced.2  When  Pramzimas  the 
most  high  god  looked  out  of  a  window  of  his  heavenly  house 
(like  Wuotan,  p.  135)  over  the  world,  and  perceived  nothing  but 
war  and  wrong  among  men,  he  sent  two  giants  Wandu  and 
Weyas  (water  and  wind)  upon  the  sinful  earth,  who  laid  all 
things  waste  for  twenty  nights  and  days.     Looking  down  once 

1  Conf.  the  capture  of  the  soothsaying  marmennil,  p.  434. 

2  Dzieje  starozytue  narodu  Litewskiego,  przez  Th.  Narbutta.     Wilno  1835. 
1,  2. 


580  CREATION. 

more,  when  he  happened  to  be  eating  celestial  nuts,  Prarnzirnas 
dropt  a  nutshell,  and  it  lighted  on  the  top  of  the  highest  moun- 
tain, to  which  beasts  and  several  human  pairs  had  fled  for  refuge. 
They  all  climbed  into  the  shell,  and  it  drifted  on  the  flood  which 
now  covered  all  things.  But  God  bent  his  countenance  yet  a 
third  time  upon  the  earth,  and  he  laid  the  storm,  and  made  the 
waters  to  abate.  The  men  that  were  saved  dispersed  themselves, 
only  one  pair  remained  in  that  country,  and  from  them  the 
Lithuanians  are  descended.  But  they  were  now  old,  and  they 
grieved,  whereupon  God  sent  them  for  a  comforter  (linxmine) 
the  rainbow,  who  counselled  them  to  leap  over  the  earth's  bones  : 
nine  times  they  leapt,  and  nine  couples  sprang  up,  founders  of 
the  nine  tribes  of  Lithuania.  This  incident  reminds  us  of  the 
origin  of  men  from  the  stones  cast  by  Deucalion  and  Pyrrha ;  and 
the  rainbow,  of  the  Bible  account,  except  that  here  it  is  intro- 
duced as  a  person,  instructing  the  couple  what  to  do,  as  Hermes 
(the  divine  messenger)  did  Deucalion.  It  were  overbold  perhaps 
to  connect  the  nutshell  with  that  nut-tree  (p.  572-3),  by  which 
one  vao-uely  expresses  an  unknown  extraction. 

Not  all,  even  of  the  stories  quoted,  describe  a  universal  deluge 
desolating  the  whole  earth  :  that  in  which  Deucalion  was  rescued 
affected  Greece  alone,  and  of  such  accounts  of  partial  floods 
there  are  plenty.  Philemon  and  Baucis  in  Phrygia  (where  Noah's 
ark  rested,  p.  577),  had  given  shelter  to  the  wayfaring  gods,  and 
beino-  warned  by  them,  fled  up  the  mountain,  and  saw  themselves 
saved  when  the  flood  rose  over  the  land  (Ovid.  Met.  8,  620)  ; 
they  were  changed  into  trees,  as  Askr  and  Embla  were  trees. 
A  Welsh  folktale  says,  that  in  Brecknockshire,  where  a  large 
lake  now  lies,  there  once  stood  a  great  city.  The  king  sent  his 
messeno-er  to  the  sinful  inhabitants,  to  prove  them;  they  heeded 
not  his  words,  and  refused  him  a  lodging.  He  stept  into  a 
miserable  hut,  in  which  there  only  lay  a  child  crying  in  its  cradle 
(conf.  ludara,  p.  559  n.) ;  there  he  passed  the  night,  and  in  going 
away,  dropt  one  of  his  gloves  in  the  cradle.  He  had  not  left  the 
city  long,  when  he  heard  a  noise  and  lamentation ;  he  thought  of 
turning  back  to  look  for  his  glove,  but  the  town  was  no  longer  to 
be  seen,  the  waters  covered  the  whole  plain,  but  lo,  in  the  midst 
of  the  waves  a  cradle  came  floating,  in  which  there  lay  both  child 
and  glove.     This  child  he  took  to  the  king,  who  had  it  reared  as 


DELUGE.  581 

the  sole  survivor  of  the  sunken  city.1  Conf.  the  story  of  Bold  at 
the  end  of  Ch.  XXXII.  Another  and  older  narrative,  found  even 
in  the  British  Triads,  comes  much  nearer  to  those  given  above  : 
AVhen  the  lake  of  Llion  overflowed  and  submerged  all  Britain, 
the  people  were  all  drowned  save  Bivyvan  and  Dwyvach,  who 
escaped  in  a  naked  (sailless)  ship,  and  afterwards  repeopled  the 
land.  This  ship  is  also  named  that  of  Nevydd  nav  neivion,  and 
had  on  board  a  male  and  female  of  every  creature  ;  again  it  is 
told,  that  the  oxen  of  Hu  Gadarn  dragged  the  avanc  (beaver) 
ashore  out  of  the  Llion  lake,  and  it  has  never  broken  out  since.3 

Of  still  narrower  limits  are  our  German  tales,  as  that  of  the 
dwarf  seeking  a  lodging  at  Kalligen  on  L.  Thun  (no.  45),  which 
is  very  like  the  Philemon-myth;  of  Arendsee  (no.  Ill),  where 
again  only  a  husband  and  wife  are  saved;  of  Seeburg  (no.  131) ; 
and  Frauensee  (no.  239).  A  Danish  folktale  is  given  by  Thiele 
1,  227.  Fresh  and  graceful  touches  abound  in  the  Servian  lay  of 
the  three  angels  sent  by  God  to  the  sinful  world,  and  the  origin 
of  the  Plattensee  or  Balatino  yezero,  Vuk  4,  8-13  (2nd  ed.  1, 
no.  207).3 

There  is  above  all  a  dash  of  German  heathenism  about  the 
lakes  and  pools  said  to  have  been  formed  by  the  streaming  blood 
of  giants  (Deut.  sag.  no.  325),  as  the  destructive  Deluge  arose 
from  Ymir's  blood. 

It  appears  to  me  impossible  to  refer  the  whole  mass  of  these 
tales  about  the  great  Flood  and  the  Creation  of  the  human  species 
to  the  Mosaic  record,  as  if  they  were  mere  perversions  and  dis- 
tortions of  it ;  the  additions,  omissions  and  discrepancies  peculiar 
to  almost  every  one  of  them  are  sufficient  to  forbid  that.  And 
I  have  not  by  a  long  way  exhausted  this  cycle  of  legends  (see 
Suppl.)  :  in  islands  of  the  Eastern  Archipelago,  in  Tonga  and 
New  Zealand,  among  Mexicans  and  Caribs  there  start  up  ac- 
counts, astonishingly  similar  and  yet  different,  of  creation  and 
the  first  human  pair,  of  a  flood  and  deliverance,  and  the  murder 
of  a  brother.4 

1  Edw.  Davies's  Brit.  Mythol.  146-7. 

2  Ibid.  95.  129.     Villemarque,  Contes  bretons  2,  291.     Mabinogion  2,  311.  381. 

3  Solo  example  of  a  Deluge- story  among  Slavs,  by  whom  cosmogonic  ideas  in 
general  seem  not  to  have  been  handed  down  at  all. 

'  W.  von  Humboldt's  Kawisprache  1,  210.    3,  419.     Major's  Mythol.  taschenb. 
2,  5.  131. 


CHAPTER  XX. 
ELEMENTS. 

From  gods,  half-gods  and  heroes,  from  the  whole  array  of 
friendly  or  hostile  beings  that,  superior  to  man  in  mind  or 
body,  fill  up  a  middle  space  betwixt  him  and  deity,  we  turn  our 
glance  to  simple  phenomena  of  nature,  which  at  all  times  in  their 
silent  greatness  wield  an  immediate  power  over  the  human 
mind.  These  all-penetrating,  all-absorbing  primitive  substances, 
which  precede  the  creation  of  all  other  things  and  meet  us  again 
everywhere,  must  be  sacred  in  themselves,  even  without  being 
brought  into  closer  relation  to  divine  beings.  Such  relation  is 
not  absent  in  any  mythology,  but  it  need  not  stand  in  the  way 
of  the  elements  receiving  a  homage  to  some  extent  independent 
of  it  and  peculiar  to  themselves. 

On  the  other  hand,  it  is  not  the  religion,  properly  speaking,  of 
a  nation,  that  ever  springs  from  the  soil  of  this  elemental  worship  ; 
the  faith  itself  originates  in  a  mysterious  store  of  supersensual 
ideas,  that  has  nothing  in  common  with  those  substances,  but 
subjugates  them  to  itself.  Yet  faith  will  tolerate  in  its  train 
a  veneration  of  elements,  and  mix  it  up  with  itself ;  and  it  may 
even  chance,  that  when  faith  has  perished  or  is  corrupted,  this 
veneration  shall  keep  its  hold  of  the  people  longer.  The  multi- 
tude will  give  up  its  great  divinities,  yet  persist  for  a  time  in  the 
more  private  worship  of  household  gods;  even  these  it  will 
renounce,  and  retain  its  reverence  for  elements.  The  history  of 
the  heathen  and  christian  religions  shews,  that  long  after  the  one 
was  fallen  and  the  other  established,  there  lived  on,  nay  there 
live  still,  a  number  of  superstitious  customs  connected  with  the 
worship  of  elements.  It  is  the  last,  the  all  but  indestructible 
remnant  of  heathenism  ;  when  gods  collapse,  these  naked  sub- 
stances come  to  the  front  again,  with  which  the  being  of  those 
had  mysteriously  linked  itself  (see  Suppl.). 

To  this  effect  I  have  already  expressed  myself  (pp.  82-84)  in 

582 


WATEE.  5S3 

speaking  of  a  worship  of  nature  by  our  ancestors,  which  is  indeed 
supported  by  early  testimonies,  but  these  are  often  perverted 
into  an  argument  against  the  heathen  having  had  any  gods. 
The  gods  stood  and  fell  from  other  causes. 

Water  the  limpid,  flowing,  welling  up  or  running  dry;  Fire 
the  illuminating,  kindled  or  quenched ;  Air  uuseen  by  the  eye, 
but  sensible  to  ear  and  touch ;  Earth  the  nourishing,  out  of 
which  everything  grows,  and  into  which  all  that  has  grown  dis- 
solves;— these,  to  mankind  from  the  earliest  time,  have  appeared 
sacred  and  venerable ;  ceremonies,  transactions  and  events  in 
life  first  receive  their  solemn  consecration  from  them.  Working 
as  they  do  with  never-resting  activity  and  force  on  the  whole  of 
nature,  the  childlike  man  bestows  on  them  his  veneration,  without 
any  particular  god  necessarily  intervening,  though  he  too  will 
commonly  appear  in  combination  with  it.  Even  to-day  the 
majesty  and  might  of  these  eldest  born  of  things  awakes  our 
admiration ;  how  could  antiquity  have  forborne  its  astonishment 
and  adoration  ?  Such  a  worship  is  simpler,  freer  and  more  dig- 
nified than  a  senseless  crouching  before  pictures  and  idols. 

All  the  elements  are  cleansing,  healing,  atoning,  and  the  proof 
by  ordeal  rests  mainly  upon  them  ;  but  man  had  to  secure  them 
in  their  purest  form  and  at  the  most  seasonable  times. 

We  will  consider  them  one  by  one. 

1.  Water.1 

Passages  proving  that  the  Alamanns  and  Franks  worshipped 
rivers  and  fountains  are  cited  at  pp.  100-1  and  in  the  Appendix.2 

1  Goth,  vato,  ON.  vatn,  OHG.  icazar,  OS.  icatar,  AS.  wceter,  Dan.  vand,  Slav. 
vodd,  Lith.  wandu,  Lett,  uhdens,  Gr.  i)Swp;  then,  corresp.  inform  to  Lat.  aqua,  but 
meaning  fluvius,  Goth,  ahva,  OHG.  aha,  AS.  ed,  ON.  a ;  the  Goth,  vegs,  OHG. 
wdc  waKres  =  fluctus,  flow. 

2  When  here  and  elsewhere  I  use  Bp.  Burchard's  Coll.  of  Decrees  as  authority 
for  German  superstitions,  I  do  not  forget  that  in  most  cases  (not  all)  it  is  drawn 
from  councils  not  held  in  Germany,  but  in  Gaul,  Italy  or  Spain.  Yet,  if  we  con- 
sider that  German  nations  had  been  spreading  themselves  all  over  those  countries 
down  to  the  8-9th  cent.,  that  the  AS.  and  Lombard  Laws,  to  say  nothing  of 
Capitularies,  declaim  equally  with  those  Decrees  of  Council  against  water,  tree  and 
stone  worship,  that  Agathias  and  Gregory  of  Tours  expressly  charge  the  Alamanns 
and  Franks  with  such  worship  ;  these  superstitions  are  seen  to  be  something  com- 
mon to  the  Italian,  Gallic  and  German  nationalities,  of  which  none  of  them  can  be 
acquitted.  Some  have  tried  to  make  out  from  Agathias,  that  our  forefathers  had 
a  mere  nature-worship,  and  no  gods.  It  would  be  about  as  uncritical  to  do  what 
is  to  some  extent  the  reverse,  and  suspect  Agathias  and  Gregory  of  having  adopted 
their  assertions  out  of  church-prohibitions  that  were  never  meant  for  Germany  at 

VOL.    II.  L 


584  ELEMENTS. 

The  people  prayed  on  the  river's  bank ;  at  the  fountain's  brink 
they  lighted  candles  and  laid  down  sacrificial  gifts.  It  is  called 
'fontibus  venerationem  exhibere,  ad  fontanas  adorare  (conf.  Legg. 
Liutpr.  6,  30),  ad  fontes  votum  facere,  reddere,  exsolvere,  ox-are 
ad  fontes,  offerre  ad  fontes,  munus  deferre,  ad  fontes  lumiuaria 
facere,  candelam  deferre.'  This  last  no  doubt  was  done  only  or 
chiefly  at  night,  when  the  flame  reflected  from  the  wave  would 
excite  a  religious  awe.1  The  Saxons  also  were  fonticolae  :  wyllas 
and  flotwceter  are  named  in  the  AS.  laws  as  objects  of  rever- 
ence. Beside  the  passage  from  Cnut  (p.  102),  the  Poenitentiale 
Ecgberti  says  2,  22  :  '  gif  hwilc  man  his  eelinessan  gehate  oSSe 
bringe  to  hwilcon  wylle';  4,  19  :  '  gif  hwa  his  wseccan  set  senigum 
wylle  hsebbe  (vigilias  suas  ad  aliquem  fontem  habeat) ' ;  the 
Canones  Edgari  §  16  forbid  wilweor&wnga  (well-worship).  I  am 
not  sure  that  a  formal  worship  of  water  in  Scandinavia  is  implied 
in  the  saga  quoted  above  (p.  102),  where  votn  is  mentioned; 
but  that  water  was  held  sacred  is  a  thing  not  to  be  doubted. 
A  lay  in  the  Edda  has  near  the  beginning  the  remarkable  words  : 
'  hnigo  heilog  votn  af  himinfiollom/  fell  holy  waters  from  heaven's 
hills.  The  Sclaveni  as  early  as  Procopius  (B.  Goth.  3,  14) 
(reftov<TL  7roTajjLOv<;  (worship  rivers)  ;  and  as  late  as  Helmold 
(1,  47)  it  is  said  of  the  Slavs  at  Faldera  :  lucorum  et  fontium 
ceterarumque  superstitionum  multiplex  error  apud  eos  habetur 
(see  Suppl.). 

Above  all  was  the  place  honoured,  where  the  wondrous  element 
leaps  up  from  the  lap  of  earth  ;  a  spring  is  in  our  older  speech 
urspriuc  (-ges),  and  also  prunno? 

Often  enough  the  first  appearing  of  a  spring  is  ascribed  to 
divine  agency  or  a  miracle  :  Wuotan,  Balder,  Charles  the  Great, 
each  made  the  reviving  fountain  flow  out  of  earth  for  his  fainting 
host  (p.  226).  Other  springs  are  charmed  out  of  the  rock  when 
struck  by  a  staff  or  a  horse's  hoof ; 3  a  saint  plants  a  bough  in 

all.  Into  secular  codes  such  prohibitions  seem  to  have  found  their  way  first 
through  the  Capitularies  ;  the  older  codes  had  no  penalties  for  idolatry,  only  the 
AS.  domas  of  Wihtroed  cap.  13  impose  them  on  deofolgild  in  general. 

1  At  Christmas  people  look  into  their  wells  with  candles. 

2  From  prinnan  (ardere),  as  sot,  another  word  for  well,  comes  from  siodan 
(fervere),  welle  (liuctus)  from  wallan  (fervere),  sual  (subfrigidus)  from  suelan  (ardere), 
conf.  Gramm.  2,  29.  34 ;  sprudeln  to  bubble  up  is  from  spruhen  to  fly  off  as  sparks 
do.     In  such  words  fire  and  water  get  wedded  together. 

3  The  Heliconian  horse-fount  {i-mroKpTjvr])  was  struck  open  by  Pegasus  :  '  novi 


WATER.      HEILAWAC.  585 

the  ground,  and  water  bubbles  up.  But  there  are  two  theories 
even  more  generally  received  :  that  the  water  of  sacred  brooks 
and  rivers  is  in  the  first  instance  poured  by  gods  and  superior 
beings  out  of  bowls  or  urns;  and  that  springs  and  wells  are 
guarded  by  snakes  or  dragons  lying  near  them  (see  Suppl.). 

Water  drawn  at  a  holy  season,  at  midnight,  before  sunrise, 
and  in  solemn  silence,  bore  till  a  recent  time  the  name  of  heilawdc, 
lieilwdc,  heilwcege.  The  first  form,  retaining  the  connecting 
vowel  after  a  long  syllable,  proves  the  antiquity  of  the  word, 
whose  sacred  meaning  secured  it  against  change.  MS.  2,  149b  : 
'  man  seit  (saith)  von  heilawdge  uns  vil,  wie  heil,  wie  guot  ez  si, 
wie  gar  vollekomen  der  eren  spil,  wie  gar  sin  kraft  verheilet  swaz 
wundes  an  dem  man  verseret  ist/  how  good  for  healing  wounds, 
etc.  Martina  116:  'Got,  du  froude  fliizzic  heilawdc,'  and  in  a 
like  sense  248.  283.  Applied  to  Christ  and  his  cross,  Mar.  224  : 
'der  boum  ist  gemeizzen,  da  daz  heilwcege  von  bechumet,  daz  aller 
werlte  gefrumet/  the  tree  whence  cometh  h.  And  more  gener- 
ally, '  ein  heilwdge,'  Diut.  1,  352 ;  much  later,  in  Anshelm's 
Chron.  of  Bern  1,  308,  '  heilwag '  among  other  charms  and  magic 
appliances.  Lastly,  in  Phil,  von  Sittewald  (Strasb.  1677)  1, 
483 :  '  running  spring-water,  gathered  on  holy  Christmas  night, 
while  the  clock  strikes  twelve,  and  named  heilwag,  is  good  for 
pain  of  the  navel/  Superst.  804.  In  this  heilawac  we  discover 
a  very  early  mingling  of  heathen  customs  with  christian.  The 
common  people  believe  to  this  very  day,  that  at  12,  or  between 
11  and  12,  on  Christmas  or  Easter  night,  spring-water  changes 
into  wine  (Superst.  54.  792),1  Wieselgren  p.  412 ;  and  this  belief 
rests  on  the  supposition  that  the  first  manifestation  of  the 
Saviour's  divinity  took  place  at  the  marriage  in  Cana,  where  he 
turned  water  into  wine.  Now  at  Christmas  they  celebrated  both 
his  birth  (epiphany,  theophany,  p.  281)  and  his  baptism,  and 
combined  with  these  the  memory  of  that  miracle,  to  which  was 


fontit  Dura  medusrci  quem  pnepetis  ungula  rupit,'  Ov.  Met.  5,  257  seq.  So  the 
vein  of  gold  in  a  hill  is  laid  open  by  a  blow  from  a  hoof.  Ithea  opens  a  spring  in 
Arcadia  with  her  staff  : 

dvravvaaaa  6ea  fiiyav  vipbOi  7T?5x1"' 
ck  5'  ^xeev  V-tya-  Xtuf*0-     Callimach.  hy.  Jov.  28. 
1  /dm  ehen  eines  weibes  (her  ten  marriages),  Leipz.  1735,  p.  235. 


586  ELEMENTS. 

given  a  special  name,  bethphania.1  As  far  back  as  387,  Chry- 
sostom  preaching  an  Epiphany  sermon  at  Antioch  says  that 
people  at  that  festival  drew  running  water  at  midnight,  and  kept 
it  a  whole  year,  and  often  two  or  three  (no  doubt  for  thaumaturgic 
uses),  and  it  remained  fresh  and  uncorrupted.2  Superstitious 
Christians  then  believed  two  things,  a  hallowing  of  the  water  at 
midnight  of  the  day  of  baptism,  and  a  turning  of  it  into  wine 
at  the  time  of  the  bethphania :  such  water  the  Germans  called 
heilawdc,3,  and  ascribed  to  it  a  wonderful  power  of  healing  diseases 
and  wounds,  and  of  never  spoiling  (see  Suppl.). 

Possibly  even  in  Syria  an  old  pagan  drawing  of  water  became 
veiled  under  new  christian  meanings.  In  Germany  other  cir- 
cumstances point  undisguisedly  to  a  heathen  consecration  of 
water :  it  was  not  to  be  drawn  at  midnight,  but  in  the  morn- 
ing before  sunrise,  down  stream  and  silently  (Superst.  89.  775), 
usually  on  Easter  Sunday  (775-6)  to  which  the  above  explana- 
tions do  not  so  well  apply ;  this  water  does  not  spoil,  it  restores 
youth,  heals  eruptions,  and  makes  the  young  cattle  strong.4 
Magic  water,  serving  for  unchristian  divination,  is  to  be  collected 
before  sunrise  on  a  Sunday  in  one  glass  from  three  flowing  springs  ; 
and  a  taper  is  lighted  before  the  glass,  as  before  a  divine  being 
(Superst.  H.  c.  55-57) .5     Here  I  bring  in  once  again  the  Hessian 

i  The  first  manifestation  of  Christ  was  his  birth,  the  second  his  baptism 
(Candlemas),  the  third  the  marriage  in  Cana :  'Tertia  apparitio  fuit  postea  similiter 
eodem  die  anno  revoluto,  cum  esset  30  annorum  et  13  dierum,  sive  quando 
manifestavit  se  esse  Deum  per  mutationem  aquae  in  vinum,  quod  fuit  primum 
miraculum  apertum,  quod  Dominus  fecit  in  Cana  Galilaeae,  vel  simpliciter  primum 
quod  fecit.  Et  haec  apparitio  dicitur  bethphania  a  jBtitw,  quod  est  domus,  et  (pdveiv, 
quod  est  apparitio,  quia  ista  apparitio  facta  fuit  in  dorno  in  nuptiis.  De  his  tribus 
apparitionibus  fit  solemnitas  in  hac  die.'  Durantis  Eation.  div.  offic.  6,  16.  The 
church  consolidated  the  three  manifestations  into  one  festival. 

2  Tom.  2  (ed.  Montfauc,  Paris  1718),  p.  369  :  Bid  tol  tovto  /cat  fieaovvKTiix)  Kara. 
tt\v  eopTr/v  rai/TTju  aVarres  vdpeuadfJ.ei'oi  ot/ca5e  rd  ra/xara  aTroridevTai,  /cat  els  iviavTOV 
6\oK\r]pov  (pv\d.TTOVffi,  are  5tj  crip.epov  dyiaade'i'Twv  t&v  vbdroiv  /cat  to  arjp.eiov  -yt'eerat 
ivapyes,  ov  bt.atpdeipop.i'vTis  ttjs  twi>  vo&twv  ineivuiv  <pvcreus  rw  ,1177/cet  rod  xpopoi',  <*A\ 
eis  iviavrbv  6\6i<\r)pov  /cat  8vu)  /cat  rpia  fry)  rod  a-qp.epov  avrXTjde'vTos  aKepalov  ko.1 
veapov  p.e'vovTOS,  /cat  /xerd  touovtov  XP°V0V  to's  &pTi  tu>v  irTjywv  e^apTraadelcnv  vdaaiv 
d/xtXAa/jU^ou. 

3  And  abo  heilaivm  ?  Frauenlob  MS.  2,  213b  on  the  '  garden  that  bear8 
heilwin:     Altd.  bl.  2,  294. 

4  Jul.  Schmidt's  Eeichenf.  p.  121.  At  Cassel  I  have  heard  bathing  in  the 
'  drusel '  water  commended  as  wholesome,  but  you  must  draw  with  the  current,  not 
against.     Probably  the  right  time  for  it  is  Walburgis  or  Midsummer. 

5  The  rite,  like  others  cited  by  Hartlieb  (who  wrote  in  1455),  may  be  of  classic 
origin.  In  yaarpop-avTeia,  i.e.  divining  by  a  bellied  jar  (yda-rp-r])  filled  with  water, 
there  also  occurs  the  torch  and  the  innocent  boy  (Hartl.'s  '  ain  rain  kind ').  Potter*s 
Antiq.,  1,  764.     Fabricii  Bibliogr.  antiq.,  ed.  3,  p.  600. 


WATER.      HEILAWAC.  587 

custom  mentioned  at  p.  58  :  on  Easter  Monday  youths  and 
maidens  walk  to  the  Hollow  Rock  in  the  mountains,  draw  water 
from  the  cool  spring  in  jugs  to  carry  home,  and  throw  flowers  in 
as  an  offering.  Apparently  this  water- worship  was  Celtic  like- 
wise; the  water  of  the  rock-spring  Karnant  makes  a  broken 
sword  whole  again,  but 

du  muost  des  urspringes  han 

underm  velse,  e  in  beschin  der  tac  (ere  day  beshine  it) . 

Parz.  254,  6.  Tit.  5456.  5732.1  Curious  customs  shew  us  in 
what  manner  young  girls  in  the  Pyrenees  country  tell  their  own 
fortunes  in  spring  ivater  on  May-day  morning. 

We  need  not  suppose  that  the  peculiar  properties  of  medicinal 
springs  are  the  point  here ;  no,  it  is  the  normal  efficacy  of  the 
refreshing,  strengthening,  re-animating  element.3  Many  places 
in  Germany  are  called  Heilbrunn,  Heilborn,  Heiligenbrunn,  from 
the  renewing  effect  of  their  springs,  or  the  wonderful  cures  that 
have  taken  place  at  them.  Heilbronn  on  the  Neckar  is  called 
Heilacprunno  in  the  oldest  documents.3  But  certain  springs  and 
wells  may  have  stood  in  especial  repute.  Of  high  renown  are 
the  ON.  Mimisbmnnr  and  Urffarbrnnnr  (p.  407),  which  Sn.  17 
calls  '  brunnr  mioc  heilagr.'  A  Danish  folksong  (1,318)  tells  of  a 
Maribohilde,  by  whose  clear  waters  a  body  hewn  in  pieces  is  put  to- 
gether again.  Swedish  lays  celebrate  Ingemos  kiilla  (Vis.  1, 244-5). 
We  remember  that  old  Frisian  fount  of  Forseti,  'whence  none 
drew  water  save  in  silence,'  pp.  229,  230  (see  Suppl.).  Sacrifices 
were  offered  at  such  springs.  Of  the  salutary  effect  of  hot  and 
dud i/beate  springs  people  must  have  been  aware  from  immemorial 
time,  witness  the  Aquae  Mattiacae  in  the  Roman  time  and  those 


i  The  hardening  and  repair  in  ft  of  swords  in  vater  (sverS  hei"5a,  Srem.  136*) 
was  certainly  believed  in  by  the  Germans  too.  The  Vilkinasaga,  cap.  40  p.  100, 
savs:  when  dwarf  Alberich  had  fashioned  Nailring,  he  searched  nine  kingdoms 
before  he  found  the  water  in  which  the  sword  could  be  tempered ;  at  last  he  arrived 
at  the  water  Treya,  and  there  it  was  tempered.  Our  Eckenlied,  str.  81,  agrees  with 
this,  but  is  still  more  precise:  '  dannoch  was  ez  niht  vollebraht,  do  fuorten'z  zwei 
wildiu  getwerc  wol  durch  niun  kiinecrlche,  biz  daz  si  kamen  zuo  der  Drdl,  din  dS 
7.v  Troige  rinnet,  daz  swert  daz  was  so  liehtgemal:  si  harten'z  in  der  Drdle,  des 
wart  ez  als6  fin  '  (dwarfs  bring  it  to  the  Dral,  that  runs  by  Troige,  etc.).  Who  can 
doubt  any  Longer  of  real  German  lays  forming  the  groundwork  of  the  Vilk.  saga? 

2  A  man  bitten  by  an  adder  will  not  die,  if  he  can  leap  over  the  nearest  water 
before  the  adder  does  so.     Lcnz's  Schlangenkuntle,  p.  208. 

3  B5hmer'B  Reg.  Karolor.  nr.  740  (an.  841);  Ecc.  Fr.  orient.  2,  893;  'der 
Keeker  vliuzet  fiir  Heilicbrunnen  (flows  past  Holy-wellj,'  MS.  2,  68b. 


588  ELEMENTS. 

1  aquae  calidae'  near  Luxeuil  (p.  83).  When  the  Wetterau 
people  begin  a  new  jug  of  chalybeate,  they  always  spill  the  first 
drop  or  two  on  the  ground,  they  say  '  to  clear  the  dust  away/ 
for  the  jugs  stand  open,  but  it  may  have  been  once  a  libation  to 
the  fountain-sprite.1  Not  only  medicinal,  but  salt  springs  were 
esteemed  holy :  ancient  accounts  of  these  will  be  presented  in  a 
later  chapter.  The  Mid.  Ages  cherished  the  notion  of  a  jung- 
brunnen  : 2  whoever  bathes  in  it  is  both  cured  of  diseases  and 
guarded  from  them  ;  in  it  Rauchels  shed  her  shaggy  skin,  and 
became  the  beauteous  Sigeminne  (p.  433-4) ;  such  a  spring  has 
sometimes  the  power  even  to  change  the  bather's  sex  (see 
Suppl.).3 

In  a  spring  near  Nogent  men  and  women  bathed  on  St. 
John's  eve  (Superst.  L.  33);  Holberg's  comedy  of  Kilde-reisen 
is  founded  on  the  Copenhagen  people's  practice  of  pilgriming  to 
a  neighbouring  spring  on  8.  Hans  often,  to  heal  and  invigorate 
themselves  in  its  waters.  On  Midsummer  eve  the  people  of 
Ostergotland  journeyed  according  to  ancient  custom  to  Lagman's 
bergekiilla  near  Skeninge,  and  drank  of  the  well  (Broocman  1, 
187.    2,  676).     In  many  parts  of  Germany  some  clear  fountain  is 


1  Where  the  Heathens  ascribed  the  miraculous  power  of  a  spring  to  their  wood 
or  water  sprites,  the  Christians  afterwards  transferred  it  to  their  saints.  I  take  an 
instance  from  the  Miracula  S.  Agili,  written  in  the  12th  century:  Marvellous  cures 
were  wrought  at  the  brook  of  St.  Aailus.  Sed  interim  quorundarn  vesaniae  occur- 
rere  libet,  qui  in  digito  Dei  nequaquam  haec  fieri  aestimantes,  daemoniacae,  pro 
nefas,  attribuunt  potestati.  Cumque  miracula  diffiteri  nequeunt,  id  solum  in 
causam  calumniae  adsumunt,  quod  in  agresti  fiunt  loco,  ubi  nullus  Dei  cultus,  ubi 
nullae  sanctorum  memoriae.  0  prudentiam !  verentur  homines  sublimi  ingenio, 
ne  ad  ludibrium  mortalium  afaunis,  nymphis  vel  satyris,  ceterisve  rim's  numinibus, 
res  geratur  ejusmodi.  Nam  ut  de  fabulis  taceam,  apud  quos  historiographorum 
veterum  seu  modernorum  legitur  daemones  visum  coecis,  mentem  amentibus, 
manus  debilibus,  gressum  claudicantibus  restaurasse?  (Acta  Bened.  sec.  2,  p.  333.) 
Tbe  Swedish  people  ascribe  the  healing  power  of  some  springs  to  white  snakes.  In 
1809  there  flocked  thousands  from  Halland  and  Vestergotland  to  the  wonder-work- 
ing Helsjo,  a  small  lake  near  Eampegarde ;  they  said,  some  children  tending  cattle 
on  the  shore  had  often  during  the  year  seen  a  beautiful  maiden  sit  on  the  bank, 
holding  a  snake  in  her  hand  and  shewing  it  to  them.  It  is  only  every  hundredth 
year  that  tbis  water-maiden  with  the  snake  appears  (Bexell's  Halland  2,  320 ;  3, 
303).  Multitudes  from  Norway  and  Halland  visited  a  spring  named  S.  Olafskialla, 
dropt  money-offerings  in,  and  carried  on  other  superstition  (Odman's  Bahuslan  p. 
169).  In  christian  times  healing  fountains  are  believed  to  spring  up  near  the 
tombs  of  holy  men,  Bex.  Hall.  3,  69  ;  or  from  under  a  saint's  body,  Flodoard.  re- 
mens.  2,  3.  I  think  it  is  with  the  hot  baths  at  Aix  that  we  must  connect  the  ivater- 
maiden  with  whose  myth  Charles  the  Great  is  mixed  up,  p.  435. 

2  Synonymously  the  OHG.  quecprunno,  MHG.  quecprunne,  Parz.  613,  9. 
Fragm.  18,  267. 

3  Conf.  the  passages  quoted  in  Mus.  fur  altd.  lit.  1,  260-3  from  Montevilla,, 
from  the  Titurel  and  from  H.  Sachs. 


WATER.      HEILAWAC.  589 

visited  at  Whitsuntide,  and  the  water  drunk  in  jugs  of  a  peculiar 
shape.  Still  more  important  is  Petrarch's  description  of  the 
annual  bathing  of  the  women  of  Cologne  in  the  Rhine  :  it  de- 
serves to  be  quoted  in  full,1  because  it  plainly  proves  that  the 
cult  prevailed  not  merely  at  here  and  there  a  spring,  but  in 
Germany's  greatest  river.  From  the  Italian's  unacquaintance 
with  the  rite,  one  might  infer  that  it  was  foreign  to  the  country 
whence  all  church  ceremonies  proceeded,  and  therefore  altogether 
unchristian  and  heathenish.  But  Petrarch  may  not  have  had 
a  minute  knowledge  of  all  the  customs  of  his  country;  after  his 
time  at  all  events  we  find  even  there  a  lustration  on  St.  John's 
day  [described  as  an  ancient  custom  then  dying  out] .  Benedict 
de  Falco's  Descrizione  de  luoghi  antiqui  di  Napoli  (Nap.  1580) 
has  the  statement:  cin  una  parte  populosa  della  citta  giace  la 
chiesa  consegrata  a  S.  Giovan  battista,  chiamata  S.  Giovan  a 
mare.  Era  una  antica  usanza,  hoggi  non  al  tutto  lasciata,  che 
la  vigilia  di  8.  Giovane,  verso  la  sera  e  '1  securo  del  di,  tutti 
huomlni  e  donne  andare  al  mare,  e  nudi  lavarsi ;  persuasi  pur- 
garsi  de  loro  peccati,  alia  focchia  degli  antichi,  che  peccando 
andavano  al  Tevere  lavarsi.'  And  long  before  Petrarch,  in 
Augustine's   time,  the  rite  was  practised  in  Libya,  and  is  de- 

1  Franc.  Petrarchae  De  relras  familiar,  epistolae,  lib.  i.  ep.  4:  Aquis  digressum, 
seel  prius,  uncle  ortum  oppidi  nomen  putant,  aquis  bajano  more  tepentibus  ablutum, 
excepit  Agrippina  Colonia,  quae  ad  sinistrnm  Rheni  latus  sita  est,  locus  et  situ  et 
flumine  clams  et  populo.  Mirum  in  terra  barbarica  quanta  civilitas,  quae  urbis 
species,  quae  virorum  gravitas,  quae  munditiae  matronarum.  Forte  Johannis 
baptistae  vigilia  erat  duru  illuc  applicui,  et  jam  ad  occidentem  sol  vergebat :  con- 
festim  amicorum  monitu  (nam  et  ibi  amicos  prius  mibi  fama  pepererat  quam 
meritum)  ab  hospitio  traducor  ad  rluvium  insigne  spectaculum  visurus.  Nee 
fallebar;  omnia  enim  ripa  praeclaro  et  ingenti  mulierum  agmine  tegebatur.  Ob- 
stupui,  dii  boni,  quae  forma,  quae  facies,  quis  habitus !  amare  potuisset  quisquis 
eo  non  praeoccupatum  animum  attulisset.  In  loco  paullum  altiore  constiteram, 
unde  in  ea  quae  gerebantur  intenderem.  Incredibilis  sine  offeusione  ooncursiia 
exat,  vicissimque  alacres,  pars  herbis  odoriferis  incmctae,  reductisque  post  cubitum 
manicis,  Candidas  in  gurgite  manus  ox  brachia  lavabant,  nescio  quid  blandum  pere- 
grine murmure  colloquentes.  [A  few  lines  omitted.]  Unum  igitur  ex  eo  [amicorum] 
numero  admirane  et  ignarus  rerum  percunctatus  vergiliano  illo  versiculo  :  '  Quid 
vult  concursus  ad  amnem,  quidve  petunt  animae?'  responsum  accepi :  pervetustum 
gentis  ritum  esse,  vulgo  persuasum,  praesertim  femineo,  omnem  totius  anni  calamita- 
tem  imminentem  fluviali  illius  diei  ablutione purgari,  et  deinceps  laetiora  succedere; 
itaque  lustrationem  esse  annua  m,  iinxbaustoque  semper  studio  cultam  colendanique. 
Ad  haec  ego  subridens  :  '  0  nimium  felices '  inquam  '  Rheni  accolae,  quoniani  illn 
miserias  purgat,  nostras  quidem  nee  Padus  unquam  purgare  valuit neo  Tiberis.  Vos 
vi  Btra  mala  Britannia  llbeno  vectore  transmittitis  ;  nos  nostra  libenter  Afris  atipie 
Dlyriis  mitteremus,  sed  nobis  (ut  iutelligi  datur)  pigriora  sunt  ilumina.'  Commoto 
risu,  sero  tandem  inde  discessimus.  [A  few  lines  omitted.]  The  letter  is  of  1830, 
and  addressed  to  Card.  Colonna.  We  rind  it  quoted  so  early  as  by  Kaisersberg 
(Omeiss  3oc). 


590  ELEMENTS. 

nounced  by  that  Father  as  a  relic  of  paganism  :  '  natali  Johannis, 
de  solemnitate  superstitiosa  pagana,  Cliristiani  ad  mare  veniebant, 
et  se  baptizabant'  (Opp.,  Paris  1683,  torn.  5,  p.  903);  and  again: 
'  ne  ullus  in  festivitate  S.  Johannis  in  fontibas  aut  paludibus  aut 
in  fluminibus,  nocturnis  aut  matutinis  horis  se  lavare  praesurnat, 
quia  haec  infelix  consuetudo  adhuc  de  Pagan orum  observation e 
remansit'  (Append,  to  torn.  5  p.  462).  Generally  sanctioned  by 
the  church  it  certainly  was  not,  yet  it  might  be  allowed  here  and 
there,  as  a  not  unapt  reminder  of  the  Baptizer  in  the  Jordan, 
and  now  interpreted  of  him,  though  once  it  had  been  heathen. 
It  might  easily  come  into  extensive  favour,  and  that  not  as  a 
christian  feast  alone  :  to  our  heathen  forefathers  St.  John's  day 
would  mean  the  festive  middle  of  the  }7ear,  when  the  sun  turns, 
and  there  might  be  many  customs  connected  with  it.  I  confess, 
if  Petrarch  had  witnessed  the  bathing  in  the  river  at  some  small 
town,  I  would  the  sooner  take  it  for  a  native  rite  of  the  ancient 
Germani ;  at  Cologne,  the  holy  city  so  renowned  for  its  relics,  I 
rather  suspect  it  to  be  a  custom  first  introduced  by  christian 
tradition  (see  Suppl.).1 

There  are  lakes  and  springs  whose  waters  periodically  rise  and 
fall :  from  either  phenomenon  mischief  is  prognosticated,  a  death, 
war,  approaching  dearth.  When  the  reigning  prince  is  about  to 
die,  the  river  is  supposed  to  stop  in  its  course,  as  if  to  indicate  its 
grief  (Deut.  sag.  no.  110) ;  if  the  well  runs  dry,  the  head  of  the 
family  will  die  soon  after  (no.  103).  A  spring  that  either  runs 
over  or  dries  up,  foreboding  dearth,  is  called  hunger  quelle,  hunger- 
brunnen  (Staid.  2,  63).  Wossingen  near  Durlach  has  a  hunger- 
brunnen,  which  is  said  to  flow  abundantly  when  the  year  is  going 
to  be  unfruitful,  and  then  also  the  fish  it  produces  are  small.2 

1  In  Poland  and  Silesia,  and  perhaps  in  a  part  of  Russia,  girls  who  have  over- 
slept matin-time  on  Easter  Monday  are  soused  with  water  by  the  lads,  and  flogged 
with  birch  twigs  ;  they  are  often  pulled  out  of  bed  at  night,  and  dragged  to  a  river 
or  cistern,  or  a  trough  filled  icith  ivater,  and  are  ducked.  The  Silesians  call  this 
schmngostern  (even  Estor's  Oberhess.  idiot,  has  schmakustern  =  giving  the  rod  at 
Easter) ;  perh.  from  Pol.  smic,  Boh.  smyti,  so  that  shiigust  would  be  rinsing 
[Suppl.  says,  '  better  from  smagac"  to  flog'] .  The  Poles  say  both  smi6  and  dyngo- 
wac,  dyngus,  of  the  splashing  each  other  with  water  (conf.  Hanusch,  p.  197),  and 
the  time  of  year  seems  to  be  St.  John's  day  as  well  as  Easter.  In  the  Russian  gov. 
of  Archangel,  the  people  bathe  in  the  river  on  June  23,  and  sprinkle  kupalnitsa 
(ranunculus  acris),  Karamzin  1,  73-4  [the  same  is  also- a  surname  of  St.  Agrippina, 
on  whose  day,  June  24,  river-bathing  (kupaluia)  commences].  Everywhere  a 
belief  in  the  sacredness  of  the  Easter-bath  and  St.  John's-bath. 

2  Mone's  Anz.  3,  221.  340,  who  gives  a  forced  and  misleading  explanation  of  the. 


HUNGER-SPRING.      WATER-GAUGING.  591 

Such  a  hunger-spring  there  was  by  Halle  on  the  Saale  ;  when 
the  peasants  came  up  to  town,  they  looked  at  it,  and  if  it  ran 
over,  they  said  :  '  this  year,  things  '11  be  dear.'  The  like  is  told 
of  fountains  near  Rosia  in  the  Siennese,  and  near  Chateaudun 
in  the  Orleanese.  As  Hunger  was  personified,  it  was  easy  to 
make  him  meddle  with  springs.  A  similar  Nornborn  was  noticed, 
p.  405.  I  insert  Dietmar  of  Merseburg's  report  (1,  3)  of  lake 
Glomazi  in  the  Slav  parts  of  the  Elbe  valley  :  '  Glomazi1  est  fons 
non  plus  ab  Albi  quam  duo  milliaria  positus,  qui  unam  de  se 
paludem  generans,  mira,  ut  incolae  pro  vero  asserunt  oculisque 
approbatum  est  a  multis,  saepe  operatur.  Cum  bona  pax  indigenis 
profutura  suumque  haec  terra  non  mentitur  fructum,  tritico  et 
avena  ac  glandine  refertus,  laetos  vicinorum  ad  se  crebro  con- 
fluentium  efficit  animos.  Qimndo  autem  saeva  belli  tempestas 
ingruerit,  sanguine  et  cinere  certum  futuri  exitus  indicium  prae- 
monstrat.  Huuc  omnis  incola  plus  quam  ecclesias,  spe  quamvis 
dubia,  veneratur  et  timet.' "  But  apart  from  particular  fountains, 
by  a  mere  gauging  of  water  a  season  of  dearth  or  plenty,  an 
increase  or  decrease  of  wealth  may  be  divined,  according  as  the 
water  poured  into  a  vessel  rises  or  falls  (Superst.  F,  43 ;  and  no. 
953  in  Praetor's  Saturnalien  p.  407).  This  looks  to  me  like  a 
custom  of  high  antiquity.  Saxo  Gram.  p.  320  says,  the  image  of 
the  god  Svantovit  in  Riigen  held  in  its  right  hand  a  horn  :  '  quod 
sacerdos  sacrorum  ejus  peritus  annuatim  mero  perfundere  con- 
sueverat,  exiqjso  liquoris  habitu  sequentis  anni  copias  prosjoedurus. 
Postero  die,  populo  prae  foribus  excubante,  detractum 
simulacro  poculum  curiosius  speculatus,  si  quid  ex  inditi  liquoris 
mensura  substractum  fuisset,  ad  sequentis  anni  inopiam  pertinere 
putabat.  Si  nihil  ex  consuetae  foecunditatis  habitu  diminutum 
vidisset,  ventura  agrorum  ubertatis  tempora  praedicabat.'  The 
wine  was  emptied  out,  and  water  poured  into  the  horn  (see  Suppl.). 


word.  Another  name  is  schandlebach  (beck  that  brings  shame,  confusion)  :  such  a 
one  was  pointed  out  to  me  on  the  plain  near  Cassel,  and  Simpliciss.  5,  14  mentions 
the  schdndlibach  by  Oberneheim,  which  only  runs  when  misfortune  befalls  the  land. 
[Suppl.  adds  the  MHG-.  sehantbach,  Weisth.  1,  760,  and  ' der  schanden  bechelin,' 
Frauenlob  p.  186] .  So,  when  the  Lutterborn  by  Herbershausen  (Helperhusen) 
neat  Gottingen  runs,  it  is  a  dear  season  ;  but  when  the  spider  builds  in  Helperhouse 
mill,  and  the  swallow  in  the  millwheel,  the  times  are  good. 

1  Al.  '  Glomuzi,  Zlumici ' ;  now  the  Lommatsch  district. 

2  Capitol,  an.  794  (Pertz  3,  74)  :    '  experimento  didicimus,   in  anno  quo  ilia 
valida  famis  irrepsit,  ebulUrc  vacuas  annonas  (empty  ears),  adaemonibus  devoratas.' 


592  ELEMENTS. 

Whirlpools  and  waterfalls  were  doubtless  held  in  special  vene- 
ration; they  were  thought  to  be  put  in  motion  by  a  superior 
being,  a  river-sprite.  The  Danube  whirlpool  and  others  still 
have  separate  legends  of  their  own.  Plutarch  (in  his  Cassar, 
cap.  19)  and  Clement  of  Alex.  (Stromat.  1,  305)  assure  us  that 
the  German  prophetesses  watched  the  eddies  of  rivers,  and  by 
their  whirl  and  noise  explored  the  future.  The  Norse  name  for 
such  a  vortex  is  fors,  Dan./os,  and  the  Isl.  sog.  1,  226  expressly 
say,  'blota3i  fors'm  (worshipped  the  f.).'  The  legend  of  the 
river-sprite  fossegrim  was  touched  upon,  p.  493 ;  and  in  such  a 
fors  dwelt  the  dwarf  Andvari  (Seem.  180.  Fornald.  sog.  1,  152). 
But  animal  sacrifices  seem  to  have  been  specially  due  to  the 
whirlpool  (Slvos),  as  the  black  lamb  (or  goat)  to  the  fossegrim; 
and  the  passages  quoted  from  Agathias  on  pp.  47,  100,  about  the 
Alamanns  offering  horses  to  the  rivers  and  ravines,  are  to  the 
same  purpose.     The  Iliad  21,  131  says  of  the  Skamander : 

a>  St)  $7)6a  7ro\et9  lepevere  ravpov<;, 
^eooi"?  8'  ev  hlvycn  /caOiere  [Mow^a?  Iitttovs' 

(Lo,  to  the  river  this  long  time  many  a  bull  have  ye  hallowed, 
Many  a  whole-hoofed  horse  have  ye  dropped  alive  in  his  eddies)  ; 
and  Pausan.  viii.  7,  2  :  to  Be  apyalov  KaOieaav  e?  tijv  Aeivqv 
(a  water  in  Argolis,  conn,  with  Stvos)  rw  JJoaethoivi  Ittttov^  oi 
jlpjeioi  K€KO<rpevov<;  %a\Lvois.  Horace,  Od.  3,  13:  0  fons 
Bandusiae,  non  sine  fioribus  eras  donaberis  haedo  (see  Sup  pi.). 

It  is  pretty  well  known,  that  even  before  the  introduction  of 
Christianity  or  christian  baptism,  the  heathen  Norsemen  had  a 
hallowing  of  new-born  infants  by  means  of  water ;  they  called 
this  vatni  ansa,  sprinkling  with  water.  Very  likely  the  same 
ceremony  was  practised  by  all  other  Teutons,  and  they  may  have 
ascribed  a  peculiar  virtue  to  the  water  used  in  it,  as  Christians  do 
to  baptismal  water  (Superst.  Swed.  116).  After  a  christening, 
the  Esthonians  will  bribe  the  clerk  to  let  them  have  the  water, 
and  then  splash  it  up  against  the  walls,  to  secure  honours  and 
dignities  for  the  child  (Superst.  M,  47). 

It  was  a  practice  widely  prevalent  to  turn  to  strange  supersti- 
tious uses  the  water  of  the  millwheel  caught  as  it  glanced  off  the 
paddles.  Old  Hartlieb  mentions  it  (Superst.  H,  c.  60),  and  vulgar 
opinion  approves  it  still   (Sap.  I,  471.  766).     The  Servians  call 


MILL-WHEEL   WATER.      RAIN-MAKING.  593 

such  water  omaya,  rebound,  from  oruanuti,  ornakhnuti,  to  rebound. 
Vuk,  under  the  word,  observes  that  -women  go  early  on  St. 
George's  day  (Apr.  23),  to  catch  it,  especially  off  a  small  brook- 
mill  (kashitchara),  and  bathe  in  it.  Some  carry  it  home  the 
evening  before,  and  sprinkle  it  with  all  manner  of  broken  greens  : 
they  think  all  evil  and  harm  will  then  glance  off  their  bodies  like 
the  water  off  the  mill  wheel  (Vuk  sub  v.  Jurjev  dan).  Similar, 
though  exactly  the  reverse,  is  the  warning  not  to  flirt  the  water 
off  your  hands  after  washing  in  the  morning,  else  you  flirt  away 
your  luck  for  the  day  (Sup.  I,  21). 

Not  only  brooks  and  rivers  (p.  585),  but  rain  also  was  in  the 
childlike  faith  of  antiquity  supposed  to  be  let  fall  out  of  bowls  by 
gods  of  the  sky;  and  riding  witches  are  still  believed  to  carry 
pitchers,  out  of  which  they  pour  storm  and  hail  upon  the  plains, 
instead  of  the  rain  or  dew  that  trickled  down  before. l 

When  the  heavens  were  shut,  and  the  fields  languished  in 
drought,  the  granting  of  rain  depended  in  the  first  instance  on  a 
deity,  on  Donar,  or  Mary  and  Elias,  who  were  supplicated  accord- 
ingly (pp.  173-G).3  But  in  addition  to  that,  a  special  charm 
was  resorted  to,  which  infallibly  procured  'rainwater/  and  in  a 
measure  compelled  the  gods  to  grant  it.  A  little  girl,  completely 
undressed  and  led  outside  the  town,  had  to  dig  up  henbane  (bilsen- 
kraut,  OHG.  pilisa,  hyoscyamus)  with  the  little  finger  of  her 
right  hand,  and  tie  it  to  the  little  toe  of  her  right  foot;  she  was 
then  solemnly  conducted  by  the  other  maidens  to  the  nearest 
river,  and  splashed  with  water.  This  ceremony,  reported  by 
Burchard  of  Worms  (Sup.  C,  201b)  and  therefore  perhaps  still  in 
use  on  the  Ehine  or  in  Hesse  in  the  11th  cent.,  comes  to  us  with 
the  more  weight,  as,  with  characteristic  differences  which  put  all 
direct  borrowing  out  of  the  question,  it  is  still  in  force  among 
Servians  and  Mod.  Greeks.  Vuk,  under  the  word  '  dodole/ 
describes  the  Servian  custom.  A  girl,  called  the  dodola,  is  stript 
naked,  but  so  wrapt  up  in  grass,  herbs  and  flowers,  that  nothing  of 

1  The  Peruvians  believe  in  a  rain-goddess,  who  sits  in  the  clouds  with  &  pitcher 
of  water,  ready  to  pour  it  out  at  the  right  time  ;  if  she  delays,  her  brother  with 
thunder  and  iightning  smites  the  pitcher  in  pieces.  Garcilaso  de  la  Vega's  Histt. 
Incarum  peruanorum  11,  27  ;  conf.  Talvj's  Cliaracteristik  der  volkslieder,  p.  L26. 

1  I  will  here  add,  from  Anton's  Coll.  on  the  Slavs,  the  substance  of  a  Walla- 
chian  song,  which  the  children  sing  when  the  corn  is  endangered  by  drought  : 
'  Papalnga  (father  Luga),  climb  into  heaven,  open  its  doors,  and  scud  down  rain 
from  above,  that  well  the  rye  may  grow ! ' 


594  ELEMENTS. 

her  person  is  to  be  seen,  not  even  the  face.1  Escorted  by  other 
maidens,  dodola  passes  from  house  to  house,  before  each  house 
they  form  a  ring,  she  standing  in  the  middle  and  dancing  alone. 
The  goodwife  comes  out  and  empties  a  bucket  of  water  over  the 
girl,  who  keeps  dancing  and  whirling  all  the  while ;  her  com- 
panions sing  songs,  repeating  after  every  line  the  burden  '  oy 
dodo,  oy  dodo  le  V  The  second  of  these  rain-hymns  (piesme 
dodolske)  in  Vuk's  Coll.  nos.  86-88  (184-8  of  ed.  2)  runs 
thus  : 

To  God  doth  our  doda  call,        oy  dodo  oy  dodo  le  ! 

That  dewy  rain  may  fall,  oy  dodo  oy  dodo  le  ! 

And  drench  the  diggers  all,      oy  dodo  oy  dodo  le  ! 

The  workers  great  and  small,    oy  dodo  oy  dodo  le  ! 

Even  those  in  house  and  stall,  oy  dodo  oy  dodo  le  ! 

And  they  are  sure  that  rain  will  come  at  once.  In  Greece,  when 
it  has  not  rained  for  a  fortnight  or  three  weeks,  the  inhabitants 
of  villages  and  small  towns  do  as  follows.  The  children  choose 
one  of  themselves  who  is  from  eight  to  ten  years  old,  usually  a 
poor  orphan,  whom  they  strip  naked  and  deck  from'  head  to  foot 
with  field  herbs  and  flowers  :  this  child  is  called  irvp-nvpovva.  The 
others  lead  her  round  the  village,  singing  a  hymn,  and  every 
housewife  has  to  throw  a  pailful  of  water  over  the  pyrperuna's 
head,  and  hand  the  children  a  para  (i  of  a  farthing).  The  Mod. 
Greek  hymn  is  in  Theod.  Kind's  rpayajSta  t?}?  veas  'EWdSos, 
Leipz.  1833,  p.  13.  Passow,  nos.  311-3,  p.  627.  Neither  Greek 
nor  Slavic  will  explain  why  the  rain-girl  should  be  called  dodola 
(caressingly  doda)  and  irvpirrjpovva-  2  Burchard  very  likely  could 
have  given  us  a  German  designation  equally  inscrutable.  But  the 
meaning  of  the  performance  is  clear  :  as  the  water  from  the 
bucket  on  the  dodola,  so  is  rain  out  of  heaven  to  stream  down  on 
the  earth  ;  it  is  the  mystic  and  genuinely  symbolic  association  of 
means  with  end.  Just  so  the  rebound  off  the  mill  wheel  was  to 
send  evil  flying,  and  the  lustration  in  the  stream  to  wash  away  all 

1  Is  this  covering  merely  to  protect  the  maiden's  modesty,  or  has  it  some 
further  reason  ?  We  shall  see  that  personations  of  spring  and  summer  were  in  like 
manner  enveloped  in  foliage. 

2  Kind,  pp.  86-7,  gives  some  variant  forms,  but  all  the  explanations  appear  to 
me  farfetched.  Both  the  Greek  and  the  Servian  names  have  the  reduplication  so 
characteristic  of  folk-words.  [Slav,  dozhd  is  rain,  and  zhd  represents  either  gd  or 
dd ;  if  this  be  the  root,  dodo-la  may  be  a  dimin.] 


RAIN-MAKING.      DUCKING.  595 

future  illnesses.  Celtic  tradition,  without  bringing  in  girl  or 
child,  makes  the  pouring  out  of  water  in  seasons  of  great  drought 
evoke  the  wished-for  rain.  The  huntsmen  go  to  the  fountain  of 
Barenton  in  the  forest  of  Breziliande,  scoop  up  the  water  in  their 
horns,  and  spill  it  on  the  stones  ;  immediately  the  rain-clouds  rise 
and  refresh  the  land. l  The  custom,  with  an  addition  of  church 
ceremonial,  is  kept  up  to  this  day.  Led  by  the  clergy,  amid 
chanting  and  pealing  of  bells,  with  five  great  banners  borne  in 
front,  the  parish  walks  in  procession  to  the  spring,  and  the  head 
of  the  commune  dips  his  foot  crosswise  in  the  fountain  of  Bar- 
enton ;  they  are  then  sure  of  its  raining  before  the  procession 
arrives  home  again.3  The  mayor's  foot  alone  is  wetted  instead  of 
the  child,  or  a  little  water  only  is  poured  out  as  a  beginning  of 
that  which  is  to  fall  in  masses  from  the  sky.  The  scanty  offering 
brings  the  great  bounty  to  our  door.  In  Spain,  when  hot  weather 
lasts  long,  an  image  of  the  Virgin  arrayed  in  mourning  (imagen 
cubierta  de  luto)  is  solemnly  escorted  through  the  villages,  to 
obtain  the  blessing  of  rain,3  as  in  the  Liege  procession  (pp.1 74-5), 
with  which  again  that  described  by  Petronius  agrees  (p.  175)  ; 
only  here  the  symbolic  libation  is  left  out.  But  of  those  herbs 
that  were  tied  round  the  child,  some  most  likely  were  of  magic 
power;  such  a  use  of  henbane  is  otherwise  unknown  to  me. 
Lastly,  the  Bavarian  waterbird  seems  identical  with  dodola  and 
pyrperuna.  The  man  who  is  the  last  to  drive  out  on  Whitmonday  4 
is  led  by  the  other  workmen  into  the  nearest  wood,  and  tied 
round  and  round  with  leaves  and  twigs  or  rushes;  then  they  ride  in 
triumph  through  the  village,  and  everybody  that  has  young  legs 
follows  the  procession  to  the  pond  or  brook,  where  the  waterbird 
is  solemnly  tumbled  off  his  horse  into  the  water  (Schm.  1,  320). 
In  Austria  too  the  village  lads  elect  a  Whitsun  king,  dress  him 
up  in  green  boughs,  blacken  his  face  and  pitch  him  into  the  brook 
(Denis,  Lesefr.  1,130).     In  these  two  cases  the    ' votis  vocare 

1  Roman  de  Ron,  v.  11514  (the  passage  extracted  in  the  notes  to  Iwein,  pp. 
262-3). 

s  Revue  de  Paris,  tome  41,  pp.  47-58.  Villemar  adds,  that  children  throw 
pins  into  the  fountain,  while  they  call  out :  '  ris  done,  fontaino  de  Berendon,  et  jo 
te  donnerai  une  epingle  1 '  and  the  fay  of  the  fountain  is  supposed  to  be  mado 
friendly  by  the  gift.     Conf.  '  libamina  lacui  exhibere',  p.  596. 

3  Don  Quixote  1,  52  (Ideler  2,  435).  And  in  other  places  it  was  the  custom  in 
time  of  drougbt,  to  carry  tbe  bodies  of  saints  about,  Flodoard.  rem.  4,  41. 

*  As  the  girl  who  oversleeps  herself  on  Easter  morning  is  ducked  (p.  590). 


596  ELEMENTS. 

irnbrem'  has  dropt  out  altogether,  and  been  replaced  by  a  mere 
Whitsun  drollery  at  the  cost  of  the  laziest  man ; l  but  I  have 
little  doubt  that  the  same  purpose  lies  at  the  bottom  of  the 
custom  (see  Suppl.). 

Of  goddesses,  no  doubt  the  bath-loving  Nerthus  and  Holda 
are  the  most  nearly  connected  with  water-worship  (Holda  lives  in 
wells,  pp.  268,  487)  ;  and  to  them  must  be  added  swan-maidens, 
mermiunes  (p.  433),  water-holdes,  spring-holdes  (p.  268),  water- 
muhmes  and  nixies.  To  all  of  them  particular  rivers,  brooks, 
pools  and  springs  can  be  consecrated  and  assigned  as  their 
abode;  Oegir  (p.  237)  and  Ban  (pp.  311,  497)  ruled  in  the  sea, 
and  the  waves  are  called  their  daughters  :  all  this  gives  a  new 
stamp  to  the  veneration  of  the  element.  Of  this  very  natural, 
but  not  essential,  combination  of  simple  rude  water-worship  with 
a  faith  in  higher  beings,  I  will  give  a  few  more  specimens. 

As  those  who  cross  a  river  by  ferry  or  by  bridge  have  to  dread 
the  power  of  the  daemon  that  dwells  in  it  (p.  497),  so  vulgar 
opinion  in  Sweden  (Sup.  K,  40)  holds  it  advisable,  in  crossing 
any  water  in  the  dark,  to  spit  three  times,  as  a  safeguard  against 
evil  influences.2  Precautions  ai*e  also  taken  in  drawing  water  from 
a  well :  before  drawing  any,  the  Greeks  at  Mykono  salute  three 
times  in  honour  of  Teloni  (fountain-sprite).3  For  a  thief  to  throw 
in  the  water  a  little  of  what  he  has  stolen  (Sup.  I,  836),  means 
sacrificing  to  the  water-sprite.  The  Vita  S.  Sulpicii  Biturig. 
(died  644)  relates  (Acta  Bened.  sec.  2,  p.  172):  'gurges  quidam 
erat  in  Yirisionensium  situs  agello  (Vierzon,  in  Biturigibus) 
aquarum  mole  copiosus,  utpote  daemonibus  consecratus ;  et  si 
aliquis  causa  qualibet  ingrederetur  eundem,  repente  funibus 
daemoniacis  circumplexus  amittebat  crudeliter  vitam.'  A  more 
decisive  testimony  to  the  worship  of  water  itself  is  what  Gregory 
of  Tours  tells  of  a  lake  on  Mt.  Helanus  (De  gloria  confess., 
cap.  2)  :  (  Mons  erat  in  Gabalitano  territorio  (Gevaudan)  cogno- 
mento  Helanus,  lacum  habens  magnum.  Ad  quern  certo  tem- 
pore multitudo  rusticorum,   quasi   libamina   lacui   Mi   exhibens, 

1  Sup.  I,  342 :  the  lazy  maid,  on  carrying  home  her  first  grass,  is  ducked  or 
splashed,  to  prevent  her  going  to  sleep  over  grass-cutting. 

2  The  spirits  cannot  abide  spitting  (p.  514). 

3  Yilloison  in  Maltebrun,  Annales  de  voy.  2,  180.  Artemidorus's  Oneirocrit. 
2  27  (Reiff  1,  189)  admits  well-nymphs  :  vvfupat.  re  yap  daiv  ev  r^  (p^arc.  Fauriel: 
rb  <ttqixzu>v  rod  Trora/jLov. 


HOLY  WATERS.   LAKES.  597 

linteaniina  projiciebat  ac  pannos  qui  ad  usum  vestimenti  virilis 
praebentur :  nonnulli  lanae  vellera,  plurimi  etiam  forrnas  casei 1 
ac  cerae  vel  panis,  diversasque  species  uuusquisque  juxta  vires 
suas,  quae  dinumerare  perlonguin  puto.  Veuiebant  auteni  cum 
plaustris  potuin  cibumque  deferentes,  madantes  animalia  et  per 
triduum  epidantes.  Quarta  autein  die  cum  discedere  deberent, 
anticipabat  eos  tempestas  cum  tonitruo  et  coruscatione  valida ;  et 
in  tantum  imber  ingens  cum  lapidum  violentia  descendebat,  ut 
vix  se  quisquam  eorum  putaret  evadere.  Sic  fiebat  per  singulos 
annos,  et  iuvolvebatur  iusipieus  populus  in  errore.' — No  god  or 
spirit  shews  his  face  here,  the  yearly  sacrifice  is  offered  to  the 
lake  itself,  and  the  feast  winds  up  with  the  coming  tempest. 
Gervase  of  Tilbury  (in  Leibnitz  1,  982)  tells  of  a  lake  on  Mt. 
Cavagum  in  Catalonia :  '  in  cujus  summitate  lacus  est  aquam 
continens  subnigram  et  in  fundo  imperscrutabilem.  Illic  mansio 
fertur  esse  daemonum  ad  modum  palatii  dilatata  et  janua  clausa  ; 
facies  tamen  ipsius  inansionis  sicut  ipsorum  daemonum  vul- 
garibus  est  incognita  ac  invisibilis.  In  lacum  si  quis  aliquam 
lapideam  aut  aliam  solidam  projecerit  materiarn,  statim  tanquam 
offtnsis  daemonibus  tempestas  erumpit.'2  Then  comes  the  story 
of  a  girl  who  is  carried  off  by  the  watersprites,  and  kept  in  the 
lake  seven  years. 

Lakes  cannot  endure  to  have  their  depth  gauged.  On  the 
Mummelsee,  when  the  sounders  had  let  down  all  the  cord  out  of 
nine  nets  with  a  plummet  without  finding  a  bottom,  suddenly  the 
raft  they  were  on  began  to  sink,  and  they  had  to  seek  safety  in  a 
rapid  flight  to  land  (Simplic.  5,  10).  A  man  went  in  a  boat  to 
the  middle  of  the  Tltlsee,  and  payed  out  no  end  of  line  after  the 
plummet,  when  there  came  out  of  the  waves  a  terrible  cry: 
'  Measure  me,  and  I'll  eat  you  up  ! '  In  a  great  fright  the  man 
desisted  from  his  enterprise,  and  since  then  no  one   has  dared 

1  Formages,  whence  fromages. 

2  This  raising  of  a  storm  by  throwing  stones  into  a  lake  or  wellhead  is  a  Teu- 
tonic, a  Celtic  and  a  Finnish  superstition,  as  the  examples  quoted  shew.  The 
watersprite  avenges  the  desecration  of  his  holy  stream.  Under  this  head  come  the 
stories  of  the  Mummelsee  (Deut.  sag.  no.  59.  Simplic.  5,  9),  of  the  Pilatussee 
(Lothar's  Volkssag.  232.  Dobenek  2,  118.  Gutslaff  p.  288.  Hone's  Anz.  4,  423), 
of  L.  Camarina  in  Sicily  (Camarinam  movere),  and  above  all,  of  Berenton  well  in 
Breziliande  forest,  Iwein  553-672,  where  however  it  is  the  well-water  poured  on  the 
well-rock  that  stirs  up  the  storm:  conf.  supra,  p.  5(J4,  and  the  place  in  Pontus  men- 
tioned by  Beneke,  p.  2G(J.  Tho  lapis  manalis  also  conjured  up  rain,  0.  Muller'.s  Btr. 
2,97. 


598  ELEMENTS. 

to  sound  the  depth  of  the  lake  (Mone's  Ariz.  8,  530).  There  is 
a  similar  story  in  Thiele  3,  73,  about  Huntsoe,  that  some  people 
tried  to  fathom  its  depth  with  a  ploughshare  tied  to  the  line, 
and  from  below  came  the  sound  of  a  spirit-voice :  '  i  maale  vore 
vagge,  vi  skal  maale  jeres  lagge !  '  Full  of  terror  they  hauled 
up  the  line,  but  instead  of  the  share  found  an  old  horse's  skull 
fastened  to  it.1 

It  is  the  custom  in  Bsthonia  for  a  newly  married  wife  to  drop  a 
present  into  the  well  of  the  house ;  it  is  a  nationality  that  seems 
particularly  given  to  worshipping  water.  There  is  a  detailed 
account  of  the  holy  Wohhanda,  a  rivulet  of  Livonia.  It  rises 
near  Ilmegerve,  a  village  of  Odenpa  district  in  Esthonia,  and 
after  its  junction  with  the  Medda,  falls  into  L.  Peipus.  The 
source  is  in  a  sacred  grove,  within  whose  bounds  no  one  dares  to 
cut  a  tree  or  break  a  twig  :  whoever  does  it  is  sure  to  die  that 
year.  Both  brook  and  fountain  are  kept  clean,  and  are  put  to 
rights  once  a  year;  if  anything  is  thrown  into  the  spring  or 
the  little  lake  through  which  it  flows,  the  weather  turns  to  storm 
(see  Suppl.). 

Now  in  1641  Hans  Ohm  of  Sommerpahl,  a  large  landowner 
who  had  come  into  the  country  in  the  wake  of  the  Swedes,  built 
a  mill  on  the  brook,  and  when  bad  harvests  followed  for  several 
years,  the  Ehsts  laid  it  all  to  the  desecration  of  the  holy  stream, 
who  allowed  no  obstructions  in  his  path ;  they  fell  upon  the  mill, 
burnt  it  down,  and  destroyed  the  piles  in  the  water.  Ohm  went 
to  law,  and  obtained  a  verdict  against  the  peasants ;  but  to 
rid  himself  of  new  and  grievous  persecutions,  he  induced  pastor 
Gutslaff,  another  German,  to  write  a  treatise 2  specially  com- 
bating this  superstition.  Doubtless  we  learn  from  it  only  the 
odious  features  of  the  heathenish  cult.  To  the  question,  how 
good  or  bad  weather  could  depend  on  springs,  brooks  and  lakes, 
the  Ehsts  replied :  c  it  is  our  ancient  faith,  the  men  of  old  have 
so  taught  us  (p.  25,  258);  mills  have  been  burnt  down  on  this 

1  The  people  about  L.  Baikal  believe  it  has  no  bottom.  A  priest,  who  could 
dive  to  any  depth,  tried  it,  but  was  so  frightened  by  the  16s  (dragons,  sea-monsters), 
that,  if  I  remember  rightly,  he  died  raving  mad.— Tkans. 

2  A  short  account  of  the  holy  brook  (falsely  so  called)  Wohhanda  in  Liefland, 
whereby  the  ungodly  burning  of  Sommerpabl  mill  came  to  pass.  Given  from 
Cbristian  zeal  against  uncbristian  and  heathenish  superstition,  by  Job.  Gutslaff, 
Pomer.  pastor  at  Urbs  in  Liefland.  Porpt  1644  (8vo,  407  pp.  without  the  Pedic. 
and  Pref.).     An  extract  in  Kellgren  (Suomi  9,  72-92). 


HOLY   LAKES   AND    STREAMS.  599 

brook  before  now  (p.  278),  he  will  stand  no  crowding.''  The  Esth. 
name  is  '  poha  yogge/  the  Lettic  c  shveti  ubbe/  i.e.  holy  brook. 
By  means  of  it  they  could  regulate  the  weather,  and  when  they 
wanted  rain,  they  had  only  to  throw  something  in  (p.  25).  Once, 
when  three  oxen  were  drowned  in  the  lake,  there  followed  snow 
and  frost  (p.  26).  At  times  there  came  up  out  of  the  brook  a  carl 
ivith  blue  and  yellow  stockings  :  evidently  the  spirit  of  the  brook. 
Another  Esthonian  story  is  about  L.  Elm  changing  his  bed. 
On  his  banks  lived  wild  and  wicked  men,  who  never  mowed  the 
meadows  that  he  watered,  nor  sowed  the  fields  he  fertilized,  but 
robbed  and  murdered,  so  that  his  bright  wave  was  befouled  with 
the  blood  of  the  slain.  And  the  lake  mourned  ;  and  one  evening 
he  called  his  fish  together,  and  mounted  with  them  into  the 
air.  The  brigands  hearing  a  din  cried  :  '  the  Eim  has  left  his 
bed,  let  us  collect  his  fish  and  hidden  treasure/  But  the  fish 
were  gone,  and  nothing  was  found  at  the  bottom  but  snakes, 
toads  and  salamanders,  which  came  creeping  out  and  lodged  with 
the  ruffian  brood.  But  the  Eim  rose  higher  and  higher,  and 
swept  like  a  white  cloud  through  the  air ;  said  the  hunters  in  the 
woods  :  '  what  is  this  murky  weather  passing  over  us  ?  '  and  the 
herdsmen  :  '  what  white  swan  is  flying  in  the  sky  ?  '  AH  night 
he  hung  among  the  stars,  at  morn  the  reapers  spied  him,  how 
that  he  was  sinking,  and  the  white  swan  became  as  a  white  ship, 
and  the  ship  as  a  dark  drifting  cloud.  And  out  of  the  waters 
came  a  voice:  fget  thee  hence  with  thy  harvest,  I  come  to  dwell 
with  thee.'  Then  they  bade  him  welcome,  if  he  would  bedew  their 
fields  and  meadows,  and  he  sank  down  and  stretched  himself  in 
hi3  new  couch.  They  set  his  bed  in  order,  built  dikes,  and  planted 
young  trees  around  to  cool  his  face.  Their  fields  he  made  fertile, 
their  meadows  green ;  and  they  danced  around  him,  so  that  old 
men  grew  young  for  joy.1 

1  Fr.  Thiersch  in  Taschenbuch  fi'ir  liebe  unci  freundschaft  1809,  p.  179.  Must 
not  Eim  be  the  same  as  Embach  (mother-beck,  fr.  emma  mother,  conf.  oim  mother- 
in-law)  uear  Dorpat,  whose  origin  is  reported  as  follows  ?  When  God  had  created 
heaven  and  earth,  he  wished  to  bestow  on  the  beasts  a  king,  to  keep  them  in 
order,  and  commanded  them  to  dig  for  his  reception  a  deep  broad  beck,  on 
whose  banks  he  might  walk ;  the  earth  dug  out  of  it  was  to  make  a  hill  for  the 
king  to  live  on.  All  the  beasts  set  to  work,  the  hare  measured  the  land,  the  fox's 
brush  trailing  after  him  marked  the  course  of  the  stream  ;  when  they  had  finished 
hollowing  out  the  bed,  God  poured  water  into  it  out  of  his  golden  bowl  (Verhandl. 
der  esthn.  gesellschaft,  Dorpat  1840.  1,  10-12).  The  two  stories  differ  as  to  the 
manner  of  preparing  the  new  bed. 

VOL.    II.  M 


600  ELEMENTS. 

The  Greeks  and  Romans  personified  their  rivers  into  male 
beings ;  a  bearded  old  man  pours  the  flowing  spring  out  of  his 
urn  (pp.  585.  593).  Homer  finely  pictures  the  elemental  strife 
between  water  and  fire  in  the  battle  of  the  Skamander  with 
Hephaestus :  the  river  is  a  god,  and  is  called  ava%,  Od.  5,  445. 
451.  The  Indian  Ganges  too  is  an  august  deity.  Smaller 
streams  and  fountains  had  nymphs  set  over  them.1  In  our 
language,  most  of  the  rivers'  names  are  feminine  (Gramm.  3, 
384-6),  there  must  therefore  have  been  female  watersprites. 
Twelve  or  eighteen  streams  are  specified  by  name  in  Ssem.  43b. 
Sn.  4.  I  single  out  Leiptr,  by  whose  clear  water,  as  by  Styx  or 
Acheron,  oaths  were  sworn.  Saein.  165a:  'at  eno  liosa  Leiptrar 
vatni.'  A  dasrnon  of  the  Rhine  is  nowhere  named  in  our  native 
traditions,  but  the  Edda  calls  the  Rin  (fern.)  svinn,  askunna 
(prudens,  a  diis  oriunda,  Sa3m.  248a).  And  in  the  bosom  of  the 
Rhine  lie  treasure  and  gold.  The  Goths  buried  their  beloved 
king  Alaric  in  the  bed  of  a  river  near  Consentia  (Cosenza),  which 
they  first  dug  out  of  its  course,  and  then  led  back  over  the 
corpse  (Jornandes,  cap.  30) ;  the  Franks,  when  crossing  a  river, 
offered  sacrifice  to  it  (p.  45). 

But  where  the  sacred  water  of  a  river  sweeps  round  a  piece 
of  meadow  land,  and  forms  an  ea  (aue),  such  a  spot  is  specially 
marked  out  for  the  residence  of  gods ;  witness  Wunsches  ouwe 
(p.  140),  Pholes  ouwa  (p.  22 5). 2  Equally  venerable  were  islands 
washed  by  the  pure  sea  wave,  Fosetesland  (p.  230),  and  the  island 
of  Nerthus  (p.  251). 

In  the  sea  itself  dwelt  Oegir  (p.  237)  and  Ran  (p.  311),  and  the 
waves  are  their  daughters  :  the  Edda  speaks  of  nine  waves,  and 
gives  their  names  (Sn.  124,  conf.  the  riddles  in  the  Hervararsaga, 
pp.  478-9) ;  this  reminds  me  of  the  nona  unda  in  the  Waltbai'ius 
1343,  and  the  (  fluctus  decunianus'  [every  tenth  wave  being  the 
biggest,  Festus,  and  Ov.  Trist.  i.  2,  50] .  There  must  also  have 
been  another  god  of  the  sea,  Geban  (p.  239,  conf.  p.  311).     Then, 

1  The  Kornans  appear  to  have  much  elaborated  their  cultus  of  rivers  and 
brooks,  as  may  be  seen  by  the  great  number  of  monuments  erected  to  river-gods.  I 
will  here  add  the  testimony  of  Tacitus,  Ann.  1,  79  :  '  sacra  et  lucos  et  aras  patriis 
omnibus  dicare.' 

2  Gallus  Ohem's  Chronik  von  Reichaiau  (end  of  loth  cent.)  quoted  in  Schon- 
liuth's  Ileicheuau,  Freib.  1836,  p.  v.  :  '  the  isle  is  to  this  day  esteemed  honourable 
and  hohj  ;  uuchristened  babes  are  not  buried  in  it,  but  carried  out  and  laid  beside  a 
small  house  with  a  saint's  image  in  it,  called  the  chindli-bihi 


EA,    ISLAND.       SEA.      FIRE.  601 

according  to  the  Edda,  there  lies  in  the  deep  sea  an  enormous 
'  worm/  miSgarSs-orinr,  biting  his  own  tail  and  begirding  the 
whole  earth.  The  immensity  of  ocean  (Goth,  mcmsdws)  is  ex- 
pressed in  the  OHG.  names  endilmeri  and  wendilmeri  (Graff  2, 
829)  ;  conf.  enteo  and  wenteo  (p.  564),  entil  and  wentil  (p.  375). 
An  AS.  term  gdrsecg  I  have  tried  to  explain  in  Zeitschr.  fur  d.  a. 
1,  578.  As  the  running  stream  will  suffer  no  evil-doer  in  it,  so 
is  '  daz  met  so  reine,  daz  ez  keine  busheit  mac  geliden/  so  clean 
that  it  no  wickedness  can  bear,  Wiener  merfart  392  (see  Suppl.). 


2.     Fire. 

Fire,1  like  water,  is  regarded  as  a  living  being  :  corresponding 
to  quecprimno  (p.  588 n.)  we  have  a  quecfiur,  daz  quecke  fiwer, 
Parz.  71,  13  ;  Serv.  vatra  zhiva,  ogan  zhivi  (vivus,  Vuk  1,  xlvi. 
and  3,  8.  20)  ;  rb  rrvp  diqpiov  epi-^v^ov  of  the  Egyptians,  Herod.  3, 
16;  ignis  animal,  Cic.  de  N.  D.  3,  14,  i.e.  a  devouring  hungry 
insatiable  beast,  vorax  flamrna;  frekr  (avidus),  Saetn.  50b ;  bitar 
iBur,  Hel.  78,  22  ;  bitar  logna  79,  20  ;  gradag  logna  (greedy  lowe), 
130,  23;  grim  endi  gradag  133,  11;  eld  unfuodi  (insatiabilis)  78, 
23 ;  it  licks  with  its  tongue,  eats  all  round  it,  pastures,  vipuerat,, 
II.  23,  177;  the  land  gets  eaten  clean  by  it,  irvpl  %6a)v  vipuerac, 
2,  780;  'lcztu  eld  eta  iofra  bygdir,  Sa3m.  I42a ;  it  is  restless, 
ciKafxarov  irvp,  II.  23,  52.  To  be  spoken  to  is  a  mark  of  living- 
things  :  '  heitr  ertu  hripuSr ! '  (hot  art  thou,  Fire),  Sasm.  40a. 
The  ancient  Persians  made  a  god  of  it,  and  the  Indian  Agni 
(ignis)  is  looked  upon  as  a  god.  The  Edda  makes  fire  a  brother 
of  the  wind  and  sea,  therefore  himself  alive  and  a  god,  Sn.  126. 
Our  people  compare  the  element  to  a  cock  flying  from  house  to 
house  :  '  I'll  set  the  red  code  on  your  roof '  is  a  threat  of  the  incen- 
diary ;  '  ein  roten  han  aufs  stadel  setzen/  H.  Sachs  iv.  3,  SGd ; 
voter  schin,  Gudr.  786,  2. 

An  antique  heathen  designation  of  the  great  World-fire,  OX. 
muspell,  OHG.  OS.  muspilli,  miuhpdli,  iiuttsju'lli,  has  already 
'nvii  noticed,  p.  558.  The  mythic  allusions  here  involved  can 
3nly  be  unfolded  in  the  sequel ;  the  meaning  of  the  word  seems 
to  be  ligni  perditor,  as  fire  in  general  is  also  called  bani  vicfar, 

*        '  Names  for  it,  Grarnm.  3,  352  ;  Eddie  names,  Sam.  50'\  Su.  187-8. 


602  ELEMENTS. 

grand  vi&ar  (bane,  crusher,  of  wood),  Sn.  126,  her  alls  vicTar, 
Stem.  228b.  Another  difficult  expression  is  eiJcin  fur,  Seem.  83b. 
Of  vafrlogi  (quivering  flame),  suggesting  the  MHG. '  daz  bibende 
fiwer'  (Tund.  54,  58),  I  likewise  forbear  to  speak;  conf.  Chap. 
XXXI.,  Will  o'  the  wisp  (see  Suppl.). 

A  regular  worship  of  fire  seems  to  have  had  a  more  limited 
range  than  the  veneration  of  water ;  it  is  only  in  that  passage  of 
the  AS.  prohibitions  quoted  p.  102,  and  in  no  other,  that  I  find 
mention  of  fire.  A  part  of  the  reverence  accorded  to  it  is  no 
doubt  included  in  that  of  the  light-giving  and  warming  sun,  as 
Julius  Caesar  (p.  103  above)  names  Sol  and  Vulcanus  together, 
and  the  Edda  fire  and  sun,  praising  them  both  as  supreme  : 
'  eldr  er  beztr  med  yta  sonum,  ok  solar  syn/  fire  is  best  for  men, 
Saern.  18b  (as  Pindar  says  water  is).  In  Superst.  B,  17,  I  under- 
stand '  observatio  pagana  in  foco'  of  the  flame  on  the  hearth  or  in 
the  oven:  where  a  hearth-fire  burns,  no  lightning  strikes  (Sup.  I, 
126)  ;  when  it  crackles,  there  will  be  strife  (322.  534).  Compare 
with  this  the  Norwegian  exposition  (p.  242)  ;  so  long  as  a  child 
is  unbaptized,  you  must  not  let  the  fire  out  (Sup.  Swed.  22),  conf. 
hasta  eld,  tagi  i  elden  (24-5.  54.  68.  107).— The  Esthonians 
throw  gifts  into  fire,  as  well  as  into  water  (Sup.  M,  11)  ;  to 
pacify  the  flame,  they  sacrifice  a  fowl  to  it  (82). 

A  distinction  seems  to  have  been  made  between  friendly  and 
malignant  fires ;  among  the  former  the  Greeks  reckoned  brimstone 
fire,  as  they  call  sulphur  Oelov,  divine  smoke  (II.  8,  135.  Od.  22, 
481.  493).  In  0.  Fr.  poems  I  often  find  such  forms  of  cursing 
as :  mat  feu  arde !  Tristr.  3791 ;  maus  feus  et  male  fiambe 
m'arde  !  Meon  3,  227.  297.  Ren.  19998.  This  evil  fire  is  what 
the  Norse  Loki  represents ;  and  as  Loki  or  the  devil  breaks  loose, 
we  say,  when  a  fire  begins,  that  it  breaks  loose,  breaks  out,  gets  out, 
as  if  from  chains  and  prison  :  '"  worde  vtir  los/  Doc.  in  Sartorius's 
Hanse  p.  27  ;  in  Lower  Germany  an  alarm  of  fire  was  given  in  the 
words  '  fur  los  ! '  ON.  '  einn  neisti  (spark)  warS  laus.' 

Forms  of  exorcism  treat  fire  as  a  hostile  higher  being,  whom 
one  must  encounter  with  might  and  main.  Tacitus  (Ann.  13,  57) 
tells  us  how  the  Ubii  suppressed  a  fire  that  broke  out  of  the  ground : 
Residentibus  flam  mis  propius  suggressi,  ictu  fustium  aliisque 
verberibus  ut  feras  (see  p.  601)  absterrebant,  postremo  tegmina 
corpore  direpta  injiciunt,  quanto  magis  profana   et  usu  polluta, 


FIEE-WORSHIP.  603 

tanto  magis  oppressura  ignes.  So,  on  valuables  that  have  caught 
fire,  people  throw  some  article  of  clothing  that  has  beeu  worn 
next  the  skin,  or  else  earth  which  has  first  been  stamped  on  with 
the  foot.  Rupertus  Tuitiensis,  De  incendio  oppidi  Tuitii  (i.e.  Deutz, 
in  1128),  relates  that  a  white  altar-cloth  (corporale)  was  thrust 
into  the  middle  of  the  fire,  to  stifle  it,  but  the  flame  hurled  back 
the  cloth.  The  cloth  remained  uninjured,  but  had  a  red  streak 
running:  through  it.  Similar  to  this  was  the  casting  of  clothes 
into  the  lake  (p.  596-7).  Fire  breaking  out  of  the  earth  (iarS- 
eldr)  is  mentioned  several  times  in  Icelandic  sagas  :  in  the  even- 
ing you  see  a  great  horrible  man  rowing  to  land  in  an  iron  boat, 
and  digging  under  the  stable  door  :  in  the  night  earth-fire  breaks 
out  there,  and  consumes  every  dwelling,  Landn.  2,  5  ;  '  iarSeldr 
rann  ofan/  4,  12  (see  Suppl.). 

Needfirb. — Flame  which  had    been   kept   some  time    among 
men  and  been  propagated  from  one  fire  to  another,  was  thought 
unserviceable  for  sacred  uses  ;  as  holy  water  had  to  be  drawn 
fresh  from  the  spring,  so  it  made  all  the  difference,  if  instead  of 
the  profaned  and  as  it  were  worn  out  flame,  a  new  one  were  used. 
This  was  called  wild  fire,  as  opposed  to  the  tame  and  domesti- 
cated.    So  heroes  when  they  fought,  '  des  fiurs  uz   den  riugen 
(harness)   hiuwen  si  genuoc/  Nib.  2215,  1  ;    uz  ir   helmen   daz 
wilde  fiwer  von  den  slegen  vuor  entwer/  Alt.  bl.  1,  339  ;  cdaz 
fiur  wilde  wadlende  druze  vluoc/  Lanz.  5306  ;  '  si  sluog'en  uf  ein- 
ander,  daz  wilde  fiur  erschien/   Etzels  hofh.   168    (see  Suppl.). 
Fire   struck  or    scraped    out    of  stone   might  indeed  have  every 
claim  to  be  called  a  fresh  one,  but  either  that  method  seemed 
too  common  (fiammam  concussis  ex  more  lapidibus  elicere,  Vita 
Severini  cap.  14),  or  its  generation  out  of  wood  was  regarded  as 
moi;e  primitive  and  hallowed.     If  by  accident  such' wild  fire  have 
arisen  uuder  the  carpenter's  hand  in  driving  a  nail  into  the  mor- 
tised timbers  of  a  new  house,  it  is  ominous  of  danger  (Superst.  I, 
411.  500.  707).     But  for  the  most  part  there  was  a  formal  kindling 
of  flame  by  the  rubbing  of  wood,  for  which  the  name  known  from 
the  oldest  times  was  notfeuer  (need  fire),  and  its  ritual  can  with 
scarce  a  doubt  be  traced  back  to  heathen  sacrifices. 

So  far  back  as  in  the  Indiculus  superstit.  15,  we  have  mention 
f  de  ignefricato  de  ligno,  id  est  nodfyr';  the  Capitulare  Carlomani 


604  ELEMENTS. 

of  742  §  5  (Pertz  3,  17)  forbids  '  illos  saerilegos  ignes  quos  nied- 
fijr  vocant.1 

The  preparation  of  needfire  is  variously  described  :  I  think 
it  worth  the  while  to  bring  all  such  accounts  together  in  this 
place.  Lindenbrog  in  the  Glossary  to  the  Capitularies  says  : 
'  Eusticani  homines  in  multis  Germaniae  locis,  et  festo  quidem 
S.'Johannis  Baptistae  die,  p alum  sepi  extrahunt,  extracto  funem 
circumligant,  illumque  hue  illuc  ducunt,  donee  ignem  concipiat  : 
quern  stipula  lignisque  aridioribus  aggestis  curate  fovent,  ac 
cineres  collectos  supra  olera  spargunt,  hoc  medio  erucas  abigi 
posse  inani  superstitione  credentes.  Eum  ergo  ignem  nodfeur  et 
nodfyr,  quasi  necessarium  ignem,  vocant/ — Joh.  Keiskius,2  in  Un- 
tersuchung  des  notfeuers,  Frankf.  and  Leipz.  1696,  8.  p.  51  ■ 
'  If  at  any  time  a  grievous  murrain  have  broke  out  among 
cattle  great  or  small,  and  they  have  suffered  much  harm 
thereby ;  the  husbandmen  with  one  consent  make  a  nothfur 
or  nothfeuer.  On  a  day  appointed  there  must  in  no  house  he 
any  flame  left  on  the  hearth.  From  every  house  shall  be  some 
straw  and  water  and  bushwood  brought ;  then  is  a  stout  oaken 
stake  driven  fast  into  the  ground,  and  a  hole  bored  through  the 
same,  to  the  which  a  wooden  roller  well  smeared  with  pitch  and 
tar  is  let  in,  and  so  winded  about,  until  by  reason  of  the  great 
heat  and  stress  (nothzwang)  it  give  out  fire.  This  is  straightway 
catched  on  shavings,  and  by  straw,  heath  and  bushwood  enlarged, 
till  it  grow  to  a  full  nothfeuer,  yet  must  it  stretch  a  little  way 
along  betwixt  two  walls  or  hedges,  and  the  cattle  and  thereto  the 
horses  be  with  sticks  and  whips  driven  through  it  three  times  or 
two.  Others  in  other  parts  set  up  two  such  stakes,  and  stuff  into 
the  holes  a  windle  or  roller  and  therewith  old  rags  smeared  with 
grease.  Others  use  a  hairen  or  common  light-  spun  rope,  collect 
wood  of  nine  kinds,  and  keep  up  a  violent  motion  till  such  time  as 
fire  do  drop  therefrom.  There  may  be  in  use  yet  other  ways  for 
the  generating  or  kindling  of  this  fire,  nevertheless  they  all  have 
respect  unto  the  healing  of  cattle  alone.  After  thrice  or  twice 
passing  through,  the  cattle  are  driven  to  stall   or  field,  and  the 

1  Tgnorant  scribes  made  it  metfratres,  the  Capitularia  spuria  Beueclicti  1,  2 
(reitz  iv.  2,  46)  have  nedfratres. 

2  Eector  of  Wolfenbtittel  school,  v.  Gericke's  Schottelms   illustratus,  Leipz. 
171P,  p.  66.    Eccard's  Fr.  or.  1,  425. 


NEED-FIIIE. 


605 


collected  pile  of  wood  is  again  pulled  asunder,  yet  in  sucli  wise  in 
sundry  places,  that  every  householder  shall  take  a  brand  with  him, 
quench  it  in  the  wash  or  swill  tub,  and  put  the  same  by  for  a 
time  in  the  crib  wherein  the  cattle  are  fed.  The  stakes  driven  in 
for  the  extorting  of  this  fire,  and  the  wood  used  for  a  roller,  are 
sometimes  carried  away  for  fuel,  sometimes  laid  by  in  safety,  when 
the  threefold  chasing  of  the  cattle  through  the  flame  hath  been 
accomplished/ — In  the  Marburg  Records  of  Inquiry,  for  1605,  it 
is  ordered,  that  a  new  cartwheel  with  an  unused  axle  be  taken 
and  worked  round  until  it  give  fire,  and  with  this  a  fire  be 
lighted  between  the  gates,  and  all  the  oxen  driven  through  it ;  but 
before  the  fire  be  kindled,  every  citizen  shall  put  his  own  fire  clean 
out,  and  afterward  fetch  him  fire  again  from  the  other.1  Kuhn's 
Markisehe  sagen  p.  369  informs  us,  that  in  many  parts  of  the 
Mark  the  custom  prevails  of  making  a  nothfeuer  on  certain  occa- 
sions, and  particularly  when  there  is  disease  among  swine.  Before 
sunrise  two  stakes  of  dry  wood  are  dug  into  the  ground  amid  solemn 
silence,  and  hempen  ropes  that  go  round  them  are  pulled  back 
and  forwards  till  the  wood  catches  fire  ;  the  fire  is  fed  with  leaves 
and  twigs,  and  the  sick  animals  are  driven  through.  In  some 
places  the  fire  is  produced  by  the  friction  of  an  old  cartwheel. — 
The  following  description,  the  latest  of  all,  is  communicated  from 
Hohenhameln,  bailiw.  Baldenberg,  Hildesheim  :  In  many  villages 
of  Lower  Saxony,  especially  in  the  mountains,  it  is  common,  as  a 
precaution  against  cattle  plague,  to  get  up  the  so-called  wild  fire, 
through  which  first  the  pigs,  then  the  cows,  lastly  the  geese  are 
driven.2  The  established  procedure  in  the  matter  is  this.  The 
farmers  and  all  the  parish  assemble,  each  inhabitant  receives 
notice  to  extinguish  every  bit  of  fire  in  his  house,  so  that  not  a 
spark  is  left  alight  in  the  whole  village.  Then  old  and  young 
walk  to  a  hollow  way,  usually  towards  evening,  the  women  carry- 
ing linen,  the  men  wood  and  tow.  Two  oaken  stakes  are  driven 
into  the  ground  a  foot  and  a  half  apart,  each  having  a  hole  on  the 
inner  side,  into  which  fits  a  cross-bar  as  thick  as  an  arm.  The 
holes  are  stuffed  with  linen,  then  the  cross-bar  is  forced  in  as 
tight  as  possible,  the  heads  of  the  stakes  being  held  together  with 

1  Zeitsclir.  des  Less,  vereins  2,  281. 

2  Not  a  word  about  sheep  :  supposing  cocks  and  hens  were  likewise  bunted  over 
tbe  coals,  it  would  explain  a  hitherto  unexplained  proverb  (lieinbart  xciv.). 


606  ELEMENTS. 

corcls.  About  the  smooth  round  cross-bar  is  coiled  a  rope,  whose 
long  ends,  left  hanging  on  both  sides,  are  seized  by  a  number  of 
men ;  these  make  the  cross-bar  revolve  rapidly  this  way  and  that, 
till  the  friction  sets  the  linen  in  the  holes  on  fire.  The  sparks  are 
caught  on  tow  or  oakum,  and  whirled  round  in  the  air  till  they 
burst  into  a  clear  blaze,  which  is  then  communicated  to  straw,  and 
from  the  straw  to  a  bed  of  brushwood  arranged  in  cross  layers  in 
the  hollow  way.  When  this  wood  has  well  burnt  and  nearly  done 
blazing,  the  people  hurry  off  to  the  herds  waiting  behind,  and 
drive  them  perforce,  one  after  the  other,  through  the  glowing 
embers.  As  soon  as  all  the  cattle  are  through,  the  young  folks 
throw  themselves  pellmell  upon  the  ashes  and  coals,  sprinkling 
and  blackening  one  another ;,  those  who  are  most  blackened  and 
besmudged  march  into  the  village  behind  the  cattle  as  conquerors, 
and  will  not  wash  for  a  long  time  after.1  If  after  long  rubbing 
the  linen  will  not  catch,  they  feel  sure  there  is  still  fire  somewhere 
in  the  village,  and  that  the  element  refuses  to  reveal  itself  through 
friction  :  then  follows  a  strict  searching  of  houses,  any  fire  they 
may  light  upon  is  extinguished,  and  the  master  of  the  house 
rebuked  or  chastised.  But  that  the  wild  fire  should  be  evoked  by 
friction  is  indispensable,  it  cannot  be  struck  out  of  flint  and  steel. 
Some  localities  perform  the  ceremony,  not  yearly  as  a  preventive 
of  murrain,  but  only  upon  its  actually  breaking  out. 

Accurate  as  these  accounts  are,  a  few  minor  details  have 
escaped  them,  whose  observance  is  seen  to  in  some  districts  at 
least.  Thus,  in  the  Halberstadt  country  the  ropes  of  the  wooden 
roller  are  pulled  by  two  chaste  boys.2  Need  fires  have  remained  in 
use  longer  and  more  commonly  in  North  Germany,3  yet  are  not 
quite  unknown  in  the  South.  Schmeller  and  Stalder  are  silent, 
but  in  Appenzell  the  country  children  still  have  a  game  of  rub- 
bing a  rope  against  a  stick  till  it  catches  fire  :  this  they  call  '  de 
tufel  hale,'  unmanning  the  devil,  despoiling  him  of  his  strength.4 

1  Is  there  not  also  a  brand  or  some  light  earned  home  for  a  redistribution  of 
fire  in  tbe  village  ? 

-  Biisching's  Wochentliche  nachr.  4,  64 ;  so  a  chaste  youth  has  to  strike  the 
light  for  curing  St.  Anthony's  fire,  Superst.  I,  710. 

3  Conf.  Conring's  Epist.  ad  Baluz.  xiii.  Gericke's  Schottel.  p.  70.  Diihnert 
sub  v.  noodfiir. 

4  Zellweger's  Gesch.  von  Appenzell,  Trogen  1830.  1,  63 ;  who  observes,  that 
with  the  ashes  of  the  fire  so  engendered  they  strew  the  fields,  as  a  protection 
against  vermin. 


NEED-FIRE. 


607 


But  Tobler  252''  says,  what  boys  call  de  tiifel  hilla  is  spinning  a 
pointed  stick,  with  a  string  coiled  round  it,  rapidly  in  a  wooden 
socket,  till  it  takes  fire.  The  name  may  be  one  of  those  innu- 
merable allusions  to  Loki,  the  devil  and  fire-god  (p.  242).  Nic. 
Gryse,  in  a  passage  to  be  quoted  later,  speaks  of  sawing  fire  out 
of  wood,  as  we  read  elsewhere  of  symbolically  sawing  the  old 
woman  in  two.  The  Practica  of  Berthol.  Carrichter,  phys.  in 
ord.  to  Maximilian  II.,  gives  a  description  (which  I  borrow  from 
Wolfg.  Hildebrand  on  Sorcery,  Leipz.  1631.  p.  226)  of  a  magic 
bath,  which  is  not  to  be  heated  with  common  flint-and-steel  fire  : 
(  Go  to  an  appletree  which  the  lightning  hath  stricken,  let  a  saw 
be  made  thee  of  his  wood,  therewith  shalt  thou  saw  upon  a 
wooden  threshold  that  much  people  passeth  over,  till  it  be  kindled. 
Then  make  firewood  of  birch-fungus,  and  kindle  it  at  this  fire, 
with  which  thou  shalt  heat  the  bath,  and  on  thy  life  see  it  go  not 
out '  (see  Suppl.). 

Notfiur  can  be  derived  from  not  (need,  necessitas),  whether 
because  the  fire  is  forced  to  shew  itself  or  the  cattle  to  tread  the 
hot  coal,  or  because  the  operation  takes  place  in  a  time  of  need, 
of  pestilence.  Nevertheless  I  will  attempt  another  explanation  : 
notfiur,  nodfiur  may  stand  for  an  older  hnoffiur,  hnodfiur,  from 
the  root  hniudan,  OHG.  hniotan,  ON.  hniofta  (quassare,  terere, 
tundere) ; l  and  would  mean  a  fire  elicited  by  thumping,  rubbing, 
shaking. 

And  in  Sweden  it  is  actually  called  both  vrideld  and  gnideld  : 
the  one  from  vrida  (torquere,  circumagere),  AS.  wriSan,  OHG. 
ridan,  MHG.  riden ;  the  other  from  gnida  (fricare),  OHG.  knitan, 
AS.  cnidan  (conterere,  fricare,  depsere). 

It  was  produced  in  Sweden  as  with  us,  by  violently  rubbing 
two  pieces  of  wood  together,  in  some  districts  even  near  the 
end  of  last  century;  sometimes  they  used  boughs  of  nine  sorts 
of  wood?     The  smoke  rising  from  gnideld  was  deemed  salutary, 

1  OHG.  pihniutit  (excutit).Gl.  ker.  251.  hnotot  (quassat)  229.  hnutten  (vibrare) 
282  ;  N.  has  fnoton  (quassare),  Ps.  109,  6.  Bth.  230  ;  conf.  nieten,  to  bump.  ON. 
still  has  knicro'a  in  hnoiS  (tudes,  malleus),  hno'JSa  (depsere),  hnu'Sla  (subigere).  It 
might  be  spelt  hnotfiur  or  huotfiur  (hnutfiur),  ace.  as  the  sing,  or  pi.  vowel-form 
was  used.  Perhaps  we  need  not  even  insist  on  a  lost  h,  but  turn  to  the  OHG. 
niuwan,  ON.  niia  (terere,  fricare),  from  which  a  subst.  not  might  be  derived  by 
suffix.  Nay,  we  might  go  the  length  of  supposing  that  not,  nauj>s,  nauftr,  need, 
contained  from  the  first  the  notion  of  stress  and  pressure  (conf.  Graff  2,  1032.  4, 
1125). 

-  Hire's  De  superstit.   p.  98,  and  Glossary  sub.  v.  wredeld.     Finn.  Magn., 


608  ELEMENTS. 

fruit-trees  or  nets  fumigated  with  it  became  the  more  productive 
of  fruit  or  fish.  On  this  fumigation  with  vriden  eld,  and  on 
driving  the  cattle  out  over  such  smoke,  conf.  Superst.  Swed.  89. 
108.  We  can  see  that  the  purposes  to  which  needfire  was 
applied  must  have  been  far  more  numerous  in  heathen  times  :  in 
Germany  we  find  but  a  fragment  of  it  in  use  for  diseased  cattle, 
but  the  superstitious  practice  of  girls  kindling  nine  sorts  of  wood 
on  Christmas  eve  (Sup.  I,  955)  may  assure  us  of  a  wider  meaning 
having  once  belonged  to  needfire  (see  Suppl.). 

In  the  North  of  England  it  is  believed  that  an  angel  strikes  a 
tree,  and  then  needfire  can  be  got  from  it ;  did  they  rub  it  only 
out  of  windfall  wood  ?  or  does  striking  here  not  mean  felling  ? 

Of  more  significance  are  the  Scotch  and  Irish  procedures, 
which  I  am  glad  to  give  in  the  words  of  the  original  communica- 
tions. The  following  I  owe  to  the  kindness  of  Miss  Austin ;  it 
refers  to  the  I.  of  Mull  (off  the  W.  coast  of  Scotland),  and  to 
the  year  1767.  '  In  consequence  of  a  disease  among  the  black 
cattle  the  people  agreed  to  perform  an  incantation,  though  they 
esteemed  it  a  wicked  thing.  They  carried  to  the  top  of  Carn- 
uioor  a  wheel  and  nine  spindles  of  oak  wood.  They  extinguished 
every  fire  in  every  house  within  sight  of  the  hill ;  the  wheel  was 
then  turned  from  east  to  west  over  the  nine  spindles  long  enough 
to  produce  fire  by  friction.  If  the  fire  were  not  produced  before 
noon,  the  incantation  lost  its  effect.  They  failed  for  several  days 
running.  They  attributed  this  failure  to  the  obstinacy  of  one 
householder,  who  would  not  let  his  fires  be  put  out  for  what  he 
considered  so  wrong  a  purpose.  However  by  bribing  his  ser- 
vants they  contrived  to  have  them  extinguished,  and  on  that 
morning  raised  their  fire.  They  then  sacrificed  a  heifer,  cutting 
in  pieces  and  burning,  while  yet  alive,  the  diseased  part.  Then 
they  lighted  their  own  hearths  from  the  pile,  and  ended  by  feast- 
ing on  the  remains.  Words  of  incantation  were  repeated  by  an 
old  man  from  Morven,  who  came  over  as  master  of  the  cere- 
monies, and  who  continued  speaking  all  the  time  the  fire  was 
being  raised.  This  man  was  living  a  beggar  at  Bellochroy. 
Asked  to  repeat  the  spell,  he  said  the  sin  of  repeating  it  once  had 


Tidskr.  for  nord.  oldk.  2,  294,  following  Westerdahl.     Conf.   bjaraau,  a  magic 
utensil,  Chap.  XXXIV. 


NEED-FIRE. 


609 


brought  him  to  beggary,  and  that  he  dared  not  say  those  words 
again.     The  whole  country  believed  him  accursed '  (see  Suppl.). 

In  the  Highlands,  and  especially  in  Caithness,  they  now  use 
needfire  chiefly  as  a  remedy  for  preternatural  diseases  of  cattle 
brought  on  by  witchcraft.1  '  To  defeat  the  sorceries,  certain 
persons  who  have  the  power  to  do  so  are  sent  for  to  raise  the 
needfire.  Upon  any  small  river,  lake,  or  island,  a  circular  booth 
of  stone  or  turf  is  erected,  on  which  a  couple  or  rafter  of  a  birch- 
tree  is  placed,  and  the  roof  covered  over.  In  the  centre  is  set  a 
perpendicular  post,  fixed  by  a  wooden  pin  to  the  couple,  the  lower 
end  being  placed  in  an  obloug  groove  on  the  floor ;  and  another 
pole  is  placed  horizontally  between  the  upright  post  and  the  legs 
of  the  couple,  into  both  of  which  the  ends,  being  tapered,  are 
inserted.  This  horizontal  timber  is  called  the  auger,  being  pro- 
vided with  four  short  arms  or  spokes  by  which  it  can  be  turned 
round.  As  many  men  as  can  be  collected  are  then  set  to  work, 
having  first  divested  themselves  of  cdl  kinds  of  metal,  and  two  at 
a  time  continue  to  turn  the  pole  by  means  of  the  levers,  while 
others  keep  driving  wedges  under  the  upright  post  so  as  to  press 
it  against  the  auger,  which  by  the  friction  soon  becomes  ignited. 
From  this  the  needfire  is  instantly  procured,  and  all  other  fires 
being  immediately  quenched,  those  that  are  rekindled  both  in 
dwelling  house  and  offices  are  accounted  sacred,  and  the  cattle 
are  successively  made  to  smell  them/  Let  me  also  make  room 
for  Martin's  description,3  which  has  features  of  its  own  :  '  The 
inhabitants  here  did  also  make  use  of  a  fire  called  tinegin,  i.e.  a 
forced  fire,  or  fire  of  necessity,3  which  they  used  as  an  antidote 
against  the  plague  or  murrain  in  cattle ;  and  it  was  performed 
thus :  all  the  fires  in  the  parish  were  extinguished,  and  then 
eighty-one  (9  x  9)  married  men,  being  thought  the  necessary 
number  for  effecting  this  design,  took  two  great  plunks  of  wood, 
and  nine  of  'em  were  employed  by  turns,  who  by  their  repeated 
efforts  rubbed  one  of  the  planks  against  the  other  until  the   heat 

1  I  borrow  the  description  of  the  process  from  James  Logan's  'The  Scottish 
Gael,  or  Celtic  manners  as  preserved  among  the  Highlanders,'  Lond.  ls;U.  2,  til; 
though  here  he  copies  almost  verbally  from  Jarnieson'a  Supplem.  to  the  Scot.  Diet. 
sub  v.  neidfyre. 

2  Descr.  of  the  Western  Islands,  p.  113. 

3  From  tin,  Ir.  teine  (fire),  and  egin,  Ir.  eigin,  eigean  (vis,  violentia) ;  which 
seems  to  favour  the  old  etymology  of  nothfeuer,  unless  it  be  simply  a  translation  of 
the  Engl,  needfire  [which  itself  may  stand  for  kneadiiie] . 


610  ELEMENTS 

thereof  produced  fire;  and  from  this  forced  fire  each  family  is 
supplied  with  new  fire,  which  is  no  sooner  kindled  than  a  pot  full 
of  water  is  quickly  set  on  it,  and  afterwards  sprinkled  upon  the 
people  infected  with  the  plague,  or  upon  the  cattle  that  have  the 
murrain.  And  this  they  all  say  they  find  successful  by  ex- 
perience :  it  was  practised  on  the  mainland  opposite  to  the  south 
of  Skye,  within  these  thirty  years/  As  in  this  case  there  is  water 
boiled  on  the  frictile  fire,  and  sprinkled  with  the  same  effect,  so 
Eccard  (Fr.  or.  1,  425)  tells  us,  that  one  Whitsun  morning  he  saw 
some  stablemen  rub  fire  out  of  wood,  and  boil  their  cabbage  over 
it,  under  the  belief  that  by  eating  it  they  would  be  proof  against 
fever  all  that  year.  A  remarkable  story  from  Northamptonshire, 
and  of  the  present  century,  confirms  that  sacrifice  of  the  young 
cow  in  Mull,  and  shows  that  even  in  England  superstitious 
people  would  kill  a  calf  to  protect  the  herd  from  pestilence  :  Miss 

C and  her  cousin  walking  saw  a  fire  in  a  field,  and  a  crowd 

round  it.  They  said,  '  what  is  the  matter  ? '  '  Killing  a  calf.' 
'What  for?'  'To  stop  the  murrain.''  They  went  away  as 
quickly  as  possible.  On  speaking  to  the  clergyman,  he  made 
inquiries.  The  people  did  not  like  to  talk  of  the  affair,  but  it 
appeared  that  when  there  is  a  disease  among  the  cows,  or  the 
calves  are  born  sickly,  they  sacrifice  (i.e.  kill  and  burn)  one  for 
good  luck/  [A  similar  story  from  Cornwall  in  Hone's  Daybook 
1,  153.] 

Unquestionably  needfire  was  a  sacred  thing  to  other  nations 
beside  the  Teutonic  and  Celtic.  The  Creeks  in  N.  America  hold 
an  annual  harvest  festival,  commencing  with  a  strict  fast  of 
three  days,  during  which  the^res  are  put  out  in  all  houses.  On 
the  fourth  morning  the  chief  priest  by  rubbing  two  dry  sticks 
together  lights  a  new  clean  fire,  which  is  distributed  among  all 
the  dwellings ;  not  till  then  do  the  women  carry  home  the  new 
corn  and  fruits  from  the  harvest  field.1  The  Arabs  have  for  fire- 
friction  two  pieces  of  wood  called  March  and  Aphar,  the  one 
male,  the  other  female.  The  Chinese  say  the  emperor  Sui  was 
the  first  who  rubbed  wood  against  wood ;  the  inconvenient 
method  is  retained  as  a  holy  one.  Indians  and  Persians  turn 
a  piece  of  cane  round  in  dry  wood,  Kanne's  Urk.  454-5  (see 
Suppl.). 

i  Fr.  Majer's  Mythol.  taschenb.  1811,  p.  110. 


NEED-FIRE.  611 

• 

It  is  still  more  interesting  to  observe  how  nearly  the  old 
Roman  and  Greek  customs  correspond.  Excerpts  from  Festus 
(0.  Muller  106,  2)  say:  'ignis  Vestae  si  quando  interstinctus 
esset,  virgiues  verberibus  afficiebantur  a  pontifice,  quibus  mos 
erat,  tabulam  felicis  materiae  tarn  diu  terebrare,  quousque  exceptum 
ignem  cribro  aeneo  virgo  in  aedem  ferret/  The  sacred  fire  of 
the  goddess,  once  extinguished,  was  not  to  be  rekindled,  save  by 
generating  the  pure  element  anew.  A  plank  of  the  choice 
timber  of  sacred  trees  was  bored,  i.e.  a  pin  turned  round  in  it, 
till  it  gave  out  sparks.  The  act  of  catching  the  fire  in  a 
sieve,  and  so  conveying  it  into  the  temple,  is  suggestive  of  a 
similar  carrying  of  water  in  a  sieve,  of  which  there  is  some 
account  to  be  given  further  on.  Plutarch  (in  Numa  9)  makes 
out  that  neiv  fire  was  obtained  not  by  friction,  but  by  in- 
tercepting the  sun's  rays  in  clay  vessels  destined  for  the  pur- 
pose. The  Greeks  worshipped  Hestia  as  the  pure  hearth-flame 
itself.1  But  Lemnos,  the  island  on  which  Zeus  had  flung  down 
the  celestial  fire-god  Hepheestus,2  harboured  a  fire-worship  of 
its  own.  Once  a  year  every  fire  was  extinguished  for  nine  days, 
till  a  ship  brought  some  fresh  from  Delos  off  the  sacred  hearth  of 
Apollo  :  for  some  days  it  drifts  on  the  sea  without  being  able  to 
land,  but  as  soon  as  it  runs  in,  there  is  fire  served  out  to  every 
one  for  domestic  use,  and  a  new  life  begins.  The  old  fire  was  no 
longer  holy  enough;  by  doing  without  it  altogether  for  a  time, 
men  would  learn  to  set  the  true  value  on  the  element  (see 
Suppl.).3  Like  Vesta,  St.  Bridget  of  Ireland  (d.  518  or  521) 
had  a  'perpetual  fire  maintained  in  honour  of  her  near  Kildare  ;  a 
wattled  fence  went  round  it,  which  none  but  women  durst  ap- 
proach ;  it  was  only  permissible  to  blow  it  with  bellows,  not  with 
the  mouth.4     The  mode  of  generating  it  is  not  recorded. 

The  wonderful  amount  of  harmony  in  these  accounts,  and  the 
usages  of  needfire  themselves,  point  back  to  a  high  antiquity. 
The  wheel  seems  to  be  an  emblem  of  the  sun,  whence  light  and 
fire  proceed;  I  think  it  likely   that   it  was  provided  with   nine 

1  Nee  tu  aliud  Vestam  quam  rivam  intelligc  flammam,  Ov.  Fast.  6,  295. 

2  Ace.  to  the  Finnish  myth,  the  fire  created  hy  the  gods  falls  on  the  sea  in 
balls,  it  is  swallowed  by  a  salmon,  and  men  afterwards  find  it  inside  the  fish  when 
caught.     Runes  pp.  6-22. 

3  Philostr.  Heroic,  pp.  710.     Welcker'a  Trilogie,  pp.  2-47-8. 

4  Acta  sanctor.,  calend.  Febr.  p.  112". 


612  ELEMENTS. 

spokes  :  'thet  niugenspetze  fial'  survives  in  the  Frisian  laws,  those 
nine  oaken  spindles  whose  friction  against  the  nave  produced  fire 
signify  the  nine  spokes  standing  out  of  the  nave,  and  the  same 
sacred  number  turns  up  again  in  the  nine  kinds  of  wood,  in  the 
nine  and  eighty-one  men  that  rub.  We  can  hardly  doubt  that 
the  wheel  when  set  on  fire  formed  the  nucleus  and  centre  of  a 
holy  and  purifying  sacrificial  flame.  Our  weisthiiiner  (2,  615-6. 
693-7)  have  another  remarkable  custom  to  tell  of.  At  the  great 
yearly  assize  a  cartwheel,  that  had  lain  six  weeks  and  three  days 
soaking  in  water  (or  a  cesspool),  was  placed  in  a  fire  kindled 
before  the  judges,  and  the  banquet  lasts  till  the  nave,  which  must 
on  no  account  be  turned  or  poked,  be  consumed  to  ashes.  This 
I  take  to  be  a  last  relic  of  the  pagan  sacrificial  feast,  and  the 
wheel  to  have  been  the  means  of  generating  the  fire,  of  which  it 
is  true  there  is  nothing  said.  In  any  case  we  have  here  the  use 
of  a  cartwheel  to  feed  a  festal  flame. 

If  the  majority  of  the  accounts  quoted  limit  the  use  of  need- 
fire  to  an  outbreak  of  murrain,  yet  some  of  them  expressly  inform 
us  that  it  was  resorted  to  at  stated  times  of  the  year,  especially 
Midsummer,  and  that  the  cattle  were  driven  through  the  flames  to 
guard  them  beforehand  against  future  sicknesses.  Nicolaus  Gryse 
(Rostock  1593,  liiia)  mentions  as  a  regular  practice  on  St.  John's 
day  :  '  Toward  nightfall  they  warmed  them  by  St.  John's  blaze 
and  needfire  (nodfiir)  that  they  sawed  out  of  wood,  kindling 
tbe  same  not  in  God's  name  but  St.  John's;  leapt  and  ran 
and  drave  the  cattle  therethro',  and  were  fulfilled  of  thousand 
joys  whenas  they  had  passed  the  night  in  great  sins,  shames 
and  harms.' 

Of  this  yearly  recurrence  we  are  assured  both  by  the  Lemnian 
worship,  and  more  especially  by  the  Celtic.1  It  was  in  the  great 
gatherings  at  annual  feasts  that  needfire  was  lighted.  These  the 
Celtic  nations  kept  at  the  beginning  of  May  and  of  November. 
The  grand  hightide  was  the  Mayday  ;  I  find  it  falling  mostly  on 
the  1st  of  May,  yet  sometimes  on  the  2nd  or  3rd.  This  day  is 
called  in  Irish  and  Gaelic  la  bealtine  or  beiltine,  otherwise  spelt 
beltein,  and  corrupted  into  belton,  beltlm,  beltam.     La  means  day, 

1  Hyde  remarks  of  the  Guebers  also,  that  they  lighted  a  fire  every  year. 


NEED-FIRE.      BEALTINE.  G13 

teine  or  tine  fire,  and  beal,  beil,  is  understood  to  be  the  name  of 
a  god,  not  directly  connected  with  the  Asiatic  Belus,1  but  a  deity 
of  light  peculiar  to  the  Celts.  This  Irish  Beal,  Beil,  Gaelic 
Beal,  appears  in  the  Welsh  dialect  as  Beli,  and  his  0.  Celtic 
name  of  Belenus,  Belinus  is  preserved  in  Ausonius,  Tertullian  and 
numerous  inscriptions  (Forcellini  sub  v.).  The  present  custom 
is  thus  described  by  Armstrong  sub  v.  bealtainn  :  '  In  some  parts 
of  the  Highlands  the  young  folks  of  a  hamlet  meet  in  the  moors 
on  the  first  of  May.  They  cut  a  table  in  the  green  sod,  of  a 
round  figure,  by  cutting  a  trench  in  the  ground  of  such  circum- 
ference as  to  hold  the  whole  company.  They  then  kindle  a  fire, 
and  dress  a  .repast  of  eggs  and  milk  in  the  consistence  of  a 
custard.  They  knead  a  cake  of  oatmeal,  which  is  toasted  at  the 
embers  against  a  stone.  After  the  custard  is  eaten  up,  they 
divide  the  cake  in  so  many  portions,  as  similar  as  possible  to  one 
another  in  size  and  shape,  as  there  are  persons  in  the  company. 
They  daub  one  of  these  portions  with  charcoal  until  it  is  perfectly 
black.  They  then  put  all  the  bits  of  the  cake  into  a  bonnet,  and 
every  one,  blindfold,  draws  out  a  portion.  The  bonnet-holder  is 
entitled  to  the  last  bit.  Whoever  draws  the  black  bit  is  the 
devoted  person  who  is  to  be  sacrificed  to  Baal,  whose  favour  they 
meam  to  implore  in  rendering  the  year  productive.  The  devoted 
person  is  compelled  to  leap  three  times  over  the  flames.'  Here  the 
reference  to  the  worship  of  a  deity  is  too  plain  to  be  mistaken  : 
we  see  by  the  leaping  over  the  flame,  that  the  main  point  was,  to 
select  a  human  being  to  propitiate  the  god  and  make  him  merci- 
ful, that  afterwards  an  animal  sacrifice  was  substituted  for  him, 
and  finally,  nothing  remained  of  the  bodily  immolation  but  a  leap 
through  the  fire  for  man  and  beast.  The  holy  rite  of  friction  is 
not  mentioned  here,  but  as  it  was  necessary  for  the  need  fire  that 
purged  pestilence,  it  must  originally  have  been  much  more  in 
requisition  at  the  great  yearly  festival. 

The  earliest  mention  of  the  beiltine  is  found  in  Cormac,  arch- 
bishop of  Cashel  (d.  908).  Two  fires  were  lighted  side  by  side, 
and  to  pass  unhurt  between  them  was  wholesome  for  men  and 
cattle.  Hence  the  phrase,  to  express  a  great  danger  :  'itir  dha 
theiune  beil/    i.e.    between    two    fires.2     That   the  sacrifice  was 

1  Bel,  Bal,  Isidor.  Etym.  8,  23. 

-  OTlaherty  in  Transact,  of  Irish  Acad.,  vol.  11,  rF-  100.  122-3. 


614  ELEMENTS. 

strictly  superintended  by  priests,  we  are  expressely  assured  by 
Usher  (Trias  thaumat.  p.  125),  who  founds  on  Evinus :  Lege 
etiam  severissima  cavebatur,  ut  omnes  ignes  per  universas  re- 
giones  ista  nocte  exstinguerentui',  et  nulli  liceat  ignem  reaccen- 
dere  nisi  prius  Temoriae  (Tighmora,  whom  we  know  from  Ossian) 
a  magis  rogus  sacrificiorum  exstrueretur,  et  quicunque  hanc  legem 
in  aliquo  transgrederetur  non  alia  mulcta  quam  capitis  supplicio 
commissi  delicti  poenam  luebat.1 

Leo  (Malb.  gl.  i,  35)  has  ingeniously  put  forward  an  antithesis 
between  a  god  of  war  Beal  or  Bael,  and  a  god  of  peace  Sighe  or 
Sithich;  nay,  by  this  distinction  he  explains  the  brothers  Bel- 
lovesus  and  Sigovesus  in  Livy  5,  34  as  servants  (vesus  =  Gaelic 
uis,  uais,  minister)  of  Beal  and  Sighe,  connecting  Sighe  with 
that  silent  peaceful  folk  the  elves,  who  are  called  sighe  (supra, 
p.  444n.)  :  to  Beal  were  offered  the  May  fires,  bealtine,  to  Sighe 
the  November  fires,  samlitheine  (peace-fire).  In  Wales  too  they 
lighted  fires  on  May  1  and  Nov.  1,  both  being  called  coelcerth 
(see  Suppl.). 

I  still  hesitate  to  accept  all  the  inferences,  but  undoubtedly 
Beal  must  be  taken  for  a  divine  being,  whose  worship  is  likely  to 
have  extended  beyond  the  Celtic  nations.  At  p.  228  I  identified 
him  with  the  German  Phol ;  and  it  is  of  extraordinary  value  to 
our  research,  that  in  the  Rhine  districts  we  come  upon  a  Pfultag, 
Pulletag  (P.'s  day),  which  fell  precisely  on  the  2nd  of  May 
(Weisth.  2,  8.  3,  748).  We  know  that  our  forefathers  very 
generally  kept  the  beginning  of  May  as  a  great  festival,  and  it  is 
still  regarded  as  the  trysting-time  of  witches,  i.e.  once  of  wise- 
women  and  fays;  who  can  doubt  that  heathen  sacrifices  blazed 
that  day?  Pkoltag  then  answers  to  Bealteine,-  and  moreover 
Baldag  is  the  Saxon  form  for  Paltar  (p.  229). 

Were  the  German  May-fires,  after  the  conversion,  shifted  to 
Easter  and  Midsummer,  to  adapt  them  to  Christian  worship  ?  Or, 
as  the  summer  solstice  was  itself  deeply  rooted  in  heathenism,  is 
it  Eastertide  alone  that  represents  the  ancient  May-fires  ?  For, 
as  to  the  Celtic  November,  the  German  Yule  or  Midwinter  might 
easily  stand  for  that,  even  in  heathen  times. 

i  Conf  the  accounts  in  Mone's  Geschichte  des  heidenth.  2,  485. 
2  All  over  England  on  the  1st  of  May  they  set  up  a  May  pole,  which  may  be 
from  pole,  palus,  AS.  pol ;  yet  Pol,  Phol  may  deserve  to  be  taken  into  account  too. 


BEALTINE.      PHOL'S   DAY.  615 

AVhichever  way  we  settle  that,  our  very  next  investigations 
will  shew,  that  beside  both  needfire  and  bealtine,  other  fires  are 
to  be  found  almost  all  over  Europe. 

It  is  not  unimportant  to  observe,  that  in  the  north  of  Germany 
they  take  place  at  Easter,  in  the  south  at  Midsummer.  There 
they  betoken  the  entrance  of  spring,  here  the  longest  day;  as 
before,  it  all  turns  upon  whether  the  people  are  Saxon  or  Frank. 
All  Lower  Saxony,  Westphalia,  and  Lower  Hesse,  Gelders, 
Holland,  Friesland,  Jutland,  and  Zealand  have  Easter  fires  ;  up 
the  Rhine,  in  Franconia,  Thuringia,  Swabia,  Bavaria,  Austria, 
and  Silesia,  Midsummer  fires  carry  the  day.  Some  countries, 
however,  seem  to  do  homage  to  both,  as  Denmark  and  Carinthia. 

Easter  Fires. — At  all  the  cities,  towns  and  villages  of  a  country, 
towards  evening  on  the  first  (or  third)  day  of  Easter,  there  is 
lighted  every  year  on  mountain  and  hill  a  great  fire  of  straw,  turf, 
and  wood,  amidst  a  concourse  and  jubilation,  not  only  of  the 
young,  but  of  many  grown-up  people.  On  the  Weser,  especially 
in  Schaumburg,  they  tie  up  a  tar-barrel  on  a  fir-tree  wrapt  round 
with  straw,  and  set  it  on  fire  at  night.  Men  and  maids,  and  all 
who  come,  dance  exulting  and  singing,  hats  are  waved,  handker- 
chiefs thrown  into  the  fire.  The  mountains  all  round  are  lighted 
up,  and  it  is  an  elevating  spectacle,  scarcely  paralleled  by  any- 
thing else,  to  survey  the  country  for  many  miles  round  from  one 
of  the  higher  points,  and  in  every  direction  at  once  to  see  a  vast 
number  of  these  bonfires,  brighter  or  fainter,  blazing  up  to  heaven. 
In  some  places  they  marched  up  the  hill  in  stately  procession, 
carrying  white  rods ;  by  turns  they  sang  Easter  hymns,  grasping 
each  other's  hands,  and  at  the  Hallelujah  clashed  their  rods  to- 
gether.    They  liked  to  carry  some  of  the  fire  home  with  them.1 

No  doubt  we  still  lack  many  details  as  to  the  manner  of  keep- 
ing Easter  fires  in  various  localities.  It  is  worth  noting,  that  at 
Braunrode  in  the  Harz  the  fires  are  lighted  at  evening  twilight 

1  Job.  Timeus  On  the  Easter  fire,  Hamb.  1590;  a  reprint  of  it  follows  Reiske'a 
Notfeuer.  Letzner's  Historia  S.  Bonif.,  Hildesh.  1G02.  4,  cap.  12.  LeukMd's 
Antiq..  gandersh.  pp.  4-5.  Eberh.  Baring's  Beschr.  der  (Lauensteiner)  Saala, 
174  1.  '2,  96.  Hamb.  mag.  2G,  302  (1702).  Hannov.  mag.  176G,  p.  216.  Rath- 
lef's  Diepholz,  Brern.  17(57.  3,  36-42.  (Pratjo's)  Bremen  und  Verden  1,  165. 
Bragur  vi.  1,  35.  Geldersche  volksalmanak  voor  1835,  p.  19.  Easter  fire  is  in 
]>:mish  paatke-blus  or  -Must;  whether  Sweden  has  the  custom  I  do  not  know,  but 
Olaus  Magnus  15,  5  affirms  that  Scandinavia  has  Midsummer  fires.  Still  more 
surprising  that  England  has  no  trace  of  an  Easter  fire  ;  we  have,  a  report  of  such 
from  Carinthia  in  Sartori's  Heisu  2,  350. 

VOL.    II.  N 


616  ELEMENTS. 

of  the  first  Easter  day,  but  before  that,  old  and  young  sally  out 
of  that  village  and  Griefenhagen  into  the  nearest  woodlands  to 
hunt  up  the  squirrels.  These  they  chase  by  throwing  stones  and 
cudgels,  till  at  last  the  animals  drop  exhausted  into  their  hands, 
dead  or  alive.     This  is  said  to  be  an  old-established  custom.1 

For  these  ignes  paschales  there  is  no  authority  reaching  beyond 
the  1 6th  century;  but  they  must  be  a  great  deal  older,  if  only  for 
the  contrast  with  Midsummer  fires,  which  never  could  peneti'ate 
into  North  Germany,  because  the  people  there  held  fast  by  their 
Easter  fires.  Now,  seeing  that  the  fires  of  St.  John,  as  we  shall 
presently  shew,  are  more  immediately  connected  with  the  Christian 
church  than  those  of  Easter,  it  is  not  unreasonable  to  trace  these 
all  the  way  back  to  the  worship  of  the  goddess  0  star  a  or  Edstre 
(p.  291),  who  seems  to  have  been  more  a  Saxon  and  Anglian 
divinity  than  one  revered  all  over  Germany.  Her  name  and  her 
fires,  which  are  likely  to  have  come  at  the  beginning  of  May, 
would  after  the  conversion  of  the  Saxons  be  shifted  back  to  the 
Christian  feast.2  Those  mountain  fires  of  the  people  are  scarcely 
derivable  from  the  taper  lighted  in  the  church  the  same  day  :  it 
is  true  that  Boniface,  ep.  87  (Wiirdtw.),  calls  it  ignis  paschalis,3 
and  such  Easter  lights  are  still  mentioned  in  the  16th  century.4 
Even  now  in  the  Hildesheim  country  they  light  the  lamp  on 
Maundy  Thursday,  and  that  on  Easterday,  at  an  Easter  fire  which 
has  been  struck  with  a  steel.  The  people  flock  to  this  fire,  cai-ry- 
ing  oaken  crosses  or  simply  crossed  sticks,  which  they  set  on  fire 
and  then  preserve  for  a  whole  year.  But  the  common  folk  dis- 
tinguish between  this  fire  and  the  wild  fire  elicited  by  rubbing 
wood.  Jager  (Ulm,  p.  521)  speaks  of  a  consecration  of  fire  and 
of  logs. 

1  Bosenkranz,  Neue  zeitschr.  f.  gesch.  der  germ.  volk.  i.  2,  7. 

2  Letzner  says  (ubi  supra),  that  betwixt  Brunstein  and  Wibbrechtshausen, 
where  Boniface  had  overthrown  the  heathen  idol  Beto  (who  may  remind  us  of  Beda's 
Bheda),  on  the  same  Betberg  the  people  '  did  after  sunset  on  Easter  day,  even 
within  the  memory  of  man,  hold  the  Easter  fire,  which  the  men  of  old  named 
botfts-thorn.'1  On  the  margin  stands  his  old  authority  again,  the  lost  Conradus 
Fontanus  (supra  p.  190).  How  the  fire  itself  should  come  by  the  name  of  buck's  or 
goat's  thorn,  is  hard  to  see  ;  it  is  the  name  of  a  shrub,  the  tragacanth.  Was  bocks- 
thorn  thrown  into  the  Easter  flames,  as  certain  herbs  were  into  the  Midsummer 
fire? 

3  N.B.,  some  maintain  that  the  Easter  candle  was  ignited  by  burning-glasses 
or  crystals  (Serrarius  ad  Epist.  Bonif.  p.  343). 

4  Franz  Weasel's  Beschreibung  des  piibstlichen  gottesdienstes,  Stralsund  ed.  by 
Zober,  1837,  p.  10. 


EASTER   FIRES.. 


017 


Almost  everywhere  during  the  last  hundred',  years  the  feeble- 
ness of  governments  has  deprived  the  people  of  their  Easter  fi  res 
(see  Suppl.).1 

Midsummer  Fires.2 — In  our  older  speech,  the  most  festive 
season  of  the  year,  when  the  sun  has  reached  his  greatest  height 
and  must  thence  decline  again,  is  named  sunewende  =$unnewende 
(sun's  wending,  solstice),  commonly  in  the  plural,  because  this 
high  position  of  the  sun  lasts  several  days:  '  ze  einen  sunewenden/ 
Nib.  32,  4;  'zen  nsehsten  sunewenden/  Nib.  1424,4.  Wigal.  1717; 
'  vor  disen  sunewenden/  Nib.  678,  3.  694,  3  ;  '  ze  sunewenden/ 
Trist.  5987  (the  true  reading  comes  out  in  Groot's  variants) ;  '  an 
sunewenden  abent/  Nib.  1754,  1 ;  '  nach  sunewenden/  Iw.  2941. s 
Now,  as  Midsummer  or  St.  John's  day  (June  24),  '  sant  Johans 
sunewenden  tac/  Ls.  2,  708,  coincides  with  this,  the  fires  in 
question  are  called  in  Up.  German  documents  of  the  14- 15th 
century  sunwentfeuer,  sunbentfewr,4,  and  even  now  among  the 
Austrian  and  Bavarian  peasantry  sunawetsfoir,  sunwentsfeuer. 
H.  Sachs  1,423d:  'auch  schiirn  die  bubn  (lads  poke)  sunwent- 
feuer.' At  this  season  were  held  great  gatherings  of  the  people  : 
1  die  nativitatis  S.  Johannis  baptistae  in  conventu  populi  maxima  ' 
(Pertz  2,  3S6) ;  this  was  in  860.  In  801  Charles  the  Great  kept 
this  festival  at  Eporedia,  now  Ivrea  (Pertz  1,  190.  223)  ;  and 
Lewis  the  Pious  held  assemblies  of  the  Empire  on  the  same  day 
in  824  and  831.  Descriptions  of  Midsummer  fires  agree  with 
those  of  Easter  fires,  with  of  course  some  divergences.  At 
Gernsheim  in  the  Mentz  country,  the  fire  when  lighted  is  blessed 
by  the  priest,  and  there  is  singing  and  prayer  so  long  as  it  burns  ; 
when  the  flame  goes  out,  the  children  jump  over  the  glimmering 
coals;  formerly  grown-up  people  did  the  same.     In  Superst.  I, 

1  '  Judic.  inquiry  resp.  the  Easter  fire  burned,  contr.to  prohib.,  on  the  Kogeln- 
berg  near  Volkmarsen,  Apr.  9,  1833,'  see  Niederhess.  wochenbl.  1834,  p.  2229*. 
The  older  prohibitions  allege  the  unchristian  character,  later  ones  the  waste  ot 
timber.     Even  bonfires  for  a  victory  were  very  near  being  suppressed. 

-  The  best  treatise  is :  Franc.  Const,  de  Khautz  de  ritu  ignis  in  natali  B. 
Johannis  bapt.  accensi,  Vindob.  1759,  8vo. 

3  All  the  good  MSS.  have,  not  sunnewende,  but  sunewende,  which  can  onlj 
stand  for  sunwende,  formed  like  suntac.  We  also  find  '  zu  sungihtenj  Scheffer  s 
Haltaus,  pp.  109,  110  ;  giht  here  corresp.  to  Goth,  gahts  (gressus),  and  allows  us  to 
guess  an  OHG.  sunnagaht. 

4  Halm's  Monum.  2,  693.  Sutner's  Berichtigungen,  Munch.  1797,  p.  107  (an. 
1401). 


618  ELEMENTS. 

848  we  are  told  how  a  garland  is  plaited  of  nine  sorts  of  flowers. 
Reiske  (ut  supra,  p.  77)  says  :  '  the  fire  is  made  under  the  open 
sky,  the  youth  and  the  meaner  folk  leap  over  it,  and  all  manner 
of  herbs  are  cast  into  it  :  like  these,  may  all  their  troubles  go  off 
in  fii*e  and  smoke  !  In  some  places  they  light  lanterns  outside 
their  chambers  at  night,  and  dress  them  with  red  poppies  or 
anemones,  so  as  to  make  a  bright  glitter/  At  Niirnberg  the 
lads  go  about  begging  billets  of  wood,  cart  them  to  the  Bleacher's 
pond  by  the  Spital-gate,  make  a  fire  of  them,  and  jump  over  it ; 
this  keeps  them  in  health  the  whole  year  (conf.  Sup.  I,  918). 
They  invite  passers  by  to  have  a  leap,  who  pay  a  few  kreuzers 
for  the  privilege.  In  the  Fulda  country  also  the  boys  beg  for 
wood  to  burn  at  night,  and  other  presents,  while  they  sing  a 
rhyme  :  '  Da  kommen  wir  her  gegangen  Mit  spiessen  und  mit 
stangen,  Und  wollen  die  eier  (eggs)  langen.  Feuerrothe  bliime- 
lein,  An  der  erde  springt  der  wein,  Gebt  ihr  uns  der  eier  ein 
Zum  Johannisfeuer ,  Der  haber  is  gar  theuer  (oats  are  so  dear). 
Haberje,  haberju!  frifrefrid  !  Gebt  uns  doch  ein  schiet  (scheit, 
billet)!'  (J.  v.  u.  f.  Deutschl.  1790.  1,  313.)  Similar  rhymes 
from  Franconia  and  Bavaria,  in  Schm.  3,  262.  In  the  Austrian 
Donaulandchen  on  St.  John's  eve  they  light  fires  on  the  hill,  lads 
and  lasses  jump  over  the  flames  amid  the  joyful  cries  and  songs 
of  the  spectators  (Reil,  p.  41).  '  Everywhere  on  St.  John's  eve 
there  was  merry  leaping  over  the  sonnenwendefeuer,  and  mead  was 
drunk  over  it/  is  Denis's  recollection  of  his  youthful  days  (Lesefr. 
1,  130).  At  Ebingen  in  Swabia  they  boiled  pease  over  the  fire, 
which  were  laid  by  and  esteemed  wholesome-  for  bruises  and 
wounds  (Schmid's  Schwab,  id.  167);  conf.  the  boiling  over  need- 
fires  (p.  610).  Greg.  Strigenitius  (b.  1548,  d.  1603),  in  a  sermon 
preached  on  St.  John's  day  and  quoted  in  Ecc.  Fr.  or.  i.  425, 
observes,  that  the  people  (in  Meissen  or  Thuringia)  dance  and 
sing  round  the  Midsummer  fires ;  that  one  man  threw  a  horse's 
head  into  the  flame,  meaning  thereby  to  force  the  witches  to  fetch 
some  of  the  fire  for  themselves.  Seb.  Frank  in  his  Weltbuch 
51b  :  '  On  St.  John's  day  they  make  a  simet  fire  [corrupt,  of  sun- 
went],  and  moreover  wear  upon  them,  I  know  not  from  what 
superstition,  quaint  wreaths  of  mugwort  and  monks-hood ;  nigh 
every  one  hath  a  blue  plant  named  larkspur  in  hand,  and  whoso 
looketh  into  the  fire  thro'  the  same,  hath  never  a  sore  eye  all  that 


MIDSUMMER   FIRES.  619' 

year  ;  he  that  would  depart  home  unto  his  house,  casteth  this  his 
plant  into  the  fire,  saying,  So  depart  all  mine  ill-fortune  and  be 
burnt  up  with  this  herb  ! ' l  So,  on  the  same  day,  were  the  wav<  is 
of  water  to  wash  away  with  them  all  misfortune  (p.  589).  But 
in  earlier  times  the  polite  world,  even  princes  and  kings,  took 
part  in  these  bonfires.  Peter  Herp's  Ann.  francof.  tell  us,  ad  an. 
1489  (Senkenb.  Sel.  2,  22) :  'In  vigilia  S.  Joh.  bapt.  rogus  ingens 
fuit  factus  ante  domum  consilium  in  for  o  (francofurtensi),  fuerunt- 
que  multa  vexilla  depicta  posita  in  struem  lignorum,  et  vexillum 
regis  in  supremo  positum,  et  circa  ligna  rami  virentes  positi. 
fuitque  magna  chorea  dominorum,  rege  inspiciente.'  At  Augsburg 
in  1497,  in  the  Emp.  Maximilian's  presence,  the  fair  Susanna 
Neithard  kindled  the  Midsummer  fire  toitli  a  torch,  and  with 
Philip  the  Handsome  led  the  first  ring-dance  round  the  fire} 
A  Munich  voucher  of  1401  renders  account :  '  umb  gras  und 
knechten,  die  dy  pank  ab  dem  haws  auf  den  margt  trugen 
(carried  benches  to  the  market-place)  an  der  sunbentnacht,  da 
herzog  Stephan  und  sein  gemachel  (consort)  und  das  frawel  auf 
dem  margt  tanzten  mit  den  purgerinen  bei  dem  suribentfwr/  (Sut- 
ner's  Berichtig.  p.  107).  On  St.  John's  eve  1578,  the  Duke  of 
Liegnitz  had  a  bonfire  made  on  the  Gredisberg,  as  herr  Gotsch 
did  on  the  Kynast,  at  which  the  Duke  himself  was  present  with 
his  court  (Schweinichen  2,  347). 

We  have  a  fuller  description  of  a  Midsummer  fire  made  in 
1823  at  Konz,  a  Lorrainian  but  still  German  village  on  the 
Moselle,  near  Sierk  and  Thionville.  Every  house  delivers  a  truss 
of  straw  on  the  top  of  the  Stromberg,  where  men  and  youths 
assemble  towards  evening;  women  and  girls  are  stationed  by  the 
Burbach   spring.     Then  a  huge  wheel  is  wrapt  round  ivith  straw, 

4 

1  On  June  20,  1653,  the  Nurnberg  town-council  issued  the  following  order  : 
■Whereas  experience  heretofore  hath  shewn,  that  alter  the  old  heathenish  use,  on 
John's  day  in  every  year,  in  the  country,  as  well  in  towns  as  villages,  money  and 
wood  hath  been  gathered  by  young  folk,  and  thereupon  the  so-called  sonnenwendt  or 
timmet  fire  kindled,  and  thereat  winebibbiiif,',  dancing  about  the  said  fur,  leaping 
over  the  same,  with  burning  of  sundry  herbs  am!  flowers,  and  setting  of  brands  from 
the  said  fire  in  the  fields,  and  in  many  other  ways  all  manner  of  superstitious  work 
carried  on — Therefore  the  Hon.  Council  of  Nurnberg  town  neither  can  nor  ought 
to  forbear  to  do  away  with  all  such  unbecoming  superstition,  pagani am,  and  peril 
(if  fire  on  this  coming  day  of  St.  John  (Neuer  lit.  anz.  1HU7,  p.  318).  [Sunwend 
tires  forbidden  in  Austria  in  1850,  in  spite  of  Goethe's  '  Fires  of  John  we'll  cherish, 
"Why  should  jdadness  perish? ' — Suppl.] 

-  Gasseri  Ann.  august.,  ad  an.  1197,  Schm.  3,  261  ;  conf.  Ranke's  Roman,  u. 
German,  volk.  1,  102. 


620  ELEMENTS. 

so  that  none  of  the  wood  is  left  in  sight,  a  strong  pole  is  passed 
through  the  middle,  which  sticks  out  a  yard  on  each  side,  and  is 
grasped  by  the  guiders  of  the  wheel ;  the  remainder  of  the  straw 
is  tied  up  into  a  number  of  small  torches.  At  a  signal  given 
by  the  Maire  of  Sierk  (who,  according  to  ancient  custom,  earns 
a  basket  of  cherries  by  the  service),  the  wheel  is  lighted  with  a 
torch,  and  set  rapidly  in  motion,  a  shout  of  joy  is  raised,  all  wave 
their  torches  on  high,  part  of  the  men  stay  on  the  hill,  part  follow 
the  rolling  globe  of  fire  as  it  is  guided  downhill  to  the  Moselle.  It 
often  goes  out  first ;  but  if  alight  when  it  touches  the  river, 
it  prognosticates  an  abundant  vintage,  and  the  Konz  people  have 
a  right  to  levy  a  tun  of  white  wine  from  the  adjacent  vineyards. 
Whilst  the  wheel  is  rushing  past  the  women  and  girls,  they 
break  out  into  cries  of  joy,  answered  by  the  men  on  the  hill ;  and 
inhabitants  of  neighbouring  villages,  who  have  flocked  to  the 
river  side,  mingle  their  voices  in  the  universal  rejoicing.1 

In  the  same  way  the  butchers  of  Treves  are  said  to  have  yearly 
sent  down  a  wheel  of  fire  into  the  Moselle  from  the  top  of  the 
Paulsberg  (see  Suppl.).2 

The  custom  of  Midsummer  fires  and  wheels  in  France  is 
attested  even  by  writers  of  the  12th  and  13th  centuries,  John 
Beleth,  a  Parisian  divine,  who  wrote  about  1162  a  Summa  de 
divinis  officiis,  and  William  Durantis,  b.  near  Beziers  in  Langue- 
doc,  about  1237,  d.  1296,  the  well-known  author  of  the  Rationale 
divinor.  offic.  (written  1286;  conf.  viii.  2,  3  de  epacta).  In  the 
Summa  (printed  at  Dillingen,  1572)  cap.  137,  fol.  256,  and  thence 
extracted  in  the  Rationale  vii.  14,  we  find :  '  Feruntur  quoque 
(in  festo  Joh.  bapt.)  brandae  seu  faces  ardentes  et  Sunt  ignes, 
qui  significant  S.  Johaunem,  qui  fuit  lumen  et  lucerna  ardens, 
praecedens  et  praecursor  verae  lucis  .  .  .  ;  rota  in  quibusdam 
locis  volvitur,  ad  significandum,  quod  sicut  sol  ad  altiora  sui 
circuli  pervenit,  nee  altius  potest  progredi,  sed  tunc  sol  descendit 
in  circulo,  sic  et  faina  Johannis,  qui  putabatur  Christus,  descendit 

1  Mem.  des  antiquaires  de  Fr.  5,  383-6. 

2  '  In  memory  of  the  hermit  Paulus,  who  in  the  mid.  of  the  7th  cent,  hurled 
the  idol  Apollo  from  Mt.  Gebenna,  near  Treves,  into  the  Moselle,'  thinks  the  writer 
of  the  article  on  Konz,  pp.  387-8.  If  Trithem's  De  viris  illustr.  ord.  S.  Bened.  4, 
201,  is  to  vouch  for  this,  I  at  least  can  only  find  at  p.  142  of  Opp.  pia  et  spirit. 
Mogunt.  1605,  that  Paulus  lived  opposite  Treves,  on  Cevenna,  named  Mons  Pauli 
after  him ;  hut  of  Apollo  and  the  firewheel  not  a  word  [and  other  authorities  are 
equally  silent] . 


MIDSUMMER   FIRES.  621 

secundum   quod  ipse   testimonium  perhibet,   dicens :  me  oportet 
minui,  ilium  autem  crescere.'     Much  older,  but  somewhat  vague, 
is  the  testimony  of  Eligius :  '  Nullus  in  festivitate   S.   Johannis 
vel  quibuslibet  sanctorum   solemuitatibus  solstitia   (?)   aut  valla- 
tiones  vel  saltationes  aut  casaulas  aut  cantica  diabolica  exerceat.n 
In  great  cities,   Paris,  Metz,  and   many  more,  as  late  as  the 
15-16-1 7th  centuries,  the  pile  of  wood  was  reared  in  the  public 
square  before  the  town  hall,   decorated  with  flowers  and  foliage, 
and  set  on  fire  by    the  Maire  himself.2     Many  districts  in  the 
south   have  retained     the    custom     to    this    day.     At    Aix,    at 
Marseille,  all  the  streets  and  squares  are  cleaned  up  on  St.  John's 
Day,  early  in  the  morning  the  country  folk  bring  flowers  into  the 
town,  and  everybody  buys   some,    every   house    is    decked  with 
greenery,  to  which  a  healing  virtue  is  ascribed  if  plucked  before 
sunrise :  '  aco    soun  dherbas  de  san  Jean.'     Some  of  the  plants 
are  thrown  into  the  flame,  the  youug  people  jump  over  it,  jokes  are 
played  on  passers-by  with  powder  trains  and  hidden  fireworks, 
or  they  are  squirted  at  and  soused  with  water  from  the  windows. 
In  the  villages  they  ride  on  mules  and  donkeys,  carrying  lighted 
branches  of  fir  in  their  hands.3 

In  many  places  they  drag  some  of  the  charred  brands  and 
charcoal  to  their  homes :  salutary  and  even  magical  effects  are 
supposed  to  flow  from  these  (Superst.  French  27.  30.  34). 

In  Poitou,  they  jump  three  times  round  the  fire  with  a  branch  of 
walnut  in  their  hands  (Mem.  des  antiq.  8,  451).  Fathers  of 
families  whisk  a  bunch  of  white  mullein  (bouillon  blanc)  and  a 
leafy  spray  of  walnut  through  the  flame,  aud  both  are  afterwards 
nailed  up  over  the  cowhouse  door;  while  the  youth  dance  and 
sing,  old  men  put  some  of  the  coal  in  their  wooden  shoes  as 
a  safeguard  against  innumerable  woes  (ibid.  4,  110). 

In  the  department  of  Hautes   Pyrenees,  on  the  1st  of  May, 

1  The  Kaiserchronik  (Cod.  pal.  361,  lb)  on  the  celebration  of  the  Sunday : 

Swenne  injioni  der  sunnintac, 

so  vllzete  sichRome  al  diu  stat  (all  R.  bestirred  itself), 

wie  si  den  got  inouten  geeren  (to  honour  the  god), 

die  allirwisisten  herren  (wisest  lords) 

vuorten  einiz  al  umbe  die  stat  (carried  a  thing  round  the  city) 

daz  was  getchaffen  name  ein  rat  (shapen  like  a  wheel) 

mit  brinnenden  liehien  (with  buruiug  lights)  ; 

6  wie  groze  sie  den  got  zierten  (greatly  glorified  the  god) ! 

-  Mem.  de  l'acad.  celt.  2,  77-8.     3,  447. 

3  Milliu's  Voyage  dans  le  midi  3,  28.     341-j. 


622  ELEMENTS. 

every  commune  looks  out  the  tallest  and  slenderest  tree,  a  pine  or 
fir  on  the  hills,  a  poplar  in  the  plains ;  when  they  have  lopped 
all  the  boughs  off,  they  drive  into  it  a  number  of  wedges  a  foot 
long,  and  keep  it  till  the  23rd  of  June.  Meanwhile  it  splits 
diamond-shape  where  the  wedges  were  inserted,  and  is  now  rolled 
and  dragged  up  a  mountain  or  hill.  There  the  priest  gives  it  his 
blessing,  they  plant  it  upright  in  the  ground,  and  set  it  on  fire 
(ibid.  5,  387). 

Strutt1  speaks  of  Midsummer  fires  in  England:  they  were 
lighted  on  Midsummer  Eve,  and  kept  up  till  midnight,  often  till 
cock-crow ;  the  youth  danced  round  the  flame,  in  garlands  of 
motherwort  and  vervain,  with  violets  in  their  hands.  In  Denmark 
they  are  called  Sanct  Hans  aftens  bins,  but  also  gadeild  (street- 
fire),  because  they  are  lighted  in  public  streets  or  squares,  and  on 
hills.  [Is  not  gade  conn,  with  sunna-gaht,  p.  617  ?]  Imagining 
that  all  poisonous  plants  came  up  out  of  the  ground  that  night, 
people  avoided  lingering  on  the  grass  ;  but  wholesome  plants 
(chamaemelum  and  bardanum)  they  hung  up  in  their  houses. 
Some  however  shift  these  street-fires  to  May-day  eve.2  Nor- 
way also  knows  the  custom:  'S.  Hans  aften  brandes  der  baal 
ved  alle  griner  (hedged  country-lanes),  hvilket  skal  fordrive  ondt 
(harm)  fra  creaturerne/  Sommerfeldt's  Saltdalen,  p.  121.  But 
some  words  quoted  by  Hallager  p.  13  are  worth  noting,  viz. 
brandshat  for  the  wood  burnt  in  the  fields,  and  brising  for  the 
kindled  fire  ;  the  latter  reminds  us  of  the  gleaming  necklace  of 
Freyja  (p.  306-7),  and  may  have  been  transferred  from  the  flame 
to  the  jewel,  as  well  as  from  the  jewel  to  the  flame. 

There  is  no  doubt  that  some  parts  of  Italy  had  Midsummer 
fires  :  at  Orvieto  they  were  exempted  from  the  restrictions  laid 
on  other  fires.3  Italian  sailors  lighted  them  on  board  ship  out 
at  sea,  Fel.  Fabri  Evagat.  1,  170.  And  Spain  is  perhaps  to 
be  included  on  the  strength  of  a  passage  in  the  Romance  de 
Guarinos  (Silva,  p.  113)  : 

1  Sports  and  Pastimes  of  the  People  of  England,  by  Jos.  Strutt.     New  ed.  by 
WHone.  Lond.  1830,  p.  359. 

2  Molbech's  Dialect.  Lex.  150.  Lyngbye's  Nord.  tidskr.  for  oldk.  2,  352-9.  Finn 
Magn.  Lex.  myth.  1091-4.     Arndt's  Keise  durch  Schweden  3,  72-3. 

3  Statuta  urbevetana,  an.  1491.  3,  51 :  Quicunque  sine  licentia  officialis  fecerit 
ignem  in  aliqua  festivitate  de  nocte  in  civitate,  in  xl  sol.  denarior.  pnniatnr, 
excepta  festivitate  S.  Johannis  bapt.  de  mense  Junii,  et  qui  in  ilia  nocte  furatus 
fuerit  vel  abstulerit  ligna  Tel  tabulas  alterius  in  lib.  x  den.  puuiatur. 


MIDSUMMER   FIEES.  623 

Yanse  dias,  vionen  dias,  venido  era  el  de  Sent  Juan, 
donde  Christianos  y  Moros  hazen  gran  solenidad  : 
los  Christianos  echan  juncia,  y  los  Moros  arrayhan, 
los  Judios  echan  eneas,  por  la  fiesta  mas  honrar. 

Here  nothing  is  said  of  fire,1  but  we  are  told  that  the  Christians 
strew  rushes,  the  Moors  myrtle,  the  Jews  reeds  ;  and  the  throw- 
ing- of  flowers  and  herbs  into  the  flame  seems  an  essential  part 
of  the  celebration,  e.g.  mugwort,  monks-hood,  larkspur  (p.  G18), 
mullein  and  walnut  leaves  (p.  G21).  Hence  the  collecting  of 
all  such  John's-herbs  in  Germany  (Superst.  I,  157.  189.  190),  and 
of  S.  Hems  urter  (worts)  in  Denmark  (K,  126),  and  the  like  in 
France  (L,  4).  According  to  Casp.  Zeumer's  De  igne  in  festo 
S.  Joh.  accendi  solito,  Jenae  1699,  the  herb  akihfia  (?)  was 
diligently  sought  on  that  day  and  hung  up  over  doors. 

In  Greece  the  women  make  a  fire  on  Midsummer  Eve,  and 
jump  over  it,  crying,  '  I  leave  my  sins/  In  Servia  they  think  the 
feast  is  so  venerable,  that  the  sun  halts  three  times  in  reverence.2 
On  the  day  before  it,  the  herdsmen  tie  birchbark  into  torches, 
and  having  lighted  them,  they  first  march  round  the  sheepfolds 
and  cattle-pens,  then  go  up  the  hills  and  let  them  burn  out  (Vuk 
sub  v.  Ivan  dan).  Other  Slav  countries  have  similar  observances. 
In  Sartori's  Journey  through  Carinthia  3,  349-50,  we  find  the 
rolling  of  St.  John's  fiery  wheel  fully  described.  Midsummer- 
day  or  the  solstice  itself  is  called  by  the  Slovens  kres,  by  the 
Croats  hresz,  i.e.  striking  of  light,  from  kresati  (ignem  elicere), 
Pol.  krzesac  ;  and  as  May  is  in  Irish  mi-na-bealtine  (fire-month), 
so  June  in  Slovenic  is  kresnik.  At  the  kres  there  were  leaps  of 
joy  performed  at  night ;  of  lighting  by  friction  I  find  no  mention. 
Poles  and  Bohemians  called  the  Midsummer  fire  sobotka,  i.e.  little 
Saturday,  as  compared   with  the  great   sobota  (Easter  Eve)  ;  the 

1  It  is  spoken  of  more  definitely  by  Martinus  de  Aries,  canonicus  of  Pampeluna 
(cir.  1510),  in  his  treatise  De  superstitionibus  (Tract,  tractattram,  ed.  Lugd.  1544. 
9,  133) :  Cum  in  die  S.  Johannis  propter  jucunditatem  multa  pie  aguntur  a 
fidelibus.  puta  pulsatio  campanarum  et  ignes  jucunditatis,  similiter  summo  mane 
i    '  uiit  ad  colligendas  herbas  odoriferas  et  optimas  et  medicinales  ex  sua  natura  et 

oitudine  virtutum  propter  tempus.  .  .  quidam  ignes  accendunt  in  compitis 
viarum,  in  agris,  ne  inde  sortilegae  et  maleficae  ilia  nocte  trausitum  faciant,  ut 
ego  propriis  oculis  vidi.  Alii  herbas  collectas  in  die  S.  Johannis  incendentes  contra 
fulgura,  tonitrua  et  tempestates  credunt  suis  fumigatiouibus  arcere  daeinones  et 
tempestates. 

2  As  he  is  supposed  to  leap  tbree  times  at  Easter  (p.  291). 


624  ELEMENTS. 

Bohemians  used  to  lead  their  coivs  over  it  to  protect  them  from 
witchcraft.  The  Russian  name  was  kupdlo,  which  some  explain 
by  a  god  of  harvest,  Kiipalo  :  youths  and  maidens,  garlanded  with 
flowers  and  girt  with  holy  herbs,  assembled  on  the  24th  June, 
lighted  a  fire,  leapt  and  led  their  flocks  over  it,  singing  hymns  the 
while  in  praise  of  the  god.  They  thought  thereby  to  shield 
their  cattle  from  the  leshis  or  woodsprites.  At  times  a  white  cock 
is  said  to  have  been  burnt  in  the  fire  amid  dance  and  soug.  Even 
now  the  female  saint,  whose  feast  the  Greek  ritual  keeps  on  this 
day  [Agrippina] ,  has  the  by-name  kupdlnitsa ;  a  burning  pile  of 
wood  is  called  the  same,  and  so,  according  to  Karamzin,  is  the 
flower  that  is  strewn  on  St.  John's  Day  [ranunculus,  crowfoot]  .* 
This  fire  seems  to  have  extended  to  the  Lithuanians  too  :  I  find 
that  with  them  kupoles  is  the  name  of  a  St.  John's  herb.  Tettau 
and  Temme  p.  277  report,  that  in  Prussia  and  Lithuania,  on 
Midsummer  Eve  fires  blaze  on  all  the  heights,  as  far  as  the  eye 
can  .reach.  The  next  morning  they  drive  their  cattle  to  pasture 
over  the  remains  of  these  fires,  as  a  specific  against  murrain, 
magic  and  milk-drought,  yet  also  against  hailstroke  and  lightning. 
The  lads  who  lighted  the  fires  go  from  house  to  house  collecting- 
milk.  On  the  same  Midsummer  Eve  they  fasten  large  burs  and 
inugwort  (that  is  to  say,  kupoles)  over  the  gate  or  gap  through 
which  the  cattle  always  pass. 

Now  at  a  bird's-eye  view  we  perceive  that  these  fires  cover 
nearly  all  Europe,  and  have  done  from  time  immemorial.  About 
them  it  might  seem  a  great  deal  more  doubtful  than  about  water- 
lustration  (pp.  585.  590),  whether  they  are  of  heathen  or  of  Chris- 
tian origin.  The  church  had  appropriated  them  so  very  early  to 
herself,  and  as  Beleth  and  Durantis  shew,  had  made  them  point 
to  John ;  the  clergy  took  some  part  in  their  celebration,  though 
it  never  passed  entirely  into  their  hands,  but  was  mainly  con- 
ducted by  the  secular  authorities  and  the  people  itself  (see  Suppl.) . 

Paciaudi3  labours  to  prove  that  the  fires  of  St.  John  have 
nothing  to  do  with  the  far  older  heathenish  fires,  but  have  sprung 
out  of  the  spirit  of  Christian  worship. 

1  Karamzin  1.  73.  81.  284.  Gotze's  Russ.  volksl.  p.  230-2.  Dobrovsky  denies 
a  god  Kupalo,  and  derives  the  feast  from  kupa  (haycock)  ;  Hanusch  p.  201  from 
kupel,  kaupel,  kupadlo  (bath,  pond),  because  ace.  to  Slav  notions  the  sun  rises  out 
of  bis  bath,  or  because  pouring  of  water  may  have  been  practised  at  the  festival. 

2  De  cultu  S.  Johannis  baptistae,  Romae  1755,  dissert.  8,  cap.  1.  2. 


(palilia).  625 

Iu  Deut.  18,  10  and  2  Chron.  28,  3  is  mentioned  the  heathen 
custom  of  making  so?is  and  daughters  pass  through  afire.  In 
reference  to  this,  Theodoret  bp.  of  Cyrus  (d.  458),  makes  a  note 
on  2  Kings  16,  3  :  elSov  yap  ev  tlctl  nroXecnv  aira%  rov  erovs  iv 
Ta?9  7rAaTeuu?  innojAevas  Trvpds  KauTavra^  rivas  virepaWo/xevov^ 
/cal  7rr}8(ovTa<;  ov  p,6vov  TralSas  dWd  icai  avhpas,  tcl  84  <ye  /3p£(p7] 
irapa  twv  pLwrepoiv  7rapa(p€p6p,eva  Sod  tt}?  ^A-0769.  eSo/cei  8k 
tovto  d7roTpo7TLaa-p,6<i  elvat  ical  /cddapais.  (In  some  towns  I  saw 
•pyres  lighted  once  a  year  in  the  streets,  and  not  only  children 
but  men  leaping  over  them,  and  the  infants  passed  through  the 
flame  by  their  mothers.  This  was  deemed  a  protective  expiation).1 
He  says  '  once  a  year/  but  does  not  specify  the  day,  which  would 
have  shewn  us  whether  the  custom  was  imported  into  Syria 
from  Rome.  On  April  21,  the  day  of  her  founding,  Borne  kept 
the  palilia,  an  ancient  feast  of  herdsmen,  in  honour  of  Pales,  a 
motherly  divinity  reminding  us  of  Ceres  and  Vesta.2  This  date 
does  not  coincide  with  the  solstice,  but  it  does  with  the  time  of 
the  Easter  fire ;  the  ritual  itself,  the  leaping  over  the  flame,  the 
driving  of  cattle  through  the  glowing  embers,  is  quite  the  same 
as  at  the  Midsummer  fire  and  needfire.  A  few  lines  from  Ovid's 
description  in  the  4th  book  of  the  Fasti  shall  suffice : 

727.     certe  ego  transilui  positas  ter  in  ordine  flammas. 
781.     moxque  per  ardentes  stipidae  crepitantis  acervos 

trajicias  celeri  strenua  membra  pede. 
795.     pars  quoque,  quum  saxis  pastores  saxa  feribant, 

scintillam  subito  prosiluisse  ferunt ; 
prima  quidem  periit ;  stipulis  excepta  secunda  est, 

hoc  argumeutum  flamma  palilis  habet. 
805.     per  flammas  saluisse  pecus,  saluisse  colonos  ; 

quod  fib  natali  nunc  quoque,  Roma,  tuo  (see  Suppl.). 

The  shepherds  had  struck  the  fire  out  of  stone,  and  caught  it  on 
straw  ;  the  leaping  through  it  was  to  atone  and  cleanse,  and  to 
secure  their  flock  against  all  harm.  That  children  were  placed  in 
the  fire  by  their  mothers,  we  are  not  told  here  ;  we  know  how 
the  infant  Demophoou   or  Triptolemus    was  put  in   the  fire  by 

I  Opp.,  ed.  Sirmond,  Paris,  1CA2.  1,  352. 

8  The  masc.  Pales,  which  also  occurs,   may  remind  us  of  the  Slav  god  of 
shepherds,  Buss.  Vulus,  Boh.  Weles. 


626  ELEMENTS. 

Ceres,  as  Achilles  was  by  Thetis,  to  insure  his  immortality.1  This 
fire-worship  seems  equally  at  home  in  Canaan,  Syria,  Greece  and 
Rome,  so  that  we  are  not  justified  in  pronouncing  it  a  borrowed 
and  imported  thing  in  any  one  of  them.  It  is  therefore  hard  to 
determine  from  what  source  the  Christians  afterwards  drew,  when 
they  came  to  use  it  in  their  Easter  and  Midsummer  festivals,  or  on 
other  occasions.  Canon  65  of  the  Council  of  a.d.  680  already 
contains  a  prohibition  of  these  superstitious  fires  at  new  moon  : 
Ta<?  ev  ral<i  vou/jur/vlais  inrb  rivwv  irpb  tcov  olrceiaiv  ipyacrrvpicov  i) 
oIkwv  avaTTTOfxeva^  irvpicaias,  a<?  /cal  vTrepdWeaOai  rtves,  Kara 
to  e0os  apyalov,  kirtyeipovcrtv,  curb  TrapovTos  KarapywOrjvai 
irpoaraTTOfxev  (The  fires  kindled  before  workshops  and  houses  at 
new  moon,  which  some  also  leap  over  after  the  ancient  custom, 
we  command  henceforth  to  be  abolished).  The  same  thing  was 
then  forbidden,  which  afterwards,  on  St.  John's  day  at  least,  was 
tolerated,  and  to  some  extent  connected  with  church  ordinances. 

Now,  even  supposing  that  the  Midsummer  fire  almost  universal 
throughout  Europe  had,  like  the  Midsummer  bath,  proceeded  more 
immediately  from  the  church,  and  that  she  had  picked  it  up  in 
Italy  directly  from  the  Roman  palilia ;  it  does  not  follow  yet,  that 
our  Easter  fires  in  northern  Germany  are  a  mere  modification  of 
those  at  Midsummer.  We  are  at  liberty  to  derive  them  straight 
from  fires  of  our  native  heathenism  :  in  favour  of  this  view  is  the 
difference  of  day,  perhaps  also  their  ruder  form ;  to  the  last  there 
was  more  earnestness  about  them,  and  more  general  participation ; 
Midsummer  fires  were  more  elegant  and  tasteful,  but  latterly  con- 
fined to  children  and  common  people  alone,  though  princes  and 
nobles  had  attended  them  before.  Mountain  and  hill  are  essential 
to  Easter  fires,  the  Solstitial  fire  was  frequently  made  in  streets 
and  marketplaces.  Of  jumping  through  the  fire,  of  flowers  and 
wreaths,  I  find  scarcely  a  word  in  connexion  with  the  former ; 
friction  of  fire  is  only  mentioned  a  few  times  at  the  Midsummer 
fire,  never  at  the  Easter,  and  yet  this  friction  is  the  surest  mark 
of  heathenism,  and — as  with  needfire  in  North  Germany,  so  with 
Easter  fires  there — may  safely  be  assumed.  Only  of  these  last 
we  have  no  accounts  whatever.  The  Celtic  bel-fires,  and  if  my 
conjecture  be  right,  our  Phol-days,  stand  nearly  midway  betwixt 

1  Conf.  the  superstitious  '  filium  in  fornacnn  pnvere  pro   sanitate  febrium,' 
and  'ponere  infanteni  juxta  ignem,   Superst.  B,  10.  14,  and  p.  200\ 


OTHER   FIRES.  627 

Easter  and  Midsummer,  but  Dearer  to  Easter  when  that  falls  late. 
A  feature  common  to  all  three,  and  perhaps  to  all  public  fires 
of  antiquity,  is  the  wheel,  as  friction  is  to  all  the  ancient  Easter 
fires. 

I  must  not  omit  to  mention,  that  fires  were  also  lighted  at 
the  season  opposite  to  summer,  at  Christmas,  and  in  Lent.  To 
the  Yule-fire  answers  the  Gaelic  samhtheine  (p.  614)  of  the  1st 
November.  In  France  they  have  still  in  vogue  the  souche  de 
Noel  (from  dies  natalis,  Prov.  natal)  or  the  trefue  (log  that  burns 
three  days,  Superst.K,  1.  28),  conf.the  trefoir  in  Brand's  Pop.antiq. 
1,  468.  At  Marseille  they  burnt  the  calendeau  or  caligneau,  a 
large  oaken  log,  sprinkling  it  with  wine  and  oil ;  it  devolved  on 
the  master  of  the  house  to  set  light  to  it  (Millin  3,  336).  In 
Dauphine  they  called  it  chalendal,  it  was  lighted  on  Christmas 
eve  and  sprinkled  with  wine,  they  considered  it  holy,  and  had 
to  let  it  burn  out  in  peace  (Champol.-Figeac,  p.  124).  Christmas- 
tide  was  called  chalendes,  Prov.  calendas  ( Kaynouard  1,  292), 
because  New-year  commenced  on  Dec.  25.  In  Germany  I  find 
the  same  custom  as  far  back  as  the  12th  cent.  A  document  of 
1184  (Kindl.'s  Miinst.  beitr.  ii.  urk.  34)  says  of  the  parish  priest 
of  Ahlen  in  Miinsterland  :  '  et  arborem  in  nativitate  Domini  ad 
festivum  ignem  swum  adducendam  esse  dicebat.''  The  hewing  of 
the  Christmas  block  is  mentioned  in  the  Weisthumer  2,  264.  302. 
On  the  Engl,  yule-clog  see  Sup.  I,  1109,  and  the  Scandinav. 
julblolc  is  well  known;  the  Lettons  call  Christmas  eve  bluhku 
walxkars,  block  evening,  from  the  carrying  about  and  burning  of 
the  log  (blukkis).1  Seb.  Frank  (Weltbuch  51a)  reports  the  fol- 
lowing Shrovetide  customs  from  Franconia :  '  In  other  places  they 
draw  a  fiery  plough  kindled  by  a  fire  cunningly  made  thereon,  till 
it  fall  in  pieces  (supra,  p.  264).  Item,  they  wrap  a  waggon-wheel 
all  round  in  straw,  drag  it  up  an  high  steep  mountain,  and  hold 
thereon  a  merrymaking  all  the  day,  so  they  may  for  the  cold, 
with  many  sorts  of  pastime,  as  singing,  leaping,  dancing,  odd  or 
even,  and  other  pranks.  About  the  time  of  vespers  they  set  the 
wheel  afire,  and  let  it  run  into  the  vale  at  full  speed,  which  to  look 
upon  is  like   as  the  sun  were  running  from  the  sky/     iSuch  a 

1  '  So  the  Lith.  fcant'dus  =  Christmas,  frciu  kalada,  a  log.' — Suppl. 


628  ELEMENTS. 

'hoop-trundling  '  on  Shrove  Tuesday  is  mentioned  by  Schrn.  1, 
544;  the  day  is  called  funkentag  (spunk.),  in  the  Rheingau  hall- 
feuer,  in  France  '  la  fete  des  brandons.'  l  It  is  likely  that  similar 
fires  take  place  here  and  there  in  connexion  with  the  vintage. 
In  the  Voigtland  on  Mayday  eve,  which  would  exactly  agree  with 
the  bealteine,  you  may  see  fires  on  most  of  the  hills,  and  children 
with  blazing  brooms  (Jul.  Schmidt's  Reichenf.  118).  Lastly,  the 
Servians  at  Christmas  time  light  a  log  of  oak  newly  cut,  badniah, 
and  pour  wine  upon  it.  The  cake  they  bake  at  such  a  fire  and 
hand  round  (Vuk's  Montenegro,  105)  recalls  the  Gaelic  practice 
(p.  613).  The  Slavs  called  the  winter  solstice  koleda,  Pol. 
koleda,  Russ.  koliada,  answering  to  the  Lat.  calendae  and  the 
chalendes  above ; 2  they  had  games  and  dances,  but  the  burning 
of  fires  is  not  mentioned.  In  Lower  Germany  too  kaland  had 
become  an  expression  for  feast  and  revelry  (we  hear  of  kaland- 
gilden,  kalandbriider),  without  limitation  to  Christmas  time,  or 
any  question  of  fires  accompanying  it  (see  Suppl.). 

If  in  the  Mid.  Ages  a  confusion  was  made  of  the  two  Johns, 
the  Baptist  and  the  Evangelist,  I  should  incline  to  connect  with 
St.  John's  fire  the  custom  of  St.  John's  minne  (p.  61),  which  by 
rights  only  concerns  the  beloved  disciple.  It  is  true,  no  fire 
is  spoken  of  in  connexion  with  it,  but  fires  were  an  essential 
part  of  the  old  Norse  minne-drinking,  and  I  should  think  the 
Sueves  with  their  barrel  of  ale  (p.  56)  burnt  fires  too.  In  the 
Saga  Hakonar  g6Sa,  cap.  16,  we  are  told:  ' eldar  scyldo  vera  a 
midjo  golfi  i  hofino,  oc  ]?ar  katlar  yfir,  oc  scyldi  full  of  eld  bera,' 
should  bear  the  cups  round  the  fire.  Very  striking  to  my  mind 
is  the  '  dricka  eldborgs  skill '  still  practised  in  a  part  of  Sweden 
and  Norway  (Sup.  K,  122-3).  At  Candlemas  two  tall  caudles 
are  set,  each  member  of  the  household  in  turn  sits  down  between 
them,  takes  a  drink  out  of  a  wooden  beaker,  then  throws  the 
vessel  backwards  over  his  head.  If  it  fall  bottom  upwards,  the 
thrower  will  die;  if  upright,  he  remains  alive.3  Early  in  the 
morning  the  goodwife  has  been  up  making  her  fire  and  baking  ; 
she  now  assembles  her  servants  in  a  half-circle  before  the  oven 

1  Sup.  K,  16.     Mem.  des  antiquaires  1,  236.     4,  371. 

2  Other  derivations  have  been  attempted,  Hanusch  192-3.      [See  note,  p.  627, 
on  Lith.  kalledos.'] 

3  A  similar  throwing  backwards  of  an  emptied  glass  on  other  occasions,  Sup.  I, 

514.  707. 


OYEN.      BONFIRE.  629 

door,  they  all  bend  the  knee,  take  one  bite  of  cake,  and  drink 
eldborgssk&l  (the  fire's  health) ;  what  is  left  of  cake  or  drink  is 
cast  into  the  flame.  An  unmistakeable  vestige  of  heathen  fire- 
worship,  shifted  to  the  christian  feast  of  candle-consecration  as 
the  one  that  furnished  the  nearest  parallel  to  it. 

Our  of  en,  MHG.  oven,  OHG.  ovan,  ON.  on  represents  the  Goth. 
auhns,  0.  Swed.  omn,  ofn,  ogn,  Svved.  ugn,  Dan.  on ;  they  all 
mean  fornax,  i.e.  the  receptacle  in  which,  fire  is  inclosed  (conf. 
focus,  fuoco,  feu),  but  originally  it  was  the  name  of  the  fire  itself, 
Slav,  or/an,  ogen,  ogn,  Boh.  ohen,  Lith.  ugnis,  Lett,  ugguns,  Lat. 
ignis,  Sanskr.  Agni  the  god  of  fire.  Just  as  the  Swedish  servants 
kneel  down  before  the  ugns-hol,  our  German  marchen  and  sagen 
have  retained  the  feature  of  kneeling  before  the  oven  and  praying 
to  it;  the  unfortunate,  the  persecuted,  resort  to  the  oven,  and 
hewail  their  woe,  they  reveal  to  it  some  secret  which  they  dare  not 
confide  to  the  world.1  What  would  otherwise  appear  childish  is 
explained :  they  are  forms  and  formulas  left  from  the  primitive 
fire-worship,  and  no  longer  understood.  In  the  same  way  people 
complain  and  confess  to  mother  earth,  to  a  stone,  a  plant,  an  oak, 
or  to  the  reed  (Morolt  1438).  This  personification  of  the  oven 
hangs  together  with  Mid.  Age  notions  about  orcus  and  hell  as 
places  of  fire.  Conf.  Erebi  fornax  (Walthar.  867),  and  what  was 
said  above,  p.  256,  on  Fornax. 

The  luminous  element  permitted  a  feast  to  be  prolonged  into 
the  night,  and  fires  have  always  been  a  vehicle  for  testifying 
joy.  When  the  worship  had  passed  over  into  mere  joy-fires,  ignis 
jocnnditatis,  feux  de  joie,  Engl,  bon-fires,  these  could,  without 
any  reference  to  the  service  of  a  deity,  be  employed  on  other 
occasions,  especially  the  entry  of  a  king  or  conqueror.  Thus 
they  made  a  torch-waggon  follow  the  king,  which  was  afterwards 
set  on  fire,  like  the  plough  and  wheels  at  the  feast  of  St.  John 


1  Haus  und  kinderm.  2,  20.  3,  221.  Deutsche  sagen  no.  513.  A  children's 
game  has  the  rhyme  :  '  Dear  good  oven,  I  pray  to  thee.  As  thou  hast  a  wife,  send  a 
husband  to  me  !'  In  the  comedy  'Life  and  death  of  honest  Madam  Slut  (Schlam- 
pampe),'  Leipz.  1696  and  1750,  act  3,  sc.  8:  '  Come,  let  us  go  and  kneel  to  the  out  u. 
maybe  the  gods  -will  hear  our  prayer.'  In  1558  one  who  had  been  robbed,  but  had 
sworn  Becrecy,  told  his  story  to  the  Dutch-tile  oven  at  the  inn.  Eommell's  Hess, 
gesch.  4,  note  p.  420.  Joh.'  MuhYr's  Hist.  Suit/..  2,  92  (a.d.  1333).  '  Nota  est  in 
eligiis  Tibulli  Januae  personificatio,  cui  amantes  dolores  suos  narrant,  quaru  orant, 
quam  increpant ;  erat  enim  daemoniaca  quaedam  vis  januarum  ex  opinione  veterum,' 
Dissen's  Tib.  1,  clxxix.     Conf.  Hartung's  Eel.  der  Eom.  2,  218  seq. 


630  ELEMENTS. 

(RA.  265).  '  Faculis  et  faustis  acclaniationibus,  ut  prioribus 
regibus  assueverant,  obviam  ei  (non)  procedebant/  Lamb,  schafn. 
ad  an.  1077.  Of  what  we  now  call  illumination,  the  lighting  up 
of  streets  and  avenues,  there  are  probably  older  instances  than 
those  I  am  able  to  quote  :  l  von  kleinen  kerzen  nianec  schoup 
geleit  uf  olboume  loup/  of  little  tapers  many  a  cluster  ranged  in 
olive  bower,  Parz.  82,  25.  Detmar  (ed.  Grautoff  1,  301)  on  the 
Emp.  Charles  I  Ws  entry  into  Lubeck  :  '  des  nachtes  weren  die 
luchten  bernde  ut  alien  husen,  unde  was  so  licht  in  der  nacht  als 
in  dem  dage/  The  church  also  escorted  with  torchlight  pro- 
cessions :  '  cui  (abbati)  intranti  per  noctis  tenebras  adhibent  faces 
et  lampadas/  Chapeaville  2,  532  (12th  cent.).  '  Hirimannus  dux 
susceptus  est  ab  archiepiscopo  manuque  deducitur  ad  ecclesiam 
accensis  luminaribus,  cunctisque  souantibus  campanis/  Dietm. 
merseb.  2,  18.  f  Taceo  coronas  tarn  luminoso  fulgore  a  lumiuaribus 
pendentes/  Vita  Joh.  gorziens.  (bef.  984)  in  Mabillon's  Acta 
Ben.,  sec.  5,  p.  395  (see  Suppl.). 

3.  Air. 
The  notions  '  air,  wind,  weather/  touch  one  another,  and  their 
names  often  do  the  same.1  Like  water,  like  fire,  they  are  all 
regarded  as  a  being  that  moves  and  lives  :  we  saw  how  the  words 
animus,  spiritus,  geld  (pp.  439.  461)  come  to  be  used  of  genii, 
and  the  Slav,  clukh  is  alike  breath,  breathing,  and  spirit. 
Wuotan  himself  we  found  to  be  the  all-pervading  (p.  133)  ;  like 
Vishnu,  he  is  the  fine  gether  that  fills  the  universe.  But  lesser 
spirits  belong  to  this  element  too:  Gustr,  Zephyr,  B laser  (p.  461), 
Blaster,  Wind-and-weather  (p.  548),  proper  names  of  dwarfs, 
elves,  giants.  In  the  Lithuanian  legend  the  two  giants  Wandu 
(water)  and  Weyas  (wind)  act  together  (p.  579).  To  the  OHG. 
wetar,  OS.  wedar,  AS.  iveder  (tempestas)  corresponds  the  Slav. 
veter,  vietar  (ventus,  aer)  :  and  to  Goth,  vinds,  OHG.  ivint,  the 
Lat.  ventus.  The  various  names  given  to  wind  in  the  Alvismal 
(Seem.  50a)  are  easily  explained  by  its  properties  of  blowing, 
blustering  and  so  forth :  oepir  (weeper)  ejulans,  the  wailing, 
conf.  OS.  wop  (whoop),  OHG.  wuof  ejulatus  ;  gneggio&r  (neigher) 
strepens,  quasi  hinniens ;  dynfari  cum  sonitu  iens. 

1  Our  luft  I  include  under  the  root  liuban,  no.  530,  whose  primary  meaning 
is  still  obscure ;  conf.  kliuban  kluft,  skiuban  skuft. 


AIR.      THE    WINDS.  631 

Thus  personification  already  peeps  out  in  mere  appellatives; 
in  the  mythic  embodiments  themselves  it  is  displayed  in  the  most 
various  ways. 

Woodcuts  and  plates  (in  the  Sachsenspiegel)  usually  represent 
the  wiuds,  half  symbolically,  as  blowing  faces,  or  heath,  probably 
a  fancy  of  very  early  date,  and  reminding  us  of  the  blowing  John's- 
head  that  whirls  Herodias  about  in  the  void  expanse  of  heaven 
(p.  285).  The  winds  of  the  four  cardinal  points  are  imagined  as 
four  dwarf 8 :  'undir  hvert  horn  (each  corner)  settu  ]>eir  dverg', 
Sn.  0  (p.  461)  l ;  but  by  the  Greeks  as  giants  and  brethren  : 
Zephyrus,  Hesperus,  Boreas,  Not  us  (Hes.  Theog.  371),  aud 
Boreas's  sons  Zetes  and  Kala'is  are  also  ivinged  winds  (Apollon. 
Argon.  1,  219).  Aeolus  (atoA,o?  nimble,  changeful,  many-hued), 
at  first  a  hero  and  king,  was  promoted  to  be  governor  and  guider 
of  wiuds  (rafjiiv'i  ave^iwv,  p.  93).  In  Russia  popular  ti-adition 
makes  the  four  winds  sons  of  one  mother?  the  O.  Russ.  lay  of  Igor 
addresses  the  wind  as  '  lord/  and  the  winds  are  called  Stribogh's 
grandsons?  his  divine  nature  being  indicated  by  the  '  bogh'  in 
his  name.  So  in  fairy-tales,  and  by  Eastern  poets,  the  wind  is 
introduced  talking  and  acting:  'the  wind,  the  heavenly  child!'* 

In  the  ON.  genealogy,  Forniotr,  the  divine  progenitor  of  giants 
(p.  240),  is  made  father  of  Kdri  (stridens)  '  who  rules  over  the 
winds;*  Kari  begets  Iokul  (glacies),  and  Iokul  /Sneer  (nix),  the 
king  whose  children  are  a  son  Thorri  and  three  daughters  Fonn, 
Drifa,  Mioll,  all  personified  names  for  particular  phenomena  of 
suow  and  ice  (Sn.  358.  Fornald.  sog.  2,  3.  17).  Kari  however  is 
brother  to  Hlor  (p.  211)  and  Logi  (p.  240),  to  water  and  fire,  by 
which  is  expressed  the  close  affinity  between  air  and  the  other 
two  elements.  The  old  Scandinavian  cry  '  blus  kdri  ! '  is  echoed 
in  that  of  the  Swedish  sailors  '  bias  kajsa  !'  a  goddess  instead  of 
the  god  (Afzelius  1,  30).  Both  wind  and  fire  '  blow  '  and  '  emit 
spray ,'  nay,  fire  is  called  the  red  wind  :  '  von  ir  zweier  swerte  gie 
derfiur-rote  wint/  Nib.  2212,  4.  In  the  same  line  of  thought  a 
higher  divinity,  Nioror,  has  the  sovereignty  given  hiui  alike  over 


'And  therefore  6str6ni,    westroni,  sundrSni,  nordrdni  are  masc.  nouns  ;  the 
forms  would  be  dustroneis,  etc. 

2  Rusa.  volksmarehen,  Leipz.  1831.  p.  119. 

3  •  Vfctre  v&trilo  gospodine,'  Hanka's  >A.  pp.  12.  36. 

4  E.g.  in  Nalos,  p.  1SU  (Bopp'a  2  ed.).     Kinderm.  nos.  1~>.  88. 

VOL.    II.  O 


632  ELEMENTS. 

water,  wind  and  fire  (p.  217)  ;  and  Loptr  (aereus)  is  another  name 
for  Loki  (p.  246).  A  phrase  in  Csedm.  181,  13  seems  worthy  of 
notice  :  '  lyft-helme  bebeaht/  galea  aerea  tectus  (see  Suppl.). 

When  in  our  language  we  still  call  one  kind  of  tempest  (OHG. 
wiwint,  Graff  1,  624),  the  windsbraut  (wind's  bride),  and  it  was 
called  the  same  in  our  older  speech,  OHG.  ivintes  brut,  0.  v.  19, 
27.  windis  prut,  Gl.  Hrab.  975b.  Jun.  230.  Diut.  2,  182.  Gl. 
florent.  982a-3b-4b;  MHG.  windes  brut  (Gramm.  2,  606),  Tit.  3733. 
swinder  (swifter)  danne  windes  brut,  Ms.  2,  131 a.  lief  spilnde 
als  ein  w.b.  durch  daz  gras,  Fragm.  19a.  alsam  in  rore  diu  w.  b., 
Reinfried  159b.  varn  mit  hurt  als  ein  w.  prut,  Frauend.  92,  13  ; — 
it  is  only  the  proper  names  that  seem  to  be  lost.1  The  corrupt 
forms  wintsprout,  -praut  (Suchenw.  41,  804),  windbrauss  (in  later 
writers,  as  Matthesius),  windsprauch  (Schm*.- 4,  110),  have  arisen 
out  of  the  endeavour  to  substitute  some  new  meaning  for  the 
no  longer  intelligible  mythic  notion.  They  say  it  is  a  woman 
snatching  up  a  napkin  from  the  bleaching  ground  and  falling 
down  with  it,  Mone's  Anz.  8,  278.  So  in  the  Netherlands  the 
whirlwind  is  called  barende  frauw,  Wolf  nos.  518-520  (see  Suppl.). 

This  wind's-bride  is  a  whirlwind,  at  which  our  mythology 
brings  the  highest  gods  into  play.  Even  Wuotan's  e  furious  host/ 
what  is  it  but  an  explanation  of  the  stormwind  howling  through 
the  air  ?  The  OHG.  ziu,  turbines,  we  have  traced  to  Zio,  pp.  203. 
285;  and  the  storm-cloud  was  called  maganwetar  (p.  332  last  1.). 
But  the  whirlwind  appeal's  to  be  associated  with  Phol  also  (pp. 
229.  285),  and  with  an  opprobrious  name  for  the  devil  (schweine- 
zagel,  siiuzagel,  sustert,  sow's  tail),  to  whom  the  raising  of  the 
whirl  was  ascribed  (Superst.  I,  522)  2  as  well  as  to  witches  (ibid. 
554).  It  was  quite  natural  therefore  to  look  upon  some  female 
personages  also  as  prime  movers  of  the  whirlwind,  the  gyrating 
dancing  Herodias,  and  frmi  Hilde,  frau  Holde  (p.  285).  In  Kilian 
693  it  is  a  fahrendes  weib ;  in  Celtic  legend  it  is  stin*ed  up  by  fays, 

1  Orithyia  carried  off  by  Boreas  (Ov.  Met.  6,  710)*could  with  perfect  justice 
be  named  windesbrut  by  Albrecbt. 

2  Two  Pol.  tales  in  Woycicki  1,  81  and  89  :  When  the  whirlwind  (vikher)  sweeps 
up  the  loose  sand,  it  is  the  evil  spirit  dancing  ;  throw  a  sharp  new  knife  into  the 
middle  of  it,  and  you  wound  him.  A  magician  plunged  such  a  knife  into  his 
threshold,  and  condemned  his  man,  with  whom  he  was  angry,  for  seven  years  to  ride 
round  the  world  on  the  swift  stormwind.  Then  the  whirlwind  lifted  the  man,  who 
was  making  haycocks  in  a  meadow,  and  bore  him  away  into  the  air.  This  knife- 
throwing  is  also  known  to  Germ,  superstition  every  where  (I,  55-1). 


wind's  bride.  633 

and  the  Irish  name  for  it  is  sigh  gaoite  (O'Brien),  sigJigaoithe 
(Croker  III,  xxi) ;  in  a  whirlwind  elvish  sprites  can  steal  (Stewart 
p.  122).  It  is  a  popular  belief  in  Sweden,  that  the  skogsrii 
(wood- wife)  makes  her  presence  known  by  a  violent  whirlwmd 
which  shakes  the  trees  even  to  breaking.  The  Slav,  poled  nice 
(supra,  p.  478n.)  is  a  female  daemon,  who  flies  up  in  the  dust  of 
the  whirlwind  (Jungmann  sub  v.).  According  to  a  legend  of  the 
Mark  (Kuhn  no.  167)  the  whirlwind  was  a  noble  damsel  who 
loved  the  chase  above  everything,  and  made  havock  of  the  hus- 
bandman's crops,  for  which  she  is  doomed  to  ride  along  with 
the  storm  to  all  eternity ;  this  again  reminds  us  of  Diana  and 
the  huntress  Holda  (see  Suppl.). 

In  addition  to  these  widely  spread  fancies,  there  is  a  peculiar 
one  about  the  origin  of  wind,  which  appears  to  extend  through 
nearly  all  Europe.  According  to  the  Edda,  Hrcesvelgr  is  the  name 
of  a  giant,  who  in  the  shape  of  an  eagle  1  sits  at  the  end  of  heaven  : 
from  his  wings  cometh  all  wind  upon  men,  Sasm.  35b.  Snorri 
defines  it  more  minutely  :  He  sits  at  the  north  side  of  heaven, 
and  when  he  flaps  his  wings,  the  winds  rise  from  under  them  (Sn. 
22.)  And  in  the  formula  of  the  trygdamal  (Gragas  2,  170),  it 
is  said  :  f  sva  viSa  sem  valr  flygr  varlangan  dag,  oc  standi  byrr 
undir  bdda  vosngi,'  far  as  falcon  flies  a  summerlong  day,  when 
stands  fair  wind  under  both  his  wings.  Light  clouds  threatening 
storm  are  called  in  Iceland  Jclo-sigi  (Biurn  spells  klosegi),  claw- 
sinking  ;  ace.  to  Gunnar  Pauli,  because  the  eagle  causes  storm  by 
letting  down  one  of  his  claws  (Finn  Magn.  p.  452).-  It  is  also 
an  Indian  belief  that  tempest  comes  from  Garuda's  wings, 
Somadeva  2,   102  :   the  motion  of  his  flight  stirs  up  the  wind. 

Then  again  people  in  the  Shetland  isles  are  said  to  conjure  the 
storm-wind  in  the  shape  of  a  great  eagle.3  Further  we  are  told 
that  Charles  the  Great  had  a  brazen  eagle  fixed  on  the  top  of 
his  palace  at  Achen  (Aix),  and  there  was  some  connexion 
between  it  and  the  wind;  Richerus  3,  71  (Pertz  5,  622)  relates 
the  inroad  of  the  Welsh  (Gauls)  in  978  :  '  Aeneam  aquilam,  quae 
in  vertice  palatii  a  Karolo  magno  acsi  volans  fixa  erat/  in  vul- 

1  The  giants  often  put  on  the  arnar  ham  (erne's  coat) :  Thiazi  in  Sn.  80.  82, 
Suttungr  in  Sn.  86. 

2  Day  also  was  imaged  as  a  bird,  who  dug  his  claws  into  the  clouds. 

3  Scott's  Pirate,  Edinb.,  1822. 

4  It  ought  not  to  be  overlooked  here,  that  at  the  west  door  of  OiSin's  hall  these 


634  ELEMENTS. 

tumum  converterunt.  Nam  Germani  earn  in  favonium  (Up. 
Germ,  fohn)  converterant,  subtiliter  significantes  Gallos  suo 
equitatu  quandoque  posse  devinci.'  The  meaning  seems  to  be, 
that  the  French  turned  the  eagle's  head  to  the  south-east,  the 
Germans  to  the  west,  to  signify  that  like  the  storm  they  could 
make  a  raid  (ride,  that  is  what  equitatus  comes  to)  upon  the 
country  toward  which  the  bird's  head  was  directed.  Dietmar  of 
Merseburg's  account  3,  6  (Pertz  5,  761)  is  as  follows  :  '  Post  haec 
autem  imperator  ordinavit  expeditionem  suam  adversus  Lotharium 
regem  Karelingorum,  qui  in  Aquisgrani  palatium  et  sedem  regiam 
nostrum  semper  respicientem  dominium  valido  exercitu  praesump- 
sit  invadere,  sibique  versa  aquila  designare.  Haec  stat  in 
orientali  parte  domus,  morisque  f  uit  omnium  hunc  locum  possi- 
dentium  ad  sua  earn  vertere  regna.3  This  statement  appears  less  . 
accurate  than  that  of  Richerus,  for  each  would  turn  the  eagle's 
head  not  toward  his  own  kingdom,  but  the  foreign  or  depen- 
dent one  ;  conf.  Jalirb.  d.  Rheinlande  v.  vi.  73.  But  even  in 
the  12th  cent,  the  wind's  connexion  with  the  eagle  was  still 
known  in  Germany,  for  Veldek  sings,  MS.  1,  21a:  'jarlanc  ist 
reht  daz  der  ar  winke  dem  vil  silczen  winde,'  all  this  year  the 
eagle  must  beckon  to  (i.e.  bring)  a  mild  wind.  How  many 
fancies  familiar  to  the  Mid.  Ages  must  be  lost  to  us  now,  when 
of  all  the  poets  that  mention  air  and  wind  and  storm  no  end  of 
times,  only  one  happens  to  allude  to  this  myth  !  But  not  only 
do  aquila  and  aquilo,1  vultur  and  vultumus  point  to  each  other; 
ave[xos  (wind)  and  aeros  (eagle)  are  likewise  from  one  root 
aco,  a?///,t.3  According  to  Horapollo  2,  15  a  sparrowhawk  with 
outspread  wings  represents  the  ivind.  Eagle,  falcon,  vulture, 
sparrowhawk,  are  here  convertible  birds  of  prey.  The  Indian 
garuda,  king  of  birds,  is  at  the  same  time  the  wind.  The  O.T. 
also  thinks  of  the  winds  as  winged  creatures,  without  specifying 
the  bird,  2  Sam.  22,  11:  frode  on  the  wings  of  the  winds'; 
Ps.    18,11.      104,3:     '  volavit   super  pennas   ventorum/    which 


also  hung  a  wolf,  and  over  it  an  eagle  (drupir  orn  yfir,  Sasui.  41b),  and  that  the 
victorious  Saxons  fixed  an  eagle  over  the  city's  gate,  supra,  p.  111. 

1  Festus :  '  aquilo  ventus  a  vehernentissinio  volatu  ad  instar  aquilae  appel- 
lator ' ;  conf.  Hesychius,  d/apos  6  ftoppas. 

2  Wackernagel  on  Ablaut  (vowel- change)  p.  30.    Eustathius  on  the  II.  87.  15 
Eom. 


WIND.      STOEM.  635 

Xotker  translates  '  iiberfloug  die  vettaclia  dero  windo ' ;  and 
Martina  7C  has,  in  allusion  to  the  biblical  phrase,  '  der  uf  der 
winde  vedern  saz.'  The  expression  used  by  Herbort  17091,  '  der 
wint  liez  ouch  dare  gan,'  shews  that  the  poet  imagined  it  either 
flying  or  riding  (see  Suppl.). 

The  Finns  call  the  eagle  Icokko  (kotka)  ;  but  a  poem  descriptive 
of  the  northstorm,  begins  :  '  Came  the  eagle  on  from  Turja,  down 
from  Lappmark  sinks  a  bird/  and  ends  :  '  Neath  his  wing  a 
hundred  men,  thousands  on  his  tail's  tip,  ten  in  every  quill  there 
be.5  l  And  in  a  Mod.  Greek  folk-song  the  sparrowhawk  (as.  in 
Horapollo)  calls  upon  the  winds  to  hush  :  airb  ra  TpUopfya  fiovva 
lepaKi  eavpe  \a\id  '  Tracer,'  aepe<?,  ird^ere  enrobe  k  aWrjv  piav 
/3pa8id.~  The  winds  are  under  the  bird's  command,  and  obey 
him.  In  another  song  the  mother  sets  three  to  watch  her  son 
while  he  sleeps,  in  the  mountains  the  sun,  in  the  plain  the  eagle 
[aero?),  on  the  sea  the  brisk  lord  Boreas  :  the  sun  sets,  the  eagle 
goes  to  sleep,  and  Boreas  goes  home  to  his  mother ; 3  from  the 
whole  context  here  we  must  understand  by  the  eagle  the  sweet 
soft  wind,  and  by  Boreas  the  cool  northwind. 

Hrcesvelgr  (OHG.  Hreosuolah  ?)  means  swallower  of  corpses, 
flesh-eater,  Sansk.  kraviyada,  and  is  used  of  birds  of  prey  that 
feed  on  carrion,  but  may  also  be  applied  to  winds  and  storms 
which  purify  the  air  :  they  destroy  the  effluvia  from  bodies  that 
lie  unburied. 

Is  that  the  foundation  of  the  fancy,  that  when  a  man  hangs 
himself,  a  tempest  springs  up,  and  the  roar  of  the  wind  pro- 
claims the  suicide  ?  4  Is  it  the  greedy  carrion-fowl  that  comes 
on  in  haste  to  seize  the  dead,  his  lawful  prey,  who  swings  un- 
buried on  the  tree  ?  Or  does  the  air  resent  the  self-murderer's 
polluting  presence  in  it  ?  A  New-year's  storm  is  thought  to 
announce  pestilence  (Sup.  I,  330.  910),  spreading  an  odour  of 
death  in  anticipation. 

Tempest  (like  fire)  the  common  people  picture  to  themselves  as 
a  voracious  hungry  being  (of  course  a  giant,  according  to  the  root 


1  Finnish  runes,  Ups.  1810,  pp.  58-60. 
-  Fauriel  2,  236.     Wh.  Miiller  2,  100. 
'  I'iiuriel  2,  432.     Wh.  Muller  2,  120. 

4  Sup.  I,  343.  1013.     Kirchhofer's  Schweiz.  spr.  327.     CI.  Brentano's  Libussa 
432.     Sartori's  Beise  in  Kiirnten  2,  164.     Leoprechting  102. 


636  ELEMENTS. 

idea  of  iotunn,  p.  519),  and  they  try  to  pacify  him  by  pouring  out 
flour  in  the  air.1  I  take  this  to  be  an  ancient  superstition,  and 
light  is  thrown  upon  it  now  by  a  Norwegian  tale  in  Asbjornsen 
no.  7,  of  the  northiuind  carrying  off  a  poor  fellow's  meal  three 
times,  but  compensating  him  afterwards  by  costly  presents.  This 
northwind  behaves  exactly  as  a  rough  good-natured  giant.  (See 
Suppl.). 

The  raising  of  the  whirlwind  was,  as  we  have  seen  (p.  632), 
ascribed  to  divine,  semi-divine  and  diabolic  beings.  In  Norway 
they  say  of  whirlwinds  and  foul  weather,  '  the  giant  stirs  his  pots/ 
Faye  p.  7. 

In  two  weather- spells  (Append.,  Exorcism  v.)  Mermeut  and 
Fasolt  are  called  upon  as  evil  spirits  and  authors  of  storms. 
Fasolt  is  the  well-known  giant  of  our  hero-legend,  brother  of 
Ecke,  who  was  himself  god  of  tides  and  waves  (p.  239).  The 
two  brothers  have  kindred  occupations,  being  rulers  of  the  dread 
sea  and  of  the  weather.  What  we  gather  from  the  second  spell 
about  Fasolt  seems  to  me  of  importance,  and  another  conclu- 
sive proof  of  the  identity  of  Ecke  with  Oegir :  as  Hler  and 
Kari  are  brothers  and  giants,  so  are  also  Ecke  and  Fasolt;  as 
Hler  commands  the  sea  and  Kari  the  winds,  so  does  Ecke  rule 
the  waters  and  Fasolt  the  storm.  To  the  Norse  poets  the  wind 
is  '  Forniots  sonr ;  and  '  Oegis  bi-oSir/3  Now,  as  Hler  was  called 
by  another  nation  Oegir,  i.e.  Uogi,  Ecke,  so  Kari  may  have  been 
called  Fasolt.  Fasolt  must  be  an  old  word,  if  only  because  it  is 
hard  to  explain  ;  does  it  come  under  the  OHG.  fasa,  fason  (Graff 
3  705)  ?  In  ON.,  '  fas '  is  superbia,  arrogantia  ;  the  name  seems 
to  express  the  overbearing  nature  of  a  giant.  Mermeut,  which 
occurs  nowhere  else,  perhaps  means  the  sea-mutterer  ?  Schm.  2, 
552.  653  has  maudern,  mutern,  murmurare. — These  demi-gods 
and  giants  stand  related  to  Donar  the  supreme  director  of  clouds 
and  weather,  as  iEolus  or  Boreas  to  Zeus. 

And  from  Zeus  it  was  that  the   favourable  wished-for  wind 
proceeded:  A ibs  ovpos,  Od.  5,  176.     Wuotan  (the  all-pervading, 

1  Sup.  I,  282.  Praetorius's  Weltbesehr.  1,  429  :  At  Bamberg,  when  a  violent 
wind  was  raging,  an  old  woman  snatched  up  her  mealsack,  and  emptied  it  out  of 
window  into  the  air,  with  the  words  :  '  Dear  wind,  don't  be  so  wild  ;  take  that  home 
to  your  child ! '  She  meant  to  appease  the  hunger  of  the  wind,  as  of  a  greedy 
lion  or  fierce  wolf. 

2  'Forniots  sefar '  =  sea  and  wind,  Stem.  90b. 


WIND.      STORM.  037 

p.  630)  mates  the  wish-wind,  oska-byrr,  p.  144.  What  notion 
lies  at  the  bottom  of  Wolfram's  making  Juno  give  the  '  segels 
luft/  sail-wind  (Parz.  753,  7)  ?  Again  in  Parz.  750,  7  and  766, 
4  :  '  Juno  fuocte  (fitted)  daz  weter,'  and  '  segelweter.'  The  fruit- 
ful breeze  that  whispers  in  the  corn  was  due  to  Fro  and  his  boar, 
pp.  213-4.  An  ON.  name  of  OSinn  was  VicTrir,  the  weatherer: 
(  at  ]>eir  sog'Su  han  veftrum  ra<Sa/  he  governs  weathers  (Fornm. 
sog.  10,  171).  Such  a  god  was  Pogoda  to  the  Slavs,  and  the  Pol. 
pogoda,  Boh.  pohoda,  still  signifies  good  growing  or  ripening 
weather  [Russ.  god  =  time, year;  pogoda  =  weather,  good  or  bad]. 
Typhon  in  Egyptian  legend  meant  the  south  wind,  Hes.  Theog. 
301.  862. 

The  Lettons  believed  in  a  god  of  winds  and  storms  Okkupeernis, 
and  thought  that  from  his  forehead  they  came  down  the  sky  to 
the  earth.1 

In  an  ON.  saga  (Fornald.  sog.  3,  122)  appears  giant  Grimnir, 
whose  father  and  brother  are  named  Griinolfr  and  Grimarr,  a  sort 
of  Polyphemus,  who  can  excite  storm  or  good  wind :  here  again 
it  is  OSinn  we  must  think  of  (p.  144).  Two  semi-divine  beings, 
honoured  with  temples  of  their  own  and  bloody  sacrifices,  were 
the  giant's  daughters  Thorger&r  and  Irpa  (p.  98).  In  the  Skald- 
skaparmal  154  ThorgerSr  is  called  Eolgabruffr  or  king  Holgi's 
daughter,  elsewhere  horgabrucfr  and  horgatroll  (Fornald.  sog.  2, 
131),  sponsa  divum,  immanissima  gigas,  which  reminds  us  of  our 
wind's-bride.  Both  the  sisters  sent  foul  weather,  storm  and  hail, 
when  implored  to  do  so,  Fornm.  sog.  11,  134-7.  And  ON. 
legend  mentions  other  dames  besides,  who  make  foul  weather  and 
fog,  as  HerSi  and  Hamglom,  Fornald.  sog.  2,  72,  Ingibiorg,  ibid. 
3,  442  (see  Suppl.).3 

What  was  at  first  imputed  to  gods,  demigods  and  giants,  the 
sending  of  wind,  storm  and  hail  (vis  daemonum  concitans  pro- 
cellas,  Beda's  Hist.  eccl.  1,  17),  was  in  later  times  attributed  to 
human  sorcerers. 

First  we  find  the  Lex  Visigoth,  vi.  2,  3  provides  against  the 
'  malefici  et  immissores  tempestatum,  qui  quibusdam  incanta- 
tionibus  grandiuem  in  vineas  messesque  mittere  perhibentur.' 
Then  Charles  the  Great  in  his  Capit.  of  789  cap.  64  (Pertz  3,61) : 

1  Okka,  or  auka,  storm;  peere  forehead.     Stender's  Gramra.  26(5. 
-  Conf.  p.  333,  463  hulizfiialmr. 


638  ELEMENTS. 

'  ut  nee  cauculatores  et  incantatores,  nee  tempestarii  vel  obliga- 
tors rton  fiant,  et  ubicunque  sunt,  emendentur  vel  damnentur.' 
Soon  after  that  king's  death,  about  the  beginning  of  Lewis  the 
Pious's  reign,  bp.  Agobard  (d.  840)  wrote  '  Contra  insulsam  vulgi 
opinionem  de  grandine  et  tonitruis/  From  this  treatise,  following 
Baluz's  edit,  of  the  works  of  Agobard,  I  take  a  few  passages. 

1,  145 :  In  his  regionibus  pene  omnes  homines,  nobiles  et 
ignobiles,  urbani  et  rustici,  senes  et  juvenes,  putant  grandines  et 
tonitrua  hominum  libitu  posse  fieri.  Dicunt  enim,  mox  ut  audie- 
rint  tonitrua  et  viderint  fulgura :  '  aura  levatitia  est/  Inter- 
rogati  vero,  quid  sit  aura  levatitia  ?  alii  cum  verecundia,  parum 
remordente  conscientia,  alii  autem  confidenter,  ut  imperitorum 
moris  esse  solet,  confirmant  incantationibus  hominum  qui  dicun- 
tur  tempestarii,  esse  levatam,  et  ideo  dici  levatitiam  auram. 

1,  146  :  Plerosque  autem  vidimus  et  audivimus  tanta  dementia 
obrutos,  tanta  stultitia  alienatos,  ut  credant  et  dicant,  quandam 
esse  regionem  quae  dicatur  Magonia,  ex  qua  naves  veniant  in 
nubibus,  in  quibus  fruges  quae  grandinibus  decidunt  et  tempesta- 
tibus  pereunt,  vehantur  in  eandem  regionem,  ipsis  videlicet  nautis 
aereis  dantibus  pretia  tempestarii s,  et  accipientibus  frumenta  vel 
ceteras  fruges.  Ex  his  item  tarn  profunda  stultitia  excoecatis,  ut 
hoc  posse  fieri  credant,  vidimus  plures  in  quodam  conventu  homi- 
num exhibere  vinctos  quatuor  homines,  tres  viros  et  unam  ferni- 
nam,  quasi  qui  de  ipsis  navibus  ceciderint :  quos  scilicet,  per 
aliquot  dies  in  vinculis  detentos,  tandem  collecto  conventu  homi- 
num exhibuerunt,ut  dixi,  in  nostra  praesentia,  tanquam  lapidandos. 
Sed  tamen  vincente  veritate  post  multam  ratiocinationem,  ipsi  qui 
eos  exhibuerant  secundum  propheticum  illud  confusi  sunt,  sicut 
confunditur  fur  quando  deprehenditur. 

1,  153 :  Nam  et  hoc  quidam  dicunt,  nosse  se  tales  tempestarios, 
qui  dispersam  grandinem  et  late  per  regionem  decidentem  faciant 
unum  in  locum  fluminis  aut  siivae  infructuosae,  aut  super  unam., 
ut  ajunt,  cupam,  sub  qua  ipse  lateat,  defluere.  Frequenter  certe 
audivimus  a  multis  dici  quod  talia  nossent  in  certis  locis  facta,  sed 
necdum  audivimus,  ut  aliquis  se  haec  vidisse  testaretur. 

1,  158  :  Qui,  mox  ut  audiunt  tonitrua  vel  cum  levijiatu  venti, 
dicunt  '  levatitia  aura  est/  et  maledicunt  dicentes  :  '  maledicta 
lingua  ilia  et  arefiat  et  jam  praecisa  esse  debebat,  quae  hos  facit ! ' 

1,  159  :  Nostris  quoque  temporibus  videmus  aliquando,  collectis 


WIND.      STORM. 


639 


messibus  et  vindemiis,  propter  siccitatem  agricolas  seminare  non 
posse.  Quare  non  obtinetis  apud  tempestarios  vestros,  ut  mittant 
auras  levatitias,  quibus  terra  inrigetur,  et  postea  seminare  possitis? 

1,  161:  Isti  autem,  contra  quos  sermo  est,  ostendunt  nobis 
homunculos,  a  sanctitate,  justitia  et  sapientia  alienos,  a  fide  et 
veritate  nudos,  odibiles  etiam  proximis,  a  quibus  dicunt  vehemen- 
tissimos  imbres,  sonantia  aquae  tonitrua  et  levatitias  auras  posse 
fieri. 

1,  102  :  In  tantum  malum  istud  jam  adolevit,  ut  in  plerisque 
locis  sint  homines  iniserrimi,  qui  dicant,  se  non  equidem  nosse 
immittere  tempestates,  sed  nosse  tamen  defendere  a  tempestate 
habitatores  loci.  His  habent  statutum,  quantum  de  frugibus  suis 
donent,  et  appellant  hoc  canonicum.  Many  are  backward  in  tithes 
and  alms,  canonicum  autem,  quem  dicunt,  suis  defensonbus  (a 
quibus  se  defendi  credunt  a  tempestate)  nullo  praedicante,  nullo 
admonente  vel  exhortante,  sponte  persolvunt,  diabolo  iuliciente. 
Denique  in  talibus  ex  parte  magnam  spem  habent  vitae  suae, 
quasi  per  illos  vivant  (see  Suppl.). 

It  was  natural  for  driving  hail-clouds  to  be  likened  to  a  ship 
sailing  across  the  sky ;  we  know  our  gods  were  provided  with 
cars  and  ships,  and  we  saw  at  p.  332  that  the  very  Edda  bestows 
on  a  cloud  the  name  of  vindflot.  But  when  the  tempest-men 
by  their  spells  call  the  air-ship  to  them  or  draw  it  on,  they  are 
servants  and  assistants  rather  than  originators  of  the  storm. 
The  real  lord  of  the  weather  takes  the  corn  lodged  by  the  hail 
into  the  ship  with  him,  and  remunerates  the  conjurors,  who 
might  be  called  his  priests.  The  Christian  people  said :  '  these 
conjurors  sell  the  grain  to  the  aeronaut,  and  he  carries  it  away.' 
But  what  mythic  country  can  Magonia  mean  ?  It  is  not  known 
whether  Agobard  was  born  in  Germany  or  Gaul,  though  his  name 
is  enough  to  shew  his  Frankish  or  Burgundian  extraction;  just 
as  little  can  we  tell  whether  he  composed  the  treatise  at  Lyons, 
or  previously  at  some  other  place.  The  name  Magonia  itself 
seems  to  take  us  to  some  region  where  Latin  was  spoken,  if  we 
may  rely  on  its  referring  to  magus  and  a  magic  land. 

In  later  times  I  find  no  mention  of  this  cloud-skip,  except  in 
H.  Sachs,  who  in  his  schwank  of  the  Lappenhiiuser  ii.  4,  89c  re- 
lates how  they  made  a  ship  of  feathers  and  straw,  and  carried  it 
up  the  hill,  with  the  view  of  launching  out  in  it  when  the  mist 


640  ELEMENTS. 

should  fall,  Fischer  in  Garg.  96a  introduces  quite  unconnectedly 
the  nebelschiffs  segel  of  Philoxenus  (the  guestfriend  or  Zeus  ?)  in 
a  passage  that  has  nothing  in  Rabelais  answering  to  it. 

In  the  latter  part  of  the  Mid.  Ages  there  went  a  story  of  the 
wind-selling  inhabitants  of  Vinland,  which  I  give  from  a  work 
composed  towards  1360  by  Glanvil  or  Bartholomaeus  Anglicus, 
'Deproprietatibus  rerum'  15,  172  :  'Gens  (Vinlandiae)  estbarbara, 
agrestis  et  saeva,  magicis  artibus  occupata.     Unde  et  naviganti- 
bus  per  eorum  litora,  vel  apud  eos  propter  venti  defectum  moram 
contrahentibus,  ventum  venalem  offerunt  atque  vendunt.     Globum 
enim  de  filo  faciunt,  et  diversos  nodos  in  eo  connectentes,  usque  ad 
trcs  nodos  vel  plures  de  globo  extrahi  praecipiunt,  secundum  quod 
voluerint  ventum  habere  fortiorem.1     Quibus  propter  eorum  in- 
credulitatem    illudentes,    daemones    aerem   concitant   et   ventum 
inajorem  vel  minorem  excitant,  secundum  quod  plures  nodos  de 
filo  extrahunt  vel  pauciores,  et  quandoque  in  tantura  commovent 
ventum,  quod  miseri  talibus  fidem  adhibentes  justo  judicio  sub- 
merguntur/ — This  selling  of  wind  in  Wilandia  (as  he  calls  it)   is 
likewise  mentioned  in  Seb.  Frank's  Weltbuch  60%  without  any 
description   of  the  method.      By  Vinland  is  to  be  understood  a 
part   of  the  Greenland    coast  which  had  been  early   visited  by 
Norwegians  and  Icelanders,  and  in  ON.   tales  is  by  turns  called 
Vinland  and  Vindland;2  the  latter  form  might  have   suggested 
the  whole  story  of  raising  the  wind,  on  which  the  ON.  writings 
as  well   as  Adam  of  Bremen  are  silent.       Others    however    tell 
the  same  story  of  the  Finns  (01.  Magnus  3,  15)  :  it  seems  to  me 
a  tradition  spread  all  over  the  North3  (see  Suppl.). 

The  Norse  legends  name  wind  produced  by  magic  gominga-ve&r. 
Ogautan  (like  Aeolus)  had  a  ve&r-belgr  (-bellows,  or  leathern 
bag)  ;  when  he  shook  it,  storm  and  wind  broke  out  (Fornald. 
sog.  2,  412);  the  same  with   Mondull   (3,  338).     The   Swedish 

1  This  globus  resembles  theLat.  turbo,  a  top  or  teetotum  used  in  magic  :  'citum 
retro  solve,  solve  turbinem,'  Hor.  Epod.  17,  7. 

2  Fornm.  sog.  2,  246.  Isl.  sog.  1,  9. 100. 151.  Couf.  Torfaeus's  Hist.  Vmlaudiae 
antiquae,  Ham.  1705. 

s  The  Esthonians  believed  that  wind  could  be  generated  and  altered.  In  the 
direction  whence  you  wish  it  to  blow,  hang  up  a  snake  or  set  an  axe  upright,  and 
whistle  to  make  it  come.  A  clergyman  happened  to  see  some  peasants  making  a 
great  fuss  round  three  stones,  eating,  drinking  and  dancing  to  the  sound  of  rustic 
instruments.  Questioned  as  to  the  object  of  the  feast,  they  replied  that  by  means 
of  those  stones  they  could  produce  wet  weather  or  dry ;  dry,  if  they  set  them 
upright,  wet  if  they  laid  them  along  (Ueber  die  Ehsten,  p.  48)  ;  supra  pp.  593-7. 


STORM.  641 

kino-  Eirikr,  son  of  Ragnar  Lodbrok,  bore  the  surname  of 
vecTi-hattr  (ventosi  pilei)  :  whichever  way  he  turned  his  hat,  from 
there  the  wished  for  wind  would  blow  (Saxo  Gram.  175.  01. 
Magnus  3,  13.  Gejer's  Hafder  582).  One  of  our  nursery-tales 
even,  no.  71,  tells  of  a  man  who  can  direct  the  weather  by 
setting  his  hat  straight  or  askew.  There  is  an  expression  in 
the  Edda,  vindhidlmr  (Seem.  168b),  which  reminds  me  of  the 
OHG.  name  Windhelm,  Trad.  fuld.  2,  167  (see  Suppl.). 

That  is  a  beautiful  fancy  in  the  Edda,  of  seven-and-twenty 
valkyrs  riding  through  the  air,  and  when  their  horses  shake 
themselves,  the  dew  dropping  out  of  their  manes  on  the  deep 
valleys,  and  hail  on  the  lofty  trees  :  a  sign  of  a  fruitful  year,  Ssem. 
145.  So  morning-dew  falls  on  the  earth  each  day  from  the  foam- 
ing bit  of  the  steed  Hrimfaxi  (dew-mane),  Sn.  11.  The  ON. 
meldropi,  AS.  meledeaw,  OHG.  militou  (Gl.  Jun.  224),  MHG. 
miltou  (Ms.  2,  124a),  all  take  us  back  to  mel  (lupatum  equi) ; 
conf.  note  on  Elene  p.  164,  where  mel  is  derived  from  midl, 
mittul,  and  supra  p.  421.  Antiquity  referred  all  the  phenomena 
of  nature  to  higher  powers.  The  people  in  Bavaria  call  a  dark 
rain-cloud  '  anel  mit  der  laugen/  granny  with  her  ley  (Schm.  1, 
63)  ;  in  Bohemia  light  clouds  are  babhy,  grannies.  When  moun- 
tain mist  is  rising,  the  Esthonians  say  '  the  Old  one  is  putting  his 
fire  out ' ;  our  people  ascribe  it  to  animals  at  least :  '  the  hare  is 
boiling  [his  supper],  the  fox  is  bathing,  brewing/  Reinh.  ccxcvi. 
When  shapes  keep  rising  in  the  mists  on  the  seashore,  the 
Italians  call  it  fata  morgana,  p.  412  (see  Suppl.). 

The  Scythians  explained  drifting  snow  as  flying  feathers  (Herod. 
4,  31),  and  our  people  see  in  the  flakes  the  feathers  out  of  the 
goddess's  bed,  or  goose  (p.  268).  Those  snow-women  Form, 
Drifa,  Mioll  (p.  631)  appear  also  to  touch  one  side  of  Holda.  The 
Lettish  riddles,  '  putns  skreen,  spahrni  pill/  and  '  putns  skreen, 
spalwas  puttn  mean  a  rain-cloud  and  a  snow-cloud.  In  Switzer- 
land vulgar  opinion  looks  upon  avalanches  as  ravening  beasts,  on 
whom  (as  on  fire)  you  can  put  a  check  (see  Suppl.). 

4.     Earth. 
Of  the  goddess,  and  her  various  names,  we  have  spoken  already  : 
Nerthus  p.  251,  Erda  p.  250,  Fairguni  p.  172.  256,  Erce  p.  253, 

1  Bird  flies,  wings  drip.     Bird  flies,  feathers  drop.     Steuder's  Gramru.  260. 


642  ELEMENTS. 

Hludana  p.  256,  and  others ;  in  which  the  ideas  of  the  ancients 
about  Terra,  Gaia,  Ops,  Rhea,  Cybele,  Ceres  repeat  themselves. 
On  p.  303  the  Indian  Prithivi  was  compared  with  Freyja,  and  the 
closest  kinship  exists  between  Freyr  and  NiorSr  (the  male  Ner- 
thus) .  But  also  the  bare  element  itself,  the  molte  (mould,  pulvis) 
p.  251,  was  accounted  holy  :  it  is  the  ^Ooov  TroXvfioreipa,  out  of 
its  teeming  lap  rise  fruits  and  trees,  into  it  the  dead  are  laid,  and 
decay  or  fire  restores  them  to  dust  and  ashes.1  To  die  was  c  to 
sink  to  the  earth/  '  til  iarSar  (til  moldar)  hniga/  '  to  kiss  the 
earth/  still  more  prettily  in  ON.  '\  mo&urcett  falla '  (Nialss.  cap. 
45),  in  maternum  genus  cadere,  to  fall  back  into  the  womb  of 
terra  mater}  They  also  said  '  iar&ar  megin  kiosa '  (vim  telluris 
eligere,  i.e.  invocare),  Saem.  27b;  and  as  the  Greeks  made  the 
falling  giant  acquire  new  strength  the  moment  he  touched  the 
ground,  the  Edda  has  e  aukinn  iarcfar  megni'  (auctus  vi  telluris), 
118b,  119a.3  One  who  had  been  long  away  from  home  kissed  the 
earth  on  treading  it  once  more ;  in  O.Fr.  poems  '  baiser  la  terre  ' 
is  a  sign  of  humility,  Berte  pp.  35.  43.  58.  Renart  14835.  As 
the  pure  stream  rejects  the  malefactor,  so  neither  will  the  earth 
endure  him:  'unssolt  diu  erde  nicht  tragen/  Troj.  491  [conf.  fart 
cursed  from  the  earth/  Gen.  4.  10-12].  Secrets  were  entrusted 
to  the  earth,  as  well  as  to  lire  and  oven,  p.  629  (see  Suppl.). 

It  is  more  especially  earth  grown  over  with  grass,  the  green- 
sward, that  has  a  sacred  power  ;  such  grass  the  Sanskrit  calls 
hhusa,  and  in  particular  durva,  to  which  correspond  the  AS.  turf, 
ON.  torf,  OHG.  zurba  :  '  holy  earth  and  haulms  of  durva/  Sak- 
untala  (Hirzelpp.  51.  127).  I  have  also  accounted  for  the  famous 
chrene  crud  of  the  Salic  law  by  our  '  reines  kraut/  clean  herb  ; 
and    explained    f  chreneschruda    (dat.)    jactare '    by   the    Roman 

1  Irstantent  (they  rise  again)  fon  thenio  Mien  legare,  uz  fori  theru  asgu,  fon 
theru  falawisgu,  fon  themo  irdisgen  herde,  0.  v.  20,  25-8. 

2  Ancient  tombs  have  been  discovered,  in  which  the  bodies  neither  lie  nor  sit, 
but  crouch  with  the  head,  arms  and  legs  pressed  together,  in  receptacles  nearly 
square.  M.  Fred.  Troyon  of  French  Switz.,  who  has  carefully  explored  and  ob- 
served many  old  graves,  expressed  to  me  his  opinion,  that  by  this  singular  treat- 
ment of  dead  bodies  it  was  prob.  intended  to  replace  man  in  the  same  posture  that 
he  maintained  in  the  womb  before  birth.  Thus  the  return  into  mother  earth  would 
be  at  the  same  time  an  intimation  of  the  coming  new  birth  and  resurrection  of  the 
embryo. 

3  The  Servians,  by  way  of  protesting,  say  '  tako  mit  zemlie ! '  so  (help)  me 
earth.  A  Gaelic  saw  (Armstrong  sub  v.  coibhi,  priest,  supra  p.  92  note)  declares : 
1  ged  is  fagus  clach  do  'n  lar,  is  faigse  na  sin  cobbair  choibbi,'  near  as  a  stone  is  to 
the  ground,  the  coibhi's  help  is  nearer  still,  which  seems  to  imply  the  earth's  prompt 
assistance  as  well  as  the  priest's. 


EARTH.  643 

' puram  herbam,  tollere/  as  the  H-el.  73,  7  has  hrencurni,  an  OHG. 
gloss  reincumes =fruinenti,  MHG.  'daz  reine  gras*  Iw.  6446,  and 
grass  and  '  der  melm/  dust,  are  coupled  together,  Wh.  24,  28. 
The  purport  of  the  law  is,  that  earth  or  dust  must  be  taken  up 
from  the  four  corners  of  the  field,  and  thrown  with  the  hand  over 
the  nearest  kinsman.  It  was  a  solemn  legal  ceremony  of  heathen 
times,  which  the  christian  Capitulars  abolished.  Against  my 
interpretation,  however,  Leo  has  now  set  up  a  Celtic  one  (cruin- 
neach  collectus,  criadh  terra),1  and  I  cannot  deny  the  weight 
of  his  arguments,  though  the  German  etymology  evidently 
has  a  stronger  claim  to  a  term  incorporated  in  the  text  itself 
than  in  the  case  of  glosses  [because  the  Latin  text  must  be 
based  on  a  Frankish  original].  The  mythic  use  made  of  the 
earth  remains  the  same,  whichever  way  we  take  the  words. 

The  ON.  language  of  law  offers  another  and  no  less  significant 
name :  the  piece  of  turf  [under  which  an  oath  was  taken]  is 
called  iar&men,  iarcfar  men  ;  now  f  men  '  is  literally  monile,  OHG. 
mani,  meni,  AS.  mene,  as  we  saw  in  the  case  of  Freyja's  neck- 
lace '  Brisinga  men/  But  '  iarSar  men '  must  once  have  been 
Iardar  men,  Erda's  necklace,  the  greensward  beiug  very  poetically 
taken  for  the  goddess's  jewelry.  The  solemn  '  ganga  undir 
Iarcfar  men'  (BA.  118-9)  acquires  its  true  meaning  by  this.  In 
other  nations  too,  as  Hungarians  (RA.  120),  and  Slavs  (Bohme's 
Beitr.  5,  141),  the  administration  of  oaths  took  place  by  the  per- 
son who  swore  placing  earth  or  turf  on  his  head  (see  Suppl.). 

The  custom  of  conquered  nations  presenting  earth  and  water 
in  token  of  submission  reaches  back  to  remote  antiquity  :  when 
the  Persians  declared  war,  they  sent  heralds  to  demand  the  two 
elements  of  those  whose  country  they  meant  to  invade,2  which 
again  reminds  us  of  the  Roman  'pura.'  Our  landsknechts  as 
late  as  the  16th  century,  on  going  into  battle,  threw  a  clod  of 
earth  (like  him  that  threw  chrenechruda)  in  token  of  utter  re- 
nunciation   of  life.3     Among  the    Greeks  too,   grasping  the  sod 

1  Zeitscbr.  f.  d.  alterth.  2,  163  seq.     Malb.  gl.  2,  149.  150. 

2  Brissonius  De  regno  Pers.  3,  GO— 71.  Herod.  4,  127.  5,  18.  Curtiusiii.  10, 
108.  Aristotle  Rhet.  ii.  22,  37.  Also  Judith  2,  7  :.  iroi^a^iv  yrjv  /cat  vdwp  (Cod. 
alex.  ed.  Augusti). 

3  Barthold's  Frundsberg  p.  58-9.     In  the  Mid.  Ages,  when  a  nun  was  co 

I,  her  kinsmen,  as  a  sign  that  she  renounced  all  earthly  possessions,  threw 
eartlt.  over  the  maiden's  arm;  conf.  Svenska  visor  1,  170  : 
det  voro  sa  manga  grefvar  bald, 


644  ELEMENTS. 

signified  taking  possession  of  land,  especially  in  the  case  of 
emigrants.  As  Euphamos  sits  on  the  prow  of  the  Argo,  Triton 
appears  in  human  form  and  presents  him  with  a  clod  of  earth  as  a 
gift  of  hospitality.  Euphamos  takes  the  symbolic  earth  (ftwXatca 
Bai/xovlav),  and  gives  it  to  his  men  to  keep,  but  they  drop  it 
in  the  sea,  and  it  melts  away.  Had  it  been  preserved  and 
deposited  at  Tainaros,  the  descendants  of  Euphamos  would  have 
won  the  promised  land  (Cyrene)  in  the  fourth  generation.  As 
it  was,  they  only  got  it  in  the  17th  (see  Suppl.).1 

In  an  AS.  spell  which  is  elsewhere  given,  four  pieces  of  turf 
are  cut  out,  oil,  honey,  yeast  and  the  milk  of  all  cattle  are  dropt 
on  them,  and  thereto  is  added  some  of  every  kind  of  tree  that 
grows  on  the  land,  except  hard  trees,2  and  of  every  herb  except 
burs ;  and  then  at  length  the  charm  is  repeated  over  it.  With 
their  seedcorn  people  mix  earth  from  three  sorts  of  fields  (Superst. 
I,  477) ;  on  the  coffin,  when  lowered,  three  clods  are  dropt  (699)  ; 
by  cutting  out  the  sod  on  which  footprints  [of  a  thief  or  enemy] 
are  left,  you  can  work  magic  (524.  556;  and  see  Suppl.). 

Of  holy  mountains  and  hills  there  were  plenty  ;  yet  there  seems 
to  have  been  no  elemental  worship  of  them :  they  were  honoured 
for  the  sake  of  the  deity  enthroned  upon  them,  witness  the 
Wodan's  and  Thunar's  hills.  When  Agathias,  without  any  such 
connexion,  speaks  of  \6(f)oi  and  cfrdpayyes  (hills  and  gullies)  as 
objects  of  worship  (p.  100) ;  possibly  his  knowledge  of  the  facts 
was  imperfect,  and  there  was  a  fire  or  water  worship  connected 
with  the  hill.  It  is  among  the  Goths,  to  whom  fair 'guni  meant 
mountain  (p.  172),  that  one  would  first  look  for  a  pure  mountain- 
worship,  if  the  kinship  I  have  supposed  between  that  word  and 
the  god's  name  be  a  matter  of  fact.  Dietmar  of  Merseburg 
(Pertz  5,  855)  gives  an  instance  of  mountain-worship  among  the 
Slavs:  '  Posita  autem  est  haec  (ci  vitas,  viz.  Nemtsi,  Nimptch) 
in  pago  silensi,  vocabulo  hoc  a  quodam  monte,  nimis  excelso  et 
grandi,  olim  sibi  indito  :  et  hie  ob  qualitatem  suam  et  quantitatem, 
cum  execranda  gentilitas  ibi  veneraretur,  ab  incolis  omnibus  nimis 

som  hade  deraf  stor  harm  (great  sorrow), 

der  de  nu  kastade  den  svarta  mull  (black  mould) 

allt  ofver  skon  Valborg's  arm. 

1  Pindar's  Pyth.  4,  21-44.      0.  M  tiller's  Orchom.  352,  and  proleg.  142  seq. ; 
his  Dorier  1,  85.     2,  535. 

2  '  Only  of  soft  wood,  not  hard,'  EA.  506. 


MOUNTAINS.      STONES.  645 

honor abatur.'      The  commentators  say  it  is  the  Zobtenberg  in 
Silesia  (see  Suppl.). 

Here  and  there  single  stones  and  rocks,  or  several  in  a  group, 
sometimes  arranged  in  circles,  were  held  in  veneration  (Append. 
'  vota  ad  lapides,'  especially  '  lapides  in  ruinosis  et  silvestribus 
locis  venerari;'  AS.  stdaweoriTang,  '  bringan  to  stdne,'  Thorpe  pp. 
380.  396).  This  worship  of  stones  is  a  distinguishing  character- 
istic of  Celtic  religion,1  less  of  Teutonic,  though  amongst  our- 
selves also  we  meet  with  the  superstition  of  slipping  through 
hollow  stones  as  well  as  hollow  trees,  Chap.  XXXVI.  Cavities 
not  made  artificially  by  human  hand  were  held  sacred.  In  Eng- 
land they  hang  such  holy-stones  or  holed-stones  at  the  horses' 
heads  in  a  stable,  or  on  the  bed-tester  and  the  house-door  against 
witchcraft.  Some  are  believed  to  have  been  hollowed  by  the 
sting  of  an  adder  (adderstones) .  In  Germany,  holy  stones  were 
either  mahlsteine  of  tribunals  or  sacrificial  stones  :  oaths  were 
taken  '  at  ursvolum  unnar  steini,'  '  at  enom  hvita  helga  steini/ 
Seem.  165a.  237b.  heilog  foil  189b.  Helgafell,  Landn.  2, 12  •  conf. 
espec.  Eyrbygg.  saga  c.  4.  Four  holy  stones  are  sunk  to  cleanse 
a  profaned  sea  (supra  p.  87  note).  A  great  number  of  stones 
which  the  giant  or  devil  has  dropt,  on  which  he  has  left  the  print 
of  his  hand  or  foot,  are  pointed  out  by  popular  legend,  without 
any  holy  meaning  being  thereby  imparted  to  them   (see  Suppl.). 

As  giants  and  men  get  petrified  (p.  551),  and  still  retain,  so 
to  speak,  an  after-sense  of  their  former  state,  so  to  rocks  and 
stones  compassion  is  attributed,  and  interest  in  men's  condition. 
Snorri  68  remarks,  that  stones  begin  to  sweat  when  brought  out 
of  the  frost  into  warmth,  and  so  he  explains  how  rocks  and  stones 
wept  for  Baldr.  It  is  still  common  to  say  of  bitter  anguish  :  '  a 
stone  by  the  wayside  would  feel  pity/  '  it  would  move  a  heart 
of  stone.' 2     Notice  the  MH.Gr.  phrase  :  f  to  squeeze  a  stone  with 


1  Conf.  Armstrong  sub  v.  earn  and  clachbrath  ;  O'Brien  sub  v.  earn ;  H. 
Schieiber's  Feen,  p.  17  on  tbe  menbir  and  pierres  fites,  p.  21  on  the  pierres 
branlantes.     Of  spindle-stones  I  have  spoken,  p.  419. 

2  This  mode  of  expression  is  doubtless  very  old ;  here  are  specimens  from 
MHG. :  ez  erbarmet  einem  steine,  Hart.  erst,  biiehl.  1752.  wser  sin  herze  steinen, 
swer  (whoso)  si  weinen  sa3he,  ze  weinen  im  geschame,  Herb.  68^ ;  ir  klage  mohte 
erbarmen  einen  stein  89b.  erbarmon  ein  stelnhertez  herze,  Flore  1498.  ir  j&raer 
daz  raoht  einen  vels  erbarmen,  Lohengr.  p.  16.  ez  moht  ein  stein  beweinet  ban 
dise  barmunge,  Dietr.  48a.  Mark,  tbe  stones  did  not  weep  of  themselves,  but  were 
moved  to  sympathy  by  the  weeping  and  wailing  of  tbe  hapless  men,  which  as  it 


646  ELEMENTS. 

straps,  till  its  veins  drop  blood/  MsH.  2,  235b,  suggested  no 
doubt  by  the  veins  which  run  through  some  stones  (see  Suppl.). 

In  closing  this  chapter,  I  will  group  together  the  higher  gods 
who  more  immediately  govern  the  four  elements.  Water,  springs, 
rain  and  sea  are  under  Wuotan  (Nichus),  Donar,  Uogi,  Holda. 
Fire,  lightning  under  Donar,  Loki.  Air,  wind  under  Wuotan, 
Fi'6.  Earth  under  Nerthus  and  many  others,  mentioned  on 
p.  641-2. 

were  penetrated  their  ears.  So  in  Holberg  (Ellefte  juni  4,  2) :  horte  jeg  en  sukken 
og  hylen,  som  en  steen  maatte  grade  ved.  And  Ovid  (Met.  9,  303) :  rnoturaque 
duras  Verba  queror  silices.  Luke  19,  40 :  oi  \ldot.  KeKpa^ovrai  [Habak.  2,  11 :  the 
stones  shall  cry  out  of  the  wall] . 


CHAPTER  XXI. 
TREES   AND   ANIMALS. 

As  all  nature  was  thought  of  by  the  heathen  mind  as  living ; l 
as  language  and  the  understanding  of  human  speech  was  allowed 
to  beasts,  and  sensation  to  plants  (see  Suppl.)  ;  and  as  every  kind 
of  transition  and  exchange  of  forms  was  supposed  to  take  place 
amongst  all  creatures :  it  follows  at  once,  that  to  some  a  higher 
worth  may  have  been  assigned,  and  this  heightened  even  up  to 
divine  veneration.  Gods  and  men  transformed  themselves  into 
trees,  plants  or  beasts,  spirits  and  elements  assumed  animal 
forms ;  why  should  the  worship  they  had  hitherto  enjoyed  be 
withheld  from  the  altered  type  of  their  manifestation  ?  Brought 
under  this  point  of  view,  there  is  nothing  to  startle  us  in  the 
veneration  of  trees  or  animals.  It  has  become  a  gross  thing 
only  when  to  the  consciousness  of  men  the  higher  being  has 
vanished  from  behind  the  form  he  assumed,  and  the  form  alone 
has  then  to  stand  for  him. 

We  must  however  distinguish  from  divinely  honoured  plants 
and  animals  those  that  were  esteemed  high  and  holy  because 
they  stood  in  close  relationship  to  gods  or  spirits.  Of  this  kind 
are  beasts  and  vegetables  used  for  sacrifice,  trees  under  which 

1  The  way  it  is  expressed  in  the  Eddie  myth  of  Baldr  is  more  to  the  point  than 
anything  else :  To  ward  off  every  danger  that  might  threaten  that  beloved  god, 
Frigg  exacted  oaths  from  water,  fire,  earth,  stones,  plants,  beasts,  birds  and  worms, 
nay  from  plagues  personified,  that  they  would  not  barm  him  ;  one  single  shrub  sbe 
let  off  from  the  oath,  because  he  was  too  young,  Sn.  64.  Afterwards  all  creatures 
weep  the  dead  Baldr,  men,  animals,  plants  and  stones,  Sn.  68.  The  OS.  poet  of  the 
Heliand  calls  dumb  nature  the  unquethandi,  and  says  168,  32  :  '  that  thar  Wal- 
dandes  dod  (the  Lord's  death)  anquethandes  so  filo  antkennian  scolda,  that  is 
endagon  ertha  bivoda,  hrisidun  thia  hohun  bergos,  harda  st&nos  clubun,  felisos  after 
them  felde.'  It  is  true  these  phenomena  are  from  the  Bible  (Matth.  27,  51-2),  yet 
possibly  a  heathen  picture  hovered  in  the  author's  mind  (as  we  saw  on  pp.  1  18. 
307),  in  thia  case  the  mourning  for  Baldr,  so  like  that  for  the  Saviour.  Herbort 
makes  all  things  bewail  Hector  :  if  (says  he,  68*)  stones,  metals,  chalk  and  sand 
had  wit  and  sense,  they  would  have  sorrowed  too.  As  deeply  rooted  in  man's 
nature  is  the  impulse,  when  unfortunate,  to  bewail  his  woes  to  the  rocks  and  trees 
and  woods  ;  this  is  beautifully  expressed  in  the  song  Ms.  1,  3b,  and  all  the  objects 
there  appealed  to,  offer  their  help. 

VOL.    II.  617  P 


,648  TEEES   AND  ANIMALS. 

higher  beings  dwell,  animals  that  wait  upon  them.  The  two 
■classes  can  hardly  be  separated,  for  incorrect  or  incomplete 
accounts  will  not  allow  us  to  determine  which  is  meant. 

1.  Trees. 

The  high  estimation  in  which  Woods  and  Trees  were  held  by 
the  heathen  Germans  has  already  been  shown  in  Chap.  IV.  To 
certain  deities,  perhaps  to  all,  there  were  groves  dedicated,  and 
probably  particular  trees  in  the  grove  as  well.  Such  a  grove 
was  not  to  be  trodden  by  profane  feet,  such  a  tree  was  not  to  be 
stript  of  its  boughs  or  foliage,  and  on  no  account  to  be  hewn 
down.1  Trees  are  also  consecrated  to  individual  daemons,  elves, 
wood  and  home  sprites,  p.  509. 

Minute  descriptions,  had  any  such  come  down  to  us,  would  tell 
us  many  things  worth  knowing  about  the  enclosure  and  main- 
tenance of  holy  woods,  about  the  feasts  and  sacrifices  held  in 
them.  In  the  Indiculus  paganiarum  we  read  (  de  sacris  sil varum, 
quae  nimidas  vocant.'  This  German  word  seems  to  me  uncor- 
rupted,  but  none  the  easier  to  understand :  it  is  a  plur.  masc. 
from  the  sing,  nimid/  but  to  hit  the  exact  sense  of  the  word,  we 
should  have  to  know  all  the  meanings  that  the  simple  verb 
neman  was  once  susceptible  of.  If  the  German  nimu  be,  as  it 
has  every  appearance  of  being,  the  same  as  vefxw,  then  nimid 
also  may  answer  to  Gr.  vc/ao?,  Lat.  nemus,  a  woodland  pasture, 
a  grove,  a  sacrum  silvae  (p.  G9).3     Documents  of  1086  and  1150 

1  Sacrum  nemus,  nemus  castum  in  Tacitus.     Ovid,  Amor.  iii.  1,  1 : 

Stat  vetus  et  multos  incaedua  silva  per  annos, 

credibile  est  illi  numen  inesse  loco  : 
ions  sacer  in  medio,  speluncaque  pumice  pendens, 

et  latere  ex  omni  dulce  queruntur  aves. 

Lucan,  Phars.  3,  399  :  Lucus  trat  longo  nunquam  violatus  ab  aevo.  So  the  Sem- 
nonian  wood,  the  nemus  of  Nerthus,  the  Slav  lucus  Zutibure,  the  Prussian  grove 
Eomowe.  Among  the  Esthonians  it  is  held  infamous  to  pluck  even  a  single  leaf 
in  the  sacred  grove :  far  as  its  shade  extends  (ut  umbra  pertingit,  EA.  57.  105),  they 
will  not  take  so  much  as  a  strawberry ;  some  people  secretly  bury  their  dead  there 
(Petri  Ehstland  2,  120).  They  call  such  woods  hio,  and  the  I.  of  Dago  is  in 
Esth.  Hiomah,  because  there  is  a  consecrated  wood  near  the  farmhouse  of  HiohoJ 
(Thorn.  Hiarn.). 

2  Like  helid  (heros),  gimeinid  (communio),  frumid,  pi.  frumidas  (AS.  frym'Sas, 
primitiae),  barid  (clamor,  inferred  from  Tacitus's  baritus). 

3  Can  nimid  have  been  a  heathen  term  for  sacrifice  ?  Abnemen  in  the  13th  cent, 
mennt  mactare,  to  slaughter  (used  of  cattle),  Berthold  p.  46,  as  we  still  say  abthun, 
abschneiden,  Ulph.  ufsneipan ;  Schmid's  Schwab,  wtb.  405  abnehmen  to  kill  poultry. 
This  meaning  can  hardly  lie  in  the  prefix,  it  must  be  a  part  of  the  word  itself : 


TREES.  649 

name  a  place  Nimodon,  Nimeden  (Moser's  Osnabr.  gesch.,  urk.  3  k 
56.  8,  57.  84)  ;  the  resemblance  may  lead  to  something  farther 
(see  Suppl.). 

There  can  be  no  doubt  that  for  some  time  after  the  conversion 
the  people  continued  to  light  candles  and  offer  small  sacrifices 
under  particular  holy  trees,  as  even  to  this  day  they  hang  wreaths 
upon  them,  and  lead  the  ring-dance  under  them  (p.  58).  In  the 
church-prohibitions  it  is  variously  called  :  f  vota  ad  arbores  facere 
aut  ibi  candelam  seu  quodlibet  munus  deferre ;  arborem  colere ; 
votum  ad  arborem  persolvere ;  arbores  daemonibus  consecntfas 
colere,  et  in  tanta  veneratione  habere,  ut  vulgus  nee  ramv/m  nee 
surculum  audeat  amputare.'  It  is  the  AS.  treow-tveor&iuir/  (cultus 
arborum),  the  ON.  biota  lundinn  (grove),  Landn.  3,  17.  The 
Acta  Bened.  sec.  2  p.  841  informs  us:  '  Adest  quoque  ibi  (at 
Lutosas,  now  Leuze)  non  ignoti  miracnli  fag  us  (beech),  subter 
quam  luminaria  saepe  cum  accensa  absque  hominum  accessu 
videmus,  divini  aliquid  fore  suspicamur.'  So  the  church  turned 
the  superstition  to  account  for  her  own  miracles  :  a  convent  was 
founded  on  the  site  of  the  tree.  About  Esthonians  of  the  present 
day  we  are  told  in  Rosenpliinter's  Beitr.  9,  12,  that  only  a  few 
years  ago,  in  the  parish  of  Harjel,  on  St.  George's,  St.  John's 
and  St.  Michael's  night,  they  used  to  sacrifice  under  certain  trees, 
i.e.  to  kill,  a  black  fowl.1  Of  the  Thunder-god's  holy  oak  an 
account  has  been  given,  pp.  72-3-4.  171.  184;  and  in  Grarnm. 
2,  997  the  OHG.  scaldeih  (ilex)  is  compared  with  the  AS.  names 
of  plants  scaldhyfel,  scaldbyfel  and  the  scaldo  quoted  above,  p.  94. 
All  this  is  as  yet  uncertain,  and  needs  further  elucidation. 

Among  the  Langobards  we  find  a  worship  of  the  so-called 
blood-tree  or  holy  tree  (p.  109).  The  Vita  S.  Barbati  in  the  Acta 
sanctor.  under  Febr.  19,  p.  139.  The  saint  (b.  cir.  602,  d.  cir. 
683)   lived  at   Benevento,  under  kings  Grimoald  and  Romuald ; 


niman,  ncman  would  therefore  be  to  cut,  kill,  divide,  and  nimidas  the  victims  slain 
in  the  holy  grove,  under  trees?  Couf.  what  is  said  in  the  text  of  the  Langobardic 
tree  of  sacrifice.  Celtic  etymologies  seem  rather  out  of  place  for  this  plainly  Saxon 
Indiculus.  Adelung  already  in  Mithrid.  2,  65. 77  bad  brought  into  the  field  Nemetes 
and  nemet  (templum)  ;  Ir.  naomh  is  sanctus,  neainh  (gen.  nimhe)  coelum,  niem- 
headh  land  consecrated,  belonging  to  the  church. 

1  The  superstition  of  the  Lausitz  Wends  holds  that  there  are  woods  which 
yearly  demand  n  human  victim  (like  the  rivers,  p.  494) ;  some  person  must  lose  his 
life  in  them  :  '  hohla  dyrbi  kojzde  ljeto  jeueho  czloweka  nijecz,'  Lausitz  mon.  schr. 
1797,  p.  748. 


650  TREES   AND  ANIMALS. 

the  Lombard  nation  was  baptized,  but  still  clung  to  superstitious 
practices  :  '  Quin  etiam  non  longe  a  Beneventi  moenibus  devotis- 
sime  sacrilegam  colebant  arborem,  in  qua  suspenso  corio  cuncti  qui 
aderant  terga  vertentes  arbori  celerius  equitabant,  calcaribus 
cruentantes  equos,  ut  unus  alteram  posset  praeire,  atque  in  eodem 
cursu  retroversis  manibus  in  corium  jaculabantur.  Sicque  parti- 
culam  modicam  ex  eo  comedendam  superstitiose  accipiebant.  Et 
quia  stulta  illic  persolvebant  vota,  ab  actione  ilia  nomen  loco  illi, 
sicut  hactenus  dicitur,  votum  imposuerunt.'  In  vain  Barbatus 
preaches  against  it :  '  illi  ferina  coecati  dementia  nil  aliud  nisi 
sessorum  meditantes  usus,  optimum  esse  fatebantur  cultum  legis 
majorum  suorum,  quos  nominatim  bellicosissimos  asserebant.' 
When  Romuald  was  gone  to  Naples, '  repente  beatissimus  Barbatus 
securim  accipiens  et  ad  votum  pergens,  suis  manibus  nefandam 
arborem,  in  qua  per  tot  temp  oris  spatia  Langobardi  exitiale  sacri- 
legium  perficiebant,  defossa  humo  a  radicibus  incidit,  ac  desuper 
terrae  congeriem  fecit,  ut  nee  indicium  ex  ea  quis  postea  valuerit 
reperire/  1  This  part  about  felling  the  tree  has  an  air  of  swagger 
and  improbability  ;  but  the  description  of  the  heathen  ceremony 
may  be  true  to  the  life.  I  have  pointed  out,  p.  174,  that  the 
Ossetes  and  Circassians  hung  up  the  hides  of  animals  on  poles 
in  honour  of  divine  beings,  that  the  Goths  of  Jornandes  truncis 
suspendebant  exuvias  to  Mars  (p.  77  note),  that  as  a  general  thing 
animals  were  hung  on  sacrificial  trees  (pp.  75-9)  ;  most  likely 
this  tree  also  was  sacred  to  some  god  through  sacrifices,  i.e.  votive 
offerings  of  individuals,3  hence  the  whole  place  was  named  '  ad 
votum/  What  was  the  meaning  of  hurling  javelins  through  the 
suspended  shin,  is  by  no  means  clear  ;  in  the  North  it  was  the 
custom  to  shoot  through  a  hanging  raw  oxhide  (Fornm.  sog.  3,  18. 
4,  61),  as  a  proof  of  strength  and  skill.     Doing  it  backwards 

1  Another  Vita  Barbati  (ibid.  p.  112)  relates  as  follows  :  '  Nam  quid  despica- 
bilius  credendum  est,  quam  ex  mortuis  animalibus  non  carnem  sed  corium  accipere 
ad  usum  comestionis,  ut  pravo  errori  subjecti  Langobardi  fecerunt  ?  qui  suarum 
festa  solennitatum  equis  praecurrentibus  unus  altero  praecedente,  sicut  mos  erat 
gentilium,  arbori  ludificae  procul  uon  satis  Benevento  vota  sua  solvebant.  Suspensa 
itaque  putredo  corii  in  hanc  arborem  divam,  equorum  sessores  versis  post  tergum 
brachiis  ignominiam  corii  certabant  lanceolis  vibrare.  Cumque  lanceolis  esse 
vibrata  pellis  rnortua  cerneretur,  veluti  pro  remedio  animae  ex  hac  illusione  corii 
partis  mediae  factam  recisionem  gustabant.  Ecce  quali  ridiculo  vanae  mentis 
homines  errori  subjacebant  pestifero  ! ' 

2  Supra  p.  360  note ;  votum  is  not  only  vow,  but  the  oblatio  rei  votivae  : 
•  votare  puerum '  in  Pertz  2,  93  is  equiv.  to  offerre. 


TREES. 


651 


increased  the  difficulty,  and  savours  of  antiquity.1  Why  the 
particle  of  skin  that  was  knocked  out  should  be  eaten,  it  is  hard 
to  say ;  was  it  to  indicate  that  they  were  allowed  to  participate 
in  the  sacrifice?  (p.  46  ;  see  Suppl.). 

And  not  only  were  those  trees  held  sacred,  under  which  men 
sacrificed,  and  on  which  they  hung  the  head  or  hide  of  the 
slaughtered  beast,  but  saplings  that  grew  up  on  the  top  of  sacri- 
ficed animals.  A  willow  slip  set  over  a  dead  foal  or  calf  is  not 
to  be  damaged  (Sup.  I,  838)  ;  are  not  these  exactly  Adam  of 
Bremen's  '  arbor es  ex  morte  vel  tabo  immolatorum  divinae' ?  (p. 

76)  .2 

Of  hallowed  trees  (which  are  commonly  addressed  as  from, 
dame,  in  the  later  Mid.  Ages)  the  oak  stands  at  the  head  (pp. 
72-77)  :  an  oak  or  beech  is  the  arbor  frugifera  in  casting  lots 
(Tac.  Germ.  10).  Next  to  the  oak,  the  ash  was  holy,  as  we  may 
see  by  the  myth  of  the  creation  of  man  ;  the  ashtree  Yggdrasill 
falls  to  be  treated  in  Chap.  XXV.  The  wolf,  whose  meeting  of 
you  promises  victory,  stands  under  ashen  boughs.  '  The  common 
people  believe  that  'tis  very  dangerous  to  break  a  bough  from 
the  ash,  to  this  very  day/  Rob.  Plot's  Staffordshire  p.  207.  One 
variety,  the  mountain-ash  or  rountree,  rowan-tree,  is  held  to  have 
magical  power  (Brockett  p.  177),3  (conf.  Chap.  XXVII.,  Bonn). 
With  dame  Hazel  too  our  folk-songs  carry  on  conversations,  and 
hazels  served  of  old  to  hedge  in  a  court  of  justice,  as  they  still  do 
cornfields,  RA.  810.  According  to  the  Ostgota-lag  (bygdab.  30), 
any  one  may  in  a  common  wood  hew  with  impunity,  all  but  oaks 
and  hazels,  these  have  peace,  i.e.  immunity.  In  Superst.  1, 972  we 
are  told  that  oak  and  hazel  dislike  one  another,  and  cannot  agree, 
any  more  than  haw  and  sloe  (white  and  black  thorn  ;  see  Suppl.). 
Then  the  elder  (sambucus),  OHGr.  holantar,  enjoyed  a  marked 
degree  of  veneration  ;  holan  of  itself  denotes  a  tree  or  shrub  (AS. 
cneowholen=ruscus).     In  Lower  Saxony  the  sambucus  nigra  is 

1  So  the  best  head  had  to  be  touched  backwards,  RA.  396  ;  so  men  sacrificed 
with  the  head  turned  away  (p.  493),  and  threw  backwards  over  their  heads  (p.  628). 

2  A  scholium  on  Ad.  of  Bremen's  Hist.  eccl.  (Pertz,  scr.  7,  379)  is  worth 
quoting :  '  Prope  illud  templum  (upsaliense)  est  arbor  maxima,  lato  ramos  extendens, 
aestate  et  hieme  semper  virens  :  cujus  ilia  generis  sit,  nemo  scit.  Ibi  etiam  est  ions, 
ubi  sacrificia  Paganorum  solent  exerceri,  et  homo  vivus  immergi,  qui  dum  mi- 
mergitur  (al.  invenitur),  ratum  erit  votum  populi.'  To  sink  in  water  was  a  good 
sign,  as  in  the  ordeal  (RA.  924;  couf.  Chap.  XXXI V.,  Witch's  bath). 

3  Esculus  Jovi  sacra,  Pliny  16,  4  (5). 


652  TEEES   AND   ANIMALS. 

called  ellorn,  eZZ-horn.1  Arnkiel's  testimony  1,  179  is  beyond 
suspicion  :  '  Thus  did  our  forefathers  also  hold  the  ellhorn  holy,  and 
if  they  must  needs  clip  the  same,  they  were  wont  first  to  say  this 
prayer  :  "  Dame  Ellhorn,  give  me  somewhat  of  thy  wood,  then  will 
I  also  give  thee  of  mine,  if  so  be  it  grow  in  the  forest."  And  this 
they  were  wont  to  do  sometimes  with  bended  knees,  bare  head  and 
folded  hands,  as  I  have  ofttimes  in  my  young  days  both  heard 
and  seen/  Compare  with  this  the  very  similar  accounts  of  elder 
rods  (Sup.  I,  866),  of  planting  the  elder  before  stables  (169),  of 
pouring  water  under  the  elder  (864),  and  of  the  elder's  mother 
(Sup.  K,  Dan.  162). 2  The  juniper,  wacholder,  plays  an  impor- 
tant part  in  the  marchen  of  machandelboom ;  in  the  poem  of  the 
Mirror's  adventure,  fol.  38,  occurs  the  mysterious  statement : 

Fraw  Weckolter,  ich  sich  Dame  Juniper,  I  see 

daz  du  ir  swester  bist,  that  thou  her 3  sister  art, 

du  kund  ouch  falsche  list  thou  knewest  false  cunning  too 

do  du  daz  kind  verstalt.  when  thou  stolest  the  child. 

A  man  in  Sudermania  was  on  the  point  of  cutting  down  a  fine 
shady  juniper,  when  a  voice  cried  out,  '  hew  not  the  juniper  ! ' 
He  disregarded  the  warning,  aud  was  about  to  begin  again,  when 
it  cried  once  more  '  I  tell  thee,  hew  not  down  the  tree  ! '  and  he 
ran  away  in  a  fright.4  A  similar  notion  lies  at  the  bottom  of 
kindermarchen  no.  128,  only  it  has  a  ludicrous  turn  given  it;  a 
voice  out  of  the  tree  cries  to  the  hewer,  '  he  that  hews  haspelholz 
(windlass-wood),  shall  die.'  Under  such  a  tree,  the  Klinta  tall 
(deal-tree,  pine)  in  Westmanland,  dwelt  a  hafs-fru,  in  fact  the 
pine  tree's  ra  (p.  496)  ;  to  this  tree  you  might  see  snow-white 
cattle  driven  up  from  the  lake  across  the  meadows,  and  no  one 
dared  to  touch  its  boughs.  Trees  of  this  kind  are  sacred  to  indi- 
vidual elves,  woodsprites,  homesprites  ;  they  are  called  in  Swed. 

1  AS.  ellen.  The  Canones  editi  sub  Eadgaro  rege,  cap.  16  (Thorpe,  p.  396), 
speak  of  the  sorcery  practised  '  on  ellenum  and  eac  on  otSrurn  mislicum  treowum  ' 
(in  sainbucis  et  in  aliis  variis  arboribus). 

2  The  god  Pushkait  lives  under  the  elder,  and  the  Lettons  used  to  set  bread  and 
beer  for  him  beside  the  tree,  Thorn.  Hiarn,  p.  43.  [In  Somersetshire  they  will  not 
burn  elder  wood,  for  fear  of  ill  luck. — Trans.] 

3  My  faithless  lover's. 

4  I  find  this  quoted  from  Loccenius's  Antiq.  Sueog.  1,3;  it  is  not  in  the  ed.  of 
1647,  it  may  be  in  a  later.  Afzelius  2,  147  has  the  story  with  tbis  addition,  that  at 
the  second  stroke  blood  flowed  from  the  root,  the  hewer  then  went  home,  and  soon 
fell  sick. 


TREES. 


653 


bo-trad,  in  Dan.  boe-tm  (p.  509).  Under  the  lime-tree  in  the 
Hero-book  dwarfs  love  to  haunt,  and  heroes  fall  into  enchanted 
sleep  :  the  sweet  breath  of  its  blossoms  causes  stupefaction,  D. 
Heldenb.  1871,  3,  14-5. 135  (see  Suppl.).  But  elves  in  particular 
have  not  only  single  trees  but  whole  orchards  and  groves  assigned 
them,  which  they  take  pleasure  in  cultivating,  witness  Laurin's 
Rosegarden  enclosed  by  a  silken  thread.  In  Sweden  they  call 
these  gardens  elftrdd-gdrdar. 

The  Greek  dryads  ]  and  hamadryads  have  their  life  linked  to  a 
tree,  and  as  this  withers  and  dies,  they  themselves  fall  away  and 
cease  to  be  ;  any  injury  to  bough  or  twig  is  felt  as  a  wound,  and 
a  wholesale  hewing  down  puts  an  end  to  them  at  once.3  A  cry 
of  anguish  escapes  them  when  the  cruel  axe  comes  near.  Ovid  in 
Met.  8,  742  seq.,  tells  a  beautiful  story  of  Erisichthon's  impious 
attack  on  the  grove  of  Ceres  : 

Ille  etiam  Cereale  nemus  violasse  securr 
dicitur,  et  lucos  ferro  temerasse  vetustos. 
Stabat  in  his  ingens  anno  so  robore  quercus, 
saepe  sub  hac  dryades  festas  duxere  choreas  .  .  . 
Contremuit,  gemitumque  dedit  Deo'ia  quercus, 
et  pariter  frondes,  pariter  pallescere  glandes 
coepere,  ac  longi  pallorem  ducere  rami. 

When  the  alder  (erle)  is  hewn,  it  bleeds,  weeps,  and  begins  to 
speak  (Meinert's  Kuhlandch.  122).  An  Austrian  marchen  (Ziska 
38-42)  tells  of  the  stately  fir,  in  which  there  sits  a  fay  waited  on 
by  dwarfs,  rewarding  the  innocent  and  plaguing  the  guilty ;  and 
a  Servian  song  of  the  maiden  in  the  pine  (fichte)  whoso  bark  the 
boy  splits  with  a  gold  and  silver  horn.  Magic  spells  banish  the 
ague  into  frau  Fichte  (see  Suppl.). 

This  belief  in  spirit-haunted  trees  was  no  less  indigenous  among 
Celts.  Sulpicius  Severus  (beg.  of  5th  cent.)  reports  in  his  life  of 
St.  Martin,  ed.  Amst.  1665,  p.  457  :  '  Dum  in  vico  quodam  tern- 
plum  antiquissimum  diruisset,  et  arborem  pinum,  quae  fano  erat 
proxima,  esset  aggressus  excidere,  turn  vero  antistes  ilhus  luci 
ceteraque  gentilium  turba  coepit  obsistere  ;  et  cum  iidem  illi,  dum 
templum  evertitur,  imperante  domino  quievissent,  succidi  arborem 

1  AS.  gloss,  wudu-elfenne,  wood-elfins,  fern.  pi. 

2  '  Non  sine  hamadryadis  fato  cadit  arborea  trabs.'     Ausonius. 


654  TREES  AND  ANIMALS. 

non  patiebantur.  Me  eos  sedulo  commonere,  nihil  esse  religionis 
in  stipite  ;  Deum  potius,  cui  serviret  ipse,  sequerentar  ;  arborem 
illam  exscindi  oportere,  quia  esset  daemoni  dedicata*  (see  Suppl.). 
A  great  deal  might  be  written  on  the  sacredness  of  particular 
plants  and  flowers.  They  are  either  dedicated  to  certain  gods 
and  named  after  them  (as  Donners  bart,  p.  183.  Baldrs  bra, 
p.  222.  Forneotes  folme,  p.  240.  Lokkes  havre,  p.  242.  Freyju 
Mr,  Friggjar  gras,  p.  302-3) ;  or  they  come  of  the  transformation 
of  some  afflicted  or  dying  man.  Nearly  all  such  plants  have  power 
to  heal  or  hurt,  it  is  true  they  have  to  be  plucked  and  gathered 
first :  the  Chap,  on  magic  will  furnish  examples.  Like  sacred 
tutelary  beasts,  they  are  blazoned  on  the  coats-of-arms  of 
countries,  towns,  and  heroes.  Thus  to  the  Northwest  Germans, 
especially  Frisians  and  Zeelanders,  the  seeblatt  (nymphaea,  nenu- 
phar) was  from  the  earliest  times  an  object  of  veneration.  The 
Hollanders  call  it  plompe,  the  Frisians  pompe  :  strictly  speaking, 
the  broad  leaves  floating  on  the  sea  are  pompebledden,  and  the 
fragrant  white  flowers,  golden  yellow  inside,  swanneblommen 
(flores  cygnei)  ;  which  recals  the  names  given  at  p.  489,  nix- 
blume,  ndckblad,  muhme  and  mummel  {i.e.  swan-maiden).  The 
Frisians  put  seven  '  sea-blades '  (zeven  plompenbladen)  in  their 
escutcheon,  and  under  that  emblem  looked  for  victory;1  our 
Grudrunlied  (1373)  knows  all  about  it,  and  furnishes  Herwic  of 
Sewen  or  Selanden  with  a  sky-blue  flag  :  c  sebleter  swebent  (float) 
dar  inne/  This  sea-flower  is  the  sacred  lotus  of  old  Egypt,  and 
is  also  honoured  in  India ;  the  Tibetans  and  Nepalese  bow  down 
to  it,  it  is  set  up  in  temples,  Brahma  and  Vishnu  float  on  its  leaf; 
and  it  is  no  other  than  a  M.  Nethl.  poem  that  still  remembers 
Thumbkin  floating  on  the  leaf  (p.  451). 


1  J.  H.  Halbertsma's  Het  Buddhisme  en  zijn  stichter,  Deventer  1843,  pp.  3. 10 ; 
and  lie  adds,  that  the  people  are  to  this  day  very  careful  in  picking  and  carrying  the 
plompen:  if  you  fall  with  the  flower  in  your  hand,  you  get  the  falling  sickness. 
Plomben,  our  plumpfen,  ON.  pornpa,  means  plumping  or  plunging  down.  Ace.  to 
W.  Barnes,  '  butterpumps  =  ovary  of  the  yellow  waterlily  ;'  conf.  Lith.  pumpa,  Slav, 
pupa,  wen,  pimple?  Mart.  Hamconii  Frisia,  Franekarae  1620,  p.  7,  says  Friso  intro- 
duced the  cognisance  of  the  seven  sea-blades  :  '  insigne  Frisonis,  ut  Cappidus  refert, 
septem  fuerunt  rubra  nympheae  herbae  folia,  in  tribus  argenteis  constitutae  trabibus 
per  scutum  caeruleum  oblicme  ductis.'  Cappidus  is  said  to  have  been  a  priest  at  Sta- 
vorn  at  the  beg.  of  the  10th  century,  but  nothing  more  is  known  of  him.  Conf.  Van 
d.  Bergh's  Volksoverlev.  p.  33.  41.  110.  Others  connect  the  division  of  Friesland 
into  7  sea-lands  with  the  7  leaves  of  the  scutcheon  ;  it  is  not  known  for  certain  when 
that  division  first  began  ;  see  De  vrije  Yries  4,  137. 


ANIMALS.  655 

2.  Animals. 

We  shall  have  still  more  to  say  about  sacred  animals,  which 
enter  into  more  intimate  relations  with  man  than  dumb  nature 
can ;  but  their  cultus  will  admit  of  being  referred  to  two  or  three 
principal  causes.  Either  they  stood  connected  with  particular 
gods,  and  to  some  extent  in  their  service,  as  the  boar  belongs 
to  Fro,  the  wolf  and  raven  to  Wuotan;  or  there  lies  at  the  basis 
the  metamorphosis  of  a  higher  being  into  some  animal  shape, 
on  the  strength  of  which  the  whole  species  comes  to  be  invested 
with  a  halo  of  honour.  That  is  how  we  may  in  some  instances 
have  to  take  a  bear,  bull,  cow  or  snake,  presupposing  an  in- 
carnation, though  our  mythology  may  have  long  ceased  to  reach 
so  far  back  as  to  give  a  full  account  of  it.  Then,  bordering 
close  upon  such  a  lowering  of  the  god  into  the  animal,  comes 
the  penal  degradation  of  man  into  a  beast,  the  old  doctrine 
of  transmigration,  in  which  we  discover  a  third  reason  for  the 
consecration  of  animals,  though  it  does  not  warrant  an  actual 
worship  of  them.  Those  myths,  e.g.  of  the  cuckoo,  woodpecker, 
nightingale,  and  so  on,  furnish  a  fund  of  beautiful  tales,  which 
enter  largely  into  the  hero-worship  (see  Suppl.). 

Quadeupeds. — Foremost  of  animals  I  name  the  horse,  the 
noblest,  wisest,  trustiest  of  domestic  animals,  with  whom  the  hero 
holds  friendly  talk  (p.  392),  who  sympathizes  in  his  griefs  and 
rejoices  in  his  victories.  As  some  heroes  are  named  after  the 
horse  (Hengest,  Hors),  the  horse  too  has  proper  names  given  him  ; 
Norse  mythology  assigns  to  nearly  every  god  his  separate  horse, 
endowed  with  miraculous  powers.  OSin's  steed  is  named  Sleipnir 
(p.  154),  and  is,  like  some  giants  and  heroes,  an  octopod.1  The 
other  horses  of  the  ases  are  enumerated  by  Sa3m.  44a  and  Sn.  18, 
without  specifying  to  which  they  belonged.  Several  names  are 
formed  with  '  faxi '  (jubatus,  comatus,  OHG.  vahso),  as  SMnfaxi 
(S»m.  32.  Sn.  11),  GuUfaxi  (Sn.  107-10),  Hrimfaxi  (Saem.  32. 
91.  Sn.  11),  Fr&yfam  (Vatnsd.  140-1).  Of  these,  GuUfaxi  the 
gold-maned   belonged  to   giant  Hriingnir,    Skinfaxi  the  shiny- 

1  Old  riddle  on  O'Sinn  and  Sleipnir  in  the  Hcrvararsaga  :  '  Who  are  the  two  that 
go  to  Thing  (council)  together,  and  have  three  eyes,  ten  legs  and  one  tail  between 
them?  '  A  mode  of  expression  quite  of  a  piece  with  our  old  habits  of  speech  ;  thus 
in  the  Weisthiimer  it  is  said  the  officers  of  the  court  shall  come  to  the  assize  with  6^ 
mouths,  meaning  three  men  on  horseback  and  a  dog. 


656  TEEES   AND   ANIMALS. 

maned  was  the  steed  of  Day,  and  Hrimfaxi  the  rirny-maued 
(p.  641)  of  Night.  But  even  Faxi  by  itself  is  a  name  for  horses, 
e.g.  Fornald.  sog.  2,  168.  508.  Arvakr  (early-waker) ,  Alsvi&r 
(all-wise)  are  horses  of  the  sun-chariot,  Ssem.  45.  Sn.  12 ;  on 
Arvakr' s  ear,  on  Alsvinn's  l  hoof,  there  were  runes  written  ;  also 
runes  'a  Slevpnis  tonnoni  (teeth)/  Ssam.  196a,  as  well  as  on  the 
bear's  paw  and  the  wolf's  claws.3  Sva&tifari  was  the  horse  that 
helped  the  giant  in  building,  Sn.  46.  And  our  hero-legend  has 
handed  down  the  names  of  many  famous  horses  (p.  392).  Bajart 
is  described  as  intelligent,  like  AlsvrSr;  he  is  said  to  be  still  alive 
in  Ardennes  forest,  where  you  may  hear  him  neigh  every  year  on 
Midsummer  day  (Quatre  fils  Aimon  180c).  The  track  of  Schim- 
ming's  shoe  stands  printed  on  the  rock,  Vilk.  saga  cap.  37  (see 
Suppl.). 

The  Freyfaxi  in  Vatnsdaslasaga  was  owned  by  a  man  named 
Brandr,  who  is  said  to  have  worshipped  it  (at  haun  hef$L  atriina'3 
a  Faxa),  and  was  therefore  called  Faxabrandr.  The  unpublished 
saga  of  Hrafnkell  is  known  to  me  only  from  Miiller's  Bibl.  1, 103, 
but  he  too  had  a  horse  Freyfaxi  (mispr.  Freirfara),  which  he 
had  half  given  to  Freyr,  vowing  at  the  same  time  to  slay  the 
man  who  should  mount  it  without  his  leave.  I  can  give  the 
passage  from  Joh.  Erici  de  philippia  apud  priscos  boreales,  Lips. 
1755,  p.  122  :  '  Hrafnkell  atti  ]>ann  grip  i  eigo  sinni,  er  hanom 
botti  betri  enn  annar,  bat  var  hestr  bleikalottr  at  lit,  er  hann 
kalla'Si  Freyfaxa,  hann  cjaf  Frey  vin  sinom  (supra,  pp.  93.  211) 
fienna  liest  half  aim.  a  bessom  hesti  hafbi  hann  sva  mikla  elsko 
(love),  at  hann  strengdi  bess  heit  (vow),  at  hann  skyldi  beim 
manni  at  bana  verSa,  er  beim  hesti  rrSi  an  hans  vilja.'  Brand's 
' atriina'S '  refers,  no  doubt,  to  the  same  circumstance  of  his  horse 
being  hallowed  and  devoted  to  the  god.  A  striking  testimony 
to  this  is  found  in  Olafs  Tryggvasonar  saga : 3  Tidings  came  to 
the  king,  that  the  Trsendir  (men  of  Drontheim)  had  turned  back 
to  the  worship  of  Freyr,  whose  statue  still  stood  among  them. 
When  the  king  commanded  them  to  break  the  image,  they  re- 
plied: '  ei  munum  ver  bridta  Wkncski  Freys,  ]?viat  ver  hofum  leingi 

1  Svi'Sr,  gen.  svirms,  like  rna'Sr,  marms. 

2  Eeminding  of  the  Germ.  Beast-apologue  (Reiub.  cclxiii.).     In  Fornald.  sog. 
1,  169  Eafn  prefers,  wrongly  I  think,  the  reading  '  hofSi,'  head. 

3  Ed.  Skalh.  1698.  1690.  2,  190  cap.  49  ;  this  cap.  is  left  out  in  Fornru.  sog.  2, 
189,  but  inserted  at  10,  312. 


HOESES.  657 

honum  bionat  ok  liefr  oss  vel  diigat.'  Olafr  summoned  them 
to  an  assembly,  resolving  to  destroy  the  idol  himself,  and  sailed 
to  the  coast  where  the  temple  (hof)  stood.  When  he  landed,  he 
found  the  horses  of  the  god  grazing  there  (]>&  siiu  hans  menn  stoft- 
hross  nokr  vr3  vegin,  er  beir  sogSu  at  hann  Freyr  aetti).  The 
king  mounted  the  stallion,  and  his  courtiers  the  mares,  and  so 
they  rode  to  the  temple ;  Olafr  dismounted,  walked  in  and  threw 
down  the  idols  (gob'in),1  but  took  Frey's  image  away  with  him. 
When  the  Traendir  found  their  gods  dishonoured,  and  Frey's 
image  carried  off,  they  were  ware  that  the  king  had  done  it,  and 
they  came  to  the  place  of  meeting.  The  king  had  the  image  set 
up  in  the  Thing,  and  asked  the  people  :  '  know  ye  this  man  ?  ' 
'  It  is  Freyr  our  god '  they  answered.  '  How  has  he  shewn  his 
power  to  you  V  'He  has  often  spoken  to  us,  foretold  the 
future,  granted  plenty  and  peace  (veitti  oss  ar  oc  friS) .'  f  The 
devil  spake  to  you  '  said  the  king  ;  then  taking  an  axe,  he  cried 
to  the  image  :  '  Now  help  thyself,  and  defend  thee  if  thou  canst/ 
Freyr  continuing  silent,  Olafr  hewed  off  both  his  hands,  and  then 
preached  to  the  people  how  this  idolatry  had  arisen.  The  whole 
narrative  bears  the  impress  of  a  later  age,  yet  it  had  sprung  out 
of  Norse  tradition,  and  assures  us  that  liaises  were  consecrated  to 
Freyr,  and  maintained  in  the  hallowed  precincts  of  his  temples. 
Had  not  the  temples  of  other  gods  such  horses  too  ?  The  animals 
that  Wilibrord  found  grazing  in  Fosete's  sanctuary  (p.  230)  can 
hardly  have  been  horses,  or  he  would  not  have  had  them  slaugh- 
tered for  food;  but  the  practice  of  rearing  cattle  consecrated  to 
the  gods  is  established  by  it  none  the  less.  And  apart  from  this, 
it  seems  that  single  beasts  were  maintained  by  private  worship- 
pers of  the  god. 

Such  breed  of  pure  and  dedicated  horses  was  destined  for  holy 
uses,  especially  sacrifice,  divination,  and  the  periodical  tours  of 
deities  in  their  cars.  Their  manes  were  carefully  cultivated, 
groomed  and  decorated,  as  the  name  Faxi  indicates;  probably 
gold,  silver  and  ribbons  were  twined  or  plaited  into  the  locks 
{Gullfaxi,  Skhifaxi)  ;  mon  gl&ar  (juba  splendet),  Stem.  92%  lysir 
mon  af  mari  (lucet  juba  ex  equo)  32b,  as  indeed  the  Lat.  jubar 
suggests  juba,  because  a  mane  does  radiate,  and  light  sends  out 

1  So  that  there  were  other  Btatues  standing  beside  Frey's. 


658  TREES   AND  ANIMALS. 

beams  in  the  manner  of  hair.1  Gulltoppr,  Silfrintoppr  are  names 
of  horses  whose  tails  were  tied  round  with  gold  or  silver,  Sn.  44. 
The  names  Gyllir  and  Gler  (golden,  glittering,  ibid.)  may  be 
given  them  for  the  same  reason,  or  because  their  hoofs  were 
shod  with  gold,  or  from  the  gilding  of  the  bridle  and  saddle. 
Of  colours,  white  was  esteemed  the  noblest ;  a  king  would  make 
his  eutry,  or  bestow  a  fief,  seated  on  a  milk-white  steed.  The 
Weisthiimer  often  mention  the  white  horse  (e.g.  3,  342.  857)  ;  if 
an  inheritance  lie  vacant,  the  governor  is  to  mount  a  white  foal, 
and  taking  one  man  before  him  and  the  other  behind,  to  set  one 
of  them  down  on  the  property  (3,  831;  conf.  2,  541).  A  foal 
was  esteemed  even  purer  and  nobler  than  a  horse  (see  Suppl.).2 

Tacitus  (Germ.  9,  10),  after  saying  '  lucos  ac  nemora  conse- 
crant,5  adds  :  '  Proprium  gentis,  equorum  quoque  praesagia  ac 
monitus  experiri.  Publice  aluntur,  iisdem  nemoribus  ac  lucis, 
candidi  et  nullo  mortali  opere  contacti,  quos  pressos  sacro  curru 
sacerdos  ac  rex  vel  princeps  civitatis  comitantur,  hinnitusque  ac 
fremitus  observant.  Nee  ulli  auspicio  major  fides,  non  solum 
apud  plebem,  sed  apud  proceres,  apud  sacerdotes :  se  euim 
ministros  deorum,  illos  conscios  putant ; '  these  sacred  beasts  are 
in  the  secrets  of  the  gods,  and  can  reveal  their  counsels.  And  in 
christian  times  the  Indiculus  pagan,  cap.  xiii.  speaks  '  de  a,uguriis 
equorum/  without  describing  them  further.  A  horse's  neigh  is 
an  omen  of  good  (Sup.  I,  239).3  To  warriors  victory  was  fore- 
tokened by  their  chargers'  neighing  (OHGr.  hueion,  MHG.  weien, 
M.  Neth.  neien,  ON.  hneggja,  Swed.  gnagga),  and  defeat  by 
their  withholding  the  cheerful  spirit-stirring  strain  :  see  an  in- 
stance in  the  Flem.  rhyming  chron.,   ed.   Kausler    7152.       We 


1  Single  hairs  out  of  the  inane  or  tail  of  a  sacred  horse  were  treasured  up. 
Franz  Wessel  relates,  p.  1-1,  that  when  the  Johannites  preached  in  a  town  or  village, 
they  had  a  fine  stallion  ridden  round,  to  which  the  people  offered  '  afgehowen 
woppen  (bunch  of  oat  ears) '  ;  any  one  who  could  get  a  hair  out  of  the  horse's  tail, 
thought  himself  lucky,  and  sewed  it  into  the  middle  of  his  milk-strainer,  and  the 
milk  was  proof  against  witchcraft. 

2  A  foal's  tooth,  it  seems,  was  hung  about  the  person,  and  worn  as  a  safeguard. 
A  MHG.  poet  says :  '  gevater  unde  fuli-zant  an  grozen  nceten  sint  ze  swach,'  god- 
fathers and  foal's  teeth  are  too  weak  in  great  emergencies,  MS.  2,  160b.  To  let 
children  ride  on  a  black  foal  makes  them  cut  their  teeth  easily,  Superst.  I,  428. 
From  Eracl.  1320.  1485  fiil-zene  appear  to  be  the  milk-teeth  shed  by  a  foal  (see 
Suppl.). 

3  What  the  breath  of  a  swine  has  polluted,  is  set  right  again  by  that  of  the 
horse  (Sup.  I,  820.  K,  92) ;  the  horse  is  a  clean  animal.  It  helps  a  woman  in  labour, 
for  a  horse  to  feed  out  of  her  apron  (Sup.  I,  337). 


HORSES.  659 

know  how  the  Persians  chose  a  king  by  the  neighing  of  his 
horse,  Herod.  3,  84.  In  the  Norwegian  tale  Grirnsborken  (Asb. 
and  Moe,  no.  38)  a  foal  is  suckled  by  twelve  mares,  and  gets  to 
talk  sensibly  (see  Suppl.). 

And  as  Mi  mi's  head  retained  its  wisdom  after  it  was  cut  off 
(379),  heathendom  seems  to  have  practised  all  sorts  of  magic  by 
cutting  off  horse's  heads  and  sticking  them  up.  In  a  nursery-tale 
(no.  89)  the  trusty  Falada's  head  is  nailed  up  over  the  gate,  and 
carries  on  converse  with  the  king's  daughter.  This  cutting  off 
and  setting  up  of  horse's  heads  has  been  mentioned  at  p.  47-8  as 
an  ancient  German  custom.  Pliny  19, 10  (58)  notices,  as  a  remedy 
for  caterpillars  :  '  si  palo  imponantur  in  hortis  ossa  capitis  ex 
equino  genere.'  In  Scandinavia  they  stuck  a  horse's  head  on  a 
pole,  and  turned  the  gaping  jaws,  propped  open  with  a  stick,  in 
the  direction  whence  the  man  they  had  a  spite  against,  and 
wished  to  harm,  was  sure  to  come.1  This  was  called  a  neidstange 
(spite-stake).  Saxo  Gram.  p.  75  :  Immolati  diis  equi  abscissum 
caput  conto  excipiens,  subjectis  stipitibus  distentos  faucium  rictus 
appniit,  sperans  se  primos  Erici  conatus  atrocis  spectaculi  for- 
midine  frustraturum.  Arbitrabatur  enim  ineptas  barbarorum 
mentes  oblatae  cervicis  terriculamento  cessuras;  et  jam  Ericus 
obvium  illis  iter  agebat.  Qui  prospecto  eminus  capite,  obscoenita- 
tis  apparatum  intelligens,  silere  socios  cautiusque  se  gerere  jubet, 
nee  quemquam  temere  praacipitare  sermonem,  ne  incauto  effamine 
ullurn  maleficiis  instruerent  locum,  adjiciens,  si  sermone  opus 
incideret,  verba  se  pro  omnibus  habiturum.  Jamque  medius  illos 
amnis  secreverat,  cum  magi,  ut  Ericum  pontis  aditu  deturbarent, 
en n firm  quo  equi  caput  refixerant  fluvio  citiraum  locant.  Ille 
nihilominus  pontem  intrepide  aggressus,  'in  latorem'  inquit 
( gestaminis  sui  fortuna  recidat,  nos  melior  consequatur  eventus. 
Male  maleficis  cedat,  infaustae  molis  gerulum  onus  obruat,  nobis 
potiora  tribuant  omina  sospitatem  !  '  Nee  secus  quam  optabatur 
evenit :  continuo  namque  excussa  cervice  ruens  ferentem  stipes 
oppressit. — Egilssaga  p.  389  :  Egill  tok  i  kond  ser  heslis  staung 
(hazel  rod),  ok  geek  a  bergsnaus  nockura,  )ki  er  vissi  til  lands 
inn.    ]>&  tok  hann  hross-hofucf  ok  setti  up  a  staungina.    siSan  veitti 


1  Wolves'  heads  were  in  like  manner  held  open  with  hazel  rods  and  hung  up 
Isengr.  645-7-8.     Reinardus  3,  293.  312.     Reinnart,  introd.  p.  lxix. 


660  TREES   AND   ANIMALS. 

liann  forraala  ok  meelti  sva :  'her  set  ek  upp  ni&staung,  ok  sny 
ek  ]?essu  ni'Si  a  hond  Eiriki  konimgi  ok  Gunnhilda  drottnmgu.' 
hann  sneri  hross-lwf&lnu  inn  a  land. — At  other  times  they  carved 
a  man's  head  out  of  wood,  and  fastened  it  to  a  stake  which  was 
inserted  in  the  breast  of  a  slaughtered  horse}  Vatnsd.  saga,  p. 
142  :  Iokull  skar  karls  hofut  a  sulu  endann,  ok  risti  a  riiuar  med 
ollum  heim  formala  sem  fyrr  var  sagdr,  siSan  drap  Iokull  mer 
eina  (killed  a  mare),  ok  opnuSu  hana  hia  briostinu,  foerffu  a 
suluna,  ok  letu  horfa  ]?eim  a  Borg  (see  Suppl.).  It  is  well  worth 
noticing,  that  to  this  very  day  the  peasants'  houses  in  a  part 
of  Lower  Saxony  (Liineburg,  Holstein,  Mecklenburg)  have  horses' 
heads  carved  on  the  gables  :  they  look  upon  it  merely  as  an  orna- 
ment to  the  woodwork  of  the  roof,  but  the  custom  may  reach 
far  back,  and  have  to  do  with  the  heathen  belief  in  outward- 
pointing  heads  keeping  mischief  away  from  houses.2  The  Jahrb. 
of  the  Meckl.  verein  2,  118  says,  these  horses'  heads  are  nailed 
transversely  on  each  gable-end  (ktihlende)  of  the  roof,  a  remin- 
iscence of  the  sacred  horses  of  the  ancients.  Heinr.  Schreiber 
(Taschenb.  f.  1840,  p.  240  seq.)  has  likewise  noticed  these  horses 
rushing  at  each  other  on  gables  of  the  older  houses  in  Romanic 
Rhsetia  (not  Germ.  Switz.,  but  Tyrol ;  see  Zingerle's  Sitten 
p.  55)  ;  he  is  decidedly  over  hasty  in  pronouncing  them  a  Celtic 
symbol,  for  if  we  were  to  say  that  the  custom  in  L.  Saxony  was 
a  legacy  from  the  earlier  Celtic  inhabitants,  criticism  would  lose 
all  firm  footing.  To  me  this  custom,  as  well  as  horse-worship 
altogether,  seems  to  belong  equally  to  Celts,  Teutons  and  Slavs ; 
what  particular  branches  of  these  races  were  most  addicted  to 
it,  will  by  degrees  unfold  itself  to  future  research  (see  Suppl.). 
Prastorius  (Weltbeschr.  2,  162-3)  relates,  that  the  Non- German 
people  (Wends)  used  to  keep  off  or  extirpate  cattle-plagues  by 
fixing  round  their  stables  the  heads  of  mad  horses  and  cows  on 

1  Conf.  Sup.  I,  838,  planting  the  willow  in  the  dead  foal's  mouth. 

2  Pretty  much  as  they  turned  the  eagle's  head  on  the  house,  and  thought 
thereby  to  shift  the  wind  (p.  633-4).  The  heathen  practice  of  fastening  up  animals' 
heads  explains  many  very  old  names  of  places  in  Germ,  and  France,  as  Berhaupten, 
Tierluiupten,  Boshaupten,  Schm.  2,  223.  Ad  locum  qui  nuncupatur  caput  caballi- 
num,  Pertz  2,  278.  Ad  locum  qui  vocatur  caput  equi  (Vita  S.  Magni,  in  Canisius's 
Lect.  ant.  1,  667),  with  the  addition  in  Goldast  (Scr.  rer.  Alem.  i.  2, 198)  :  '  et  idcirco 
vocatus  est  ille  locus  caput  equi,  quia  omnes  venatores  reliquerant  ibi  suos  caballos, 
et  pedestres  ibant  ad  venandum.'  Obviously  a  false  later  interpretation  ;  in  fact 
this  life  of  St.  Magnus  (Magnoald,  Mangold)  has  a  good  many  interpolations,  conf. 
Mabillon*s  Acta  Bened.  sec.  2,  p.  505. 


HORSES.  661 

hedge-stakes;  also  that  if  at  night  their  horses  were  ridden 
to  exhaustion  by  the  night-hag  or  leeton,  they  put  a  horse's  head 
among  the  fodder  in  the  crib,  and  this  would  curb  the  spirit's 
power  over  the  beast.  Very  likely  the  superstitious  burying  of 
a  dead  head  in  the  stable  (I,  815)  means  that  of  a  horse,1  conf. 
Chap.  XXXVIII.,  Nightmare.  In  Holland  they  hang  a  horse's 
head  over  pigstyes  (Westendorp  p.  518),  in  Mecklenburg  it  is 
placed  under  a  sick  man's  pillow  (Jahrb.  2,  128).  We  saw 
the  horse's  head  thrown  into  the  Midsummer  fire  with  a  view  to 
magical  effects  (p.  G18).2 

Praetorius's  account  is  enough  to  shew  that  Slavs  agreed  with 
Germans  in  the  matter  of  horse- worship.  But  older  and  weightier 
witnesses  are  not  wanting.  Dietmar  of  Merseburg  (6,  17.  p.  812) 
reports  of  the  Luitizers,  i.e.  Wilzes :  c  Terrain  cum  tremore 
infodiunt,  quo  sortibus  emissis  [imm.  ?]  rerum  certitudinem  du- 
biarum  perquirant.  Quibus  finitis,  cespite  viridi  eas  operientes, 
equum,  qui  maximus  inter  alios  habetur  et  ut  sacer  ab  his  vener- 
atur,  super  fixas  in  terram  duorum  cuspides  hastilium  inter  se 
transmissorum  supplici  obsequio  ducunt,  et  praemissis  sortibus 
quibus  id  explicavere  prius,  per  hunc  quasi  divinum  denuo 
augurantur ;  et  si  in  duabus  his  rebus  par  omen  apparet,  factis 
completur;  sin  autem,  a  tristibus  populis  hoc  prorsus  omittitur.' 
— The  Vita  beati  Ottonis  episcopi  bambergensis,  composed  by  an 
unknown  contemporary  (Canisius  iii.  2,  70),  relates  more  fully  of 
the  Pomeranians,  whom  Otto  converted  a.d.  1124:  '  Habebant 
eaballum  mirae  magnitudinis,  et  pinguem,  nigrl  coloris,  et  acrem 
valde.  Iste  toto  anni  tempore  vacabat,  tantaeque  fuit  sanctitatis 
ut  nullum  dignaretur  sessorem;  habuitque  unum  de  quatuor 
sacerdotibus  templorum  custodem  diligentissimum.  Quando  ergo 
itinera  terrestri  contra  hostes  aut  praedatum  ire  cogitabant, 
eventum  rei  hoc  niodo  solebant  praediscere.  Hastae  novem  dis- 
ponebantur  humo,  spatio  unius  cubiti  ab  invicem  separatae. 
Strato  ergo  caballo  atque  frenato,  sacerdos,  ad  quern  pertinebat 
custodia  illius,  tentum  freno  per  jaeentes  hastas  transversa m 
ducebat  ter,  atque  reducebat.     Quod  si  pedibus  inoffensis  hastisque 

1  Conf.  Fornald.  sog.  2,  168.  300,  what  is  said  of  Faxi's  hross-haus. 

-  Why  should  the  monks  in  the  abbey  have  a  caput  caballinum  /  Reinhar''us 
3,  2032.  2153.  Does  the  expression  spun  out  of  a  dead  hurne's  head  '  in  Burcaid, 
Waldis  1,  2,  mean  enchanted  ? 


662  TREES  AND  ANIMALS. 

indisturbatis  equus  transibat,  signum  habuere  prosperitatis,  et 
securi  pergebant ;  sin  autem,  quiescebant.' — Here  the  holy  steed 
is  led  across  nine  spears  lying  a  cubit  apart  from  one  another,  in 
Dietmar's  older  narrative  over  the  points  of  two  crossed  spears ; 
of  course  the  Luitizers  may  have  had  a  different  method  from  the 
Pomeranians.  Saxo  Gram.  p.  321  gives  yet  a  third  account  of 
the  matter  respecting  the  Slavs  of  Riigen  :  '  Praeterea  peculiarem 
albi  coloris  equum  tit\x\o  possidebat  (numen),  cujus  jubae  out  caudae 
pilos  convellere  nefarium  ducebatur.  Hunc  soli  sacerdoti  pascendi 
insidendique  jus  erat,  ne  divini  animalis  usus  quo  frequentior  hoc 
vilior  haberetur.  In  hoc  equo,  opinione  Rugiae,  Svantovitus  (id 
simulacro  vocabulum  erat)  adversus  sacrorum  suorum  hostes  bella 
gerere  credebatur.  Cujus  rei  praecipuum  argumentum  exstabat, 
quod  is  nocturno  tempore  stabulo  insistens  adeo  plerumque  mane 
sudore  ac  luto  respersus  videbatur,1  tanquam  ab  exercitatione 
veniendo  magnorum  itinerum  spacia  percurrisset.  Auspicia 
quoque  per  eundem  equum  hujusmodi  sumebantur.  Cum  bellum 
adversum  aliquam  provinciam  suscipi  placuisset,  ante  fanum  tri- 
plex hastarum  ordo  ministrorum  opera  disponi  solebat,  in  quorum 
quolibet  binae  e  traverso  junctae  conversis  in  terram  cuspidibus 
figebantur,  aequali  spaciorum  magnitudine  ordines  disparante. 
Ad  quos  equus  ductandae  expeditionis  tempore,  solenni  precatione 
praemissa,  a  sacerdote  e  vestibulo  cum  loramentis  productus,  si 
propositos  ordines  ante  dextro  quam  laevo  pede  transcenderet, 
faustum  gerendi  belli  omen  accipiebatur.  Sin  laevum  vel  semel 
dextro  praetulisset,  petendae  provinciae  propositum  mutabatur.' — 
This  description  is  still  more  exact :  the  sacred  horse,  here  attri- 
buted to  the  deity  himself  who  bestrides  him  by  night,  is  led 
three  times  over  two  spears  planted  crosswise,  that  is,  over  six 
spears,  and  must,  for  the  omen  to  be  favourable,  pass  each  row 
with  his  right  foot  foremost ;  if  at  even  one  row  he  has  lifted 
the  left  before  the  right,  misfortune  is  threatened.  The  colour 
ascribed  to  the  steed  is  white  as  in  Tacitus,  not  black  as  in  the 
biographer  of  Otto. 

The   Chronica   Augustensis  ad.  an.   1068    (in  Freher  1,  349) 
says,  that  Bp.  Burcard  of  Halberstadt  (the  Buko  still  known  in 


1  As  the  horse  ridden  by  the  night-spirit  is  covered  with  dust  and  sweat  the 
next  morning  (see  p.  287  and  Suppl.). 


HORSES.  663 

our  children's  game)  took  away  their  sacred  horse  from  the 
Lutizers,  and  rode  home  to  Saxony  on  it  himself:  'Burcardus 
Halberstatensis  episcopus  Luiticiorum  provinciam  ingressus  in- 
cendit,  vastavit,  avectoque  equo  quern  pro  deo  in  Rheda1  aolebant, 
super  eum  sedens  in  Saxoniam  rediit.'' 

May  we  then  adopt  the  hypothesis,  that  Dietmar  and  the 
Augsburg  chronicler  mean  the  sacred  horse  of  Radigast  at 
Rhetra,  and  Saxo  and  the  author  of  the  Vita  Ottonis  that  of 
Sviatovit  at  Arkona  ?  Each  of  these  gods  2  had  horses  hallowed 
to  him,  and  others  may  have  had  the  same.  And  so  in  Germany 
too,  horses  may  have  been  dedicated  to  several  deities,  and 
divination  performed  with  them  under  similar  forms ;  especially 
to  the  gods  Frouwo  (p.  656)  and  Wuotan  (p.  154-5-6). 

Some  accounts  of  the  reverence  paid  to  sacred  horses  in  Dit- 
marsen  have  a  doubtful  look.  The  Rieswold  or  Riesumwold  on 
the  confines  of  N.  and  S.  Ditmarsen  is  said  to  have  been  a  holy 
wood,  in  which  human  sacrifices  were  offered,  and  white  horses 
consecrated  to  gods  were  maintained.3  This  is  simply  an  unauthor- 
ized appropriation  of  the  statement  in  Tacitus  to  a  particular 
locality.  There  is  more  of  local  colour  in  what  Bolten  1,  262  re- 
peats after  the  suspicious  Carsten,  that  at  Windbergen  there 
stood  a  grove  set  apart  to  Hesus  (!),  which  is  still  called  Hesc 
or  Heseholt.4  In  the  grove  two  white  horses,  a  young  and  an 
old,  were  fed  for  the  god,  no  one  was  allowed  to  mount  them,  and 
good  or  bad  auguries  were  gathered  from  their  neighing  and 
leaping.  Some  talk  of  ten  or  even  twenty  horses.  A  priest  of 
the  god  stuck  staves  in  the  ground,  led  the  bridled  steed  along, 
and  by  certain  processes  made  it  leap  slowly  over  the  starves. 
Joh.  Aldolfi,  i.e.  Neocorus,  who  is  cited  in  support,  says  nothing 
at  all  about  it.  The  immunity  from  mounting  is  another  point  of 
agreement  with  those  Slav  horses. 


1  Not  '  in  rheda '  (Wedekiud's  Notes  1,  173).  Ehetra,  a  chief  place  of  Slav 
heathenism,  placed  by  Adam  of  Bremen  in  the  land  of  the  Eetharii,  where  stands 
the  temple  of  Redigost ;  Dietmar  gives  the  Lutiz  town  in  the  '  grau  Riedera  '  itself 
the  name  of  Riedegost. 

2  Sviatovit  or  Svantevit  has  been  confounded  with  St.  Vitus,  sanctus  Vitus 
(conf.  Acta  sanctor.  15  Jun.  p.  1018)  ;  but  we  cannot  possibly  make  the  god 
Svantevit  originate  in  Vitus. 

3  Falk's  Collection  of  treatises,  5,  103.     Tondern,  1828. 

4  This  Hese-ivood  may  however  remind  us  of  the  '  silva  Heisi,  Hese '  on  the 
Rubr  in  Westph.  (Lacombl.  no.  6.  17.  Gl.  260)  and  the  '  silva  caesia'1  of  Tacitus. 

VOL.    II.  Q 


664  TEEES   AND   ANIMALS. 

But  in  the  case  of  the  heathen  Livonians  the  Slav  custom 
admits  of  proof.  The  Chronicon  livonicum  vetus  relates  ad 
an.  1192  (in  Gruber  p.  7):  '  Colligitur  populus,  voluntas  deorum 
de  immolatione  (fratris  Theoderici  cisterciensis)  sorte  inquiritur. 
Ponitur  lancea,  calcat  equus ;  pedem  vitae  deputatum  (the  right 
foot)  nutu  dei  praeponit.  Orat  frater  ore,  manu  benedicit. 
Ariolus  deum  Christianorum  equi  dorso  insidere  et  pedem  equi 
ad  praeponendum  movere  asserit,  et  ob  hoc  equi  dorsum  tergen- 
dum,  quo  deus  elabatur.  Quo  facto,  dum  equus  vitae  pedem 
praeponit  ut  prius,  frater  Theodoricus  vitae  reservatur.'  Here  a 
heathen  and  a  christian  miracle  met. 

This  worship  was  also  an  Old  Prussian  one  :  '  Prussorum  aliqui 
equos  nigros,  quidam  albi  colons,  propter  deos  suos  non  aude- 
bant  aliqualiter  equitare.'     Dusburg  3,  5  (see  Suppl.).1 

The  sacrificing  of  horses,  and  the  eating  of  horseflesh  inseparable 
from  it,  have  been  noticed  (pp.  47-49).  Strabo  reports,  that  the 
Yeneti  offered  a  white  horse  to  Diomed  (v.  1,  9.  Siebenk.  2,  111. 
Casaub.  215.  Kramer  1,  339).  The  Indians  get  up  grand  horse- 
sacrifices  with  imposing  ceremonies.  What  is  told  of  the  Kal- 
muks  appears  worthy  of  notice.  Among  them  you  see  numbers 
of  scaffolds  erected,  bearing  horses'  hides  and  heads,  the  remains 
of  former  sacrifices.  By  the  direction  of  the  horse's  head  to  east 
or  west,  you  can  tell  if  the  sacrifice  was  offered  to  a  good  or 
evil  spirit.2  On  the  one  hand  it  suggests  that  sacrificial  fixing 
of  horses'  heads  in  a  particular  direction  in  Germany,  which 
under  Christianity  was  treated  as  wicked  sorcery ;  and  on  the 
other  hand  the  '  pira  equinis  sellis  constructa '  in  Jornandes,  and 
the  arj/xa  of  the  Scythian  kings  in  Herodotus  (see  RA.  676,  and 
Suppl.).3 

Of  honours  paid  to  oxen  I  have  not  so  much  to  tell,  though 
they  are  not  at  all  a  matter  of  doubt,  if  only  because  bullocks 
were  sacrificed,  and  bulls  drew  the  car  of  the  Frankish  kings,  RA. 
262.  War-chariots  continued  to  have  oxen  till  late  in  the  Mid. 
Awes :  '  capto  ducis  (Lovaniensis)  vexillo,  dicto  gallice  standart, 

1  Sup.  M,  35  shews  that  Esthonians  ascribe  prophetic  powers  to  the  horse. 

2  Ledebour's  Eeise  nach  dem  Altai,  Berl.  1830.  2,  54-5. 

3  A  Sansk.  name  for  the  horse  is  Sr'tbhratri,  brother  of  Sri  (Lakshrni),  because, 
like  her  (and  Apbrodite)  it  rose  out  of  the  sea-waves,  Pott  2,  407.  Still  more 
natural  is  the  identification  of  horse  and  ship. 


oxex.  G65 

opere  plumario  a  regina  Angliae  ei  misso,  quod  fastu  superbiae 
quadriga  bourn  ferebat/  Chapeaville  2,  69  (an.  1129).  A  chariot 
drawn  by  four  ivhite  oxen  in  Lorraine  occurs  in  Scheffer's  Haltaus, 
p.  251.  In  Plutarch's  Marius  cap.  23  is  the  well-known  story  of 
the  Cimbrians  swearing  over  a  brazen  bull,  by  which  the  Mecklen- 
burgers  account  for  the  bull's  head  in  their  arms  (Mascov  1,  13). 
At  Hvitabter  the  people  worshipped  an  ox  (Fornald.  sog.  1,  253), 
at  Upsal  a  cow  (1,  254.  260-6.  270-2;  see  Suppl.). 

Whilst  among  horses  the  stallion  is  more  honoured  than  the 
mare,  among  neat  the  cow  seems  to  take  the  lead.  Klne  were 
yoked  to  the  car  of  Nerthus  [and  two  milch- kine  to  the  ark  of 
Jehovah] .  The  Edda  speaks  of  a  cow  named  Au&umbla,  which 
plays  a  great  part  in  the  origin  of  men  and  gods  (p.  559),  and  was 
no  doubt  regarded  as  a  sacred  beast.  By  the  side  of  that  faith 
in  horses  (p.  656)  we  find  an  'atrunaSr  a  ku.'  King  Eysteinn  of 
Sweden  put  faith  in  a  cow  called  Sibil] a  :  'hun  var  sva  miuk 
blotin  (so  much  worshipped),  at  menu  mattu  eigi  standast  lat 
hennar' ;  they  used  to  lead  her  into  battle,  Fornald.  sog.  1,  251. 
260.  King  Ogvaldr  carried  a  sacred  cow  with  him  everywhere, 
by  sea  and  by  land,  and  constantly  drank  of  her  milk  (Fornm. 
sog.  2,  138.     10,302).! 

The  horns  of  cows,  like  the  manes  of  horses,  were  adorned 
with  gold:  ( gull  kyr  ndar  kyr/  Seem.  73a.  141a;  and  the  herdsman 
of  the  Alps  still  decks  the  horns  of  his  cattle  with  ribbons  and 
flowers.  Oxen  for  sacrifice  are  sure  not  to  have  lacked  this 
decoration. 

The  Sanskrit  gavs  (bos  and  vacca),  root  go,  ace.  gam,  Pers. 
ghau,  gho,  corresponds  to  Lett,  gohw,  OHG.  chuo,  AS.  cu,  ON. 
kyr.  What  is  more  important,  '  go '  likewise  means  terra  and 
plaga  (Bopp's  Gram.  §  123.  Gloss,  p.  108b),  so  that  it  touches 
the  Gr.  yd,  77}.  Taking  with  this  the  presence  of  Au&umbla  in 
the  Norse  history  of  creation,  we  can  perhaps  connect  rinta  (the 
earth)  and  Rindr  (p.  251)  with  our  rind  armentum  ;  it  is  true 
this  'rind'  originally  began  with  hr  (Graff  4,  1171),  and  is  the 

1  What  can  the  black  cow  mean  in  the  following  phrases?  '  the  b.  c.  crushes 
him '  (Hiipel's  Livland.  idiot.  131);  'the  b.  c.  has  trodden  him'  (Etner's  Apoth. 
514).  The  Hor.  Belg.  6,  97.  101  (conf.  2-2;5)  speaks  '  van  onser  goeden  blaren  cur,  van 
miere  blaren  coe' ;  and  Ir.  elfenm.  cxx.  of  the  blue  cow.  It  is  dangerous  to  Kill 
the  black  cow,  Sup.  I,  887.  A  Slovfenic  name  for  the  rainbow  is  mavra  =  black  uow. 
[Eng.  '  the  b.  c.  has  trodden  on  his  foot,'  of  sorrow,  esp.  bereavement.] 


666  TEEES   AND   ANIMALS. 

AS.  hrySer,  broker,  but  who  can  tell  whether  '  rinde '  cortex  was 
not  once  aspirated  too  ?  Evpooirr],  the  name  of  one  quarter  of 
the  earth,  must  surely  also  mean  earth  (evpela  the  broad) ,  and  on 
p.  338  I  made  a  guess  that  Europe/,,  whom  Zeus  courted  in  the 
shape  of  a  bull,  must  herself  have  been  thought  of  as  a  cow,  like 
Io ;  it  was  not  the  earth  took  name  from  her,  but  she  from  the 
earth.  On  the  worship  of  cows  and  oxen  by  the  Indians,  Egypt- 
ians and  Romans,  I  refer  to  A.  W.  SchlegeFs  learned  treatise.1 
The  Israelites  also  made  a  burnt- offering  of  '  a  red  heifer  (Goth, 
kalbo)  upon  which  never  came  yoke/  Numb.  19,  2  (see  Suppl.). 

The  boar  and  the  he-goat  were  holy  sacrificial  beasts  (p.  50-1-2), 
the  boar2  dedicated  to  Freyr  (p.  213),  he  and  she  goats  to  Thurr 
(p.  185),  as  goats  are  even  yet  considered  devil's  creatures.3  To 
that  divine  boar's  account  I  think  we  are  also  entitled  to  set 
down  the  old  song  out  of  which  Notker  has  preserved  a  passage 
(he  whose  foreign  learning  so  seldom  suffers  him  to  put  down 
anything  he  knew  of  his  own  country)  : 

Imo  sint  fuoze  fuodermaze, 
imo  sint  burste  ebenho  forste, 
unde  zene  sine  zuelif-elnige ; 

his  bristles  are  even-high  with  the  forest,  and  his  tusks  twelve  ells 
long.  A  reason  for  the  veneration  of  the  boar  has  been  found 
in  the  fact  that  he  roots  up  the  ground,  and  men  learnt  from  him 
to  plough.  The  Slavs  also  seem  to  have  worshipped  boars : 
'  Testatur  idem  antiquitas,  errore  delusa  vario,  si  quando  his 
saeva  longae  rebellionis  asperitas  immineat,  ut  e  mari  praedicto 
(near  Riedergost)  aper  magnus  et  candido  dente  e  spumis  luces- 
cente  exeat,  seque  in  volutabro  delectatum  terribili  quassatione 
multis  ostendat/  Ditm.  merseb.  p.  812  (see  Suppl.). 

None  but  domestic  animals  were  fit  for  sacrifice,  and  not  all  of 
them,  in  particular  not  the  dog,  though  he  stands  on  much  the 
same  footing  with  his  master  as  the  horse ;  he  is  faithful  and  in- 
telligent, yet  there  is  something  mean  and  unclean  about  him, 

1  Ind.  bibl.  2,  288—295. 

2  He  enjoys  a  double  appellation  :  OHG.  epur,  AS.  eofor  ;  and  OHG.  per,  AS. 
bar  (Goth,  bills?). 

3  While  God  (Wuotan)  made  tbe  wolf  (p.  147),  the  devil  (Donar?)  produced  the 
goat.     In  some  places  they  will  not  eat  goats'  feet  (Tobler  p.  214). 


BOAR.      DOG.      BEAR.  667 

■which  makes  his  name  a  handle  to  the  tongue  of  the  scorner.  It 
seems  worthy  of  notice,  that  dogs  can  see  spirits  (Sup.  I,  1111), 
and  recognise  an  approaching  god  while  he  is  yet  hidden  from 
the  human  eye.  When  Grimnir  entered  the  house  of  Geirr6"Sr, 
there  was  f  eingi  hundr  sva  olnir,  at  a  hann  mundi  hlaupa/  the 
kino-  bade  seize  the  dark-cloaked  giant,  '  er  eigi  vildo  hundar 
ara^a/  Seem.  39.  40.  So  when  Hel  prowls  about,  the  dogs  per- 
ceive her.  The  Greeks  had  exactly  the  same  notion  :  at  Athena's 
approach,  no  one  espies  her,  not  even  Telemachos,  only  Odysseus 
and  the  dogs,  Od.  16,  160  : 

ov8'  apa  TrjXe/jbaxos  tSev  avriov,  ovB'  evo^crev, 
ov  yap  7T(w  Travreacri  6eol  (palvovrat  ivap<yeis, 
aW'  'Oovaevs  re  /cvveq  re  'i$ov,  kcli  p'  ov%  vXulovto, 1 
/cvv£rj0p,a>  erepcocre  Bed  GTaOfiolo  (po{3r]0ev, 

(they  did  not  bark,  but  fled  whining  through  the  tent). — The 
howling  of  dogs  is  ominous  (Sup.  I,  493),  and  gives  notice  of  fire. 
OSinn  is  provided  with  dogs,  'VrSris  grey,'  Sasm.  15P  ;  so  are 
the  norns  (p.  410),  'noma  grey,'  273a.  But  whence  arose  the 
story  in  the  early  Mid.  Ages,  of  St.  Peter  and  his  dog  ?  In  the 
AS.  Saturn  and  Solomon  (Kemble  p.  186),  one  asks  :  c  saga  me, 
hwilc  man  erost  wasre  ivicF  hund  sprecende  ? '  and  the  other 
answers  :  '  ic  ]>e  secge,  sanctus  Petras.'  The  Nialss.  cap.  158  p. 
275  contains  a  spell  to  save  from  the  power  of  the  watersprite  : 
(  runnit  hefr  hundr  fiinn,  Petr  'postoli,  till  Roms  tysvar  (twice),  ok 
mundi  (would)  renna  it  brroja  sinn,  ef  ]ni  leyfdir'  (see  Suppl.). 

Among  wild  beasts  of  the  wood  were  some  that  men  regarded 
with  awe,  and  treated  with  respect:  above  all,  the  bear,  wolf  and 
fox.  I  have  shewn  that  it  was  an  ancient  and  widespread  custom 
in  Europe  to  bestow  names  of  honour  on  these  three  (Reinh.  p. 
lv.  ccvii.  446), 2  and  that  with  our  ancestors  the  boar  passed  for 
the  king  of  beasts  (p.  xlviii.  seq.  ccxcv.).  A  doc.  of  1290  (Lang's 
Regr  4,  467)  presents  the  surname  'Chuonratder  h&iligbar';  with 
this  connect  the  name  Ealecbern  (Trad.  corb.  Wig.  §  268),  the 
ON.  Hallbiomj  and  the  still  older  names,  male  and  female,  ON. 

1  In  a  Dan.  folksong  1,  207-9  they  bark  at  a  spectre.  Barking  and  not  bark- 
ing are  the  same  thing  here. 

2  A  striking  confirmation  appears  in  V.  Hugo's  Notre  Daino  de  Paris  2,  272  :  lie 
states,  from  a  book  or  from  oral  tradition,  that,  the  Gipsies  call  the  fox  piedbUu, 
cuureur  ties  bois,  the  wolf  piedgris,  pteddorg,  and  the  bear  vieux  or  ijrandpere. 


668  TEEES   AND   ANIMALS. 

Asbiorn,  AS.  Osbeorn,  OHG-.  An  spew,  and  ON".  Asbirna,  OHG. 
Anspirin  (in  Walth.  Ospirn),  Ospirinberg,  MB.  28.  2,  123;  ap- 
parently the  legend  of  the  animal's  sacredness  was  still  in  full 
swing  among  the  people.  Biom  was  a  side-name  of  Thorr,  and 
Welsh  legend  presents  king  Arthur  as  a  bear  and  a  god,  which  is 
not  to  be  accounted  for  by  the  mere  resemblance  of  his  name  to 
aprcro<; :  the  bear  in  the  sky  plays  a  most  dignified  part.  In  the 
Edda  a  by-name  of  the  bear  is  Vetrli&i,  hiemem  sustinens  (Sn. 
179.  222),  because  he  sleeps  through  winter,  and  winter  was 
called  biarnar-nott ;  the  name  was  passed  on  to  men,  as  '  VetrliM 
skald'  in  Fornm.  sog.  2,  202,  and  a  Vetrliffi  3,  107  whose  name 
reproduces  his  father's  name  Asbiorn.1  The  myth  of  the  white 
bear  and  the  wee  wight  was  alluded  to,  p.  479.  It  is  not  to 
be  overlooked,  that  certain  beast-fables  get  converted  into  human 
myths,  and  vice  versa  :  e.g.,  the  parts  of  bear  and  fox  are  handed 
over  to  a  giant  or  the  devil.  Thus,  the  Esthonian  tale  of  the 
man  who  goes  partners  with  the  bear  in  raising  turnips  and  oats 
(Reinhart  cclxxxviii.)  is  elsewhere  told  of  a  man  and  the  devil. 
Such  overlapping  of  the  beast-fable  with  other  traditions  is  an 
additional  guarantee  of  the  epic  nature  of  the  former. — Two 
wolves,  Geri  and  Freki,  were  sacred  to  OSinn  :  whatever  food  was 
set  before  him,  he  gave  to  them  to  eat,  Sn.  4;  they  were,  so 
to  speak,  the  hounds  of  the  god  (VrSris  grey).  I  should  like  to 
know  where  Hans  Sachs  picked  up  that  striking  notion  of  the 
Lord  God  having  chosen  wolves  to  be  His  hunting  dogs.2  A 
son  of  Loki,  Fenrisiilfr,  makes  his  appearance  in  wolf's  shape 
among  the  gods ;  no  metamorphosis  occurs  more  frequently  in 
our  antiquities  than  that  of  men  into  were-wolves. — Both  wolf 
and  bear  are  a  favourite  cognisance  in  coats  of  arms,  and  a  great 
many  names  of  men  are  compounded  with  them  :  neither  fact  is 
true  of  the  fox.  Hence  the  dearth  of  mythical  conceptions  linked 
with  the  fox ;  a  few  traces  have  been  pointed  out  in  Reinh.  ccxcvi.,3 

1  The  name  Weturlit  is  also  found  in  the  Necrolog.  augiense  (Mone  98b). 

-  Ed.  1558.  i,  499d :  '  die  wolf  er  im  erwelen  gund  ('gan  choose),  und  het  sie  hei 
ihm  fur  jagdhund.' 

3  Klaproth  finds  in  Japanese  books,  that  the  people  in  Japan  worship  the  inari 
(fox)  as  a  tutelar  god  :  little  temples  are  dedicated  to  him  in  many  houses,  espec. 
of  the  commoner  folk.  They  ask  his  advice  in  difficulties,  and  set  rice  or  beans  for 
him  at  night.  If  any  of  it  is  gone  in  the  morning,  they  believe  the  fox  has  con- 
sumed it,  and  draw  good  omens  from  it ;  the  contrary  is  an  unlucky  sign  (Nouv. 
anuales  des  voyages,  Dec.  1833,  p.  298).  They  take  him  to  be  a  kami  i.e.  the  soul 
of  a  good  man  deceased  (ibid.) 


■WOLF.      FOX.      CAT.      BIRDS.  669> 

and  the  kindcrmarchen  no.  38  has  furnished  him  with  nine  tails, 
as  Sleipnir  had  eight  legs,  and  some  heroes  and  gods  four 
arms. 

Freyja's  car  was  drawn  by  two  cats  (tveim  kottum),  p.  305. 
Now,  as  fres  in  ON.  means  both  he-cat  and  bear,  it  has  lately 
been  contended,  not  without  reason,  that  kottum  may  have  been 
substituted  for  fressum,  and  a  brace  of  bears  have  been  really 
meant  for  the  goddess,  as  Cybele's  car  was  drawn  by  lions, 
p.  254.  For  Puss-in-boots  see  pp.  503-9,  and  the  Norweg.  tale  in 
Folkeeventyr  no.  29.  Cats  and  weasels  pass  for  knowing  beasts 
with  magical  powers,  whom  one  has  good  reason  to  indulge,  Sup. 
I,  292  (see  Suppl.). 

Birds. — With  birds  the  men  of  old  lived  on  still  more  intimate 
terms,  and  their  greater  nimbleness  seemed  to  bespeak  more  of 
the  spiritual  than  was  in  quadrupeds.  I  will  here  quote  some 
instances  of  wild  fowl  being  fed  by  man.  Dietmar  of  Merseb. 
relates  of  Mahtildis,  Otto  I.'s  mother  (Pertz  5,  740) :  '  non  solum 
pauperibus,  verum  etiam  avibus  victum  subministrabat ; '  and  we 
find  the  same  in  the  Vita  Mahtild.  ^Pertz.  6,  294)  :  e  nee  etiam 
oblita  est  volucrum  aestivo  tempore  in  arboribus  resonantium, 
praecipiens  ministris  sub  arbores  proicere  micas  panis.'  In  Nor- 
way they  used  to  put  out  bunches  of  corn  for  the  sparrows  on 
Yule-eve :  '  Jule-aften  at  sette  trende  korabaand  paa  stoer  under 
aaben  himmel  ved  laden  og  foe-huset  till  spurrens  fode,  at  de 
niiste  aar  ikke  skal  giore  skade  (do  no  harm  next  year)  paa 
ageren,'  Hiorthoi  Gulbrands  dalen,  Kb.  1785.  1,  130;  it  was  a 
sacrifice  offered  to  the  birds,  to  keep  them  from  ravaging  the 
crops.  It  reminds  one  of  the  legacy  to  birds  on  Walther  von 
der  Vogelweide's  tombstone,  whose  very  name  denotes  '  pascua 
avium/ 

Gods  and  goddesses  often  change  themselves  into  birds,  but 
giants  possess  the  same  power  too.  The  Esthonian  god  Tarapila 
flies  from  one  place  to  another,  p.  77;  the  Greek  imagination 
pictured  winged  gods,  the  Hebrew  winged  angels,  the  Old  German 
a  maiden  with  swan's  wings.  The  Norse  gods  and  giants  put  on 
an  eagle's  coat,  antar-Jiain,ip.  633n.,  the  goddesses  a  falcon's  coat, 
vals-ham,  p.  302.  Wind  is  described  as  a  giant  and  eagle,  p. 
033,  and  sacred  eagles  scream  on  the  mountains :  '  orn  gul  aria, 


670  TKEES  AND   ANIMALS. 

arar  gullo,'  Ssem.  142a  149a.     Wolfram  thinks  of  the  earth  as  a 
bird,  when  he  says,  Wh.  308,  27  : 

so  diu  erde  ir  gevidere  rert 

nnde  si  der  meie  lert 

ir  muze  alsus  volrecken  (see  Suppl.). 

Domestic  fowl  available  for  sacrifice,  notably  the  cock  and  the 
goose,  have  but  few  mythic  aspects  that  I  know  of.  Fire  is  de- 
cribed  as  a  red  cock  (p.  601) :  H.  Sachs  has  the  phrase  '  to  make 
the  red  cock  ride  on  one's  rooftree/  and  the  Danes  e  den  rode 
hane  galer  over  taget/  the  red  cock  ctows  on  the  thack  (the 
fire  crackles).  Red  cocks  in  preference  had  to  be  brought  in 
payment  of  ground  rent  (formerly  perhaps  in  sacrifice),  RA.  376. 
The  Yoluspa  54  sets  before  us  f  Fialarr,  fagur-rau&r  hani ;  singing 
in  the  forest ;  a  golden-crested  cock  awakes  the  heroes,  a  dark 
one  crows  in  the  nether  world.  In  the  Danish  song  1,  212  there 
is  meaning  in  the  crowing  of  a  red  and  a  black  cock  one  after  the 
other;  and  another  song  1,  208  adds  a  white  cock  as  well.  An- 
other cock  in  the  Edda,  Yi'Sofnir,  perches  on  MioiamerSr,  Sasm. 
109a;  with  him  Finn  Magnusen  (Lex.  myth.  824.  1090)  would 
connect  the  cock  they  stick  on  the  Maypole.  The  Wends  erected 
cross-trees,  but,  secretly  still  heathen  at  heart,  they  contrived  to 
fix  at  the  very  top  of  the  pole  a  weathercock}  In  one  fairy-tale, 
no.  108,  HansmeinigeFs  cock  sits  on  a  tree  in  the  wood.  I  do  not 
know  when  the  gilded  cock  on  the  church-steeple  was  introduced  ; 
it  can  hardly  have  been  a  mere  weather-vane  at  first.  Guibertus 
in  Yita  sua,  lib.  1  cap.  22,  mentions  a  gallus  super  turri,  so  that 
the  custom  prevailed  in  France  at  the  beginning  of  the  12th 
century;  in  S.  Germany  we  know  it  existed  two  centuries  earlier. 
Eckehard  tells  of  the  great  irruption  of  Hungarians  :  '  duo  ex  illis 
accendunt  campanarium,  cujus  cacuminis  gallum  aureum  putantes, 
deumque  loci  sic  vocatum,  non  esse  nisi  carioris  metalli  materia 
fusum,  lancea  dum  unus,  ut  eum  revellat,  se  validus  protendit,  in 
atrium  de  alto  cecidit  et  periit'  (Pertz  2,  105).  The  Hungarians 
took  this  gilded  cock  (gallus)  for  the  divinity  of  the  place,  and 
perhaps  were  confirmed  in  their  error  by  the  bird's  name  being 
the  same  as  that  of  St.  Gallus ;  they  even  left  the  minster  stand  - 

1  Armalen  der  Churbr.  Hanrtov.  laude,  8  jahrg.  p.  284.     Some  think  the  cock 
referred  to  Peter's  denial. 


COCK.      RAVEN. 


G71 


ing  for  fear  of  him:  'monasterio,  eo  quod  Galhis,  deus  ejus, 
ignipotens  sit,  tandem  omisso  '  (ibid.  106). x  Tit.  407:  '  uz  golde 
ein  ar  gercetet,  gefiuret  unde  gefunkelfc  ufjeglich  leriuze  gelcetet. 
True,  the  cock  is  an  emblem  of  vigilance,  and  the  watchman,  to 
command  a  wide  view,  must  be  highly  placed ; 2  but  it  is  quite 
possible  that  the  christian  teachers,  to  humour  a  heathen  custom 
of  tying  cocks  to  the  tops  of  holy  trees,  made  room  for  them  on 
church-towers  also,  and  merely  put  a  more  general  meaning  on 
the  symbol  afterwards  (see  Suppl.). 

At  the  head  of  wildfowl  the  eagle  stands  as  king,  and  is  the 
messenger  of  Jove.  In  our  beast-fables  the  raven  seems  to  take 
upon  him  the  parts  both  of  wolf  and  of  fox,  uniting  the  greed 
of  the  one  with  the  other's  cunning.  Two  ravens,  Huginn  and 
Man  inn,  are,  like  the  two  wolves,  constant  companions  of  OSinn 
(p.  147)  ;  their  names  express  power  of  thought  and  remembrance  : 
they  bring  him  tidings  of  all  that  happens.3  Compare  the  sage 
sparrow  (sporr)  of  the  Norse  king  Dag  (Yngl.  saga  21),  who 
gathers  news  for  him  out  of  all  countries,  and  whose  death  he 
avenges  by  an  invasion.  Those  scouts  of  OSinn  seem  to  be 
alluded  to  in  several  stories,  e.g.,  Olaf  Tryggv.  cap.  28,  where 
screaming  ravens  testify  that  OSinn  accepts  the  offering  pre- 
sented ;  and  in  Nialss.  119  two  ravens  attend  a  traveller  all  day. 
In  like  manner  St.  Gregory  is  escorted  by  three  flying  ravens, 
Paul.  Diac.  1,  26.  In  the  beautiful  myth  of  king  Oswald,  the 
raven  who  gets  his  plumage  bound  with  gold  (conf.  the  falcon, 
Ms.  1,  38b)  acts  an  essential  part :  he  has  nothing  of  the  fiendish 
nature  afterwards  imputed  to  this  bird.  It  shews  the  same 
tendency,  that  where  the  Bible  says  of  the  raven  sent  out  of  the 
ark  by  Noah,  simply  that  he  e%eh.6iov  ovk  avearpetye  (Gen.  8,  7), 


1  All  very  legendary ;  for  the  Hungarian  attack  on  the  monastery  of  Herzfeld 
(Hirutfeld)  on  the  Lippe  is  related  much  in  the  same  way  in  the  Vita  S.  Idae,  viz. 
that  having  scaled  the  nolarius,  but  not  succeeded  in  wrenching  off  the  bills,  they 
suddenly  tied,  aliquid  ibi  esse  divalis  numinis  suspicati  sunt  (Pertz  2,  573).  Here 
the  cock  does  not  come  into  play,  the  bells  do  it  all. 

2  Minister's  Sinnbilder  der  alten  Christen,  p.  55.  As  Gregory  the  Greaf  explains 
g alius  by  '  praedicator '  (Opp.,  Paris  1705.  i,  959.  961),  and  again  speculator  by  the 
same  '  praedicator,'  he  may  in  the  following  passage  have  had  the  cock  in  view, 
without  naming  him:  'speculator  semper  in  altitudine  stat,  ut  imidquid  venturum 
sit  longe  prospiciat,'  ibid,  i,  1283. 

3  In  a  Slovenic  fairy-tale  somebody  had  a  raven  (vrdna)  who  was  all-knowing 
(vedezh),  and  used  to  tell  him  everything  when  he  came  home.  Murko's  Sloven, 
deutsclns  wtb.    Gratz  1833.   p.  690. 


672  TREES   AND   ANIMALS. 

our  Teutonic  poetizers  must  make  him  alight  on  carrion,  Cgedm. 
87,  11.  Diut.  3,  60.  King  Arthur,  whom  we  lately  met  as  a 
bear,  is  said  to  have  been  converted  into  a  raven  :  '  que  anda 
hasta  ahora  convertido  en  cuervo,  y  le  esperan  en  su  reyno  por 
momentos,'  Don  Quixote  1,  49.  In  folksongs  it  is  commonly  a 
bird  that  goes  on  errands,  brings  intelligence  of  what  has  passed, 
and  is  sent  out  with  messages  :  the  Bohemians  say  '  to  learn  it 
of  the  bird'  (dowedeti  se  po  ptacku,  see  Suppl.). 

In  our  legends,  birds  converse  together  on  the  destinies  of 
men,  and  foretell  the  future.  Ravens  reveal  to  the  blind  the 
means  of  recovering  their  sight,  KM.  no.  107.  Domestic  fowls 
discuss  the  impendiug  ruin  of  the  castle,  Deut.  sag.  1,  202.  In 
the  HelgaqvrSa,  Ssem.  140-1,  a  wise  bird  (fugl  froShuga'Sr)  is 
introduced  talking  and  prophesying  to  men,  but  insists  on  a 
tem.ple  and  sacrifices  before  he  will  tell  them  more.  In  one 
German  story,  men  get  to  understand  the  language  of  birds  by 
eating  of  a  white  snake,  KM.  no.  17.  SigurSr  understands  it  too, 
the  moment  the  heart's  blood  of  the  dragon  Fafnir  has  got  from 
his  finger-tips  to  his  tongue  :  and  then  swallows  (igSor)  give  him 
sound  advice,  Sasm.  190-1.  To  kill  swallows  brings  misfortune  : 
ace.  to  Sup.  I,  378  it  occasions  four  weeks'  raiu  ;  and  their  nests 
on  the  houses  no  one  dares  knock  down.  From  Saxo's  account 
(p.  327)  of  the  oaken  statue  of  Rugivit,  we  may  conclude  that  the 
Slavs  had  let  swallows  build  on  it  in  peace  (see  Suppl.). 

The  mythical  character  of  the  swan  is  certified  by  the  legend 
of  swan-wives  (p.  426)  and  by  the  bird's  own  death-song  (see 
Suppl.).  The  stork  too  was  held  inviolable,  he  is  like  swallows 
a  herald  of  spring  ;  his  poetic  name  certainly  reaches  back  to 
heathen  times,  but  hitherto  has  baffled  all  explanation.  OHG. 
glosses  give  odebero,  Graff  3,  155,  udebero,  Sumerl.  12,  16, 
otivaro,  odebore,  Fundgr.  1,  386,  odeboro,  Gl.  Tross;  MHG. 
adebar  only  in  Diut.  3,  453 ;  MLG.  edebere,  Bran's  Beitr.  47, 
adebar,  Reinke,  1777.  2207;  M.  Neth.  odevare,  hodevare,  Rein. 
2316.  Clignett  191  j  New  Neth.  oyevdr ;  New  LG.  eber,  aber, 
atjebar ;  AS.  and  Norse  have  nothing  similar.  The  '  bero,  boro  ' 
is  bearer,  but  the  first  word,  so  long  as  the  quantity  of  its  vowel 
remains  doubtful,  is  hard  to  determine ;  the  choice  would  lie 
between  luck-bringer  (fr.  St  opes)  and  child- bringer,  which  last 
fits  in  with  the  faith,  still  very  prevalent,  that  the  stork  brings 


SWALLOW.      STORK.      WOODPECKER.  673 

babies.  If,  beside  the  OS.  partic.  odan,  AS.  eaden,  ON.  auSinn 
(genitus),  we  could  produce  a  subst.  6d,  ead  (proles),  all  would  be 
straight.  The  prose  word,  OHG.  storah,  AS.  store,  ON.  storhr, 
may  be  just  as  old.  In  Frisian  superstition  there  occur  meta- 
morphoses of  storks  into  men,  and  of  men  into  storks.  A  lay 
of  Wolfram  5,  21  declares  that  storks  never  hurt  the  crops  (see 
Suppl.). 

The  woodpecker  was  held  sacred  by  ancient  peoples  of  Italy, 
and  ranked  as  the  bird  of  Mars,  'ilpeo?  opvis  :  perched  on  a 
wooden  pillar  (eVt  klovos  %v\lvov)  he  prophesied  to  the  Sabines 
in  the  grove  by  Matiena  (or  Matiera,  Dion.  hal.  1,  14.  Reiske 
p.  40)  ;  he  had  once  guided  them  on  their  way,  (op/j.7)vrat  ol 
TLiKevTlvoL  hpvoKoXdiTTov  ttjv  68bv  rjyecrafievov,  Strabo  v,  p.  240. 
And  he  purveyed  for  Romulus  and  Remus  when  the  wolfs  milk 
did  not  suffice  them,  Ov.  Fasti  3,  37.  54 ;  conf.  Niebuhr  1,  245. 
Ace.  to  Virg.  Aen.  7,  189  and  Ov.  Met.  14,  321  Picus  was  the 
son  of  Saturn  and  father  of  Faunus,1  and  was  changed  into  the 
bird.  The  apparent  relationship  of  this  Picus  to  our  poem  of 
Beowulf  (bee-hunter,  i.e.  woodpecker),  was  pointed  out  p.  369. 
In  Norway  the  red-hooded  blackpecker  is  called  Gertrude's  fowl, 
and  a  story  in  Asbiornsen  and  Moe  (no.  2)  explains  its  origin : 
When  our  Lord  walked  upon  earth  with  Peter,  they  came  to  a 
woman  that  sat  baking,  her  name  was  Gertrude,  and  she  wore  a 
red  cap  on  her  head.  Faint  and  hungry  from  his  long  journey, 
our  Lord  asked  her  for  a  little  cake.  She  took  a  little  dough 
and  set  it  on,  but  it  rose  so  high  that  it  filled  the  pan.  She 
thought  it  too  large  for  an  alms,  took  less  dough  and  began 
to  bake  it,  but  this  grew  just  as  big,  and  again  she  refused  to 
give  it.  The  third  time  she  took  still  less  dough,  and  when  the 
cake  still  swelled  to  the  same  size,  '  Ye  must  go  without '  said 
Gertrude,  'all  that  I  bake  becomes  too  big  for  you.'  Then 
was  the  Lord  angry,  and  said:  'Since  thou  hast  grudged  to 
give  me  aught,  thy  doom  is  that  thou  be  a  little  bird,  seek  thy 
scanty  sustenance  twixt  wood  and  bark,  and  only  drink  as  oft  as 
it  shall  rain.'  No  sooner  were  these  words  spoken,  than  the 
woman  was  changed  into  Gertrude's  fowl,  and  flew  up  the  kitchen 

1  When  the  Swiss  call  the  black-pecker  merzajulU  (March-foal,  Staid.  2,  199. 
Tobler  316^),  the  simplest  explan.  is  from  picus  martius  ;  yet  fiilli  may  be  for  vogeli, 
and  so  March-fowl  or  Martin's  fowl;  see  more  in  Chap.  XXXV.,  Path-crossing. 


674  TREES   AND   ANIMALS. 

chimney.  And  to  this  day  we  see  her  in  her  red  cap,  and  the 
rest  of  her  body  black,  for  the  soot  of  the  chimney  blackened 
her ;  continually  she  hacks  into  the  bark  of  trees  for  food,  and 
pipes  before  rain,  because,  being  always  thirsty,  she  then  hopes 
to  drink.1  The  green-pecker  has  the  alias  giessvogel,  Austr. 
gissvogel  (Stelzhamer's  Lieder  pp.  19.  177),  goissvogel  (Hofer  1, 
306),  Low  G.  giitvogel,  gietvogel,  giltfugel  (Ehrentr.  1.  345),  Engl. 
rainbird,  rainfowl,  because  his  cry  of  '  geuss,  giess,  giet'  (pour  !) 
is  said  to  augur  a  downpour  of  rain.  About  him  there  goes  a 
notable  story  :  When  the  Lord  God  at  the  creation  of  the  woi'ld 
ordered  the  beasts  to  dig  a  great  well  (or  pond),  this  bird 
abstained  from  all  work,  for  fear  of  soiling  his  handsome  plumage 
(or  yellow  legs).  Then  God  ordained  that  to  all  eternity  he 
should  drink  out  of  no  well  (pond) ;  therefore  we  always  see  him 
sip  laboriously  out  of  hollow  stones  or  cart-ruts  where  rainwater 
has  collected.  But  when  no  rain  has  fallen  and  there  is  drought, 
he  is  sore  athirst,  and  we  hear  unceasingly  his  pain-stricken 
'  giet ! '  And  the  good  Lord  takes  pity,  and  pours  down  rain 
(Reusch  in  Preuss.  provinz.  bl.  26,  536;  from  Samland).  Fahl- 
mann  in  the  Dorpater  verhandl.  1,  42  gives  an  Esthonian  myth  : 
God  was  having  the  Em-bach  (-beck,  -brook,  p.  599n.)  dug,  and 
set  all  the  beasts  to  work  ;  but  the  Whitsun-fowl  idly  flew  from 
bough  to  bough,  piping  his  song.  Then  the  Lord  asked  him : 
'hast  thou  nought  to  do  but  to  spruce  thyself?'  The  bird 
replied,  '  the  work  is  dirty,  I  can't  afford  to  spoil  my  golden- 
yellow  coat  and  silvery  hose.'  'Thou  foolish  fop/  the  Lord 
exclaimed,  f  from  henceforth  thou  shalt  wear  black  hose,  and 
never  slake  thy  thirst  at  the  brook,  but  pick  the  raindrops  off  the 
leaves,  and  only  then  strike  up  thy   song  when  other  creatures 

creep  away   from   the  coming  storm/ Now   that  Norwegian 

Gertrude's  fowl,  whose  thirsty  piping  brings  on  rain,  is  evidently 
identical,  and  very  likely  another  story  explains  the  rainbird  as 
the  metamorphosis  of  a  vain  idle  person.  Sometimes  it  is  not 
the  woodpecker  at  all  that  is  meant  by  giessvogel,  giesser,  wasser- 
vogel,  pfingstvogel,  regenpfeifer,  but  a  snipe  (Hofer  1,  306.  341), 
whose  cry  likewise  forebodes  a  storm  (p.  184),  or  the  curlew 
(numenius  arquata),    Fr.  pluvier   (pluviarius),  Boh.  Jcoliha,  Pol. 

1  Eytchko\'s  Jouru.  thro'  the  Euss.  Emp.,  trsl.  by  Hase,  Biga  1774.  p.  124. 


WOODPECKER.      MAGPIE.      SPABBOWHAWK.      CUCKOO.       G75 

kulig,  hullihj  LG.  regemvolp,  ivaterwolp  (Brem.  wtb.  5,286).  In 
our  owu  beast-fables  the  woodpecker  is  left  without  any  part 
to  play,  only  in  an  altogether  isolated  episode  he  is  introduced 
conversing  with  the  wolf  (Reinh.  419).  The  Votiaks  pay  divine 
honours  to  the  tree-tapping  woodpecker,  to  induce  him  to  spare 
their  woods.1  The  cry  of  this  woodpecker  (zhunia)  the  Servians 
call  klikchi,  kliknuti,  kliktati,  as  they  do  that  of  the  vila  [p.  436, 
but  there  wrongly  asci'ibed  to  the  tapping  noise].  Wood- 
peckers by  their  tapping  shew  the  way  to  the  river  (Lay  of  Igor 
70) ;  the  old  legend  of  the  woodpecker  and  springwurzel  will  be 

examined  in  Chap.  XXXII  (see  Suppl.) . A  near  neighbour  of 

the  pecker  (picus)  is  the  pie,  magpie  (pica).  In  ON.  her  name  is 
skadi  (masc.,  says  Biorn),  Swed.  shata,  Dan.  shade,  which  may 
be  referred  to  the  abstract  notion  of  damnum,  OHGr.  scado  ;  at 
the  beginning  of  the  Volsunga  saga  there  occurs  a  man's  name 
Skadi,  which  Finn  Magn.  (Lex.  699)  declares  to  be  the  goddess 
Skaffi.  In  Flemish  beast-legend  the  magpie  was  '  ver  Ave/  frau 
Ave.  In  Poitou  there  still  lingers  a  trace  of  pie-worship  ;  viz. 
a  bunch  of  heath  and  laurel  is  tied  to  the  top  of  a  high  tree  in 
honour  of  the  magpie,  because  her  chatter  warns  the  people  of  the 
wolf's  approach :  '  porter  la  crepe  (pancake)  a  la  pie/  Mem.  des 
antiq.  8,  451. 

In  Old  Bohemian  songs  the  sparrowhawlc  (krahui,  krahug)  is  a 
sacred  bird,  and  is  harboured  in  a  grove  of  the  gods  (Koniginh. 
MS.  72.  80.  160).  On  the  boughs  of  an  oak  that  springs  out  of 
a  murdered  man's  grave,  holy  sparrowhawks  perch,  and  publish 
the  foul  deed  (see  Suppl.). 

There  is  no  bird  to  which  the  gift  of  prophecy  is  more  univer- 
sally conceded  than  the  cuckoo,2  whose  clear  and  measured  voice 
rings  in  the  young  foliage  of  the  grove.  The  Old  German  law 
designates  spring  by  the  set  phrase  '  wann  der  gauch  guket '  (RA. 
36),  as  in  Hesiod's  rules  of  husbandry  the  cuckoo's  song  marks 
the  growing  rains  of  spring.  Two  old  poems  describe  the  quarrel 
of  Spring  and  Winter  about  the  cuckoo,  and  the  shepherds' 
lamentation  for  him :    Spring  praises  the    bird,   '  tarda  hiems  ' 

1  Carniol.  zuna,  Pol.  Boh.  zluwa,  Boh.  also  wlha,  wolga. 

2  Goth,  giiuks  ?  OHG.  gouh  (Hoffni.  5,  G),  AS.  geac,  ON.  gaukr  ;  MHG.  gouch, 
MS.  2,  L32b,  alBO  reduplicated  (like  ououlus)  gucgouch,  MS.  1,  132J,  guggouch,  MS. 
1,  1GG' ;  our  gukuk,  kukuk,  Op.G.  guggauch,  gutzgouch. 


676  TREES   AND   ANIMALS. 

chides  him,  shepherds  declare  that  he  is  drowned  or  kidnapped. 
There  is  a  remarkable  line  : 

Teinpus  adest  veris ;  cucidus,  modo  rurupe  soporem.1 

His  notes  usher  in  the  sweetest  season  of  the  year,  but  his  telling 
men  their  fortunes  is  not  alluded  to.  The  Cod.  Exon.  146,  27 
also  makes  him  publish  or  '  bid '  the  year  :  '  gedcas  gear  budon/ 
cuculi  annum  nuntiavere.  But  the  superstition  is  not  yet  extinct, 
that  the  first  time  you  hear  the  cuckoo  in  the  spring,  you  can 
learn  of  him  how  many  years  you  have  yet  to  live  (Sup.  I,  197. 
K,  Swed.  119.  Dan.  128.  146).  In  Switzerland  the  children 
call  out :  '  gurjger,  wie  lang  leb  ino?'  and  in  Lower  Saxony  : 

huhuh  vam  haven, 

wo  lange  sail  ik  leven  ? 

then  you  must  listen,  and  count  how  many  times  the  bird  repeats 
his  own  name  after  your  question,  and  that  is  the  number  of 
years  left  you  to  live  (Schutze's  Hoist,  idiot.  2,  363} .  In  some 
districts  2  the  rhyme  runs  : 

kukuk  beckenknecht, 

sag  mir  recht, 

wie  viel  jar  ich  leben  soil  ?  3 

The  story  is,  that  the'bird  was  a  baker's  (or  miller's)  man,  and 
that  is  why  he  wears  a  dingy  meal-sprinkled  coat.  In  a  dear 
season  he  robbed  the  poor  of  their  flour,  and  when  God  was 
blessing  the  dough  in  the  oven,  he  would  take  it  out,  and  pull 
lumps  out  of  it,  crying  every  time  '  guk-guk/  look-look ;  there- 
fore the  Lord  punished  him  by  changing  him  into  a  bird  of  prey, 


1  Both  eclogues  in  Domavii  Ampbith.  456-7,  where  they  are  attrib.  to  Beda  ; 
ditto  in  Leyser  p.  207,  who  says  they  were  first  printed  in  the  Frankf.  ed.  (1610)  of 
Ovid's  Amatoria,  p.  190.  Meanwhile  Oudin  (De  script,  eccles.  2,  327-8,  ed.  Lips. 
1722)  gives  the  Confiictus  veris  et  hiemis  under  the  name  of  '  Milo,  sancti  Aniandi 
elnonensis  monachus  '  (first  half  of  9th  century) ;  and  the  second  poem  De  morte 
cuculi  stands  in  Mabillon's  Anal.  1,  369  as  'Alcuini  versus  de  cuculo.'  Anyhow  tbey 
fall  into  tbe  8th  or  9th  century  ;  in  shortening  the  penultima  of  '  cuculus  '  they 
agree  with  Eeinardus  3,  528.  Hoffm,  Horae  belg.  6,  236  has  also  revived  the 
Confiictus. 

2  Aegid.  Albertini  narrenbatz,  Augsb.  1617.  p.  95  :  '  Even  as  befel  that  old  wife, 
which  asked  a  guguck  how  many  year  she  had  yet  to  live,  and  the  guguck  beginning 
five  times  to  sing,  she  supposed  that  she  had  five  year  more  to  live,  etc'  From 
'  Schimpf  und  ernst '  c.  391. 

3  So  in  Mod.  Greek :  kovko  /jlov,  koukclki.  /xov,  ki  apyvpoKovK&Ki  p.ov,  ttoctovs  XP^V0VS 
8t  va  {yaw ; 


cuckoo.  677 

which  incessantly  repeats  that  cry  (conf.  Praetorius's  Weltbeschr. 
1,  656.  2,  491).  No  doubt  the  story,  which  seems  very  ancient, 
and  resembles  that  of  the  woodpecker  (p.  673),  was  once  told 
very  differently;  conf.  Chap.  XXII.,  Pleiades.  That  '  dear 
season  '  may  have  to  do  with  the  belief  that  when  the  cuckoo's 
call  continues  to  be  heard  after  Midsummer,  it  betokens  dearth 
(Sup.  I,  228). 

In  Sweden  he  tells  maidens  how  many  years  they  will  remain 
unmarried  : 

gok,  gok,  sitt  pa,  quist  (on  bough), 

sag  mig  vist  (tell  me  truej, 

hur  manga  ar  (how  many  years) 

jag  o-gift  gar  (I  shall  un-given  go)  ? 

If  he  calls  more  than  ten  times,  they  declare  he  has  got  '  pa  galen 
quist'  (on  the  silly  bough,  i.e.  bewitched),  and  give  no  heed  to 
his  prophecies.  And  then  a  good  deal  depends  on  the  quarter 
whence  you  hear  your  cuckoo  first.  You  must  pay  strict  atten- 
tion in  spring ;  if  you  hear  him  from  the  north  (the  unlucky 
quarter),  you  will  see  sorrow  that  year,  from  east  or  west  his 
call  betokens  luck,  and  from  the  south  he  is  the  proclaimer  of 
butter  :  '  ostergok  ar  trostegok,  vestergok  ar  bastagok,  norrgok  or 
sorggok,  sorguk  ar  smorgok.1 

In  Goethe's  Oracle  of  Spring  the  prophetic  bird  informs  a 
loving  pair  of  their  approaching  marriage  and  the  number  of 
their  children. 

It  is  rather  surprising  that  our  song- writers  of  the  13th  cen- 
tury never  bring  in  the  cuckoo  as  a  soothsayer;  no  doubt  the 
fact  or  fancy  was  familiar  to  all,  for  even  in  the  Renner  11340  wo 

read  : 

daz  weiz  der  gouch,  der  im  fur  war 

hat  gegutzet  hundert  jar. 

Caesarius  heisterbac.  5,  17:  'Narravit  nobis  anno  praeterito 
(?  1221)  Theobaldus  abbas  eberbacensis,  quod  quidani  couversus, 
cum  nescio  quo  tenderet,  et  avem,  quae  cuculus  dicitur  a  voce 
nomen  habens,  crebrius  cant  ant  cm  audiret,  vices  interruptions 
nuuieravit,   et  vigiuti  duas  inveniens,   easque   quasi  pro   online 

1  Arndt's    Iteise   durch  Schw.  4,   5 — 7.     The  snipe  is  in  Swed.  /( rrsgjdk,  ON. 
hrossayaukr  (horse-cuckoo),  and  she  too  has  the  gift  of  divination,  p.  184. 


678  TREES  AND  ANIMALS. 

accipiens,  pro  annis  totidem  vices  easdem  sibi  computavit :  c  eia,' 
inquit,  '  certe  viginti  duobus  annis  adhuc  vivam,  ut  quid  tanto 
tempore  mortificein  me  in  ordine  ?  redibo  ad  seculum,  et  seculo 
deditus  viginti  annis  f  ruar  deliciis  ejus ;  duobus  annis  qui  super- 
sunt  pcenitebo.'' — In  the  Couronnemens  Renart,  the  fox  hears  the 
bird's  voice,  and  propounds  to  him  the  query : 

A  cest  mot  Renart  le  cucu 

entent,  si  jeta  un  faus  ris, 

'  jou  te  conjur  '  fait  il,  f  de  cris, 
215  cucus,  que  me  dies  le  voir  (truth), 

quans  ans  jai  a  vivre  ?  savoir 

le  veil.'     Cucu,  en  preu  cucu/ 

et  deus  cucu,  et  trois  cucu, 

quatre  cucu,  et  cine  cucu, 
220  et  sis  cucu,  et  set  cucu, 

et  uit  cucu,  et  nuef  cucu, 

et  dis  cucu,  onze  cucu, 

duze  cucu,  treize  cucu. 

Atant  se  taist,  que  plus  ne  fu 
225  li  oisiaus  illuec,  ains  s'envolle. 

Renart  carries  the  joyful  news  to  his  wife,  that  the  bird  has 
promised  him  yet  '  treize  ans  d'ae  '  (see  Suppl.). 

Is  it  the  cuckoo  that  is  meant  by  '  timebird '  in  Ms.  1,  88a :  (  cliu 
vroide  vlogzet  (joy  flies)  gelich  dem  zitvogel  in  dem  neste '  ? 
What  makes  me  think  so  is  a  passage  in  Pliny,  which  anyhow  is 
pertinent  here,  exhorting  the  husbandman  at  the  aequinoctium 
vernum  to  fetch  up  all  arrears  of  work  :  e  dum  sciat  inde  natam 
exprobrationem  foedam  putantium  vites  per  imitationem  cant  us 
alitis  temporarii,  quern  cuculum  vocant.  Dedecus  enim  habetur 
opprobriumque  meritum,  falcem  ab  ilia  volucre  deprehendi,  ut  ob 
id  petulantiae  sales  etiam  cum  primo  vere  ludantur/ 

Delight  at  the  first  song  of  the  cuckoo  is  thus  expressed  in  a 
Swiss  couplet  (Tobler  245b)  : 

wenn  der  gugger  chond  gegugga  ond  's  merzafoli  lacht, 
denn  wott  i  gad  goh  lo,  'swit  i  koh  mocht ; 

1  A  line  seems  wanting  here,  to  tell  us  that  Cuckoo,  like  a  sensible  cuckoo  (en 
preu  cucu,  fugl  fr&3huga'$r))  '  began  to  sing,  One  cucu.' 


cuckoo.  679 

they  imagine  that  he  never  sings  before  the  3rd  of  April,  and 
never  after  Midsummer  : 

am  drefcta  Abarella 

moss  der  gugger  griiena  haber  schnella  ; 

but  he  cannot  sing  till  he  has  eaten  a  bird's  egg.  If  you  have 
money  in  your  pouch  when  you  hear  him  sing  the  first  time,  you 
will  be  well  off  all  that  year,  if  not,  you  will  be  short  the  whole 
year  (Sup.  I,  374) ;  and  if  you  were  fasting,  you  will  be  hungry 
all  the  year.  When  the  cuckoo  has  eaten  his  fill  of  cherries  three 
times,  he  leaves  off  singing.  As  the  cuckoo's  song  falls  silent  at 
Midsummer,  vulgar  opinion  holds  that  from  that  time  he  turns 
into  a  hawk.     Reusch,  N.  pr.  prov.  bl.  5,  338-9. 

The  Poles  call  the  bird  zezula,  the  Bohemians  'ezhule  (both 
fern.).  The  0.  Pol.  chronicle  of  Prokosz,1  p.  113  of  the  Lat.  ed., 
has  a  remarkable  account  of  the  worship  of  a  Slavic  god  Zyvie : 
1  divinitati  Zywie  fanum  exstructum  erat  in  monte  ab  ejusdem 
nomine  Zywiec  dicto,  ubi  primis  diebus  mensis  Maji  innumerus 
populus  pie  conveniens  precabatur  ab  ea,  quae  vitae2  auctorhabe- 
batur,  longam  et  prosperam  valetudinem.  Praecipue  tamen  ei 
litabatur  ab  iis  qui  primum  cantum  cucidi  audivissent,  ominantes 
superstitiose  tot  annos  se  victuros  quoties  vocem  repetiisset.  Opin- 
abantur  enim  supremum  hunc  universi  moderatorem  transfigurari 
in  cuculwm  ut  ipsis  annuntiaret  vitae  tempora :  unde  crimini 
ducebatur,  capitalique  poena  a  magistratibus  afficiebatur,  qui 
cuculum  occidisset.'  Here  the  oracular  bird  is  a  god  in  meta- 
morpltosis,  just  as  that  Saxon  rhyme  called  him  'kukuk  vam 
haven.' 

To  the  Servian  haiduks  it  betokens  evil  when  the  hulcavitsa 
comes  too  soon,  and  cries  out  of  the  black  (leafless)  forest ;  and 
good  luck  when  it  sings  from  the  green  wood,  Vuk  sub  v. 

In  the  Eddie  Grotta-song  the  quern-maids  are  only  allowed  to 
rest  and  sleep  while  the  cuckoo  is  silent  (enn  gaukrinn  ]?ag<Si). 

The  cuckoo  can  prophesy  both  good  and  ill ;  in  dealing  with 
him    (as  with   other  birds  of  enchantment,  owls,   magpies)   you 

1  Kronika  polska  przez  Prodosza,  Warsz.  1825,  and  in  Latin  '  Chronicon 
Slavosarmaticum  Procosii,'  -Varsav.  1827  ;  professedly  of  the  10th  cent.  It  is  not 
so  old  as  that,  yet  Dobrowsky  (Wien.  jahrb.  32,  77—80)  goes  too  far  in  pronouncing 
it  a  pure  fabrication  ;  it  is  at  any  rate  founded  on  old  traditions. 

•  zy  wy,  alive ;  zywie,  to  sustain  life,  nourish. 

II.  R 


680  TREES   AND   ANIMALS. 

have  to  weigh  your  words  and  questions,  so  as  not  to  get  en- 
snared (Arndt's  Sweden  3,  18).  To  kill  him  without  cause  is 
dangerous,  his  followers  might  avenge  it.  He  has  power  to  teaze 
men,  to  delude  them,  what  Swedish  superstition  calls  dara,  and 
Danish  gante.  A  MHG.  poem  (Fragm.  38b)  has  :  'peterlin  und 
louch  hat  begucket  mit  der  gouch.'  Often  his  appearing  is  of  evil 
omen.  Paulus  Diac.  6,  55  says  of  Hildeprand  king  of  the  Lom- 
bards :  '  cui  dum  contum,  sicut  moris  est,  traderent,  in  ejus  conti 
summitate  cuculus  avis  volitando  veniens  insedit.  Tunc  aliquibus 
prudentibus  hoc  portento  visum  est  signincari,  ejus  principatum 
inutilem  fore'  (see  Suppl.). 

As  that  all-nourishing  life-divinity  of  the  Slavs  took  the  shape 
of  the  cuckoo,  so  does  the  Grecian  Zeus  transform  himself  into 
the  bird,  when  he  first  approaches  Hera.  A  seated  figure  of  the 
goddess  shews  a  cuckoo  on  her  staff,  and  a  bas-relief  representing 
the  wedding  procession  of  Zeus  and  Hera  has  a  cuckoo  perched  on 
Zeus's  sceptre  (as  on  that  of  the  Lombard  king)  ;l  so  that  this 
bird  has  got  mixed  up  with  the  most  sacred  of  all  weddings, 
and  we  understand  why  he  promises  marriage  and  the  fruit  of 
wedlock.  Then,  the  mountain  on  which  Zeus  and  Hera  came 
together,  previously  called  Qp6va%  (from  Opovos,  seat  of  the 
Thunderer?  supra  p.  183)  or  @opva%,  received  after  that  the 
name  of  6po<s  kokkvjlov  (Pausanias  ii.  36,  2).  Well,  and  we  have 
gowk's-hills  in  Germany  :  a  Gauchsberg  near  Kreuznach  (Widder's 
Pfalz  4,  36),  others  near  Durlach  and  Weinsberg  (Mone's  Anz.  6, 
350),  a  Guggisberg  in  Switzerland  (Joh.  Miiller,  1,  347.  2,  82. 
Tschachtlan  p.  2),  Gockerliberg  (KM.  no.  95);  the  name  might 
be  accounted  for  very  naturally  by  the  song  of  the  bird  being 
heard  from  the  hill,  but  that  other  traditions  also  are  mixed  up 
with  it.  In  Freidank  82,  8  (and  almost  the  same  in  Bonerius  65, 
55): 

wisiu  wort  unt  tumbiu  were 

diu  habent  die  von  Gouchesberc. 

Here  the  men  of  Gauchsberg  are  shown  up  as  talking  wisely  and 
acting  foolishly ;  Gauchsberg  is  equivalent  to  Narrenberg  (fool's 

1  Welcker  on  Schwenk  269.  270 ;  usually  an  eagle  sits  there.  The  figures  of 
eagle  and  cuckoo  are  not  always  easy  to  distinguish  ;  but  to  this  day  the  Bavarians 
by  way  of  jest  call  the  Prussian  eagle  '  gukezer,'  Schm.  2,  27. 


cuckoo.  681 

mount).1  As  far  back  as  the  10th  cent,  gouh  has  the  side-mean- 
ing of  fool  (N.  ps.  48,  11.  93,  8.  urkeizkouh,  war-fool,  N.  Bth. 
175);  the  same  everywhere  in  the  loth  (Walth.  22,  31.  Trist. 
8631.  18215),  though  commonly  with  a  qualifying  adj.  or  gen. 
pi.  :  ich  tumber  gouch,  MS.  1,  65a.  tumber  denn  ein  gouch,  Troj. 
81 20.  tumber  gouch,  Barl.  319,  25.  gouch  unwise  228,  32.  sin- 
neloser  gouch,  319,  38.  der  treit  gouches  houbet  (wears  a  gowk's 
head),  MsH.  3,  468g.  rehter  witze  ein  gouch,  MS.  2,  124b.  der 
mgere  ein  goichelin  (dim.),  and  gouchgouolt  (augm.),  Ben.  209. 
The  ON.  gaukr  is  likewise  arrogans  morio.  Hans  Sachs  occa- 
sionally uses  Gauchberg2  in  the  same  sense,  ii.  4,  110'1  (Kempten 
ii.  4,  220a),  extr.  from  Goz  1,  52.  Yet  originally  in  Gauchsberg 
the  bird  himself  may  very  well  have  been  meant  in  a  mystic  sense 
which  Las  fallen  dark  to  us  now  (see  Suppl.).3 

In  other  ways  too  the  cuckoo  stands  in  ill  repute,  he  passes 
for  an  adulterer,  who  lays  his  eggs  in  other  people's  nests ;  hence 
the  Romans  used  cuculus  in  the  sense  of  moechus  (Plauti  Asinaria, 
twice  in  last  scene),  and  our  gouch,  gouchelhi  formerly  meant 
bastard  (Nib.  810,  1.  Aw.  1,  46),  as  the  Swiss  gugsch  still 
means  an  unbidden  rival  suitor.  He  even  comes  out  as  a  fiendish 
being,  or  the  fiend  himself,  in  phrases  everywhere  known  from  of 
old  :  '  cuckoo  knows,  cuckoo  take  him,  cuckoo  sent  him  here ' 
and  the  like,  in  all  of  which  the  devil's  name  might  be  substi- 
tuted without  change  of  meaning.  This  seems  to  me  to  point 
to  old  heathen  traditions,  to  which  the  diabolic  tinge  was  added 
only  by  degrees;  and  among  these  I  reckon  the  Low  Saxon 
formula  l  the  cuckoo  and  his  clerk  (or  sexton) ' !  by  which  clerk  is 
meant  the  hoopoo  (Brem.  wtb.  2,  858),  a  bird  that  is  likewise 
thought  to  have  received  his  form  by  metamorphosis.  I  cannot 
trace  the  story  of  the  cuckoo  and  hoopoo  any  further;  does  the 

1  Hence  we  find,  as  substitutes  for  it,  Affenbcrc  (Docen's  Misc.  2,  187)  ;  Aff'en- 
berc  and  Narrental,  MsH.  3,  200b;  Afferdal,  ibid.  213*.  Wmsbeke  45,7.  Renner 
1G4G9 ;  Apenberg  and  Narrenberg  in  the  Plattd.  '  Narragonia  '  77b.  137b  ;  Esalsberc, 
Diut.  2,  77.  Animals  whose  stupidity  was  proverbial  of  old,  are  the  ox,  ass,  ape, 
goat,  goose,  gowk  and  jay  :  vi"S  osvinna  apa,  Srein.  25b.  atrunnr  apa  55a.  Notk.  ps. 
57,  11  lias  ruoh  (stultus),  i.e.  hruoh,  AS.  hroc  (graculus,  Granim.  3,  361). 

3  Much  oftener  Scltalksberg  (rogue's  hill)  in  the  phrase  'in  den  schalksperg 
hawcn  (hew) '  i.  5,  521".  hi.  3,  28d.  54b.  iv.  3,  20d.  3K  40* ;  the  reason  of  which  1 
do  not  know.  '  Schalksberg  wine  grows  in  Franconia.'  '  Henricus  dictus  de  Scalkes- 
bergh,'  Spilker  2,  148  (an.  1208). 

3  Those  who  crave  other  explanations,  will  find  plenty  in  Mone's  Anz.  6,  350 
eeq.  '  Gouchsberg  is  Caucasus,  as  Elberich  is  the  spirit  of  Elburj,  diabolus  the 
Persic  div,'  and  so  forth. 


682  TREES   AND   ANIMALS. 

one  sing-  to  the  other  ?  [his  note  '  ooboo '  is  like  an  echo  of 
' cuckoo'].  Dobel  i.  1,  68  calls  the  hoopoo  the  cuckoo's  lackey, 
because  he  comes  with  him  in  spring  and  goes  with  him  in 
autumn  (see  Suppl.).  The  peewit  has  the  same  things  said  of 
him. 

The  froth  on  willows,  caused  by  the  cicada  spumaria,  we  call 
kulcuJcs-speichel,  Swiss  guggerspeu,  Engl,  cuckoo-spit,  -spittle,  Dan. 
giogespyt,  but  in  some  places  witch's  spittle,  Norweg.  trold- 
kiaringspye  r1  another  proof  of  the  bird's  connexion  with  preter- 
natural things,  and  reminding  us  of  the  bird-spittle  (fugls  hraki) 
which  in  Sn.  34  goes  to  make  up  the  band  Gleipnir.  Several 
names  of  plants  assure  us  of  his  mythic  nature.  Sorrel  :  OHG. 
g ouch esampf era,  Swiss  guggersauer,  AS.  gedcessure,  Dan.  gioge- 
mad,  giogesyre,  it  being  supposed  that  he  loved  to  eat  it ;  our 
kukuksbrot,  gauchlauch,  Fr.  pain  de  coucou,  panis  cuculi.  Cuckoo- 
flower :  kukuksblume,  gauchblume,  flos  cuculi.  Pimpernel :  gauch- 
lieil,  etc.,  guckgauchdorn,  Fischart's  Geschichtskl.  269a. 

The  Slavs  all  make  this  bird  feminine,  and  see  nothing-  bad, 
nothing  fiendish  in  it  :  zezhidice  sits  on  the  oak,  and  bewails  the 
passing  away  of  spring,  Koniginh.  MS.  174.  The  Servian  kuka- 
vitsa  was  once  a  maiden,  who  wept  her  brother's  death  till  she 
was  changed  into  the  bird  ;  '  sinia  (gray)  kukavitsa,'  Yuk  3,  66 ; 
three  women  turned  into  kukavitsas,  Vuk  1,  no.  321.  In  songs 
of  Lit.  Russia  still  a  moping  melancholy  bird  ;  and  in  Russian 
folktales  we  have  again  a  young  girl  changed  into  a  cuckoo  by  an 
enchantress  (Gotze's  Serb,  lieder,  p.  212). 

Of  small  birds,  the  swallow  has  been  mentioned,  p.  672. 
1  Frau  nacldigall '  is  often  named  by  our  minnesingers ;  but  the 
myth,  that  her  children  are  born  dead  and  she  sings  them  alive, 
seems  not  of  German  origin.  The  lark  and  galander  (crested 
lark)  must  have  been  actors  in  the  animal  legend  oftener  than  we 
are  now  aware  of;  there  are  still  beautiful  stories  of  the  zaunkonig 
(hedgeking,  wren),  AS.  wrenna.  But  I  have  yet  to  speak  of  two 
little  birds,  which  appear  to  have  been  peculiarly  sacred  in  olden 
times  :  redbreast  and  titmouse. 

Robin  redbreast  is  on  no  account  to  have  his  nest  disturbed,  or 
the  house  will  be  struck  with  lightning  :  it  is  the  redstart's  nest 

1  Summer-freckles  in  Bavar.  gugl-er-scheglccn,  cuckoo-spots,  Schm.  2,  27;  conf. 
Hofer  1,  337. 


REDBREAST.      TITMOUSE.  G83 

that  draws  down  the  flash.  The  latter  the  Swiss  call  husrotKeli 
(house-redling) ;  if  you  tease  him  or  take  him  out,  your  cows 
will  give  red  milk  (Tobler  281).  Were  these  birds  sacred  to 
Douar  the  red-bearded  ?  And  has  that  to  do  with  the  colour  of 
their  throat  and  tail  ?  They  sa}7-  the  redbreast  drops  leaves  and 
flowers  on  the  face  of  a  murdered  man  [or  '  babe ']  Avhom  he 
finds  in  the  wood ;  did  he  do  this  in  the  service  of  a  god,  who 
therefore  would  not  suffer  him  to  be  molested  ? 

The  tiny  titmouse,1  whom  he  called  gossip,  was  able  to  outwit 
even  Reynard  himself.  The  weisthumer  tell  us  in  what  estima- 
tion this  little  forest  bird  was  held,  by  setting  the  severest  penal- 
ties on  his  capture  :  l  item,  si  quis  sibilando  vel  alio  modo  volu- 
crem  ilium  ceperit,  qui  vulgo  meise  nuncupatur,  banni  reus  erit/ 
Jura  archiep.  trever.,  in  Lacombl.  arch.  326.  '  si  quis  auceps 
hanc  silvam  intraverit,  pro  nullo  genere  volucrum  componet,  nisi 
capiat  meisam  que  dicitur  banmeisa,  et  pro  ilia  componat  60  sol. 
tanquam  pro  cervo/  ibid.  367.  '  wer  da  fehet  ein  bermeisen,  der 
sal  geben  ein  koppechte  hennen  und  zwelf  hunkeln,  und  sechzig 
schilling  pfenning  und  einen  helbeling/  Dreieicher  wildbann 
(Weisth.  1,  499).  '  wer  eine  holmeise  fienge  mit  limen  ader  mit 
slagegarn,  der  sal  unserme  herrn  geben  eine  falbe  henne  mit  sie- 
ben  hiiukeln/  Rheingauer  w.  1,  535.  '  wer  ein  sterzmeise  fahet, 
der  ist  umb  leib  u.  guet,  und  in  unsers  herrn  ungnad/  Creuz- 
nacher  w.  2,  153. — The  reason  of  these  laws  is  hidden  from  us; 
plainly  the  bird  was  held  sacred  and  inviolable.  And  it  is  per- 
fectly in  tune  with  this,  that  at  the  present  moment  the  Lettons, 
who  call  the  bird  sihle,2  regard  it  as  prophetic  and  auspicious, 
and  even  call  a  soothsayer  sildneeks.3  Also  the  Spanish  name  for 
the  titmouse,  rid  (lord),  or  rid  paxaro  (lord  sparrow),  is  worth 
considering.  Titmouse,  wreu  and  woodpecker  (bee-wolf)  are 
confounded  in  popular  belief;  what  is  meant  is  the  tiniest 
prettiest  bird  (see  Suppl.). 


1  Meise,  OHG.  meisa,  AS.  ma.se,  Nethl.  meze,  Fr.  mesange,  O.Fr.  mesenge. 

-  Lith.  iyle,  zvlele ;  Pol.  sikora,  Boh.  sykora,  Buss,  zi'nika,  sinftsa,  Slov. 
senitsa,  Serv.  sienitsa.  The  Lettic  name  maybe  dei-ivable  from  sinnaht,  the  Lith. 
from  zynoti  (scire),  so  that  the  full  form  would  be  ainnele,  /!ynle,  the  sage  knowing 
bird?  Tbe  jay  also  is  in  Lettic  sihls.  To  the  Swed.  Lapps  taitne  signifies  not 
only  wood-pecker,  but  superstitious  diviimt ion;  tayetet  is  to  understand.  In  view 
of  that,  our  speckt  (woodpecker)  seems  to  belong  to  a  lost  root  spihan,  spah,  spahun, 
whence  also  spehon  (explorare),  and  spahi  (sapiens,  prudens). 

3  Mag.  der  lett.  lit.  gesellsch.,  Mitau  1838.    0,  151. 


684  TEEES   AND   ANIMALS. 

Beptiles. — Snakes,  by  the  beauty  of  their  shape  and  the  terror 
of  their  bite,  seem  above  all  animals  to  command  awe  and  rever- 
ence. A  great  many  stories  tell  of  an  exchange  of  form  between 
men  and  snakes :  an  almost  infallible  sign  of  their  having  been 
worshipped.  Beings  that  had  passed  out  .of  human  into  animal 
shapes,  and  were  able  to  return  into  the  former  at  need,  these 
heathenism  was  inclined  to  regard  as  sacred  ;  it  worshipped  kind 
beneficent  snakes,  whilst  in  christian  opinion  the  notion  of  snakes 
being  malignant  and  diabolic  predominates. 

The  same  Vita  Barbati,  which  we  had  to  thank  for  information 
on  the  tree-cultus  of  the  Lombards  (p.  649),  tells  us  likewise  of 
a  worship  of  snakes  :  e  His  vero  diebus,  quamvis  sacra  baptis- 
matis  unda  Langobardi  abluerentur,  tamen  priscum  gentilitatis 
ritum  tenentes,  sive  bestiali  mente  degebant,  bestiae  simulachro, 
quae  vulgo  vipera  nomm&tur,  fled  eb  ant  colla,  quae  debite  suo  de- 
bebant  flectere  Creatori.  .  .  .  Praeterea  Romuald  ejusque 
sodales,  prisco  coecati  errore,  palam  se  solum  Deum  colere  fate- 
bantur,  et  in  abditis  viperae  simulachrum  ad  suam  perniciem 
adorabant.'  During  the  king's  absence,  Barbatus  beseeches  his 
consort  Theodorada  to  procure  for  him  that  image  of  the  snake. 
'  Illaque  respondit :  Si  hoc  perpetravero,  pater,  veraciter  scio  me 
morituram.'  He  perseveres  and  at  last  persuades  her  ;  as  soon 
as  the  image  is  in  his  hands,  he  melts  it  down,  and  delivers  the 
metal  to  goldsmiths  to  make  out  of  it  a  plate  and  a  chalice.1 
Out  of  these  golden  vessels  the  christian  sacrament  is  adminis- 
tered to  the  king  on  his  return,  and  then  Barbatus  confesses  that 
the  holy  utensils  were  made  by  melting  down  the  idol.  '  Repente 
unus  ex  circumstantibus  ait :  Si  mea  uxor  talia  perpetrasset,  nullo 
interposito  momento  abscinderem  caput  ejus.'  A  passage  in  the 
other  Vita  also  is  pertinent  here :  '  Quinetiam  viperam  auri 
metallo  formatam  summi  pro  magnitudine  dei  supplici  devotione 
venerari  videbantur.  Unde  usque  hodie,  sicut  pro  voto  arboris 
Votum,  ita  et  locus  ille  Census,  devotiones  2  ubi  viperae  redde- 
bantur  dignoscitur  appellari.'  About  '  votum  '  I  expressed  my 
mind,  p.  650n. ;  '  census '  signifies  the  Goth,  gild,  gilstr,  OHGr. 
kelt,  Tcelstar  (p.  38-9  and  RA.  358).     The  two  words  votum  and 

1  As  the  gold  of  the  swan-rings  was  made  into  pots,  and  what  remained  over 
was  the  goldsmith's  profit. 

2  Printed  text :  locus  ille  census  devotionis,  ubi  viperae  reddebantur. 


SNAKE.  685 

census  are  no  slight  testimony  to  the  genuineness  and  oldness  of 

the  biography. Here  then  we  have  a  striking  instance  of  an 

idol  made  of  gold,  and  moreover  of  the  christian  teacher's  en- 
deavour to  preserve  the  sacred  material,  only  converting  it  into  a 
christian  form.  What  higher  being  the  snake  represented  to  the 
Lombards,  we  can  scarcely  say  for  certain  ;  not  the  all-encircling 
world-snake,  the  miSgarSs-ormr,  iormungandr  of  Norse  myth- 
ology, for  there  is  not  a  hint  that  even  in  the  North,  let  alone 
elsewhere,  he  was  visibly  represented  and  worshipped.  Ofnir 
and  Svafnir  are  ON.  names  of  snakes,  and  side-names  of  OSinn 
(conf.  p.  144)  ;  is  it  Wuotan  that  we  are  to  understand  by  the 
'  summus  deus '  of  the  Lombards  ?  l  But  the  special  character- 
istics of  their  snake-worship  are  entirely  lost  to  us.  If  the  term 
vipera  was  deliberately  chosen,  as  I  have  no  doubt  it  was,  it  can 
only  mean  one  of  the  smaller  kinds  of  snake  (coluber  berus), 
OHG.  natara,  AS.  ncecbre,  ON.  nadra  (also  masc.  naSr,  like  Goth, 
nadrs),  though  the  simulacrum,  of  whose  gold  a  plate  and  chalice 
could  be  made,  bespeaks  a  considerable  size. 

Lombard  legend  has  more  to  tell  us  of  snakes,  and  those 
expressly  small  ones.  The  Heldenbuch  describes  the  combat  of 
a  small  fire-spitting  beast  on  the  Gartensee  (L.  di  Garda)  with 
Wolfdietrich  and  a  lion,  to  both  of  whom  it  gives  enough  to  do  : 

Nun  horent  durch  ein  wunder,  wie  das  tierlein  ist  genant : 
es  heisst  zn  welsch  ein  zunder,  zu  teutsch  ein  saHbant, 
in  Sittenland  nach  eren  ist  es  ein  vipper  genant ; 

and  it  is  added,  that  there  are  but  two  such  vipers  alive  at  once, 
for  the  young  ones  soon  after  birth  eat  up  their  pai-ents.  This 
agrees  closely  with  the  statements  in  the  Physiologus  (Diut.  3, 
29,  30.  Hoffni.  fundgr.  28).  I  cannot  explain  zunder  from  any 
Italian  dialect ;  saribant  is  the  MHG.  servant,  Trist.  8994.  Sit- 
tenland I  take  to  be  the  canton  Valais,  from  its  capital  Sitten 
(Sion)  ;  there  the  Romance  vipera  might  easily  remain  in  use 
(Grisons  vipra,  vivra).  In  the  Jura  a  never-dying  winged  snake 
with  a  diamond  ■eye  is  called  vouivre,  Mem.  des  antiq.  G,  217.  In 
Switzerland  this  snake  in  called  stollenwurm  (Wyss's  Reise  ins 
Beimer  Oberland,  p.  422),  and  in  Salzburg  Lirgstutze,  Schin.  1, 
196  (seeSuppl.). 

1  '  Summi  pro  magn.  Dei'  may  possibly  mean  'instead  of  (worshipping)  the 
majesty  of  the  Most  High.' — Trans. 


686  TREES   AND   ANIMALS. 

Plenty  of  old  tales  are  still  told  of  home-snakes  and  unices.1 
On  meadows  and  pastures,  and  even  in  houses,  snakes  come  to 
children  when  alone,  sip  milk  with  them  out  of  their  bowl,  wear 
golden  crowns,  which  in  drinking  they  take  off  from  their  heads 
and  set  on  the  ground,  and  often  forget  and  leave  them  ;  they 
watch  infants  in  the  cradle,  and  to  bigger  children  they  shew 
treasures  :  to  kill  them  is  unlucky.  Every  village  has  its  own 
snakes  to  tell  of.  So  goes  the  story  in  Swabia.  Some  Hessian 
stories  are  collected  under  Kinderm.  no.  105,  and  one  from 
Austria  in  Ziska's  Volksmiirchen  (Vienna  1822,  p.  51)  ;  nearly  all 
bring  in  the  milk-drinking  2  and  the  golden  crown.  If  the  parents 
surprise  the  snake  with  the  child,  and  kill  it,  the  child  begins  to 
fall  away,  and  dies  before  long  (Temme's  Pomm.  sagen  no.  257). 
Once,  when  a  woman  lay  asleep,  a  snake  crept  into  her  open 
mouth,  and  when  she  gave  birth  to  a  child,  the  snake  lay  tightly 
coiled  round  its  neck,  and  could  only  be  got  away  by  a  milk- 
bath  ;  but  it  never  left  the  baby's  side,  it  lay  in  bed  with  it,  and 
ate  out  of  its  bowl,  without  doing  it  any  harm  (Mone's  Anz.  8, 
530).  Then  other  accounts  speak  of  a  multitude  of  snakes  filling 
house  and  yard,  whose  king  was  distinguished  by  a  glittering 
crown  on  his  head.  When  he  left  the  yard,  all  the  rest  would 
accompany  him  ;  in  the  stable  where  he  lived,  they  swarmed  so 
plentifully,  that  the  maids  feeding  the  cattle  would  take  them 
out  of  the  crib  by  armful s.  They  were  friendly  to  the  cattle 
and  the  people ;  but  a  new  farmer  shot  their  king,  and  they  all 
departed,  and  with  them  vanished  wealth  and  prosperity  from 
the  estate  (ibid.  6,  174).3  Here  also  comes  in  the  queen  of  snakes 
(Deut.  sagen  no.  220),  and  a  remarkable  story  in  the  Gesta  Eo- 
manorum  (Keller  p.  152).  To  a  dairymaid  at  Immeneich  there 
came  a  great  snake  into  the  cowshed  every  morning  and  evening 
at  milking-time,  and  wore  a  great  crown  on  its  head.     The  girl 


1  MHG.  vnk,  gen.  unkes,  MS.  2,  209b.  206a :  '  from  copper  one  divideth  gold 
with  an  mike's  ashes';  hence  an  alchymist  was  called  unken-brenner  (Felix 
Malleolus  de  nobilitate  et  rusticitate,  cap.  30).  By  unhe  is  properly  meant  the 
rana  portentosa  (bull-frog  ?),  but  often  snake  or  reptile  in  general.  Like  the 
weasel,  it  is  called  caressingly  '  miimelein,  miiemal,'  aunty.     Schm.  2,  576. 

2  Down  to  the  recurring  formula  :  '  ding,  iss  aucb  brocken  ! '  (thing,  eat  crumbs 
too) ;  '  friss  auch  mocken,  nicht  lauter  schlappes ! '  (not  only  slops)  Mone's  Anz. 
8,  530  ;  '  friss  auch  brocken,  nicht  lauter  bruhe  ! '  ibid.  6,  175. 

3  A  similar  story  of  the  king  of  snakes  from  Liibbenau  in  the  Spreewald  of 
Lausitz  (Busching's  Woch.  nachr.  3,  342)  in  Reusch  no.  74. 


SNAKE.  687 

everytime  gave  it  warm  cow's  milk  to  suji.  She  suddenly  left  the 
place  in  a  tiff,  and  when  the  new  maid  went  for  the  first  time  to 
milk,  there  lay  the  golden  crown  on  the  milking-stool,  with  the 
inscription:  '  a  token  of  gratitude/  She  brought  the  crown  to 
her  master,  who  gave  it  to  the  girl  it  was  intended  for;  but  from 
that  time  the  snake  was  never  seen  again  (Moneys  Anz.  8,  537). 
The  adder's  crown  (atternkronlein)  makes  any  one  that  wears  it 
invisible  (Schui.  2,  388)  and  immensely  rich  as  well.  In  some 
districts  they  say  every  house  has  two  snakes,  a  male  and  a 
female,  but  they  never  shew  themselves  till  the  master  or  mistress 
of  the  house  dies,  and  then  they  undergo  the  same  fate.  This 
feature,  and  some  others,  such  as  the  offering  of  milk,  bring  the 
home-snakes  near  to  the  notion  of  good  helpful  home-sprites  (see 
Suppl.). 

The  snake  then  comes  before  us  as  a  beneficent  inviolable 
creature,  perfectly  adapted  for  heathen  worship..  A  serpent 
twined  round  the  staff  of  Asklepios,  and  serpents  lay  beside 
healing  fountains  (p.  588n.).  The  ancient  Prussians  maintained  a 
large  snake  for  their  Potrimpos,  and  the  priests  guarded  it  with 
care ;  it  lay  under  ears  of  corn,  and  was  nourished  with  milk.1 
The  Lettons  call  snakes  milk-mothers  (peena  mahtes) ;  they  were 
under  the  protection  of  one  of  the  higher  goddesses  named 
Brehkina  (crier),  who  cried  out  to  all  that  entered  to  leave  her 
1  peena  mantes'  unmolested  in  the  house  (Mag.  der  lett.  gesellsch. 
6,  144).  There  is  milk  set  for  them  in  pots.  The  Lithuanians 
also  revered  snakes,  harboured  them  in  their  houses,,  and  offered 
them  sacrifices.2  Egyptian  snake-worship  was  witnessed  by 
Herodotus  2,  74.  '  Nullus  locus  sine  genio,  qui  per  anguem 
plerumque  ostenditur/  Serv.  ad  Aen.  5,  95. 

Snakes  were  devised  as  a  charm  in  swords  and  en  helmets 
(Ssem.  142b)  : 

liggr  me'S  eggjo  ormr  dreyftiiSr, 
enn  a  valbosto  verpr  naffr  hala. 

The  ormr  or  yrmlingr  was  supposed  to  run  from  the  sword's  hilt 


1  Voigt's  Geschichte  Preussens  1,  584. 

2  Seb.  Frank's  Weltbuch  55?.  Mone's  Heidenth.  1,  98.  Adam.  brem.  de  situ 
Daniae,  cap.  24,  of  tbe  Litbuaniaris  :  '  dracones  adorant  cum  volucribus,  quibus 
etiain  vivos  litant  homines,  quos  a  mercatoribus  emunt,  diligenter  omnino  probatos 
ne  maculam  in  corpore  habeant.' 


688  TEEES   AND   ANIMALS. 

(helz,  liialt)  to  the  point  and  back  again  (Kormakss.  p.  82-4. 
Vilk.  s.  p.  101).  Vitege  had  the  epithet  '  mit  dem  slangen'  be- 
cause of  his  helmet's  crest  (Heldensage  p.  148).  They  imparted 
strength  to  a  helmet,  and  force  to  the  blade  of  a  sword.  It 
seems  much  the  same  thing,  when  waggoners  plait  adder's- 
tongues  into  their  whips,  Sup.  I,  174  (see  Suppl.). 

The  snake  crawls  or  wriggles  along  the  ground;  when 
provided  with  wings,  it  is  called  draclie,  a  non-German  word 
coming  from  the  Lat.  draco,  Gr.  Spd/ccov,  and  introduced  very 
early,  OHG.  tracche,  AS.  draca,  ON.  dreki.  The  Elder  (or 
Ssemund's)  Edda  has  dreki  only  once,  in  the  latish  Solarl.  127b; 
elsewhere  it  is  ormr,  AS.  wi/rm,  OHG.  wurm,  Goth,  vaurms,  which 
in  a  wider  sense  includes  the  snake  also.  The  one  encountered 
by  Beowulf  comes  before  us  emphatically  as  a  winged  snake 
(serpens  alatus)  ;  'nihtes  fleoge^  '  4541,  by  night  he  flies,  and 
hence  is  called  uhtscead'a  4536  (nocturnus  hostis,  aggressor),  and 
lyftsceacFa  (aereus  hostis),  Cod.  exon.  329,  24.  Also  the  dragon 
that  keeps  Krimhild  prisoner  on  the  Drachenstein  comes  riding 
through  the  air,  or  flying.  But  the  one  that  young  Siegfried  had 
previously  killed,  when  sent  out  by  tlie  smith,  lay  beside  a  linde 
(lime-tree),  and  did  not  fly  :  this  is  the  Fdfnir  of  the  Edda,  a  man 
who  had  assumed  the  form  of  a  snake.;  of  him  the  Edda  uses 
skriSa  (repere,  to  stride),  Ssem.  186.  Sn.  138;  and  he  is  the 
wyrm  or  draca  slain  by  Sigemund  and  Fitela  in  Beow.  1765. 
1779.  In  the  Nib.  101,  2  and  842,  2  he  is  called  lintmche,  lint- 
drache,  in  the  Siegfriedslied  8,  2  lintwwrm  :  an  expression  found 
also  in  Mar.  148,  28.  En,  2947.  Troj.  25199,  and  to  be  ex- 
plained, not  from  linde  (tilia)  as  misunderstood  by  later  legend, 
but  from  the  OHG.  lint.  With  this  lint  (Goth.  linJTs,  AS.  IrS, 
ON.  linn?)  many  women's  names  are  formed  (Gramm.  2,  505), 
e.g.,  Sigilint,  ON.  Sigrlinn  (supra  p.  428),  and  it  may  have  con- 
tained the  notion  of  brightness  or  beauty,1  suitable  alike  to  snake 
and  woman;  the  derivative  weak  form  linni  (masc.)  in  ON. 
signifies  again  coluber,  serpens.  And  himhnrg=Lintburg,  the 
name  of  several  towns,  is  more  correctly  derived  from  snake  than 
from  lime-tree. 

About  dragons  it  is   a  favourite   fancy   of  antiquity,  that  they 

1  Does  not  the  Engl,   lithe,  pliable,  give  the  most  suitable  meaning.  Germ. 
gelind  soft,  lindern  to  mitigate  ? — Trans. 


DRAGON.  689 

lie  upon  gold,  and  are  illumined  by  it ;  gold  itself  was  poetically 
named  worm-bed,  ON.  ormbeSr  or  ormbeSs-eldr  (worinbed's  fire). 
And  with  this  was  linked  a  further  notion,  that  they  guard 
treasures,  and  carry  them  through  the  air  by  night.  That  wyrm 
slain  by  Sigemund  is  called  f  hordes  hyrde/  Beow.  1767  ;  the  one 
that  Beowulf  fought  with  receives  the  epithet  '  se  hord  beweo- 
tode  '  4420.  Fafnir,  formerly  a  giant,  lay  '  in  (the  "shape  of)  a 
worm/  wearing  the  Oegis-hialm,  over  inherited  gold  (Sa3m. 
18Sb.  lS9b)  ;  the  expression  is  '  i  lyngvi }  (from  lyng,  heath),  and 
the  spot  is  named  Gnita-herSi ;  hence  in  other  cases  also  the  word 
lyngvi,  lyng&rmr  (heath-worm)  stands  for  dragon.  The  Vols. 
saga  c.  17  distinguishes  lyngormr  a  small  snake  from  drehi  a  large 
one;  so  that  our  OHGr.  heimo,  OS.  hema,  AS.  hdma,  spoken  of 
on  p.  387,  may  be  identical  with  lyngvi;  Vilk.  saga  c.  17,  p.  31 
expressly  calls  heima  '  allra  orma  akcmdr '  (omnium  vermium 
minimus),  but  as  he  is  venomous,  he  cannot  be  the  harmless 
cicada  (OHG.  muhheimo).  Popular  belief  still  dreams  of  glitter- 
ing treasures  lying  on  lonesome  heaths  and  guarded  by  dragons  ; 
and  hcad'en  gold  in  Beow.  may  mean  either  aurum  tesquorum  or 
ethnicorum,  for  dragons,  like  giants,  were  thought  of  as  old  and 
full  of  years,  e.g.,  eald  uhtsceafta,  Beow.  4536 ;  wintrum  froS  (wise 
with  years)  4548 ;  ]?reo  hund  (300)  wintra  heold  on  hrusan  (earth) 
4550;  at  the  same  time  they  are  covetous,  envious,  venomous, 
spitting  flame :  ni&draca,  Beow.  4540 ;  dttorsceaffa  5<373,  fyre 
befongen  4541,  ongan  gledum  spiwan  4619,  deorcum  nihtum 
ricsian  4417.  It  is  said  of  .Fafnir,  Sasm.  186:  '  screrS  af  gulli, 
bles  eitri,  hristi  sik  ok  barSi  hofbi  ok  sporSi/  stept  off  the  gold, 
blew  poison,  shook  himself,  and  struck  with  head  and  tail ;  it  was 
noticed  on  p.  562  that  the  two  notions  of  eit  (fire)  and  eiter 
(poison)  run  into  one.  Connect  with  this  the  descriptions  of  MHG. 
poets  :  the  '  trache  '  has  his  haunt  in  a  valley,  out  of  his  throat 
he  darts  flame,  smoke  and  wind,  Trist.  8944-74 ;  he  has  plumage, 
wings,  he  spits  fire  and  venom,  Troj.  9764.  9817  (see  Suppl.). 

Now  it  was  the  heroes'  province  to  extirpate  not  only  the 
giants,  but  (what  was  in  a  measure  the  same  thing)  the  dragons  J 
in  the  world:  Tborr  himself  tackles  the  enormous  mibgarSs-orm, 
Sigemund,    Siegfried,    Beowulf    stand   forth  as    the  bravest   of 

1  The  analogy  is  kept  up  in  the  circumstance  of  the  conquered  dragon  (like  the 
giant's  skeleton  p.  555n.)  being  fastened  over  the  town-gate,  e.g.  Pulci  4,  76. 


690  TREES   AND   ANIMALS. 

dragon-quellers,  backed  by  a  crowd  of  others,  who  spring  out  of 
the  exhaustless  fount  of  living  legend,  wherever  time  and  place 
requires  them.  Frotho,  a  second  Siegfried,  overpowers  a  veno- 
mous dragon  that  lay  reposing  on  his  treasure,  Saxo  Gram.  p. 
20.  The  beautiful  Thora  Borgarhiortr  had  a  small  lyngorm  given 
her,  whom  she  placed  in  a  casket,  with  gold  under  him  :  as  he 
grew,  the  gold  grew  also,  till  the  box  became  too  narrow,  and  the 
worm  laid  himself  in  a  ring  all  round  it ;  soon  the  chamber  was 
too  small,  and  he  lay  round  that,  with  his  tail  in  his  mouth,  admit- 
ting none  into  the  room  unless  they  brought  him  food,  and  he 
required  an  ox  at  every  meal.  Then  it  was  proclaimed,  that 
whoever  slew  him  should  get  the  maiden  for  his  bride,  and  as 
much  gold  as  lay  under  the  dragon,  for  her  dowry.  It  was 
Eagnar  Lodbrok  that  subdued  this  dragon,  Fornald.  sog.  1, 
237-8.  The  rapid  growth  of  the  worm  has  a  startling  similarity 
to  that  of  the  fish,  p.  578.  But,  beside  the  hoarded  gold  which 
the  heroes  carry  off  as  prize,  the  adventure  brings  them  other 
advantages  :  eating  the  dragon's  heart  gives  one  a  knowledge  of 
beasts'  language,  and  painting  oneself  with  his  blood  hardens  the 
skin  against  all  injury.  Both  featm^es  enter  deeply  into  the 
legend  of  Siegfried  (see  Suppl.).1 

Nearly  all  of  this  has  its  counterpart  in  the  beliefs  of  other 
nations.  As  the  Romans  borrowed  gigas  from  the  Greeks,  so 
they  did  draco,  for  neither  serpens  nor  vermis  was  adequate 
(like  our  slango  and  wurm)  to  express  the  idea.  Now  hpaKwv 
comes  from  hepiceiv  to  look,  illumine,  flash  out,  <pdo<;  8e&opice 
expresses  illuminating  light,  and  this  confirms  me  in  my  proposed 
explanation  of  our  lint  and  linni.  A  fox  after  long  burrowing 
struck  upon  the  cave  of  a  dragon  watching  hidden  treasure,  l  ad 
draconis  speluncam  ultimam,  custodiebat  qui  thesauros  abditos/ 
Phaedr.  4,  19.  Then  the  story  of  the  gold-guarding  griffins  must 
be  included,  as  they  are  winged  monsters  like  the  dragons. 

In  0.  Slavic  zmiy  m.,  and  zmiya  f.,  signify  snake,  the  one  more 
a  dragon,  the  other  an  adder.  The  Boh.  zmek  is  the  fiery  dragon 
guarding  money,  zmiye  the  adder;  Serv.  zmay  dragon,  zmiya 
adder.  Mica,  which  the  zmay  shakes  off  him,  is  named  otresine 
zmayeve  (dragon's  offshake),  Vuk  p.  534.     Once  more,  everything 

1  Which  reminds  Albrecht  in  Titurel  3313—17  of  a  similar  tale  of  Eodolz, 
conf.  Parz.  518,  18  and  Diut.  3,  59. 


DRAGON.      BEETLE.  691 

leads  to  glitter,  gold  and  fire.  The  Lith.  smakas  seems  borrowed 
from  Slavic ;  whether  connected  with  AS.  snaca,  is  a  question. 
Jungmann  says,  zmek  is  not  only  a  dragon,  but  a  spirit  who 
appears  in  the  shape  of  a  wet  bird,1  usually  a  chicken,  and  brings 
people  money;  Sup.  I,  143  says  you  must  not  hurt  earth-chicks 
or  house-adders;  Schm.  1,  101  explains  erdhiinlcin  (earth -chicken) 
as  a  brio-ht  round  lustre,  in  the  middle  of  which  lies  some- 
thing  dark;  conf.  geuliuon,  Helbl.  8,  858. 

Renvall  thus  describes  the  Finn,  mammelainen :  '  femina  ma- 
ligna, matrix  serpentis,  divitiarum  subterranearum  custos.'  Here 
at  last  the  hoard  is  assigned  to  a  female  snake ;  in  Teutonic  and 
also  Slavic  tales  on  the  contrary  it  is  characteristic  of  the  fierce 
fiendish  dragon  (m.)  to  guard  treasure,  and  the  adder  or  unke  (f.) 
plays  more  the  part  of  a  friendly  homesprite  :  as  the  one  is  a  man 
transformed,  so  the  other  appears  as  a  crowned  maiden  with  a 
serpent's  tail  (Deut.  sag.  no.  13),  or  as  a  fay.  But  she  can  no 
more  dispense  with  her  golden  crown  than  the  dragon  with  his 
guardianship  of  gold ;  and  the  Boh.  zmek  is  at  once  dragon  and 
adder.  A  story  of  the  adder-king  is  in  Bechstein's  Franken  p. 
290  (see  Suppl.). 

Amidst  all  these  points  of  connexion,  the  being  worshipped  by 
the  Lombards  must  remain  a  matter  of  doubt ;  we  have  only  a 
right  to  assume  that  they  ascribed  to  it  a  benign  and  gracious 
character. 

Insects. — Some  traces  of  beetle-worship  I  am  able  to  disclose. 

"We  have  two  old  and  pretty  general  terms :  OHG.  chevor, 
cheviro,  MHG.  kever,  kevere,  NHG.  kiifer,  N.  Neth.  kever,  AS. 
ceafor,  Engl,  chafer.  We  have  no  business  to  bring  in  the  Lat. 
caper  (which  is  AS.  haefer,  ON.  hafr)  ;  the  root  seems  to  be  the 
AS.  ceaf,  caf=alacer,  for  the  chafer  is  a  brisk  lively  creature, 
and  in  Swabia  they  still  say  kafermassig  for  agilis,  vivax  (Gramm. 
2,  571. 1013).  The  AS.  has  ceafortun,  cafertun,  for  atrium,  vesti- 
bulum ;  '  scarabaeorum  oppidum  '  as  it  were,  because  chafers 
chirp  in  it  ?  3     The  second  term,  OHG.  wihil,  webil,  MHG.  wibel, 

1  Zmokly  is  drenched,  zmoknuti  to  wet ;  '  mokry  gako  zmok,'  dripping  like  an 
earth-sprite. 

J  Here  again  the  female  being  has  the  advantage  over  the  male. 

3  Helbling,  speaking  of  an  ill-shaped  garment,  starts  the  query  (1,  177),  where 


C92  TBEES   AND   ANIMALS. 

NHG.  webol,  wiebel,  AS.  wifel,  wefel,  Engl,  weevil,  agrees  with. 
Litli.  wdbalas,  wabalis,  Lett,  wabbols,  and  I  trace  it  to  weben 
(weave,  wave)  in  the  sense  of  our  c  leben  und  weben/  vigere, 
moveri ;  we  say,  '  kriebeln  und  wiebeln '  of  the  swarming  of 
beetles.1 

To  the  Egyptians  the  beetle  (scarabaeus,  KavOapos,  Kcipa/3o<;) 
was  a  sacred  being,  an  emblem  of  inmost  life  and  mysterious  self- 
generation.  They  believed  that  he  proceeded  out  of  matter 
which  he  rolled  into  globules  and  buried  in  manure  (see  Suppl.). 

ON.  literature  deals  in  no  prose  terms,  but  at  once  comes  out 
with  the  poetic  name  iotunox,  iotunoxi  (giant-ox)  ;  as  that  giant 
maiden  took  the  ploughman  with  his  oxen  and  plough  for  crawl- 
ing beetles  (p.  540,  Finn,  sontiainen,  sondiainen,  dung-beetle 
from  sonda,  fimus),  so  conversely  the  real  beetle  might  awaken 
the  notion  of  a  iotunox.  To  liken  the  small  animal  to  the  large 
was  natural. 

Our  biggest  beetle,  the  stately  antlered  stag-beetle,  the  Eomans 
called  lucanus,  Nigid.  in  Pliny  11,  28  (34),  with  which  I  suppose 
is  connected  the  well-known  luca  bos,  lucanus  or  lucana  bos,  a 
name  which  got  shifted  from  the  horned  beast  to  a  tusked  one, 
the  elephant  (Varro  7,  39.  40.  O.  Mull.  p.  135).  But  we  call 
the  beetle  hirsch  (stag,  Fr.  cerf  volant),  and  even  ox  and  goat, 
all  of  them  horned  beasts,  Pol.  ielonek,  0.  Slav,  elenetz  (both 
stagling),  Boh.  rohac  (corniger),  Austr.  hornier,  Swed.  horntroll. 
Again,  a  Lat.  name  for  scarabaeus  terrester  was  taurus,  Plin.  30, 
5  (12),  which  keeps  my  lucanus  bos  or  cervus,  in  countenance. 
To  the  female  the  Bohemians  give  the  farther  name  of  babJca 
(granny). 

On  p.  183  we  came  across  a  more  significant  name,  donner- 
guegi,  donnerpuppe,  in  obvious  allusion  to  Donar,  whose  holy  tree 
the  beetle  loves  to  dwell  in ;  and  with  this,  apparently,  agrees  a 
general  term  for  beetles  which  extends  through  Scandinavia, 
viz.  Westergotl.  torbagge,  Swed.  tortyfvel,  Norweg.  tordivel,  Jutl. 
torr,  torre.  True,  there  is  no  Icelandic  form,  let  alone  ON.,  in 
which  Thorr  can  be  detected ;  yet  this  '  tor '  may  have  the  same 

might  be  the  back  and  belly  of  one  that  was  hidden  away  in  such  a  cheverpeunt  ? 
He  calls  the  ample  cloak  a  chafer-pound  or  yard,  in  whose  recesses  you  catch  beetles. 
This  keverpiunt  answers  to  the  AS.  ceafortun. 

1  Slavic  names  are,  Boh.  chraust,  Pol.  chraszcz  ;  Boh.  brauk,  bruk,  prob.  from 
bruchus,  ppovKos.  [Buss,  zhuk  ;  the  '  gueg  '  of  S.  Germany  ?] 


BEETLE.      CHAFER.  693 

force  it  lias  in  torsdag  (p.  126)  and  tordon  (p.  166)  ;  '  bagge/ 
says  Ibre  p.  122,  denotes  juvenis,  puer,  bence  servant  of  tbe  god, 
which,  was  afterwards  exchanged  for  dyfvel=diefvul,  devil. 
Afzelius  (Sagohafder  1,  12.  13)  assures  us,  that  tbe  torbagge  was 
sacred  to  Thor,  that  in  Norrlandbis  larva  is  called  mulloxe  (earth- 
ox,  our  Swiss  donnerpuppe  ?  conf.  iotunoxi),  and  that  he  who 
finds  a  dung-beetle  lying  on  liis  back  (ofvaltes)  unable  to  help 
himself,  and  sets  him  on  his  legs  again,  is  believed  by  the  Norr- 
landers  to  have  atoned  for  seven  sins  thereby. 

This  sounds  antique  enough,  and  I  do  not  hastily  reject  the 
proposed  interpretation  of  tordyfvel,  false  as  it  looks.  For  the 
AS.  tordwifel  is  plainly  made  up  of  c  tord/  stercus  (Engl,  turd) 
and  the  'wifel'  above,  and  answers  to  the  Dan.  skai-nbasse, 
skarntorre  (dungbeetle) ;  consequently  tordyfvel,  torbasse  crave 
the  same  solution,  even  though  a  simple  '  tord  '  and  '  vivel '  be 
now  wanting  in  all  the  Scandinavian  dialects.  The  Icelandic 
has  turned  tordivel  about  into  torfdifill,  as  if  turf-devil,  from 
torf,  gleba.  There  is  also  the  N.  Neth.  tor,  tor  re  beetle,  and 
drektorre  dungbeetle  [or  devil's  coach-horse ;  also  Engl,  dumble- 
dorr  cockchafer],  to  be  taken  into  account  (see  Suppl.). 

But  who  ever  saw  even  a  beetle  lie  struggling  on  his  back, 
without  compassionately  turning  him  over  ?  The  German  people, 
which  places  the  stagbeetle  in  close  connexion  with  thunder  and 
fire,  may  very  likely  have  paid  him  peculiar  honours  once. 

Like  other  sacred  harbingers  of  spring  (swallows,  storks),  the 
first  cockchafer  (Maikiifer)1  used  to  be  escorted  in  from  the  woods 
with  much  ceremony;  we  have  it  on  good  authority,  that  this 

1  Maikiifer  (like  maiblume)  sounds  too  general,  and  not  a  people's  word.  And 
there  is  do  Lat.  name  preserved  either.  The  Greek  fjni\o\6i>0r)  designates  our  mai- 
kiifer or  our  goldkafer ;  boys  tied  a  string  to  it  and  played  with  it  (Aristoph.  Nub. 
763),  as  our  boys  do.  The  It.  scarafaggio  is  formed  from  scarafone  (scarabaeus) ; 
the  Fr.  hanneton  a  dim.  of  the  obsolete  hanne  horse,  which  may  have  been  the  term 
for  the  stagbeetle  (still  petzgaul,  Bruin's  horse,  in  the  Wetterau),  Fr.  cerf  volant, 
Dan.  eeghiort,  Swed.  ekhjort,  i.e.  oak-hart.  The  Mecklenb.  eksawer,  oak-chafer,  as 
well  as  the  simple  saver,  sever,  sebber  (Schiitze's  Hoist,  idiot.  4,91)  is  applied  to  the 
maikiifer;  in  other  parts  of  L.  Saxony  they  Bay  maisavel,  maisdbel.  This  saver, 
zdver  (Brem.  wtb.  4,  592.  5,  310)  is  surely  no  other  than  kiifer  with  change  of  k 
into  z,  s;  Chytneus's  Nomencl.  saxon.  has  •  zever,  and  goldzever  =  goldkafer.'  Or 
does  the  HG.  ziefer  belong  here,  contrary  to  the  etymol.  proposed  on  p.  40?  In 
the  Westerwald  powitz,  kowitz  is  maikiifer,  and  in  R.ivensbevg  povommel  dungbeetle 
(Kuhn's  Westfal.  sagen  2,  188),  almost  agreeing  with  Esthon.  poua  chafer,  beetle. 
Like  the  various  names  for  the  stagbeetle,  maybeetle,  dungbeetle,  goldbeetle,  the 
traces  of  ancient  beetle-worship  seem  also  to  meet,  first  in  one,  then  in  another  of 
them.     A  scarafone  who  brings  succour  occurs  in  Pentamer.  3,  5  (see  Suppl.). 


G94  TEEES   AND   ANIMALS. 

continued  to  be  done  by  the  spinning  girls  in  parts  of  Schleswig 
as  late  as  the  17th  century.1 

Folk- tales  of  Up.  Germany  inform  us  :  Some  girls,  not  grown 
up,  went  one  Sunday  to  a  deserted  tower  on  a  hill,  found  the 
stairs  strewn  with  sand,  and  came  to  a  beautiful  room  they  had 
never  seen  before,  in  which  there  stood  a  bed  with  curtains. 
When  they  drew  these  aside,  the  bed  was  swarming  with  gold- 
beetles,  and  jumping  up  and  down  of  itself.  Filled  with  amaze- 
ment, the  girls  looked  on  for  a  while,  till  suddenly  a  terror  seized 
them,  and  they  fled  out  of  the  room  and  down  the  stairs,  with  an 
unearthly  howl  and  racket  at  their  heels  (Moneys  Ahz.  7,  477). 
On  the  castle-hill  by  Wolfartsweiler  a  little  girl  saw  a  copper  pot 
standing  on  three  legs,  quite  new  and  swarming  full  of  horsebeetles 
(roskafer).  She  told  her  parents,  who  saw  at  once  that  the  beetles 
were  a  treasure,  and  hastened  with  her  to  the  hill,  but  found 
neither  pot  nor  beetles  any  more  (ibid.  8,  305).  Here  beetles 
appear  as  holy  animals  guarding  gold,  and  themselves  golden. 

In  Sweden  they  call  the  small  goldbeetle  (skalki'ak)  Virgin 
Mary's  key-maid  (jungfru  Marie  nyckelpiga),  Dybeck's  Runa 
1844,  p.  10;  in  spring  the  girls  let  her  creep  about  on  their 
hands,  and  say,  '  hon  marker  mig  brudhandskar,'  she  marks  (fore- 
shews)  me  bride's  gloves ;  if  she  flies  away,  they  notice  in  which 
direction,  for  thence  will  come  the  bridegroom.  Thus  the  beetle 
seems  a  messenger  of  the  goddess  of  love ;  but  the  number  of 
the  black  spots  on  his  wings  has  to  be  considered  too  :  if  more 
than  seven,  corn  will  be  scarce  that  year,  if  less,  you  may  look 
for  an  abundant  harvest,  Afzel.  3,  112-3. 

The  little  coccinella  septempunctata  has  mythical  names  in 
nearly  all  our  dialects  :  NHG.  gotteskiihlein  (God's  little  cow),21 
gotteskalb,  herrgotteskalb,  herrgotts-thiercheu  (-beastie),  herr- 
gots-voglein  (-birdie),  Marienvoglein,  Marienkdfer,  Marienkalblein ; 
Engl,  ladycow,  ladybird,  ladyfiy;  Dan.  Marihone  (-hen);  Boh. 
hrawJca,  hrawicka  (little  cow).  In  Up.  Germany  they  call  the 
small  goldbeetle  (chrysomela  vulg.)  fraua-chiieli,  ladycow  (Tobler 

1  An  old  description  of  the  maygrave  feast  by  Ulr.  Petersen  (in  Falck's  New 
staatsb.  mag.,  vol.  1,  Schlesw.  1832, p.  655)  speaks  of  it  tbus  :  '  A  quaint  procession 
of  the  erewhile  amazous  of  the  spinning-wbeel  at  Scbleswig,  for  fetching  in  of  a 
cantharis  or  maykafer  with  green  boughs,  whereat  the  town-ball  of  this  place  was 
decked  out  with  greenery.'     The  feast  was  still  held  in  1630 — 40. 

2  The  Kuss.  'Bozbia  korovka,  has  exactly  the  same  meaning. — Trans. 


CHAFER.      BEE.  695 

20-f1')  and  '  der  liebe  froue  henje,'  our  lady's  hen  (Alb.  Schott's 
Deutsche  in  Piemonfc  297),  in  contrast  to  herra-chueli  the 
coccinella  (Tobler  265a),  though  the  name  probably  wavers  be- 
tween the  two.  By  the  same  process  which  we  observed  in  the 
names  of  plants  and  stars,  Mary  seems  to  have  stept  into  the 
place  of  Freyja,  and  Marihone  was  formerly  Freyjuhoena,  which 
we  still  have  word  for  word  in  Froue  henje,  and  the  like  in  Fraua- 
chiieli.  And  of  Romance  tongues,  it  is  only  that  of  France  (where 
the  community  of  views  with  Germany  was  strongest)  that  has  a 
bete  a  dieu,  vache  a  dieu;  Span,  and  Ital.  have  nothing  like  it. 
At  all  events  our  children's  song  : 

MarienTxdferchcn,  flieg  aus  !   (fly  away) 

dein  hauschen  brennt,  (burns) 

dein  mutterchen  flennt,  (weeps) 

dein  vaterchen  sitzt  auf  der  schwelle ;   (sits  on  the  threshold) 

flieg  in  'n  himmel  aus  der  holle  !   (into  heaven  out  of  hell) 

must  be  old,  for  in  England  also  they  sing:  'Ladybird,  ladybird, 
fly  away  home,  your  house  is  on  fire,  and  your  children  will  burn 
[all  but  little  Bessie  that  sits  in  the  sun].'  With  us  too  the  chil- 
dren put  the  Marienkafer  or  sonnenkafer  on  their  finger,  and  ask 
it,  like  the  cuckoo :  '  sunnenkiehen  (sun's  chicken),  ik  frage  di, 
wo  lange  schal  ik  leven  ?  '  '  Een  jaar,  twee  jaar,'  etc.,  till  the 
chafer  flies  away,  its  home  being  in  the  sun  or  in  heaven.  In 
Switzerland  they  hold  the  goldbeetle  on  their  hand,  and  say  : 
'  cheferli,  cheferli,  fliig  us  !  i  getter  milech  ond  brocka  ond  e 
silberigs  loffeli  dezue.'  Here  the  chafer,  like  the  snake,  is  offered 
'  milk  and  crumbs  and  a  silver  spoon  thereto.'  In  olden  times  be 
must  have  been  regarded  as  the  god's  messenger  and  confidant 
(see  Suppl ). 

Lastly  the  bee,  the  one  insect  that  is  tamable  and  will  live 
among  men,  and  whose  wise  ways  are  such  a  lesson  to  them,  may 
be  expected  to  have  old  mythic  associations.  The  bee  is  believed 
to  have  survived  from  the  golden  age,  from  the  lost  paradise 
(Chap.  XXX.)  ;  nowhere  is  her  worth  and  purity  more  prettily 
expressed  than  in  the  Servian  lay  of  the  rich  Gavan,  where  God 
selects  three  holy  angels  to  prove  mankind,  and  bids  them 
descend  from  heaven  to  earth,  (  as  the  bee  upon  the  flower,'  kako 
pchela  po  tsvetu  (Vuk  1,  128  ed.  2).     The  clear  sweet  honey, 

VOL.  II.  s 


696  TEEES   AND   ANIMALS. 

which  bees  suck  out  of  every  blossom,  is  a  chief  ingredient  of  the 
drink  divine  (p.  319),  it  is  the  r/Bela  iScoSr/  of  the  gods,  Hymn,  in 
Merc.  560  ;  and  holy  honey  the  first  food  that  touches  the  lips 
of  a  new-born  child,  RA.  457.  Then,  as  the  gift  of  poesy  is 
closely  connected  with  O^hroeris  dreckr,  it  is  bees  that  bring  it 
to  sleeping  Pindar  :  fieXiaaai  avrcp  /cadevSovri  irpoaeireTovro  re 
Kai  ewXaacrov  7rpo?  tcl  %e/\?7  rov  Krjpov'  cip-%7}  fiev  TlivSdpa) 
Trotelv  ao-fxara  iyevero  rotainrj,  Pausan.  ix.  23,  2.  And  there- 
fore they  are  called  Musarum  volucres  (Varro  de  re  rust.  3,  16). 
A  kindermarchen  (no.  62)  speaks  of  the  queen-bee  settling  on 
her  favourite's  mouth;1  if  she  flies  to  any  one  in  his  sleep,  he 
is  accounted  a  child  of  fortune. 

It  seems  natural,  in  connexion  with  these  bustling  winged 
creatures,  to  think  of  the  silent  race  o£  elves  and  dwarfs,  which 
like  them  obeys  a  queen.  It  was  in  the  decaying  flesh  of  the  first 
giant  that  dwarfs  bred  as  maggots  ;  in  exactly  the  same  way  bees 
are  said  to  have  sprung  from  the  putrefaction  of  a  bullock's  body  : 
'  apes  nascuntur  ex  bubulo  corpore  putrefacto/  Varro,  2,  5 ; 
'  amissas  reparari  ventribus  bubulis  recentibus  cum  fimo  obrutis/ 
Plin.  11,  20  (23);  conf.  Virg.  Georg.  4,  284-558.  Ov.  Met.  15, 
364.  To  this  circumstance  some  have  ascribed  the  resemblance 
between  apis  bee  and  Apis  bull,  though  the  first  has  a  short  a, 
and  the  last  a  long.  What  seems  more  important  for  us  is  the 
celebrated  discovery  of  a  golden  bullock's-head  amongst  many 
hundred  golden  bees  in  the  tomb  of  the  Frankish  king  Childeric 
at  Doornik  (repres.  in  Eccard's  Fr.  or.  1,  39.  40). 

Natural  history  informs  us  that  clouds  of  bees  fall  upon  the 
sweet  juice  of  the  ash-tree;  and  from  the  life-tree  Yggclrasil  the 
Edda  makes  a  dew  trickle,  which  is  called  a  'fall  of  honey/ 
and  nourishes  bees  (Sn.  20). 3 

The  Yngl.  saga  cap.  14  says  of  Yngvifrey's  son,  king  Fiolnir 
(Siolm  in  the  0.  Swed.  chron.),  that  he  fell  into  a  barrel  of  mead 
and  was  drowned;  so  in  Saxo,  king  Hunding  falls  into  sweet 
mead,  and  the  Greek  myth  lets  Glaucus  drown  in  a  honey-jar,  the 
bright  in  the  sweet.     According  to  a  legend  of  the  Swiss  Alps, 


1  Sederunt  in  ore  infantis  turn  etiam  Platonis,  suaYitateru  illam  praedulcis 
eloquii  portendentes.   Plin.  11, 17  (18). 

2  Ceram  ex  floribus,  melliginem   e  lacrimis  arborum  quae  glutinum  pariunt, 
salicis,  ulmi,  arundinis  succo. 


BEE.  697 

in  the  golden  age  when  the  brooks  and  lakes  were  filled  with 
milk,  a  shepherd  was  upset  in  his  boat  and  drowned ;  his  body, 
long  sought  for,  turned  up  at  last  in  the  foaming  cream,  when 
they  were  churning,  and  was  buried  in  a  cavity  which  bee3  had 
constructed  of  honeycombs  as  large  as  town-gates  (Mem.  de 
l'acad.  celt.  5,  202).  Bees  weave  a  temple  of  wax  and  feathers 
(Schwenk's  Gr.  myth.  p.  129.  Herm.  Miiller's  Griechenth.  455), 
and  in  our  Kinderm.  no.  107,  p.  130-1  a  palace  of  wax  and  honey. 
This  reminds  us  of  the  beautiful  picture  in  Lohengrin  p.  191  of 
Henry  2/s  tomb  in  Bamberg  cathedral : 

Sus  lit  er  da  in  siner  stift 

di'er  het  erbouwen,  als  diu  bin  ir  wift 

uz  maneger  bliiete  wiirket,  daz  man  honc-seim  nennet. 

(he  lies  in  the  minster  he  built,  as  the  bee  her  web  from  many  a 
blossom  works,  that  we  name  honey -juice) .  In  the  various 
languages  the  working  bee  is  represented  as  female,  OHG.  pia, 
Lat.  apis,  Gr.  /ze'Xicrera,  Lith.  bitte,  in  contrast  with  the  masc. 
fucus  the  drone,  OHG.  treno,  Lith.  tranas ;  but  then  the  head  of 
the  bees  is  made  a  king,  our  weiser  (pointer),  MHG.  wisel,  OHG. 
wiso,  dux,  Pliny's  f  rex  apium/  Lith.  bittinis,  M.  Lat.  chosdrus 
(Ducange  sub  v.),  yet  AS.  beomodor.  Boh.  matka.  The  Gr. 
iacnjv  is  said  to  have  meant  originally  the  king-bee,  and  to  have 
acquired  afterwards  the  sense  of  king  or  priest,  as  fieXiaaa  also 
signified  priestess,  especially  of  Deineter  and  Artemis.  Even 
gods  and  goddesses  themselves  are  represented  by  the  sacred 
animal,  Zeus  (Aristaeus)  as  a  bee,  Vishnu  as  a  blue  bee.  A 
Roman  Meilona  (Arnob.  4,  131),  or  Mellonia  (Aug.  de  civ.  Dei 
4,  24),  was  goddess  of  bees ;  the  Lith.  Austheia  was  the  same, 
jointly  with  a  bee-god  Bybylus.  Masculine  too  was  the  Lett. 
Uhsinsh,  i.e.,  the  hosed  one,  in  reference  to  bees'  legs  being 
covered  with  wax  ('waxen  thighs/  Mids.  Dream  3,  1).  From  all 
these  fancies,  mostly  foreign,  we  might  fairly  make  guesses  about 
our  own  lost  antiquities ;  but  we  should  have  to  get  more  exact 
information  as  to  the  legend  of  the  Bee-wolf  (pp.  369,  673)  and 
the  mythic  relationship  of  the  woodpecker  (Lith.  melleta)  to  the 
bee  (see  Suppl.). 


CHAPTER  XXII. 
SKY     AND     STARS. 

The  visible  heavens  have  in  many  ways  left  their  mark  on  the 
heathen  faith.  Not  only  do  gods,  and  the  spirits  who  stand 
next  them,  have  their  dwelling  in  the  sky,  and  get  mixfc  up  with 
the  stars,  but  earthly  beings  too,  after  their  dissolution,  are 
transported  thither,  and  distinguished  heroes  and  giants  shine 
as  constellations.  From  the  sky  the  gods  descend  to  earth, 
along  the  sky  they  make  their  journeys,  and  through  the  sky 
they  survey  unseen  the  doings  of  men.  And  as  all  plants  turn 
to  the  light  of  heaven,  as  all  souls  look  up  to  heaven,  so  do  the 
smoke  of  sacrifice  and  the  prayers  of  mankind  mount  upwards. 

Heaven  covers  earth,  and  our  word  'himmel'  comes  from 
the  root  hima  (tego,  involvo,  vestio,  Gramm.  2,  55  ;  conf.  Lith. 
dangus  coelum,  from  dengiu  tego ;  OHG.  himilezi  laquear).  The 
Goths  and  Old  Norsemen  agree  in  preferring  the  form  himins, 
himinn,  and  most  other  Teutons  himil ;  even  Swed.  Norw.  Dan. 
have  hiimnel.  The  Saxon  race  has  moreover  two  terms  peculiar 
to  itself:  one  is  OS.  hebhan,  hevan,  AS.  heofon,  Engl,  heaven, 
and  still  in  Lower  Saxony  and  Westphalia,  heben,  heven,  haven, 
hdwen.  I  have  endeavoured  to  make  out  the  area  over  which 
this  name  extends  (Gramm.  I,  xiv.).  The  Frisians  did  not  use 
it,  for  the  N.  and  W.  Fris.  patois  of  to-day  owns  to  nothing  but 
'himmel.''1  Nor  does  the  Netherl.  dialect  know  it;  but  it  is 
found  in  Westphalia,  in  L.  Saxony  as  far  as  Holstein,  and  beyond 
the  Elbe  in  Mecklenburg  and  Pomerania.  The  AS.  and  Engl, 
are  wholly  destitute  of  the  word  himel ;  OS.,  like  the  present 
LS.  and  Westph.,  employs  both  terms  alike,  yet  apparently  so 
as  to  designate  by  hevan  more  the  visible  heaven,  and  by  himil 
the   supersensual.      Alb.  of   Halberstadt  (ed.   1545,  145b)   uses 


1  Himel,  Lapekoer  fen  Gabe  scroar,  Dimter  1834,  p.  101. 103.    hemmel,  Hansens 
Geizhalz,  Souderbg.  1833.  p.  148.     himel,  Friesche  wetten  348.     himul,  As.  274. 

698 


SKY.      HEAVEN.  699 

heben  (rhym.  neben)  of  the  place.  Eeinolfc  von  der  Lippe  couples 
the  two  words:  '  liim°l  und  heben  von  vreuden  muz  irkrachen,' 
burst  with  joy.  People  say  :  '  de  heven  steit  niimmer  to ' ;  '  wenn 
de  heven  fallt,  lig-g-  wi  der  all  unner  ; '  '  de  sterren  an  dem  haven ; ' 
in  Westphalia  hebenscheer  means  a  sky  overcast  without  rain,  and 
even  heben  alone  can  signify  cloud.1  In  hihvenhiine  (p.  156),  in 
kukuk  vara  haven  (p.  676),  the  physical  sense  preponderates, 
whereas  one  would  hardly  speak  otherwise  than  of  '  going  to 
himel/  or  himelrih.  Yet  this  distinction  seems  to  be  compara- 
tively recent :  as  the  AS.  he'ofon  can  be  used  in  a  purely  spiritual 
sense,  so  the  poet  of  our  Heliand  alternates  between  himilriki 
149,  8  and  hebanriM  143,  24,  himilfader  145,  12  and  hebancuning 
143,  20.  And  of  course  himil  had  originally,  and  has  everywhere 
in  PIG.,  the  physical  meaning  too ;  hence  upliimil  in  Hel.  88,  15, 
just  like  npheofon  in  Casdm.  270,  24.  The  root  of  hebhan,  hevan, 
he'ofon,  is  probably  a  lost  Gothic,  <hiba,  haf/  cognate  with  Lat. 
capio,  so  that  it  is  the  all-capacious,  ON.  vidfecTmir,  wide-fathom- 
ing or  encompassing  sky.2 

The  other  Saxon  term  may  be  placed  on  a  level  with  the  Gi\ 
aldi'ip  (thin  upper  air),  whilst  himil  and  hevan  answer  to  ovpavos  ; 
it  is  OS.  radur,  AS,  rodor.  In  Ceedmon  we  find  rodor  183,  19. 
207,8.  uprodar  179,  10.  182,15.  205.2.  rodortungol  (star), 
100,  21.  rodorbeorht  239,  10.  Its  root  rad  lies  buried  as  yet 
in  obscurity ;  it  has  disappeared  from  all  modern  dialects  [except 
as  Bother  in  proper  names  ?] .  I  am  inclined  to  connect  with 
it  the  ON.  rocFull  (sol),  which  has  nothing  to  do  with  raivSr 
(ruber).  From  the  AS.  poets  using  indifferently  '  wuldres  gim' 
and  '  lieofones  gim  '  (Beow.  4142.  Andr.  1209);  heofonbeorht, 
rodorbeorht,  wuldorheorht ;  heofontorht,  swegltorht,  wuldortarht ; 
we  might  almost  infer  that  wuldor  (glory)  originally  meant 
coelum,  which  would  throw  light  on  the  OHG.  name  WoldarhWh. 
And  the  same  with  sivegel  (aether,  coelum)  :  conf.  swegles  begong, 

1  Sanskr.  nabas,  Slav.  n6bo  (coelum),  pi.  nebesa,  Gr.  j/^os,  Lat.  nubes,  nebula  ; 
Ir.  neamb,  Wei.  m'-v,  Armor,  nef,  Lett,  debbes  (coelum),  debbess  (nubes) ;  couf.  Lith. 
dangus  above  [and  sky,  welkin,  with  ON.  scy,  Germ,  wolke,  cloud]. 

2  '  Hills  of  heaven'  are  high  ones,  reaching  into  the  clouds,  often  used  as  proper 
names:  himimioll,  Sasm.  148\  Tngl.  saga  cap.  39;  Himinbiorg,  Sami.  41,  92b  is 
an  abode  of  gods;  spirits  haunt  the  Himiliriberg  (inons  coelius,  Pertz  2,  10); 
Himilesberg  in  Hesse  (Kucbenbecker's  Anal.  11,  137.  Amsb.  urk.  118);  a  Him- 
meUberg  in  Vestgbtland,  and  one  in  Hallaud  (said  to  be  Hoim'Sall's) ;  Hiinelberc, 
Frauendienst  199,  10. 


700  SKY   AND    STAES. 

Beow.  1713;  under  swegle  (sub  coelo),  Beow.  2149;  swegh&A 
(coeli  currus),  Cod.  exon.  355,  47  ;  OS.  suigli. 

I  call  attention  to  the  AS.  sceldbyrig,  Caedm.  283,  23,  which 
has  no  business  to  be  translated  refugium  or  sheltering1  city ;  it  is 
distinctly  our  schildburg  (aula  clypeis  tecta),  a  bit  of  heathenism 
the  poet  let  fall  inadvertently ;  so  the  Edda  speaks  of  Valholl 
as  '  shioldum  hokt,  lagt  gyltum  shioldum,  sva  sem  spanhak/  Sn.  2, 
thatched  with  golden  shields  as  with  shingle-roof  (p.  702  and 
Suppl.). 

Eddie  names  in  Ssem.  49b.  Sn.  177;  all  masculine,  some 
obviously  founded  on  personification.  Heaven  is  pictured  as 
a  husband,  embracing  the  female  earth ;  he  is  not  however 
admitted  into  the  circle  of  the  gods,  like  Ovpavos,  whereas  Earth 
does  stand  among  the  goddesses.  To  us  heaven  signifies  simply 
a  certain  space,  the  residence  of  gods.  Two  poetic  names  for 
it  have  reference  to  that  enigmatical  being  Mimir  (p.  379)  : 
hreggmimir,  rain-shedder,  from  hregg  imber ;  and  vetmimir, 
moistener  ?  conf.  vaata  humor. 

To  express  star,  constellation  (sidus),  our  older  speech,  in 
addition  to  stairno,  sterno,  steorra,  stiarna  (Gramm.  3,  392)  and 
OHG.  himiheichan  (Hymn.  4,  2),  has  a  symbolical  term,  OHG. 
himilzvngd,  Diut.  1,  526b  and  Gl.  Doc.  249  ;  OS.  himiltungal,  Hel. 
18,  2;  AS.  lieofontungol,  rodortungol ;  ON.  kimintungl.  Even 
the  simple  tungol  has  the  same  sense  in  AS.,  and  a  Gothic  gloss 
on  Gal.  4,  3,  gives  c  tuggl  astrum/  whilst  in  ON.  tungl  means  the 
moon.  This  neuter  noun  tungal,  tungol,  tungl,  is  no  doubt  from 
tunga  (lingua),  which  word  itself  appears  in  OHG.  himilzunga 
(Graff  5,  682)  :  the  moon  and  some  of  the  planets,  when  partially 
illuminated,  do  present  the  appearance  of  a  tongue  or  a  sickle, 
and  very  likely  some  cosmogonic  belief1  was  engrafted  on  that ; 
I  know  of  nothing  like  it  in  other  languages. 

All  the  heavenly  bodies  have  particular  spots,  seats,  chairs 
assigned  them,  which  they  make  their  abode  and  resting-place ; 
they  have  their  lodges  and  stages  (sterrono  girusti,  0.  i.  17,  10). 
This  holds   especially  of  the  sun,  who   daily  sinks  into  his   seat 


1  A  translation  of  the  tongue  to  heaven.  Or  was  the  twinkling  of  the  stars 
likened  to  a  tingling  [ziingeln,  a  quivering  nickering  motion  like  that  of  the 
tongue]?  The  moon's  steady  light  does  not  hear  that  out,  nor  the  OHG.  form 
without  the  I. 


SUN.      MOON,  701 

or  settle  (see  Chap.  XXIII)  j  but  similar  chairs  (KM.  25),  and 
a  seat-goino-  (sedelgang)  are  attributed  to  all  the  stars.  N.  Bth. 
210.  223  says,  Bootes  '  trago  ze  sedele  gauge/  and  'tiu  zeicheu 
ne  gant  nicht  in  sedeU  As  chair  and  table  are  things  closely 
connected,  the  stars  may  have  had  tables  of  their  own,  or,  what 
comes  to  the  same  thing,  may  have  been  regarded  as  tables  of 
the  sky ;  in  saying  which,  I  am  not  thinking  of  the  Egyptian 
sun-table,  but  more  immediately  of  the  '  bioffum  yppa/  sidera 
extollere,  of  the  Voluspa  (Saem.  lb),  the  three  creative  '  Bors 
synir '  having  set  up  as  it  were  the  tables  of  the  firmament : 
bioor  is  the  Goth,  biuds,  OHG.  piot  (pp.  38.  68).  As  the 
stationary  stars  had  chairs  and  tables,  the  planetary  ones,  like 
other  gods,  had  steeds  and  cars  ascribed  to  them  (see  Suppl.).1 

The  two  principal  stars  are  the  sun  and  moon,  whose  gender 
and  appellations  I  have  discussed  in  Gramm.  3,  349.  350  :  a  MHG. 
poet  calls  the  sun  '  daz  merere  Held,'  the  greater  light,  Fundgr. 
2,  12.  It  is  worth  mentioning  that  some  of  the  Eddie  names 
for  the  moon  are  still  preserved  in  patois  dialects  of  Up.  Germany. 
As  the  dwarfs  named  the  moon  skin  (jubar),  the  East  Franks 
call  her  schein  (Reinwald's  Henneb.  id.  2,  159).2  In  the  under- 
world the  moon  bore  the  name  of  hverfandi  hvel,  whirling  wheel, 
and  in  Styria  (esp.  the  Bruck  distr.)  she  is  gmoa-rat  (Sartori's 
Styria,  p.  82),  if  I  may  translate  that  by  rota  communis,  though 
it  may  perhaps  mean  gemeiner  rath  (vorrath),  a  common  pro- 
vision at  the  service  of  all  men.  That  the  sun  was  likened  to  a 
ivheel  of  fire,  and  the  element  blazing  out  of  him  was  represented 
iu  the  shape  of  a  wheel,  has  been  fully  shewn,  p.  620.  Tit.  2983 
speaks  of  the  sun's  wheel.  The  Edda  expressly  calls  the  sun 
fagrahvel,  fair  wheel,  Saem.  50a  Sn.  177.  223.  The  Norse 
rune  for  S  is  named  sol  sun,  the  AS.  and  OHG.  sigll,  sugil,  for 
which  I  have  proposed  (Andr.  p.  96)  the  readings  segil,  sagil, 
sahil,  and  may  now  bring  in  support  the  Goth.  so. nil  and 
Gr.  7/\to?.  But  the  Gothic  letter  Q  (=  HV)  is  the  very  symbol 
of  the   sun,  and  plainly   shews  the  shape  of  a  wheel ;  we  must 

1  Wagen  waggon  belongs  to  wcg  way,  as  carpentum  does  to  carpere  (viam) ;  the 
car  of  heaven  is  also  that  of  the  highest  god.  Otfr.  i.  5,  5.  says  of  the  herald  angel  : 
'  floug  er  sunnum  pad,  sterrono  strdza,  wega  wolkSno.'  The  Indians  also  call  the 
sky  path  of  clouds,  Somadeva  1,  17.     2,  157. 

2  So  in  Mod.  Gr.  <peyy6.pi  brilliance,  a  name  whose  surprising  identity  with  the 
OHi.fengari  (Sn.  177)  I  have  already  noticed  elsewhere. 


702  SKY  AND   STABS. 

therefore  suppose  it  to  have  been  the  initial  of  a  Goth, 
hvil  =  AS.  Itweol,  ON.  hvel.  From  fhvel'  was  developed  the 
Icel.  Idol,  Swed.  Dan.  hjul,  0.  Swed.  hiughl;  and  from  (hweol, 
hweohl ;  the  ~Eng\. wheel,  Nethl.  iviel,  and  Fria.fial  (Richth.  737). 
In  view  of  all  these  variations,  some  have  even  ventured  to 
bring  in  the  ON.  jol,  Swed.  Dan.  jul  (yule),  the  name  of  the 
winter  solstice,  and  fasten  upon  it  also  the  meaning  of  the  wheel; 
on  that  hypothesis  the  two  forms  must  have  parted  company 
very  early,  supposing  the  Gothic  name  of  November  jiuleis  to 
be  cognate.1  The  word  wheel  seems  to  be  of  the  same  root  as 
while,  Goth,  hveila,  OHG.  India,  i.e.  revolving  time;  conf.  Goth, 
hveila-hvairbs,  OHG.  huil-huerbic,  volubilis. 

Another  symbolic  epithet  of  the  sun  seems  to  be  of  great  age  : 
the  warlike  sentiment  of  olden  times  saw  in  him  a  gleaming 
circular  shield,  and  we  noticed  above  (p.  700)  that  the  sky  itself 
formed  a  sceldbyrig.  Notker  cap.  71,  finding  in  his  text  the 
words  'sinistra  clypeum  coruscantem  praeferebat  (Apollo),' 
translates  :  '  an  dero  winsterun  truog  er  einen  roten  shilt/  then 
adds  a  remark  of  his  own  :  '  wanda  selbiu  diu  sunna  einemo 
skilte  gelih  ist.'  In  German  law  and  German  poetry  we  catch 
the  glimmer  of  these  '  red  shields.'  Even  Opitz  2,  286  calls  the 
sun  '  the  beauteous  shield  of  heaven.' 

The  very  oldest  and  most  universal  image  connected  with 
the  sun  and  other  luminaries  seems  after  all  to  be  that  of  the 
eye.  Ancient  cosmogonies  represent  them  as  created  out  of  eyes. 
To  Persians  the  sun  was  the  eye  of  Ahuromazdao  (Ormuzd),  to 
Egyptians  the  right  eye  of  the  Demiurge,  to  the  Greeks  the 
eye  of  Zeus,  to  our  forefathers  that  of  Wuotan ;  and  a  fable  in 
the  Eclda  says  OSinn  had  to  leave  one  of  his  eyes  in  pledge 
with  Mimir,  or  hide  it  in  his  fountain,  and  therefore  he  is  pic- 
tured as  one-eyed.  In  the  one-eyed  Cyclop's  mouth  Ovid  puts 
the  words  (Met.  13,  851)  : 

Unum  est  in  media  lumen  mihi  fronte,  sed  instar 
ingentis  clypei ;  quid,  non  haec  omnia  magno 
sol  videt  e  coelo  ?     soli  tamen  unicus  orhis. 

1  The  Norse  initial  H  is  occasionally  dropt :  in  Icel.  both  hiula  and  jula 
stand  for  the  babbling  of  infants.  The  dialect  of  the  Saterland  Frisians  has  an 
actual  jule,  jole  (rota).  It  is  worthy  of  notice,  that  in  some  parts  of  Schleswig  they 
used  at  Christmas-time  to  roll  a  wheel  into  the  village,  and  this  was  called  '  at  trills 
juul  i  by,'  trundling  yule  into  town  ;  Outzen  sub.  v.  jol,  p.  145. 


SUN.      MOON.  703 

Like  the  giant,  the  god  (Wuotan,  the  sky)  has  but  one  eye, 
which  is  a  wheel  and  a  shield.  In  Beow.  1135  '  bedcen  Godes  ' 
is  the  sun,  the  great  celestial  sign.1  With  this  eye  the  divinity 
surveys  the  world,  and  nothing  can  escape  its  peering  all-piercing 
glance2;  all  the  stars  look  down  upon  men.3  But  the  ON.  poets, 
not  content  with  treating  suu,  moon  and  stars  as  eyes  of  heaven, 
invert  the  macrocosm,  and  call  the  human  eye  the  sun,  moon,  or 
star  of  the  skull,  forehead,  brows  and  eyelashes ;  they  even  call 
the  eye  the  shield  of  the  forehead :  a  confirmation  of  the  similar 
name  for  the  sun.  Another  title  they  bestow  on  the  sun  is 
'  gimsteinn  himius '  (gemma  coeli)  ;  so  in  AS.  '  heofones  gim,' 
Beow.  4142  and  '  wuldres  gim/  Andr.  1289  (see  Suppl.). 

And  not  only  is  the  sun  represented  as  the  god's  eye  looking 
down,  but  as  his  full  face  and  countenance;  and  that  is  how  we 
draw  his  picture  still.  Otfried  says  of  the  sun  being  darkened 
at  the  Saviour's  death,  iv.  33,  5  : 

In  ni  liaz  si  nuzzi  thaz  scouaz  annuzzi, 

ni  liaz  in  scinan  thuruh  thaz  ira  gisiuni  blidaz. 

The  Edda  speaks  of  the  sun  and  moon  as  brother  and  sister, 
children  of  a  mythic  Mundilfori.  Several  nations  beside  the 
Lithuanians  and  Arabs  (Gramm.  3,  351)  agree  with  us  in  ima- 
gining the  moon  masculine  and  the  sun  feminine.  The  Mexican 
Meztli  (luna)  is  a  man ;  the  Greenlanders  think  of  Anningat,  the 
moon,  as  pursuing  his  sister  Mallina,  the  sun.  An  Ital.  story 
(Pentam.  5,  5)  makes  Sole  and  Luna  children  of  Talia  (in 
Perrault  they  are  named  Jour  and  Aurore).  The  Slavs  make  the 
moon  masc,  a  star  fern.,  the  sun  neut. ;  thus  in  a  Servian  lay 
(Vuk  1,  134),  God  calls  the  sun  (suntse,  Euss.  solntse,  -tse  dim. 
suff.)  his  child  (chedo),  the  moon  (mesets)  being  its  brother,  and 
the  star  (zvezda)  its  sister.  To  think  of  the  stars  as  children  or 
young  suns  is  nothing  out  of  the  way.  AVolfram  says  in  Wh.  254, 
5:  'jungiu  siinnelin  ruohten  wahsen.' 

1  The  Servians  call  the  deepest  part  of  a  lake  oko  (eye),  Vuk's  Montenegro  62. 
-  When  the  Iliad  U,  344  says: 

ov8  clv  vui'i  5ta.opa.Koi  H(\i6s  irep, 
ovre  kclI  d^vrarov  iriXerai  <paos  daop&aatiai, 
it  resembles  the  lay  of  Wolfram  8,  28  : 

Obe  der  sunnen  dri  mit  blicke  wairen  (if  there  were  3  suns  looking), 
sin  inohten  zwischen  si  geliuhten  (they  could  not  shine  in  between). 
s  Upeo-^to-Tov  do-rpup  vvkt6s  6<p0a\fi6s,  Aesch.  Sept.  c.  Th.  390. 


704  SKY  AND   STARS. 

Down  to  recent  times,  our  people  were  fond  of  calling  the 
sun  and  moon  frmi  sonne  and  herr  mmid}  Aventin  19b  :  'franw 
Sonne  geht  zu  rast  und  gnaden.'  In  the  country  between  the 
Inn  and  Salzach  they  say  '  der  her  Man/  meaning  no  more  than 
simply  moon,  Schm.  2,  230.  582.  Gesner  in  Mithrid.,  Tur.  1555, 
p.  28  :  'audio  veteres  Germanos  Lunura  quoque  deum  coluisse  et 
appellasse  hermon,  id  est  dominum  Lunum,  quod  forte  parum 
animadvertentes  aliqui  ad  Hermann,  i.e.  Mercurium  trans- 
tulerunt;  '  this  last  guess  has  missed  the  mark.  Hulderic.  Eyben 
de  titulo  nobilis,  Helmst.  1677.  4,  p.  136:  'qua  etiam  ratione 
in  veteri  idololatrico  luna  non  domina,  dominus  appellatur  : 

bis  gottwillkommen,  neiier  mon,  holder  herr, 
mack  mir  meines  geldes  mehr  ! 3 

Also  in  Nicolaus  Magni  de  Gawe  (Superst.  E,  10):  f  vetulam 
novi,  quae  credidit  solem  esse  deanv,  vocans  earn  sanctam  domi- 
nam;'  and  earlier  still  in  Eligius  (Sup.  A):  'nullus  dominos 
solem  aut  lunam  vocet/  3 

In  these  invocations  lingers  the  last  vestige  of  a  heathen 
worships  perhaps  also  in  the  s-onnenlehn,  sun-fief  (RA.  278)  ?  I 
have  spoken  on  bowing  to  the  sun,  p.  31,  and  cursing  by  him, 
'  der  sunnen  haz.  vara/  p.  19,  where  he  is  made  equal  to  a  deity.4 
In  the  same  way  the  knees  were  bent  and  the  head  bared  to  the 
new  moon  (Sup,  E,  11).  In  taking  an  oath  the  fingers  were 
extended  toward  the  sun  (Weisth.  3,  349) ;  and  even  Tacitus  in 
Ann.  13,  55  relates  of  Bojocalus  :  'solem  respiciens  et  cetera 
sidera  vocans,  quasi  coram  interrogabat,  vellentne  intueri  inane 
solum7  (see  Suppl.). 

That  to  our  remote  ancestry  the  heavenly  bodies,  especially 
the  sun  and  moon,  were  divine  beings,  will  not  admit  of  any 
doubt.  Not  only  do  such  symbolic  expressions-  as  '  face,  eye, 
tongue,  wheel,  shield,  table,  car '  bring  us  face  to  face  with  a 
vivid  personification ;  we  have  also  seen  how  significantly  Caesar 

1  Frau  Sunne  (Gorres  Meisterl.  184).  Hence  in  O.Fr.  Solans,,  without  the 
article,  Bekker  on  Ferabras  p.  163, 

-  His  authority  is  Dynkelspuhl  tract.  1,  praec.  1,  p.  59.  Is.  this  the  Nicolaus 
Dinkelspuel  in  Jocher  ? 

3  Conf.  the  wind  addressed  as  lord,  p.  631 ;  and  dobropan,  p.  130  note. 

*  Some  would  trace  the  name  of  Salzwedel,  Soltwedel  in  the  Altmark  to  heathen 
sun-worship,  (Ledebur's  Allg.  arch.  14,  370.  Temme's  Altmark  p.  29),  though  the 
first  syll.  plainly  means  salt ;  '  wedel '  will  be  explained  when  we  come  to  the  moon. 


SUN.      MOON.  705 

couples  together  Sol,  Vulcanus  and  Luna,  p.  103.  conf.  p.  602. 
As  Sol  is  reckoned  among  asins  in  the  Edda  (Sn.  39),  and  is 
sister  to  Mdni  (Sn.  12),  this  last  has  claims  to  an  equal  rank. 
Yet  Ssem.  lb  calls  Sol  '  sinni  Mana,'  companion  of  the  moon, 
sinni  being  the  Goth,  gasinpja,  OHG.  kasindeo,  sindo  >  and  it  is 
remarkable  that  the  Merseburg  Lay  gives  the  divine  Sunna  not 
a  companion  brother,  but  a  sister  Sindgund  (supra  p.  308),  whose 
name  however  still  expresses  attendance,  escort;1  may  she  have 
been  a  morning  or  evening  star  ?  We  should  have  to  know  first, 
what  distinction  a  dim  remote  antiquity  made  between  s&uil  and 
sunno  in  respect  of  gender  and  mythical  use ;  if  '  sauil,  sagil/  like 
sol  and  77X109,  was  masc,  then  Sunna  and  Sindgund  might  be 
imagined  as  female  moons  like  Luna  and  SeXijvr),  yet  sol  is  always 
fern,  in  ON.,  and  our  sunne  so  late  as  in  MHG.  strangely  wavers 
between  the  two  sexes,  Gramm.  3,  350  (see  Suppl.). 

Be  that  as  it  may,  we  have  a  right  to  add  in  support  of  the 
sun's  divinity,  that  l  she '  is  described  like  other  gods  (pp.  17.  26. 
324),  as  blithe,  sweet  and  gracious.  0.  iv.  33,  6  speaks  of  her 
'  gisiuni  blidaz,  thes  sih  ioh  worolt  frewita/  whereof  the  world 
had  aye  rejoiced ;  and  a  13th  cent,  poem  (Zeitschr.  f.  d.  alt.  1, 
493-4)  thus  describes  the  greetings  addressed  to  her : 

Wol  dir  frouive  Sunne  I  'Hail  to  thee,  Lady  Sun  ! 

du  bist  al  der  werlt  wunne  !  Art  all  the  world's  delight.' 

so  ir  die  Sunnen  vro  sehet,  When  ye  see  the  sun  glad, 

schcenes  tages  ir  ir  jehet,  The  fair  day  to  her  ye  ascribe, 

der  eren  ir  der  Sunnen  jehefc,  To  her  ye  give  the  honour, 

swenn  ir  si  in  liehtem  schine  sehet.  Whenever  ye  see,,  etc. 

Other  passages  in  point  are  reserved  for  next  chapter. 

The  personality  of  the  sun  and  moon  shews  itself  moreover  in 
a  fiction  that  has  wellnigh  gone  the  round  of  the  world.  These 
two,  in  their  unceasing  unflagging  career  through  the  void  of 
heaven,  appear  to  be  in  flight,  avoiding  some  pursuer.  A  pair  of 
wolves  are  on  their  track,  Shall  dogging  the  steps  of  the  sun, 
Uati  of  the  moon ;  they  come  of  a  giant  race,  the  mightiest  of 
whom,  Mdnagarmr  (moon-dog),  apparently  but  another  name  for 
Hati,  is  sure  some  day  to  overtake  and  siualloiv  the  moon.     How 

1  Conf.  sunnagahts,  sungiht  (solis  iter),  p.  617  n.,  and   sunnan  s\5fcct  (iter), 
Caedm.  182,  25. 


706  SKY  AND   STAKS. 

extensively  this  tradition  prevailed,  has  already  been  shewn 
(pp.  244-5)  .l  A  parhelion  or  mock-sun  (vadersol)  is  in  Swed. 
called  solvarg,  solid/,  sun-wolf,  Hire's  Dial.  lex.  165. 

One  of  the  most  terrific  phenomena  to  heathens  was  an  eclipse 
of  the  sun  or  moon,  which  they  associated  with  a  destruction  of 
all  things  and  the  end  of  the  world ;  they  fancied  the  monster 
had  already  got  a  part  of  the  shining  orb  between  his  jaws,  and 
they  tried  to  scare  him  away  by  loud  cries.  This  is  what  Eligius 
denounces  (Superst.  A)  :  '  nullus,  si  quando  luna  obscuratur, 
vociferare  praesumat ; '  it  is  the  cry  of  '  vince  luna  ! ' 3  that  the 
Indicul.  paganiar.  means  in  cap.  21  de  defectione  lunae,  and 
Burchard  (Sup.  C,  193b)  by  his  '  clamoribus  aut  auxilio  splendorem 
lunae  deficientis  restaurare'  The  Norse  writings,  while  minutely 
describing  the  threatened  deglutition,  make  no  allusion  to  the 
shouting :  it  may  have  been  more  customary  with  Celts  and 
Romans  than  with  Teutons.  A  5th  cent,  father,  St.  Maximus  of 
Turin,  in  a  Homilia  de  defectu  lunae,  preaches  thus  :  '  Cum  ante 
dies  plerosque  de  vestrae  avaritiae  cupiditate  pulsaveritn,  ipsa  die 
circa  vesperam  tanta  vociferatio  populi  exstitit,  ut  irx*eligiositas 
ejus  penetraret  ad  coelum.  Quod  quum  requirerem,  quid  sibi 
clamor  hie  velit,  dixerunt  mihi,  quod  lahoranti  lunae  vestra  vocife- 
ratio subveniret,  et  defectum  ejus  suis  clamoribus  adjuvaret.' s  The 
same  '  laborans '  (in  distress)  is  used  by  Juvenal  6,  442  : 

Jam  nemo  tubas,  nemo  aera  fatiget ; 
una  lahoranti  poterit  succurrere  lunae* 

I  may  safely  assume  that  the  same  superstitious  notions  and 
practices  attend  eclipses  among  nations  ancient  and  modern.5 
The  Indian  belief  is,  that  a  serpent  eats  up  the  sun  and  moon 
when  they  are  eclipsed  (Bopp's  Gloss.  148a),  or  a  demon  (rahus) 
devours  them  (Bopp's  Nalas,  pp.  153.  272.     Somadeva  2, 1 5. 187). 

1  I  add  from  Fischart's  Garg.  130b:  'sari  den  wolf  dies  mons.'  Rabelais  1,  11 
has :  la  lune  des  loups.  In  old  calendars,  eclipses  are  represented  by  two  dragons 
holding  the  sun  and  moon  in  their  mouths,  Mone's  Untersuch.  p.  183. 

2  This  would  be  in  OHG.  '  Karih  mano ! '  in  Goth.  '  jiukai  mena  ! '  but  we 
find  nothing  of  the  kind  even  later. 

3  Ducange  6,  1618  quotes  the  passage  sub  v.  vinceluna  ;  but  the  reprint  of  the 
Horn.  Maximi  taurin.  '  De  defectu  lunae '  (in  Mabillon's  Mus.  Ital.,  torn.  i.  pars  2, 
pp.  19.  20)  has  it  not. 

*  Conr.  Tac.  Annal.  1,  28  and  Boeth.  de  consol.  4  metr.  5 :  '  lassant  crebris 
pulsibus  aera.' 

5  It  is  only  among  Greeks  and  Slavs  that  I  have  not  come  across  them. 


ECLIPSES.  707 

To  this  day  the  Hindus  consider  that  a  giant  lays  hold  of  the 
luminaries,  and  tries  to  swallow  them  (Broughton's  Pop.  poetry 
of  Hind.  p.  131).  The  Chinese  call  the  solar  eclipse  zhishi  (solis 
devoratio),  the  lunar  yueshi  (iunae  devoratio),  and  ascribe  them 
both  to  the  machinations  of  a  dragon.  Nearly  all  the  populations 
of  Northern  Asia  hold  the  same  opinion  :  the  Tchuvashes  use 
the  phrase  '  vubur  siat/  daemon  comedit  (Guil.  Schott  de  lingua 
Tschuw,  p.  5)  ;  the  Finns  of  Europe  have  a  similar  belief,  the 
Esthonians  say  the  sun  or  moon  '  is  being  eaten/  and  formerly 
they  sought  to  hinder  it  by  conjuring  spells  (Thorn.  Hiiirn,  Mitau 
1791  p.  39).  The  Lithuanians  think  a  demon  (Tiknis  or  Tiklis) 
attacks  the  chariot  of  the  sun,  then  darkness  arises,  and  all 
creatures  are  in  fear  lest  the  dear  sun  be  worsted ;  it  has  been 
staved  off  for  a  long  time,  but  it  must  come  to  that  at  the  end 
of  the  world  (Narbutt  1,  127.  142).  In  eclipses  of  the  moon,  the 
Greenlanders  carry  boxes  and  kettles  to  the  roofs  of  their  houses, 
and  beat  on  them  as  hard  as  they  can  (Cranz's  Gronland  3,  294) . 
An  English  traveller  says  of  the  Moors  in  Africa  :  When  the  sun's 
eclipse  was  at  its  height,  we  saw  the  people  running  about  as  if 
mad,  and  firing  their  rifles  at  the  sun,  to  frighten  the  monster  who 
they  supposed  was  wishing  to  devour  the  orb  of  day.  The  plains 
and  heights  of  Tripoli  resounded  with  the  death- dirge  (the  cry 
1  wulliali  wu  ! '),  and  the  same  all  along  the  coast.  The  women 
hanged  copper  vessels  together,  making  such  a  din  that  it  was 
heard  leagues  away  (see  Sappl.). l 

A  Mongolian  myth  makes  out  that  the  gods  determined  to 
punish  Arakho  for  his  misdeeds,  but  he  hid  so  effectually,  that 
no  one  could  find  out  his  lurkingplace.  They  therefore  asked 
the  sun,  who  gave  an  unsatisfactory  answer;  but  when  they 
asked  the  moon,  she  disclosed  his  whereabouts.  So  Arakho  was 
dragged  forth  and  chastised  ;  in  revenge  of  which,  he  pursues  both 
sun  and  moon,  and  whenever  he  comes  to  hand-grips  with  one  of 
them,  an  eclipse  occurs.  To  help  the  lights  of  heaven  in  their 
sad  plight,  a  tremendous  uproar  is  made  with  musical  and  other 
instruments,   till   Arakho    is    scared    away.2     Here  a   noticeable 

1  Morgenblatt  1817  p.  159a ;  conf.  Niebuhr's  Beschr.  Arab.  119.  120. 

2  Benj.  Bergmanii's  Nomad,  streifereien  3,  41.  Ace.  to  Georgii  Alpbab.  tibe- 
tan.  p.  189,  it  is  monsters  called  Tracehn,  with  their  upper  parts  shaped  like  men, 
and  the  lower  like  snakes,  that  lie  in  wait  for  the  sun  and  moon.  [South  of  L. 
Baikal  it  is  the  king  of  hell  that  tries  to  swallow  the  moon.—  Trass.] 


708  SKY  AND   STAES. 

feature  is  the  inquiry  made  of  the  sun  and  moon,  who  overlook 
the  world  and  know  all  secrets  (Castren's  Myth.  62) .  So  in  our 
fairytales  the  seeker  asks  of  the  sun,  moon  and  stars  (Kinderm. 
no.  25.  88 ;  conf.  3,  218-9),  some  of  whom  are  found  helpful  and 
sympathizing,  others  cruel  and  cannibal  (Vuk  no.  10).  In  Ser- 
vian songs  the  moon  and  the  morning  star  (danitsa)  hold  a  colloquy 
on  the  affairs  of  men  (Yuk  3,  3).  During  an  eclipse  of  the  sun 
(I  don't  know  whether  of  the  moon  also)  our  people  cover  the 
wells  up,  else  their  water  would  turn  impure,  Superst.  I,  589. 

Is  there  a  trace  of  moon-worship  to  be  found  in  the  fact  that 
people  had  an  image  of  the  moon  carved  on  rocks  and  stones  that 
marked  a  boundary?  In  EA.  542  an  Alamannic  doc.  of  1155  is 
given,  which  traces  the  custom  all  the  way  up  to  king  Dagobert. 
In  Westphalian  docs,  as  late  as  the  17th  cent.  I  find  halfmonds- 
schnad-stones,1  unless  the  word  halfmoon  here  means  something 
else. 

In  Bavaria  there  is  a  Mondsee,  OHG.  Mdninseo  (lunae  lacus), 
in  Austria  a  Mdnhart  (lunae  silva,  tj  Aovva  v\w  in  Ptolemy);3  we 
may  safely  credit  both  with  mythic  associations. 

As  time  is  more  easily  reckoned  by  the  changes  of  the  moon, 
which  visibly  mark  off  the  week  (p.  126-7),  than  by  the  sun,  our 
ancestors  seem  to  have  had,  beside  the  solar  year,  a  lunar  one 
for  common  use,  whose  thirteen  months  answered  to  the  twelve 
of  the  solar  year.  The  recurring  pei'iod  of  from  29  to  30  days 
was  therefore  called  menops,  mdnod,  from  mena,  mano.  Hence 
also  it  was  natural  to  count  by  nights,  not  days :  c  nee  dierum 
numerum  sed  noctium  computant,  sic  constituunt,  sic  condicunt, 
nox  ducere  diem  videtur/  Tac.  Germ.  c.  1.1.  And  much  in  the 
same  way,  the  year  was  named  by  its  winter,  which  holds  the 
same  relation  to  summer  as  night  to  day.  A  section  of  time  was 
measured  by  the  number  of  se'ennights,  fortnights,  months  or 
winters  it  contained. 

And  that  is  also  the  reason  why  the  phases  of  the  moon  had 
such  a  commanding  influence  on  important  undertakings.  They 
are  what  Jornandes  cap.  11  calls  lunae  commoda  incommodaque. 
It  is  true,  the  performance  of  any  kind  of  work  was  governed  by 

1  Defence  of  Wulften  castle,  Vienna  1766.  suppl.  p.  71-2.  162. 

2  Can  Manhart  have  come  from  Maginhart  ?     Helbl.  13,  190  has  Meinharts- 
berc. 


PHASES   OF   THE   MOON.  709 

the  day  and  solar  time,  whether  of  warriors  (RA.  297),  or  of 
servants  (3.53),  or  of  tribunals  especially  (814-6).  If,  on  the 
other  hand,  some  new  and  weighty  matter  was  to  be  taken  in 
hand,  they  consulted  the  moon;  which  does  not  mean  that  the 
consultation  was  held  or  the  action  begun  in  the  night,  but  on 
those  days  whose  nights  had  an  auspicious  phase  of  the  moon : 
'  coeunt,  nisi  quid  fortuitum  et  subitum  incident,  certis  dlebus, 
quum  ant  inchoatur  luna  aid  impletur ;  nam  agendis  rebus  hoc 
auspicatissimum  initium  credunt/  Tac.  Germ.  11.  So  in  Tac. 
Ann.  1,  50  a  nox  illunis  is  chosen  for  a  festival. 

Now  the  moon  presents  two  distinct  appearances,  one  each 
fortnight,  which  are  indicated  in  the  passage  just  quoted  :  either 
she  is  beginning  her  course,  or  she  has  attained  her  full  orb  of 
light.  From  the  one  point  she  steadily  increases,  from  the  other 
she  declines.  The  shapes  she  assumes  between  are  not  so  sharply 
defined  to  the  sense. 

Her  invisibility  lasts  only  the  one  night  between  the  disappear- 
ance of  her  last  quarter  and  the  appearance  of  her  first,  at  new- 
moon  (conjunction  of  sun  and  moon)  ;  in  like  manner,  full-moon 
lasts  from  the  moment  she  attains  perfect  sphericity  till  she  loses 
it  again.  But  in  common  parlance  that  '  nox  illunis  '  is  included 
in  the  new-moon,  and  similarly  the  decline  is  made  to  begin 
simultaneously  with  the  full. 

♦The  Gothic  for  TravaeXvvov  wa3  fullijjs  m.,  or fullip  n.  (gen.  pi. 
fulli]?e),  from  which  we  may  also  infer  a  niujips  for  vov^r/vla. 
Curiously,  this  last  is  rendered  fulli]?  in  Col.  2,  16,  which  to  my 
mind  is  a  mere  oversight,  and  not  to  be  explained  by  the  supposi- 
tion that  the  Goths  looked  upon  full-moon  as  the  grander  festival. 
The  AS.  too  must  have  called  full-moon  fi/Hecf,  to  judge  by  the 
iiame  of  the  month  '  winterfylliS,'  which,  says  Beda  (de  temp, 
rat.  13),  was  so  named  'ab  hieme  et  plenilunio';  but  the  later 
writers  have  only  niwe  mona  and  full  mona.  So  there  may  have 
been  an  OHG.  niuwid  and  fullid,  though  we  can  only  lay  our 
finger  on  the  neuters  niunulni  and  folmam,1  to  which  Graff  2,  222 
adds  a  niwilune;  MHG.  daz  niumcene  and  volmoene,  the  last  in 
Trist.  9464.  11086.  11513  (see  SuppL). 

1  Also  niuwer  mano,  N.  ps.  80,  4.  foller  mano,  pa.  88,  38.  In  Cap.  107-8  he 
uses  vol  and  wan  (empty),  and  in  Cap.  147  hurnalu,  lialbscafti/j  and  J'ol ;  conf.  Hel. 
Ill,  8  wanod  olitho  wahsid. 


710  SKY  AND   STAES. 

Iii  ON.  the  two  periods  are  named  by  the  neuters  '  ny  ok  nicf,' 
habitually  alliterating ;  ny  answers  to  novilunium,  it  signifies  the 
new  light,  and  nicT  the  declining,  dwindling,  from  the  lost  root 
nrSa  naft,  from  which  also  come  the  adv.  nrSr  (deorsum)  and  the 
noun  na'S  (quies,  OHG.  ginada).  So  that  ny  lasts  from  the  begin- 
ning of  the  first  quarter  to  the  full,  and  ni3  from  the  decrease  of 
the  full  to  the  extinction  of  light  in  the  last  quarter.  The  two 
touch  one  another  at  the  border-line  between  the  faintest  streaks 
of  waxing  and  of  waning  brightness.  But  nrS  meant  especially 
the  absence  of  moonlight  (interlunium),  and  nrSamyrkr  total 
darkness  (luna  silens).  Kind  gods  created  these  for  men  of  old 
to  tell  the  year  by  :  '  ny  ok  nicf  skopo  nyt  regin  oldum  at  ar-tali,'1 
Ssem.  34a.  '  Mani  styrirgongu  tungls,  oc  rae'Sr  nyjum  oc  nicfum,' 
Sn.  12,  Mani  steers  the  going  of  the  moon,  and  rules  new  moons 
and  full.  Probably  even  here  personification  comes  into  play, 
for  in  Voluspa  11  (Sasm.  2b)  Nyji  and  Niffi  are  dwarfs,  i.e.  spirits 
of  the  sky,  who  are  connected,  we  do  not  exactly  know  how,  with 
those  lunar  phases  ny  ok  niS.3  Of  changeful  things  it  is  said  ( J>at 
gengr  eptir  nyum  ok  niSum/  res  alternatur  et  subit  lunae  vices. 
O.  Swed.  laws  have  the  formula  '  ny  oc  nicfar,'  for  '  at  all  times, 
under  any  phase/  Gutalagh  p.  108.  So  '  i  ny  ok  nicTa,'  Sudh. 
bygn.  32.  Upl.  vidh.  28,  1.  Vestg.  thiuv.  22,  1;  but  here  the 
second  word  seems  to  have  given  up  its  neut.  form,  and  passed 
into  a  personal  and  masc.  Mod.  Swed.  has  ' ny  och  nedan'*; 
Dan.  '  ny  og  nee,'  '  det  gaaer  efter  nye  og  ncee'  '  hverken  i  nye  eller 
nee/  i.e.  never,  fnaar  nyet  tandes/  quando  nova  luna  incenditur; 
this  nee  was  in  0.  Dan.  ned,  need.  To  the  niSamyrkr  above 
answers  a  Swed.  nedmork,  pitchdark.  The  Norse  terminology 
differs  in  so  far  from  the  H.  Germ.,  that  it  expresses  the  total 
obscuration  by  nrS,  while  we  designate  it  by  neumond  (i.e.  ny)  ; 
with  us  new-moon  is  opposed  to  full-moon,  with  the  Scandina- 
vians niS  to  ny,  each  of  them  standing  for  one  half  of  the  moon's 
course.  Since  a  mention  of  the  first  and  last  quarters  has  come 
into  use,  full-moon  and  new-moon  signify  simply  the  points  of 
fullness  and  vacancy  that  lie  between ;  and  now  the  Swedes  and 
Danes  have  equally  adopted  a  fullmane,  fuldmaane,  as  counter- 

1  Ace.  to  Alvismal,  the  alfar  call  the  moon  artali  (OHG.  jarzalo  ?),  Sasm.  49b. 

2  Comp.  with  '  ni'S  ok  nf  '  the  Gr.  £vq  km.  via. 


PHASES    OF   THE    MOON.  711 

part  to  nymane,  nymaane,  whereby  the  old  '  ned,  nae '  has  become 
superfluous,  and  the  meaning  of  cny '  somewhat  modified.1 

Though  the  OHG.  remains  do  not  offer  us  a  neuter  niuivi,2  such 
a  form  may  have  existed,  to  match  the  Noi'se  ny,  seeing  that  the 
Miilhausen  statute  of  the  13th  cent.  (Grasshof  p.  252),  in  granting 
the  stranger  that  would  settle  in  the  town  a  month's  time  for  the 
attempt,  says  '  ein  nuwe  und  ein  wedil,  daz  sint  vier  wTochin : ' 
that  Martin  von  Amberg's  Beichtspiegel  has  '  das  vol  und  das 
neu,'  Dasypodius  still  later  '  das  newe,  interlunium,'  and  Tobler 
331wdas  neu,  der  wachsende  mond.'  For  the  waning  moon, 
Tobler  404b gives  '  nid  si  gehender  (going  down)/  which  reminds 
one  of  nicf;  otherwise  '  der  schwined  mo,'  OHG.  'diu  suinenta 
rnauin,'  N.  ps.  88,  38,  its  opposite  being  '  diu  folia'  (see  Suppl.). 

I  have  yet  to  bring  forward  another  expression  of  wide  range 
and  presumably  old,  which  is  used  by  turns  for  one  and  another 
phase  of  the  moon's  light,  oftenest  for  plenilunium,  but  some- 
times also  for  interlunium  :  MHG.  wedel :  '  im  was  unkunt  des 
manen  wedel'  Martina  181c;  NHG.  ivadel,  wadel,  but  more  among 
the  common  folk  and  in  the  chase  than  in  written  speech.  Pic- 
torius  480,  Staid.  2,  456,  Tobler  441b  have  wedel,  ivadel  full-moon, 
wadeln  to  become  full-moon,  when  her  horns  meet,  i.e.,  when  she 
completes  her  circle.  Keisersperg's  Postille  138b :  '  ietz  so  ist  er 
niiw,  ietz  fol,  ietz  alt,  ietz  die  erst  qvart,  ietz  die  ander  qvart, 
ietz  ist  es  wedel ' ;  here  full-moon  and  wedel  are  not  so  clearly 
defined  as  in  another  passage  of  Keisersperg  (Oberlin  1957) 
on  March :  '  wan  es  ist  sein  wedel,  sein  volmon.'  In  Dasy- 
podius :  '  plenilunium,  der  volmon,  wadel.' s  The  Germans  in 
Bohemia  commonly  use  ivadel  for  full-moon,  and  Schm.  4,  22 
produces  other  notable  authorities.  But  the  word  is  known  in 
Lower  Germany  too ;  Bohmer's  Kantzow  p.  2GG  spells  it  ivadel,4 

1  Modern  Icel.  names  are:  Many  (black  new,  interlunium)  ;  prim  (nova  hum). 
also  n5'qveikt  tungl ;  h&lfvaxid  tungl  (first  quarter);  fullt  tungl  (plenilunium); 
halfprotid  t&ngl  (hist  quarter).  Here  too  the  old  names  have  gone  out  of  use, 
'  Many  '  replaces  ni'5,  and  'prim  '  ny. 

-  Notker's  Capella  100  has  '  manen  niwi '  fern. 

3  Yet  under  luna  he  has  '  plenilunium  vollinon  oder  brurh,'1  and  the  same  under 
bruch  (=abbruch)  a  breaking  off,  falling  off,  defectus ;  which  confirms  my  view, 
that  we  reckon  the  wane  from  full-moon  itself  (Wtb.  2,  408).  Ace.  to  Muchar's 
Noricum  2,  36  the  waxing  and  waning  moon  are  called  the  gesunde  and  the  kranke 
man  (well  and  ill). 

4  Following  Tacitus,  he  says,  the  Germani  always  chose  either  new  or  full-moon, 
for  after  the  wadel  they  thought  it  unlucky.  Wadel  then  comprehends  the  two  phases 
of  new  and  full  moon,  but  seems  to  exclude  those  of  the  first  and  last  quarter. 

VOL.    II.  T 


712  SKY   AND    STARS. 

the  Brem.  wtb.  5,  166  '  waal,  vollmoncl '  (like  aal  for  adel,  a 
swamp),  and  Kilian  f  waedel,  senium  lunae/  From  the  phrase- 
ology of  Superst.  I,  973  one  would  take  wadel  to  be  a  general 
name  for  the  moon,  whether  waxing  or  waning,  for  '  the  bad  wadel ' 
[new-moon]  surely  implies  a  good  wadel  favourable  to  the  oper- 
ation. Now  wadel,  ivedel  means  that  which  wags  to  and  fro,  and 
is  used  of  an  animal's  tail,  flabrum,  flabellutn,  cauda ;  it  must 
either,  like  zunga  and  tungl,  refer  to  the  tip  or  streak  of  light  in  the 
crescent  moon,  or  imply  that  the  moon  cruises  about  in  the  sky.1 
The  latter  explanation  fits  a  passage  in  the  AS.  poem  on  Finnes- 
burg  fight,  line  14  :  '  mi  seined  bes  m6na  ivacFol  under  wolcnum/ 
i.e.,  the  moon  walking  [wading]  among  the  clouds,  waSol  being 
taken  for  the  adj.  vagus,  vagabundus.  Probably  even  the  OHGr. 
wadal  was  applied  to  the  moon,  as  an  adj.  vagus  (Graff  1,  776), 
or  as  a  subst.  flabellum  (1,  662).  But,  as  this  subst.  not  only 
signifies  flabellum  [whisk],  but  fasciculus  [wisp],  the  name  may 
ultimately  be  connected  with  the  bundle  of  brushwood  that  a 
myth  (to  be  presently  noticed)  puts  in  the  spots  of  the  full-moon 
(see  Suppl.). 

Lith.  jdunas  menu  novilunium,  pilnatis  plenilunium,  puspilis 
first  quarter,  pusdylis  last  qu.,  delczia  luna  decrescens,  lit.  trunca, 
worn  away,  tarpijos  interlunium  (from  tarp,  inter)  ;  puspilis 
means  half-full,  pusdylis  half-worn,  from  the  same  root  as  delczia 
truncation,  decrease.  There  is  also  a  '  menu  tusczias,'  vacant 
moon ;  and  the  sickle-shaped  half-moon  is  called  dalgakynos. 
Lettic  :  jauns    mehnes  novilun.,   pilna   melines  plenilun.,  mehnes 

punte  luna  accrescens,  wezza  melines 2  luna  senescens. Finnic  : 

uusikuu  novil.j  taysikuu  plenil.,  yliJcuu  luna  accr.,  alakuu  deer., 
formed    with  uusi  novus,  tiiysi  plenus,  yli   superus,  ala  inferus, 

which  supports  our  explanation  of  the  ON.  niS. The  Servians 

divide  thus  :  miyena  novil.,  mladina  luna  accr.,  lit.  young,  puna 
plenil.,  ushtap  luna  deer.  Sloven  mlay,  ml  ad  novil.,  pohia  plenil., 
ship  plenil.,  but  no  doubt  also  luna  deer.,  from  shipati  to  nip, 
impair.     Pol.  noiv  and  Boh.   nowy  novil.,  Pol.   pelnia  and  Boh. 

i  The  Engl,  waddle,  which  is  the  same  word,  would  graphically  express  the 
oscillation  of  the  (visible)  moon  from  side  to  side  of  her  path  ;  and  if  icedel  meant 
that  oscillation,  it  would  apply  equally  to  new  and  to  full  moon.— Trans. 

2  Wezza  mehnes,'  the  old  moon,  In  a  Scotch  ballad  :  '  I  saw  the  new  moon  late 
yestreen  wi'  he  auld  moon  in  her  aim.'  Jamieson  1,  159.  Percy  1,  78.  Halliwell 
pp.  167-8. 


PHASES    OF   THE    MOON.  713 

auplnelc  plenil.  Here  we  see  another  instance  of  the  ruder  races 
having  more  various  and  picturesque  names  for  natural  pheno- 
mena, which  among  the  more  cultivated  are  replaced  by  abstract 
and  uniform  ones.  No  doubt  Teutonic  speech  iu  its  various 
branches  once  possessed  other  names  beside  n iff  and  wadel. 

Tacitus  merely  tells  us  that  the  Germani  held  their  assemblies 
at  new  moon  or  full  moon,  not  that  the  two  periods  were  thought 
equally  favourable  to  all  enterprises  without  distinction.  We  may 
guess  that  some  matters  were  more  suitable  to  new  moon,  others 
to  full ;  the  one  would  inspire  by  its  freshness,  the  other  by  its 
fulness.1 

Caesar  1,  50  reports  to  us  the  declaration  of  wise  women  in  the 
camp  of  Ariovistus  :  fnon  esse  fas  Germanos  superare,  si  ante 
novam  lunam  proelio  contendissent.'  A  happy  issue  to  the  battle 
was  expected,  at  all  events  in  this  particular  instance,  only  if  it 
were  fought  at  new  moon. 

As  far  as  I  can  make  out  from  later  remnants  of  German 
superstition,  with  which  that  of  Scotland  should  be  compared 
(Chambers  35b.  36a),  new-moon,  addressed  by  way  of  distinction 
as  '  gracious  lord '  p.  704,  is  an  auspicious  time  for  commence- 
ments properly  speaking.  Marriages  are  to  be  concluded  in  it, 
houses  to  be  built :  e  novam  lunam  observasti  pro  domo  facienda 
aut  conjugiis  sociandis  '  (Sup.  C,  193b),  the  latter  just  the  same 
in  Esth.  Sup.  no.  1.  Into  a  new  house  you  must  move  at  new 
moon  (Sup.  I,  429),  not  at  the  wane  (498)  ;  count  money  by  the 
new  moon  (223),  she  will  increase  your  store  (conf.  p.  704)  ;  on 
the  other  hand,  she  loves  not  to  look  into  an  empty  purse  (107). 
All  through,  the  notion  is  that  money,  married  bliss  and  house 
stores  will  thrive  and  grow  with  the  growing  light.  So  the  hair 
and  nails  are  cut  at  new-moon  (French  Sup.  5.  Schiitze's  Hoist. 
id.  3,  68),  to  give  them  a  good  chance  of  growing;  cattle  are 
weaned  in  the  waxing  light  (I,  757),  in  the  waning  they  would 
get  lean;  Lith.  Sup.  11  says,  let  girls  be  weaned  at  the  wane, 

1  New-moon  was  peculiarly  holy  to  ancient  peoples,  thus  to  the  Greeks  the  eurj 
Kai  via,  which  was  also  expressed  by  iv-rj  alone  =  Sanskr.  anni  (uew  inoon).  The 
return  of  Odysseus  was  expected  at  that  season,  Od.  14,  102  : 

tou  ixkv  (pOivovros  /xrivos,  tou  b"  lara^ivoLO. 

Rama's  birth  is  fixed  for  the  new-moon  after  vernal  equinox  (Schlegel  on  Rainav. 
i.  19,  2).    Probably  bealteinc  were  lighted  at  this  new-moon  of  spring. 


714  SKY  AND    STABS. 

boys  at  the  full,  probably  to  give  the  one  a  slim  elegant  figure, 
and  the  other  a  stout  and  strong.  Healing  herbs  and  pure  dew- 
are  to  be  gathered  at  new-moon  (tou  an  ties  mdnen  niwi  gelesen, 
N.  Cap.  100,  conf.  25),  for  then  they  are  fresh  and  unalloyed. 
When  it  says  in  I,  764  that  weddings  should  take  place  at  full- 
moon,  and  in  238  that  a  new  dwelling  should  be  entered  with  the 
waxing  or  full  moon,  this  full-moon  seems  to  denote  simply  th« 
utmost  of  the  growing  light,  without  the  accessory  notion  of 
incipient  decline.  If  our  ancestors  as  a  rule  fought  their  battles 
at  new-moon,  they  must  have  had  in  their  eye  the  springing 
up  of  victory  to  themselves,  not  the  defeat  and  downfall  of 
the  enemy.1 

Kb  full-moon  (as  opposed  to  new),  i.e.  by  a  waning  light,  you 
were  to  perform  operations  involving  severance  or  dissolution, 
cutting  down  or  levelling.  Thus,  if  I  understand  it  rightly,  a 
marriage  would  have  to  be  annulled,  a  house  pulled  down,  a 
pestilence  stamped  out,  when  the  moon  is  on  the  wane.  Under 
this  head  comes  in  the  rule  to  cut  wood  in  the  forest  when  it  is 
wadel,  apparently  that  the  timber  felled  may  dry.  In  a  Calendar 
printed  by  Hupfuff,  Strasb.  1511  :  '  with  the  moon's  wede]  'tis 
good  to  begin  the  hewing  of  wood.''  The  same  precept  is  still 
given  in  many  modern  forest-books,  and  full-moon  is  therefore 
called  holz-wadel :  '  in  the  bad  wadel  (crescent  moon)  fell  no 
timber/  Sup.  I,  973.  In  Keisersperg's  Menschl.  baum,  Strasb. 
1521,  19  :  '  Alway  in  wedel  are  trees  to  be  hewn,  and  game  to  be 
shot.' 3  Grass  is  not  to  be  mown  at  new,  but  at  full  moon  (Lith. 
Sup.  7);  that  the  hay  may  dry  quickly?  and  treasures  must  be 
lifted  at  full-moon.  If  a  bed  be  stuffed  when  the  moon  is  grow- 
ing, the  feathers  will  not  lie  (I,  372.  914)  ;  this  operation  too 
requires  a  waning  light,  as  if  to  kill  the  new-plucked  feathers 
completely,  and  bring  them  to  rest.  If  you  open  trenches  by 
a  waxing  moon,  they  will  soon  grow  together  again ;  if  by  a 
waning,  they  keep  on  getting  deeper  and  wider.  To  open  a  vein 
with  the  moon  declining,  makes  the  blood  press  downwards  and 

1  The  Estlionians  say  to  the  new-moon  :  '  Hail,  moon !  may  you  grow  old,  and 
I  keep  young  ! '     Thorn.  Hiarne  p.  40. 

2  In  Demerara  grows  a  tree  like  the  mahogany,  called  walala  ;  if  cut  down  at 
new-moon,  the  wood  is  tough  and  hard  to  split,  if  at  full,  it  is  soft  and  splits  easily. 
Bamboo  planks  cut  at  new-moon  last  ten  years,  those  cut  at  full-moon  rot  within 
the  year. 


PHASES   OP   THE    MOON. 


715 


load  the  legs  (Tobler  404b) ;  set  about  it  therefore  by  the  mount- 
ing moonlight.  Vuk  sub  v.  miyena  says,  the  Servian  women  will 
wash  never  a  shirt  at  new-moon,  they  declare  all  the  linen  would 
get  mooned  (omiyeniti)  in  the  water,  i.e.  bulge  and  pucker,  and 
soon  tear;  one  might  find  another  reason  too  for  washing  by 
the  waning  moon,  that  stains  and  dirt  should  disappear  with  the 
dwindling  light  (see  Suppl.). 

Behind  superstitious  practices  I  have  tried  to  discover  a 
meaning,  which  may  possibly  come  near  their  original  signifi- 
cation. Such  symbolical  coupling  of  means  and  end  was  at  all 
events  not  foreign  to  antiquity  anywhere :  the  holy  water  floats 
all  misfortune  away  with  it  (p.  589),  the  spray  from  the  mill  wheel 
scatters  all  sickness  (p.  593).  So  the  sufferer  stands  with  his 
face  to  the  waning  moon,  and  prays  :  '  as  thou  decreasest,  let  my 
pains  diminish '  (I,  2 15)  ;  he  can  also  go  on  the  other  tack,  and 
cry  to  the  new  moon  :  '  may  what  I  see  increase,  and  what  I  suffer 
cease '  (492) .  Turning  the  face  toward  the  luminary  I  take  to 
be  a  relic  of  heathen  moon-worship.1 

Superstitions  of  this  kind  have  long  been  banished  to  the 
narrower  limits  of  agriculture  and  cattle-breeding;  we  should 
arrive  at  a  clearer  knowledge  of  them,  had  their  bearing  on 
public  life  been  described  for  us  in  early  times.  Observation  of 
the  lunar  changes  must  in  many  ways  have  influenced  sacrifices, 
the  casting  of  lots  and  the  conduct  of  war.  Some  things  now 
appear  bewildering,  because  we  cannot  review  all  the  circum- 
stances, and  some  no  doubt  were  different  in  different  nations. 
German  superstition  (I,  856)  thinks  it  a  calamity  for  the  master 
of  the  house  to  die  during  the  moon's  decline,  for  then  the  whole 
family  will  fall  away ;  the  Esthonian  view  (41)  is,  that  a  death  at 
new-moon  is  unlucky,  perhaps  because  more  will  follow  ?  Fruits 
that  grow  above  ground  are  to  be  sown  at  the  waxing,  those  under 
ground  at  the  waning  (Jul.  Schmidt  p.  122) ;  not  so  Westendorp 
p.  129:  'dat  boven  den  grond  wast,  by  a/nemende  maan,  dat 
onder  den  grond  wast,  by  foenemende  maan  te  zaaien/  Gutslaf 
(Wohhanda  p.  49,  conf.  errata)  remarks,  that  winter-crops  are 
not  to  be  sown  while  the  moon  stands  at  the  idle  quarter  (third, 

1  Whoever  at  play  turns  bis  back  to  the  moon,  has  had  lack  (I,  801).  But  the 
seaman  iu  his  hammock  takes  care  not  to  face  the  full-moon,  lest  he  be  struck  with 
blindness. 


716  SKY  AND    STARS. 

kus  se  kuk  maal).  In  the  sermon  of  Eligius  (Sup.  A),  the 
sentence  '  nee  lona  nova  quisquam  timeat  aliquid  operis  arripere' 
is  unintelligible  so  long  as  we  do  not  know  what  sort  of  operation 
is  meant. 

The  spots  or  shady  depressions  on  the  full-moon's  disc  have 
given  rise  to  grotesque  but  similar  myths  in  several  nations.  To 
the  common  people  in  India  they  look  like  a  hare,  i.e.  Chandras 
the  god  of  the  moon  carries  a  hare  (sasa),  hence  the  moon  is 
called  sasin  or  sasanka,  hare  mark  or  spot.1  The  Mongolian 
doctrine  also  sees  in  these  shadows  the  figure  of  a  hare."  Bogdo 
Jagjamuni  or  Shigemuni  [the  Buddha  Sakya-muni],  supreme 
ruler  of  the  sky,  once  changed  himself  into  a  hare,  simply  to 
serve  as  food  to  a  starving  traveller ;  in  honour  of  which  meri- 
torious deed  Khormusta,  whom  the  Mongols  revere  as  chief  of 
the  tenggri  [genii],  placed  the  figure  of  a  hare  in  the  moon. 
The  people  of  Ceylon  relate  as  follows  :  While  Buddha  the  great 
god  sojourned  upon  earth  as  a  hermit,  he  one  day  lost  his  way 
in  a  wood.  He  had  wandered  long,  when  a  hare  accosted  him  : 
'  Cannot  I  help  thee  ?  strike  into  the  path  on  thy  right,  I  will 
guide  thee  out  of  the  wilderness/  Buddha  replied  :  '  Thank 
thee,  but  I  am  poor  and  hungry,  and  unable  to  repay  thy  kind- 
ness/ '  If  thou  art  hungry/  said  the  hare,  '  light  a  fire,  and  kill, 
roast  and  eat  me.'  Buddha  made  a  fire,  and  the  hare  immediately 
jumped  in.  Then  did  Buddha  manifest  his  divine  power,  he 
snatched  the  beast  out  of  the  flames,  and  set  him  in  the  moon, 
where  he  may  be  seen  to  this  day.3  To  the  Greenlander's  fancy 
these  spots  are  the  marks  of  Marina's  fingers,  with  which  she 
touched  the  fine  reindeer  pelisse  of  Anninga  (Majer's  Myth, 
taschenb.  1811.  p.  15). 

An  ON.  fable  tells  us,  that  Mani  (the  moon)  took  two  children, 
Bil  and  Hiuki,  away  from  the  earth,  just  as  they  were  drawing 
water  from  the  well  Byrgir,  and  carrying  the  pail  Seegr  on  the 
pole  Simul  between  their  shoulders.    These  children  walk  behind 

1  Schlegel's  Ind.  bibl.  1,  217.  Ace.  to  Bopp's  Gloss.  346%  a  Sanskrit  name  for 
the  moon  means  lepore  praeditus,  leporem  gerens. 

2  Bergmann's  Streifer.  3,  40.  204.     Majer's  Myth.  wtb.  1,  540. 

3  Douce's  Illustr.  of  Shaksp.  1,  16  from  the  lips  of  a  French  traveller,  whose 
telescope  tbe  Cingalese  had  often  borrowed,  to  have  a  good  look  at  the  hare  in  the 
moon. 


MAN   IN   THE   MOON.  717 

Maui,  as  one  may  see  from  the  earth  (sva  sem  sia  ma  af  ioriui), 
Sn.   12.     That  not  the  moon's   phases  but  her  spots  are    here 
meant,  is  plain  enough  from  the  figure  itself.     No  change  of  the 
moon  could  suggest  the  image  of  two  children  with  a  pail  slung 
on  their  shoulders.     Moreover,  to  this  day  the  Swedish  people  see 
in  the  spots  of  the  moon  two  persons  carrying  a  big  bucket  on 
a  pole}     Bil  was  probably  a  girl,  and  Hiuki  a  boy,  the  former 
apparently  the   same  as  the  asynja  named  together  with  Sol  in 
Sn.  39  ;  there   it  is  spelt  Bil,  but  without  sufficient  reason ;  the 
neuter  '  bil '   signifies  momentum,   interstitium,  a  meaning  that 
would  suit  any  appearance  of  the  moon  (conf.   p.  374  on  OHG. 
pil).     What  is  most  important  for  us,  out  of  this  heathen  fancy 
of  a  kidnapping  man  of  the  moon,  which,  apart  from  Scandinavia, 
was  doubtless  in  vogue  all  over  Teutondom,  if  not  farther,  there 
has   evolved  itself   since  a  christian  adaptation.     They  say   the 
man  in  the  moon  is  a  woocl-stealer,  who  during  church  time  on 
the  holy  sabbath  committed  a  trespass  in  the  wood,  and  was  then 
transported  to  the  moon  as  a  punishment;  there  he  may  be  seen 
with  the  axe  on  his  bach  and  the  bundle  of  brushivood  (dornwelle) 
in  his  hand.     Plainly  enough  the  water-pole  of  the  heathen  story 
has  been  transformed  into  the  axe's  shaft,  and  the  carried  pail 
into  the  thornbush ;  the  general  idea   of  theft  was  retained,  but 
special  stress  laid  on  the  keeping  of  the  christian  holiday  ;  the 
man   suffers  punishment   not  so  much  for  cutting  firewood,   as 
because  he  did  it  on  a  Sunday.3     The  interpolation  is  founded  on 
Numb.    15,   32-6,  where    we  are  told  of  a  man    that  gathered 
sticks  on  the  sabbath,  and  was  stoned  to  death  by  the  congrega- 
tion of  Israel,  but  no  mention  is  made  of  the  moon  and  her  spots. 
As  to  when  this  story  first  appeared  in  Germany  I  have  no  means 
of  telling,  it  is  almost  universally  prevalent  now;3  in  case  the 
full-moon's  name  of  wadel.  wedel  in  the  sense  of  a  bunch  of  twigs4 

1  Dalin  1,  158:  men  annu  fins  den  meningen  bland  var  almoge.  Ling's 
Eddornas  sinnebildslara  1,  78:  annu  sager  alliniinheten  i  Sodraswerge,  att  manens 
flackar  aro  tvenne  varelser,  som  bara  en  bryggsa  (bridge-bucket,  shin- 

-  A  Westphalian  story  says,  the  man  dressed  the  church  With  thorns  on 
Sunday,  and  was  therefore  put,  bundle  and  all,  into  the  moon. 

:(  Hebel  has  made  a  pretty  song  about  it,  pp.  86-9:  'me  net  em  gsait  der 
Dietrrlr,'  on  which  Schm.  2,  583  asks  :  is  this  Dietrich  of  Bern,  translated  in 
classi  •  fashion  to  the  sky?  We  must  first  make  sure  that  the  poet  found  the  name 
already  in  the  tradition. 

4  In  the  Henneberg  distr.  wadel  means  brushwood,  twigs  tied  up  in  a  bundle, 
esp.  fir-twigs,  wadeln  to  tie  up  brushwood  (Reinwald  2,  137)  ;  this  may  however 
come  from  the  practice  of  cutting  wood  at  full-moon. 


718  SKY  AND   STARS. 

has  itself  arisen  out  of  the  story  (p.  712),  it  must  be  of  pretty 
high  antiquity.  In  Tobler's  Appenzell  sprachsch.  20b  we  are 
told  :  An  arma  ma  (a  poor  man)  het  alawil  am  sonnti  holz 
ufg'lesa  (picked  up  wood).  Do  hed  em  der  Hebe  Gott  d'wahl 
g'loh  (let  him  choose),  6b  er  lieber  wott  i'  der  sonn  verbrenna, 
oder  im  mo'  verfrura  (burn  in  sun,  or  freeze  in  moon.  Var. : 
inm  kalta  mo'  ihi,  oder  i'  d'  holl  abi).  Do  will*  er  lieber  in'n  mo' 
ihi.  Dromm  sied  ma'  no'  ietz  an'  ma'  im  mo'  inna,  wenn's  wedel 
ist.  Br  hed  a'  piischeli  uff  'em  rogga  (bush  on  his  back).  Kuhn's 
Mark,  sagen  nos.  27.  104.  130  give  us  three  different  accounts  : 
in  one  a  broom- maker  has  bound  twigs  (or  a  woman  has  spun)  on 
a  Sunday,  in  another  a  man  has  spread  manure,  in  the  third  he 
has  stolen  cabbage-stumps  ;  and  the  figure  with  the  bunch  of 
twigs  (or  the  spindle),  with  the  dungfork,  with  the  cabbage- stalk, 
is  supposed  to  form  the  spots  in  the  moon.  The  earliest  authority 
I  know  of  is  Fischart's  Garg.  1 30b :  '  sab  im  mon  ein  mannlin, 
das  holz  gesfohlen  hett ;  '  Praetorius  says  more  definitely,  Welt- 
beschr.  1,  447  :  the  superstitious  folk  declared  the  dark  spots  on 
the  moon  to  be  the  man  that  gathered  sticks  on  the  sabbath  and 
was  stoned  therefor.  The  Dutch  account  makes  the  man  steal 
vegetables,  so  he  appears  in  the  moon  with  the  '  bundel  moes '  on 
his  shoulders  (Westendorp  p.  129).  The  English  tradition  seems 
pretty  old.  Chaucer  in  his  Testament  of  Creseide  260-4  de- 
scribes the  moon  as  lady  Cynthia  : 

Her  gite  (gown)  was  gray  and  ful  of  spottis  blake, 

and  on  her  brest  a  chorl  paintid  ful  even 

bering  a  bush  of  thornis  on  his  balce, 

■which  for  his  theft  might  clime  no  ner  the  heven. 

In  Kitson's  Anc.  songs  (Lond.  1790),  p.  35  is  a  '  song  upon 
the  man  in  the  moon/  beginning  thus  : 

Mon  in  the  mone  stond  and  strit  (standeth  and  strideth), 

on  his  botforhe  is  burthen  he  bereth ; 

hit  is  muche  wonder  that  he  na  donn  slyt  (slideth), 

for  doutelesse  he  valle,  he  shoddreth  and  shereth, 

when  the  forst  freseth  much  chele  he  byd  (chill  he  bideth)  ; 

the  thomes  beth  kene,  is  hattren  to-tereth. 

Shivering  with  cold,  he  lugs  on  his  fork  a  load  of  thorns,  which 
tear  his  coat,  he  had  cut  them  down  and  been  impounded  by  the 
forester;  the    difficult  and  often  unintelligible   song  represents 


MAN   IN   THE   MOON.  719 

him  as  a  lazy  old  man,  who  walks  a  bit  and  stands  a  bit,  and 
is  drunk  as  well;  not  a  word  about  desecration  of  the  sabbath. 
Shakspeare  alludes  more  than  once  to  the  man  in  the  moon ; 
Tempest  ii.  2  :  '  I  was  the  man  i'  th'  moon,  when  time  was '  .  .  . 
'  I  have  seen  thee  in  her,  and  I  do  adore  thee  :  my  mistress  shewed 
me  thee  and  thy  dog  and  thy  hush.'  Mids.  N.  Dr.  iii.  1  :  '  One 
must  come  in  with  a  bush  of  thorns  and  a  lanthorn,  and  say  he 
comes  to  present  the  person  of  Moonshine.'  In  Gryphius  too 
the  player  who  acts  the  moon  ties  a  bush  round  his  body  (conf. 
Ir.  elfenm.  no.  20). 

Two  more,  and  those  conflicting,  interpretations  of  the  moon's 
spots  are  likewise  drawn  from  the  Bible.  Either  it  is  Isaac  bear- 
ing a  burthen  of  wood  for  the  sacrifice  of  himself  on  Mount  Moriah 
(Praetor.  Weltbeschr.  1,  44.7)  ;  or  it  is  Cain  carrying  a  bundle  of 
thorns  on  his  shoulders,  and  offering  to  the  Lord  the  cheapest  gift 
from  his  field.1     This  we  find  as  far  back  as  Dante,  Parad.  2,  50. 

die  sono  i  segni  bui 
di  questo  corpo,  che  laggiuso  in  terra 
fan  di  Gcvin  favoleggiare  altrui  ? 

And  Inferno  20,  126  :  Gaino  e  le  spine.  On  this  passage  Landino 
remarks  :  '  cioe  la  luna,  nella  quale  i  volgare  vedendo  una  certa 
ombra,  credono  che  sia  Caino,  c'  habbia  in  spalla  una  foreata  di 
'pruni.'  And  another  commentator:  f  accommodandosi  alia  favola 
del  volgo,  che  sieno  quelle  macchie  Caino,  che  inahi  una  foreata 
di  s  j  tine* 

Nearly  all  these  explanations  agree  in  one  thing:  they  suppose 
the  spots  to  be  a  human  figure  carrying  something  on  its  shoulder, 
whether  a  hare,  a  pole  and  bucket,  an  axe  and  thorns,  or  the  load 
of  thorns  alone.2  A  wood-stealer  or  fratricide  accounts  for  the 
spots  of  the  moon,  as  a  chaff-stealer  (p.  357)  does  for  the  streaks 
in  the  milky  way. 

There  must  have  been  yet  more  traditions.  A  Netherl.  poet 
of  the  14th  century  speaks  of  the  dark  stripes  that  stand 

1  The  story  of  the  first  fratricide  seems  to  have  made  a  peculiarly  deep  im- 
pression on  the  new  converts  from  heathenism  ;  they  fancy  him  a  wicked  giant, 
conf.  Beow.  213  seq.,  and  supra  p.  525. 

3  Water,  an  essential  part  of  the  Norse  myth,  is  wanting  in  the  story  of  the 
man  with  the  thornbush,  but  it  re-appears  in  the  Carniolan  story  (for  kramerisch 
read  kraineriech)  cited  in  Brentano's  Libussa  p.  421 :  the  man  in  the  moon  is  called 
Kotar,  he  makes  her  grow  by  pouring  water. 


720  SKY  AND   STAES. 

reclit  iut  midden  van  der  mane, 
dat  men  in  duitsche  beet  ludergheer ; 

in  another  passage  it  is  lendegher1  (for  leudegher?);  and  Willems 
in  Messager  de  Gand,  1,  195,  following  a  MS.  of  1351,  reads,  f  dat 
men  in  dietsch  heet  lodegeer  ;'  but  none  of  these  forms  is  intel- 
ligible to  me.  Perhaps  the  proper  name  Ludger,  Leodegarius, 
OHG.  Liutker,  has  to  do  with  it,  and  some  forgotten  legend  of 
the  Mid.  Ages.  A  touching  religious  interpretation  is  handed 
down  by  Berthold  145,  surely  not  invented  by  himself,  that  the 
moon  is  Mary  Magdalene,  and  the  spots  her  tears  of  repentance 
(see  Suppl.). 

The  Sun  has  had  a  slighter  influence  than  the  moon  on  super- 
stitious notions  and  observances.  Magical  herbs  must  be 
gathered,  if  not  by  moonlight,  at  least  before  sunrise  (p.  G21), 
and  healing  waters  be  drawn  before  sunrise  (p.  586).  The 
mounting  sun  dispels  all  magic,  and  bids  the  spirits  back  to  their 
subterranean  abode. 

Twice  in  the  year  the  sun  changes  his  course,  in  summer  to 
sink,  in  winter  to  rise.  These  turning-points  of  the  sun  were 
celebrated  with  great  pomp  in  ancient  times,  and  our  St.  John's 
or  Midsummer  fires  are  a  relic  of  the  summer  festival  (p.  617 
seq.).  The  higher  North,  the  stronger  must  have  been  the  im- 
pression produced  by  either  solstice,  for  at  the  time  of  the  sum- 
mer one  there  reigns  almost  perpetual  day,  and  at  the  winter  one 
perpetual  night.  Even  Procopius  (ed.  Bonn.  2,  206)  describes 
how  the  men  of  Thule,  after  their  35  days'  night,  climb  the 
mountain-tops  to  catch  sight  of  the  nearing  sun.  Then  they 
celebrate  their  holiest  feast  (see  Suppl.). 

Tacitus  tells  us  (cap.  45),  that  the  sun  after  setting  shoots  up 
such  a  radiance  over  the  Suiones,  that  it  pales  the  stars  till 
morning.  '  Sonum  insuper  audiri,  formas  deorum  et  radios  capitis 
aspici,  persuasio  adjicit.'  I  would  have  turned  this  passage  to 
account  in  Chap.  VI.,  as  proving  the  existence  of  Germanic  gods, 

7  Van  "Wyn's  Avondstonden  1,  306.  Bilderdijk's  Yerklarende  gestachtlijst  der 
naamworden  2,  198  has  ludegeer,  ludegaar,  and  explains  it,  no  doubt  wrongly,  as 
luikenaar  (leodiensis).  However,  he  tells  the  old  story :  '  't  rnannetjen  in  de  maan, 
dat  gezegd  werd  een  doornbosch  op  zijn  rug  te  heben,  en  om  dat  by  't  gestolen  had, 
met  hooger  ten  hemel  te  mogen  opklimmeD,  maar  daar  ingebannen  te  zijn.'  Exactly 
as  in  Chaucer. 


SOLSTICE.      SUNSET.  721 

had  it  not  seemed  credible  that  such  accounts  may  not  have 
reached  the  Romans  from  Germany  itself,  but  been  spread  among 
them  by  miscellaneous  travellers'  tales.  Strabo  8,  1  (Tsch.  1, 
308)  quotes  from  Posidonius  a  very  similar  story  of  the  noise 
made  by  the  setting  sv/n  in  the  sea  between  Spain  and  Africa: 
fxei^o)  Svveiv  tov  i'fktov  ev  rfj  irapwKeavLTihi  fxeTa  ■^r6(j>ov  TTapairXr)- 
<rico<},  coaavel  ai^ovros  rod  TreXdyovi  kclto,  afieaiv  avrov  hca  to 
e/jLTriineiv  et?  tov  j3v66v.  But  the  belief  may  even  then  have 
prevailed  among  Germans  too  ;  the  radiant  heads,  like  a  saint's 
glory,  were  discussed  at  p.  323,  and  I  will  speak  of  this  mar- 
vellous music  of  the  rising  and  setting  sun  in  the  next  chapter. 
Meanwhile  the  explanation  given  of  the  red  of  morning  and 
evening,  in  the  old  AS.  dialogue  between  Saturn  and  Solomon 
(Thorpe's  Anal.  p.  100),  is  curious  :  '  Saga  me,  forhwan  byS  seo 
sunne  redd  on  cefen?''  'Ic  ]?e  secge,  for]?on  heo  locaS  on  helle.' 
'  Saga  me,  hwi  scineS  heo  swa  redde  on  morgene  ?'  '  Ic  ]?e  secge, 
for]>on  hyre  twynaS  hwaaSer  heo  rnaag  cSe  [orig.  )>e]  ne  masg 
]nsne  middaneard  eondiscinan  swa  hyre  beboden  is.'  The  sun 
is  red  at  even,  for  that  she  looketh  on  hell ;  and  at  morn,  for 
that  she  doubteth  whether  she  may  complete  her  course  as  she  is 
bidden. 

Not  only  about  the  sun  and  moon,  but  about  the  other  stars, 
our  heathen  antiquity  had  plenty  of  lore  and  legend.  It  is  a  very 
remarkable  statement  of  Jornandes  cap.  11,  that  in  Sulla's  time 
the  Goths  under  Dicenaeus,  exclusive  of  planets  and  signs  of  the 
zodiac,  were  acquainted  with  344  stars  that  ran  from  east  to  west. 
How  many  could  we  quote  now  by  their  Teutonic  names  ? 

The  vulgar  opinion  imagines  the  stars  related  to  each  individual 
man  as  friend  or  foe.1  The  constellation  that  shone  upon  his  birth 
takes  him  under  its  protection  all  his  life  through ;  this  is  called 
being  born  under  a  good  or  lucky  star.  From  this  guidance,  this 
secret  sympathy  of  dominant  constellations,  fate  can  be  foretold. 
Conversely,  though  hardly  from  native  sources,  it  is  said  in  the 
Renner  10981  that  every  star  has  an  angel  who  directs  it  to  the 
place  whither  it  should  go. 


1  Swera  die  sternen  werdent  gram, 
dein  wirt  der  indue  lihte  alsam.     Frid.  108,  3. 


722  SKY  AND   STARS. 

There  is  a  pious  custom  of  saluting  the  celestial  luminaries 
before  going  to  bed  at  night  (Sup.  I,  112),  and  among  the  Mod. 
Greeks,  of  offering  a  prayer  when  the  evening  star  is  on  the  rise. 

According  to  the  Edda,  all  the  stars  were  sparks  of  fire  from 
Muspells-heim,  that  flew  about  the  air  at  random,  till  the  gods 
assigned  them  seats  and  orbits,  Sn.  9.     Seem.  1. 

Ignited  vapours,  which  under  a  starry  sky  fall  swiftly  through 
the  air  like  fiery  threads — Lat.  trajectio  stellae,  stella  transvolans, 
Ital.  stella  cadente,  Fr.  etoile  filante,  Span,  estrella  vaga,  Swed. 
stjernfall,  Dan.  stiernskud  (star-shoot).,  what  the  Greeks  call 
Suiyeiv  trajicere — are  by  our  people  ascribed  to  a  trimming  of 
the  stars'  light ;  they  are  like  the  sparks  we  let  fall  in  snuffing  a 
candle.     We  find  this  notion  already  in  Wolfram's  Wh.  322,  18  : 

Dehein  sterne  ist  so  lieht,  No  star  so  bright 

emfiirbe  sich  etswenne.'1  but  trims  itself  somewhen. 

Hence  our  phrase  of  '  the  stars  snuffing  themselves/  and  our 
subst.  sternputze,  stemschnuppe.  These  falling  stars  are  ominous,2 
and  whoever  sees  them  should  say  a  prayer  (Sup.  I,  595)  :  to  the 
generous  girl  who  has  given  away  her  all,  they  bring  down  with 
them  [or  turn  into]  gold-pieces  (Kinderm.  153)  ;  nay,  whatever 
wish  you  form  while  the  snuff  is  falling,  is  fulfilled  (Tobler  408b). 
The  Lithuanians  beautifully  weave  shooting  stars  into  the  fate- 
mythus :  the  verpeya  (spinneress)  begins  to  spin  the  thread  of  the 
new-born  on  the  sky,  and  each  thread  ends  in  a  star ;  when  a  man 
is  dying,  his  thread  snaps,  and  the  star  turns  pale  and  drops 
(Narbutt,  1,  71). 

A  comet  is  called  tail-star,  hair-star  in  Aventin  74b.  119b, 
peacock-tail  (Schm.  1,  327)  ;  and  its  tail  in  Detmar  1,  242  schin- 
scliove,  from  schof  a  bundle  of  straw.  Its  appearing  betokens 
events  fraught  with  peril,  especially  the  death  of  a  king  (Greg, 
tur.  4,  9)  :  '  man  siht  an  der  zit  einen  sterren,  sam  einen  pfawen 
zagel  wit  (wide  as  a  peacock's  tail),  so  miiezen  siben  sachen  in 
der  werlt  ergan,'  MsH.  3,  468h  (see  Suppl.). 

Our  old  heathen  fancies  about  the  fixed  stars  have  for  the  most 
part  faded  away,  their  very  names  are  almost  all  supplanted  by 

1  MS.  n.  reads  '  subere  sich.'     Even  OHG.  has  farban  (umiulare,  expiare). 

2  So  with  the  Greeks  (Reinh.  fuchs  p.  lxxii.).     In  a  poem  of  Beranger:  '  mon 
enfant,  un  mortel  expire,  son  etoile  tonibe  a  l'instant.' 


SHOOTING   STAR.      COMET.      PLANET.  723 

learned  astronomic  appellations  ;  only  a  few  have  managed  to 
save  themselves  in  ON.  legend  or  among  the  common  people. 

Whether  the  planets  were  named  after  the  great  gods,  wo 
cannot  tell :  there  is  no  trace  of  it  to  be  found  even  in  the  North. 
Planet-names  for  days  of  the  week  seem  to  have  been  imported, 
though  very  early,  from  abroad  (p.  126  seq.)  Other  reasons 
apart,  it  is  hardly  conceivable  that  the  heathen,  who  honoured 
certain  fixed  stars  with  names  of  their  own,  should  not  have 
distinguished  and  named  the  travelling  stars,  whose  appearances 
and  changes  are  so  much  more  striking.  The  evening  and 
morning  Venus  is  called  evening star,  morning 'sta/r,  OHG.  a/pant- 
sterno,  tagastemo,  like  the  Lat.  vesper  and  lucifer.1  The  turikel- 
steme  in  Ms.  1,  38b  seems  to  be  vesperugo,  the  eveningstar  be- 
ginning to  blaze  in  the  twilight,  conf.  Gramm.  2,  526.  An  OHG. 
iihfosterno  morningstar,  N.  Bth.  223,  is  from  uhta,  Goth,  uhtvo 
crepusculum.  Gl.  Trev.  22b  have  stelbom  hesperus;  can  this  be 
stellbaum,  the  bird-catcher's  pole?  But  in  Rol.  240,27  'die 
urmaren  stalboume '  stands  for  stars  in  general,  and  as  every  star 
was  provided  with  stool  or  stand  (p.  700-1),  we  may  connect  stel- 
boum,  stalboum  with  this  general  meaning.  There  is  perhaps 
more  of  a  mythic  meaning  in  the  name  nahtfare  for  eveningstar 
(Heumanni  opusc.  453.  460),  as  the  same  word  is  used  of  the  witch 
or  wise-woman  out  on  her  midnight  jaunt.  The  Anglo-Saxons 
called  the  eveningstar  swdna  steorra  (bubulcorum  stella),  because 
the  swains  drove  their  herd  home  when  it  appeared.  Again,  in 
0.  iv.  9,  24  Christ  is  compared  to  the  sun,  and  the  apostles  to 
the  eleven  daystars,  '  dagasterron '  here  meaning  not  so  much 
luciferi  as  the  signs  of  the  zodiac.  There  are  no  native  names 
for  the  polar  star  (see  Suppl.) . 

Twice  the  Edda  relates  the  origin  of  particular  stars,  but  no 
one  knows  now  what  constellations  are'  meant.  The  legend  of 
Orvandils-td  and  the  AS.  Earendel,  OHG.  Orentil,  has  been  cited, 
p.  374;  this  bright  luminary  may  have  meant  the  morningstar. 
Then  the  ases,  having  slain  the  giant  Thiassi,  had  to  atone  for  it 
to  his  daughter  SkaSi.  Ooinn  took  Thiassi's  eyes  and  threw 
them  against  the  sky,  where  they  formed  two  stars,  Sn.  82-3. 
These  a/ugu  Tldassa  are  most  likely  two  stars  that  stand  near 

1  In  an  old  church-hymn  Lucifer  is  provided  with  a  chariot:  cuxrus  jam  poscit 
phosphorus  (reita  giu  fergdt  tagastern),  Hyuin.  2,  3. 


724  SKY  AND    STARS. 

each  other,  of  equal  size  and  brightness,  perhaps  the  Twins  ? 
This  is  another  instance  of  the  connexion  we  found  between  stars 
and  eyes  ;  and  the  toe  translated  to  heaven  is  quite  of  a  piece 
with  the  f  tongues '  and  the  correspondence  of  the  parts  of  the 
body  to  the  macrocosm,  p.  568  (see  Suppl.). 

The  milky-way  and  its  relation  to  Irmin  I  have  dealt  with, 
pp.  356-8. 

Amongst  all  the  constellations  in  our  sky,  three  stand  pro- 
minent to  the  popular  eye  :  Ursa  major,  Orion  and  the  Pleiades. 
And  all  of  them  are  still  known  by  native  names  ;  to  which  I 
shall  add  those  in  use  among  the  Slavs,  Lithuanians  and  Finns, 
who  give  them  the  same  place  of  honour  as  we  do. 

The  Great  Bear  was  doubtless  known  to  our  ancestors,  even 
before  their  conversion,  as  waggon,  wain;  which  name,  un- 
borrowed, they  had  in  common  with  kindred  [Aryan]  nations, 
and  therefore  it  is  the  common  people's  name  for  it  to  this 
day  :  they  say,  at  dead  of  night  the  heavenly  wain  turns  round 
with  a  great  noise,  conf.  p.  745.  So  the  Swiss  (Tobler  264a) : 
when  the  herra-waga  stands  low,  bread  is  cheap,  when  high,  it  is 
dear.  0.  v.  17,  29  uses  the  pi.  c  wag  and  gistelli/  meaning  at 
once  the  greater  waggon  and  the  less  ;  which  last  (Ursa  minor) 
Berthold  calls  the  wegelin.1  So  '  des  wagenes  gerihte/  Wackern. 
lb.  772,  26.  It  comes  of  a  lively  way  of  looking  at  the  group, 
which  circling  round  the  polar  star  always  presents  the  appear- 
ance of  four  wheels  and  a  long  slanting  pole,  deichsel  (terno),  on 
the  strength  of  which  the  AS.  sometimes  has  }>id  alone  :  wannes 
J?isla  (thill),  Boeth.  Bawlins.  192b.  Eeferences  are  given  at 
p.  151,  also  the  reasons  for  my  conjecture  that  the  waggon  meant 
is  that  of  Wuotan  the  highest  god.  True,  an  0.  Swed.  chronicle 
connects  the  Swed.  name  harlwagen  with  Tkorr,  who  stepping 
into  his  chariot  holds  the  seven  stars  in  his  hand  (Thor  statt 
naken  som  ett  barn,  siu  stjernor  i  handen  och  Karlewagn),  which 
I  will  not  absolutely  deny;  but  it  is  Woden  stories  in  particular 
that  are  transferred  to  the  Frankish  Charles  (p.  153).  When 
in  Gl.  Jun.  188  f  Arturus '  is  rendered  wag  an  (though  Gl.  Hrab. 


1  Ich  ban  den  glanzen  himelwagen  und  daz  gestirne  besehen,  Troj.  19062. 
There  may  for  that  matter  be  several  himelwagens,  as  there  were  many  gods  with 
cars.  Cervantes  too,  in  a  song  of  the  gitanilla  (p.  m.  11),  says  :  Si  en  el  cielo  hay 
estrellas,  que  lucieiUes  carrus  forman. 


CHAELES'S   WAIN.  725 

951b  has  'arctus'  the  bear  =  wagan  in  Tiimile),  that  is  explained 
by  the  proximity  of  the  star  to  the  Great  Bear's  tail,  as  the  very 
name  up/crovpos  shews.1  I  have  to  add,  that  Netherland  cities 
(Antwerp,  Groningeu)  have  the  stars  of  the  Great  or  the  Lesser 
Bear  on  their  seals  (Messager  de  Gaud  3,  339),  and  in  England 
the  Charles-wain  is  painted  on  the  signboards  of  taverns. 

The  Greeks  have  both  names  in  use,  apic-os  bear,  and  apa^a 
waggon,  the  Romans  both  ursa  and  plaustrum,  as  well  as  a 
septentrio  or  septentriones  from  trio,  plough-ox.  Fr.  char,  charriot, 
Ital.  Span,  carro.  Pol.  woz  (plaustrum),  woz  niebieski  (heavenly 
wain),  Boh.  wos,  and  at  the  same  time  oglea  (thill,  sometimes  og, 
wog)  for  Bootes  j  the  Illyrian  Slavs  kola,  pi.  of  kolo  wheel,  there- 
fore wheels,  i.e.  wain,  but  in  their  Icola  rodina  and  rodokola  2  I 
cannot  explain  the  adjuncts  rodo,  rodina.  Lith.  gryzulio  rats, 
gryzdo  rats,  from  ratas  (rota),  while  the  first  word,  unexplained 
by  Mielcke,  must  contain  the  notion  of  waggon  or  heaven  ; 3  Lett. 
ratti  (rotae).  Esth.  wanhri  tahhed,  waggon-stars,  from  wanker 
(currus)  ;  Hung,  g'&ntzbl  szekere,  from  szeker  (currus),  the  first 
word  being  explained  in  '  Hungaria  in  parabolis '  p.  48  by  a 
mythic  Gontzal,  their  first  waggoner.  Prominent  in  the  Fiunish 
epos  are  paiwa  the  sun,  Jcuu  the  moon,  and  otawa,  which  Castren 
translates  karla-vagnen,  they  are  imagined  as  persons  and  divine, 
and  often  named  together ;  the  Pleiades  are  named  seidainen. 

Never,  either  in  our  OHG.  remains,  or  among  Slavs,  Lithu- 
anians and  Finns, 4  do  we  find  the  name  borrowed  from  the 
animal  (ursa),  though  these  nations  make  so  much  of  the  bear 
both  in  legend  and  perhaps  in  worship  (p.  668). 

The  carro  menor  is  called  by  Spanish  shepherds  bocina,  bugle  ;5 
by  Icelanders  fiosakonur  a  lopti,  milkmaids  of  the  sky,  Biorn  sub 
v.     F.  Magnusen's  Dag.  tid.  104-5  (see  Suppl.). 


1  [From  ofyos  keeper,  not  ovpd  tail] .  'ApK7-o0jXa£  [bear-ward,  or  as  we  might 
say]  Waggoner,  is  Bootes,  of  whom  Greek  fable  bas  much  to  tell.  Axcturus  stands 
in  Bootes,  and  sometimes  for  Bootes.  An  OHG.  gloss,  Diut.  1.  167*,  seems 
curiously  to  render  Bootes  by  stuffala,  Graff  6,  662.  Is  this  stuphila,  stipula, 
stubble  ? 

'-'  Bosnian  Bible,  Ofen  1831.  3,  154.  223.  In  Vuk  roda  is  stork,  whence  the 
adj.  rodin,  but  wbat  of  tbat  ?     This  roda  seems  to  be  rota,  rad,  wheel  over  again. 

3  Litb.  Bible,  Konigsb.  1816,  has  in  Job  (J,  9  gryzo  wezimmas ;  gryzdas, 
grizulas  is  thill,  and  wezimmas  waggon. 

4  Can  this  be  reconciled  with  the  statement,  p.  729,  that  Finn,  otawa  =  bear? 
The  Mongol,  for  bear  is  utege. — Trans. 

6  Don  Quixote  1,  20  (ed.  Ideler  1,  232  ;  conf.  5,  261). 


726  SKY   AND    STARS. 

The  small,  almost  invisible  star  just  above  the  middle  one  in 
the  waggon's  thill  has  a  story  to  itself.  It  is  called  waggoner, 
hind,  in  Lower  Germany  dilmeke,  thumbkin,  dwarf,  Osnabr. 
diimke,  Meckl.  duming,  in  Holstein  'Hans  Dilmken,  Hans  D  it  mid 
sitt  opm  wagn.'  They  say  that  once  a  waggoner,  having  given 
our  Saviour  a  lift,  was  offered  the  kingdom  of  heaven  for  his 
reward ;  but  he  said  he  would  sooner  be  driving  from  east  to 
west  to  all  eternity  (as  the  wild  hunter  wished  for  evermore  to 
hunt) .  His  desire  was  granted,  there  stands  his  waggon  in  the 
sky,  and  the  highest  of  the  three  thill-stars,  the  '  rider '  so-called, 
is  that  waggoner.  Another  version  in  Miillenhoffs  Schles.  Hoist, 
sagen  no.  484.  I  daresay  the  heathen  had  a  similar  fiction  about 
Wodan's  charioteer.  Joh.  Praetorius  De  suspecta  poli  declina- 
tione,  Lips.  1675,  p.  35:  '  qui  hanc  stellam  non  pi-aeteriissent, 
etiamsi  minor  quam  Alcor,  das  kneeldgen,  der  dilmeke,  das  reuter- 
lein,  knecldjink  fuisset;  '  and  again  on  the  thief's  thumb,  p.  140  : 
'  fabula  de  pollicari  aitriga,  dilmeke,  fuhrman.'  That  the  same 
fancy  of  the  waggoner  to  this  constellation  prevails  in  the  East, 
appears  from  Niebuhr's  Arabia,  and  the  Hungarian  Gontzol  seems 
closely  related  to  him ;  in  Greek  legend  likewise  Zeus  places  the 
waggon's  driver  (/;y/o^o?)  or  inventor  JEJrichthonius  among  the 
stars,  though  not  in  the  Great  Bear,  but  between  Perseus  and 
the  Twins  in  the  galaxy.  The  Bohemian  formdnek,  wozatag 
(auriga)  or  bowozmj  signify  Arcturus,  Bootes  and  Erichthonius 
(Jungm.  1,  550.  3,  401),  and  palecky  it  wozit  thumblings  on 
waggon.  But  in  Slovenic,  it  seems,  hervor  (Murko  85.  Jarnik 
229b)  and  burovzh  mean  the  waggoner  and  the  Polar  Star. 

The  cluster  of  brilliant  stars  in  which  the  Greeks  recognised 
the  figure  of  Orion x  had  various  Teutonic  names,  the  reasons  of 
which  are  not  always  clear  to  us  now.  First,  the  three  stars  in 
a  line  that  form  Orion's  belt  are  called  in  Scandinavia  Friggjar- 
rockr,  Friggerok  (pp.  270.  302-3),  and  also  by  transfer  to  Mary 
Mariarok,  Marirok  (Peter  Syv  in  the  Danske  digtek.  middelald. 
1,  102),  Mariteen;  here  is  plain  connecting  of  a  star-group  with 
the  system  of  heathen  gods.  The  same  three  stars  are  to  this 
day  called  by  the  common  folk  in  Up.  Germany  the  three  mowers, 
because  they  stand  in  a  row  like  mowers  in  a  meadow  :  a  homely 

1  Our    MHG.    poets   adopt  Orion  without  translating  it,  MS.  1,  37\     The 
Romans,  ace.  to  Varro  and  Festus,  called  it  Jugula,  it  is  not  known  why. 


WAGGONER.      ORION.  727 

designation,  like  that  of  waggon,  which  arose  in  the  childlike 
fancy  of  a  pastoral  people.  OHG.  glosses  name  Orion  pjiuoc 
(aratrum),  and  in  districts  on  the  Rhine  he  is  called  the  rake 
(rastrum)  :  he  is  a  tool  of  the  husbandman  or  the  mower.  The 
Scotch  pleuch,  Engl,  plough,  is  said  of  Charles's  wain.  Some 
AS.  (perhaps  more  OS.)  glosses  translate  Orion  by  eburdring, 
ebur&ntng,  eblnlring,  ebirthiring  (Gl.  Jun.  309.  371), l  which  in 
pure  AS.  would  have  been  eofor'Sryng,  eforSring ;  it  can  mean 
nothing  but  boar-throng,  since  kryng,  as  well  as  ]?rang,  Mid. 
Lat.  drungus,  is  turba.  How  any  one  came  to  see  a  herd  of  wild 
boars  in  the  group,  or  which  stars  of  Orion  it  included,  I  do  not 
know  :  the  wild  huntsman  of  the  Greek  legend  may  have  nothing 
to  do  with  it,  as  neither  that  legend  nor  the  group  as  seen  by 
Greek  eyes  includes  any  hunted  animal ;  the  boars  of  the  Teutonic 
constellation  have  seemingly  quite  a  different  connexion,  and 
perhaps  are  founded  on  mere  comparison.  OHG.  glosses  give 
us  no  ejpurdrunc,  but  its  relation  to  Iuwaring  and  Iring  was 
pointed  out,  p.  359  note.  In  the  latter  part  of  the  Mid.  Ages 
our  '  three  mowers  '  or  the  Scandinavian '  Mary's  distaff '  is  called 
Jacobs-stab,  Boh.  Jahubahul ;  the  heathenish  spindle,  like  the 
heathenish  Irmin-street  (p.  357  note),  is  handed  over  to  the 
holy  apostle,  who  now  staff  in  hand,  paces  the  same  old  heavenly 
path ;  in  some  parts  Peter's  staff  is  preferred.  The  Esthonians 
call  Orion  warda  Uihhed,  spear  stars,  from  '  wardas '  spear,  and 
perhaps  staff,  like  St.  James's  staff.  The  Lithuanians  szenpjuivis, 
hay-star?  from  'szen'  foenum  (Nesselmann  515),  as  August  is 
called  szenpjutis ;  because  the  constellation  rises  at  hay-harvest  ? 
perhaps  also  with  reference  to  the  f  three-mowers '  ?  for  in  the 
same  way  several  Slav  nations  have  the  name  kosi  scythes,  Boh. 
Icosy  (Jungm.  2,  136),  Pol.  Jcosy  (Linde  1092a),  Sloven,  lcoszi 
(Murko  142)  mowers.  Other  Slavic  names  of  Orion  are  shtupka 
(Bosn.  Bible,  3,  154),  for  which  we  ought  to  read  shtapka,  in  Vuk 
shtaha  crutch,  crosier,  from  our  stiibchen,  Carniol.  pdlize  staves, 
in  Stulli  babini  sctapi  old  wives'  staves;  and  kruzilice,2  wheelers, 
rovers?  from  'kruziti'  vagari  (see  Suppl.). 

1  The  second  passage  has  '  eburdnung,'  an  error,  but  an  evidence  of  the  MS.'s 
age,  for  in  the  8-itth  cent,  the  second  stroke  of  r  was  made  as  long  as  that  of  n. 

2  Dobrowsky's  Slavin  p.  425  ;  the  Pol.  hruzlic  is  crocklet,  mug.  Hanka's 
Altbohm.  glossen  have  66,  857  kruzlyk  circulea,  9U,  164  krusslyk  lix,  which  I  do 
not  understand.     Can  it  be  crutch  ? 

VOL.  II.  U 


728  SKY   AND   STAHS. 

Between  the  shoulders  of  the  Bull  is  a  space  thickly  sown  with 
stars,  but  in  which  seven  (really  six)  larger  ones  are  recognis- 
able ;  hence  it  is  called  sieben-gestim,  OHG.  thaz  sibunstirri, 
0.  v.  17,  29.  Diut.  i.  520\  Gl.  Jim.  188  (where  it  is  confounded 
with  the  Hyades  not  far  off,  in  the  Bull's  head).  Beside  this 
purely  arithmetical  denomination,  there  are  others  more  living  : 
Gr.  nXetd&es,  Ion.  IlXrj'idSes,  seven  daughters  of  Atlas  and 
Ple'ione,  whom  Zeus  raised  to  the  sky,  II.  18,  486.  Od.  5,  272, 
and  who,  like  the  Norse  Thiassi  and  Orvandill,  are  of  giant  kin  ; 
but  some  explain  these  Pleiads  from  ireXeLdq  wild  dove,  which 
is  usually  ireXeia}  Lat.  Vergiliae,  of  which  Festus  gives  a  lame 
explanation.     A  German  poet  writes  virilie,  Amgb.  42b. 

The  picture  of  the  Pleiades  that  finds  most  favour  among  the 
people  in  Germany  and  almost  all  over  Europe  is  that  of  a  hen 
and  seven  chickens,  which  at  once  reminds  us  of  the  Greek  seven 
doves?     Mod.  Gr.  irovXia  (Fauriel  2,  277).     Our  kluche,  Mucker  in, 
kluckhenne,  brut-henne  rnit  den  hunlein ;  Dan.  af ten-hone,  even- 
ing-hen (-honne,  Dansk.  digtek.  middelald.  1, 102);  Engl,  hen  with 
her  chickens;  Fr.  la  poussiniere,  in  Lorraine  poucherosse,  covrosse 
(couveuse,  brood-hen,  qui  conduit  des  poussius)3 ;  Gris.  cluotschas 
or  cluschas  the  cluck-hens;  Ital.  gallinelle ;  Boh.  slepice  s  kurdtky 
hen  with  chickens;  Hung,  fiastik,  fiastyuk  from  tik,  tyuk  gallina, 
and  fiazom  pario.     The  sign  of  the  cluck-hen  seems  to   me  inter- 
grown  with   our  antiquity.      Nursery  tales   bring  in  a  peculiar 
feature,  viz.  that  three  nuts  or  eggs  having  been  given  as   a  pre- 
sent, out  of  them  come  a  golden  dress,  a  silver  dress,  and  a  cluckie 
with  seven  (or  twelve)  chickies,  the  three  gifts  representing  sun, 
moon   and  seven-stars.      Kinderm.   no.   88   (2,   13).      So  in  the 
Introd.  to  the  Pentamerone,  out  of  the  miraculous  nut   comes  a 
voccola  co  dudece  polecine.    Now  the  Hungarian  tale  in  Gaal  p.  381 
has  '  golden  hen  and  six  chickens,'  meaning  the  Pleiades  ;  and  the 
maiden,  seeking  her  lost  lover,  has  to  obtain  access  to  him  by  the 
valuables  contained  in  three  nuts ;  these  were  three   dresses,  on 
which  severally  were  worked  the  sun,  the  moon,  and  the  seven- 
stars  (conf.   Wigal.  812),  being  gifts   of  Sun,  Moon,  and  Seven- 

1  The  Suppl.  adds  :  '  the  Pleiades,  like  doves,  carry  ambrosia  to  Zeus,  but  one 
always  gets  lost  in  passing  the  Planctae  rocks,  and  Zeus  fills  up  their  number  again, 
Athen.  4,  325-6.' — Homer  tells  the  story  simply  of  doves,  iriXaiai,  Od.  12, 61. — Trans. 

2  Conf.  Pentam.  4,  8  '  li  sette  palommielle,'  seven  children  transformed, 
s  Mem.  des  antiq.  4,  376.     6,  121-9. 


PLEIADES.  729 

stars,  bestowed  upon  her  in  her  wanderings.  The  third  dress 
tradition  at  last  converted  into  the  cluckie  herself.  Treasure- 
hunters  dig  for  the  costly  clnckie  with  her  chicks;  conf.  the 
sunken  hoard,  Chap.  XXXII.  A  c  hen  and  twelve  hiinkeln  '  was 
also  an  earthly  fine,  Weisth.  1,  465.  499.  I  am  not  sure  that  we 
are  entitled  to  connect  the  nut  with  '  Iduns  huot ' ;  but  what  is 
'  snn,  moon  and  cluckie '  with  us,  is  with  the  Finns  far  more 
plainly  '  piii  wa.,  kuu,  otawa,'  i.e.  sun,  moon,  bear.  The  Span,  name 
is  Mas  siete  cabrillas'  seven  kids.1  Pol.  baby  old  wives,  Russ. 
baba  old  wife  [and  nasedka  sitting  hen],  Linde  1,  38a;  Serv. 
vlashitsi  (Vuk  78),  vlashnitsi,  (Bosn.  Bible  3,  154,  223),  Sloven. 
vlastovtse  swallows?  but  Jaruik  229b  explains  it'  ramstiibe/  which 
I  do  not  understand.  The  0.  Boh.  name  too  is  obscure,  sczyet- 
nycze  pleiades  (Hanka's  Glossen  58b)=  stetnice,  bristly  ones,  from 
stetina  seta  ?  Sloven,  gostoseotsi,  gostozhirtsi  the  thick-sown  ? 
The  last  name  agrees  with  the  Lith.  and  Finn,  view,  viz.  the  con- 
stellation is  a  sieve  having  a  great  many  holes,  or  sifting  out  a 
heap  of  flour  :  Lith.  setas  Lett,  setinsh,  Esth.  sool  or  soggel,  Finn. 
seula,  seulainen.  "Why  does  Suchenwirt  4,  326  say,  '  daz  her  daz 
tailt  sich  in  daz  lant  gleich  recht  als  ain  sibenstirn '  ?  because  the 
army  is  so  thickly  spread  over  the  land  ?   (see  Suppl.). 

The  origin  of  the  Pleiades  is  thus  related  :  Chi'ist  was  passing 
a  baker's  shop,  when  He  smelt  the  new  bread,  and  sent  his  dis- 
ciples to  ask  for  a  loaf.  The  baker  refused,  but  the  baker's  wife 
and  her  six  daughters  were  standing  apart,  and  secretly  gave  it. 
For  this  they  were  set  in  the  sky  as  the  Seven-stars,  while  the 
baker  became  the  cuckoo  (p.  G7G  baker's  man),  and  so  long  as 
he  sings  in  spring,  from  St.  Tiburtius's  day  to  St.  John's,  the 
Seven-stars  are  visible  in  heaven.  Compare  with  this  the  Nor- 
wegian tale  of  Gertrude's  bird  (p.  673). 

There  may  be  a  few  more  stars  for  which  popular  names  still 
exist.2  In  Lith.  the  Kids  are  artojis  sa  jduczeis  plougher  with 
oxen,  and  Capella  neszeja  walgio  food-bearer  (f.).  Hanka's  0. 
Boh.  gl.  58b  gives  hrusa  for  Aldebanm,  przyczeh  for  Arcturus. 
We  might  also  expect  to  find  names  for  the   Hyades  and  Cas- 

1  Don  Quixote  2,  41  (Idel.  4,  83  ;  conf.  6,  242). 

-  Cymrio  ami -Gaelic  Bibles  (Job  9,  9),  retain  the  Latin  names  from  the  Vulgate; 
from  which  it  does  not  follow  that  these  languages  lack  native  nanus  for  stirs. 
Armstrong  cites  Gael,  crannarain,  baker's  peel,  for  the  Pleiades,  aud  dragblod,  hre- 
tail,  for  the  Lesser  Bear. 


730  SKY  AND   STARS. 

siopeia.  But  many  stars  are  habitually  confounded,  as  the 
Pleiades  with  the  Hyades  or  Orion,  and  even  with  the  Wain  and 
Arcturus  ; l  what  is  vouched  for  by  glosses  alone,  is  not  to  be 
relied  on.  Thus  I  do  not  consider  it  proved  as  yet  that  the  names 
plough  and  eburdrung  really  belong  to  Orion.  By  '  plough '  the 
Irish  Fairy-tales  2,  123  mean  the  Wain  rather  than  Orion,  and 
who  knows  but  the  '  throng  of  boars '  may  really  stand  for  the 
'TdSes  (from  5?)3  and  the  Lat.  Suculae?  (see  Suppl.). 

Still  more  unsafe  and  slippery  is  the  attempt  to  identify  the 
constellations  of  the  East,  founded  as  they  are  on  such  a  different 
way  of  looking  at  the  heavens.  Three  are  named  in  Job  9,  9  : 
ttfy  ash,  nD'O  kimeh,  ^D3  ksil;3  which  the  Septuagint  renders 
7rA,aaSe?,  ecnrepos,  dp/cTovpos,  the  Vulgate  'Arcturus,  Orion, 
Hyades/  and  Luther  '  the  Wain,  Orion,  the  Glucke  (hen)/  In 
Job  38,  31  kimeh  and  ksil  are  given  in  the  LXX  as  7r\eui8es, 
'flpicov,  in  Vulg.  as  '  Pleiades,  Arcturus/  in  Diut.  1,  520  as 
'  Siebeustirni,  Wagan/  and  in  Luther  as  '  Siebenstern,  Orion/ 
For  ksil  in  Isaiah  13,  10  the  LXX  has  flpiwv,  Vulg.  merely 
'splendor/  Luther  'Orion/  In  Amos  5,  8  kimeh  and  ksil  are 
avoided  in  LXX,  but  rendered  in  Vulg.  '  Arcturus,  Orion/  and 
by  Luther  'the  Glucke,  Orion/  Michaelis  drew  up  his  86 
questions  on  the  meaning  of  these  stars,  and  Niebuhr  received 
the  most  conflicting  answers  from  Arabian  Jews ; 4  on  the  whole 
it  seemed  likeliest,  that  (1)  ash  was  the  Arabian  constellation 
om  en  ndsh,  (2)  kimeh  or  chima  the  Arab,  toriye,  (3)  ksil  the 
Arab,   shell   (sihhel) ;    the    three  corresponding    to    Ursa    major, 


1  Keisersperg's  Postil  206  :  '  the  sea-star  or  the  Wain,  or  die  henn  mit  den  hiinlin 
as  ye  call  it.'  Grobianus  1572  fol.  93b  :  'wo  der  wagen  steht,  und  wo  die  gluek  mit 
hunkeln  geht.'  Several  writers  incorrectly  describe  the  '  diimke,  diiming  '  as  '  sie- 
bengestirn '  ;  even  Tobler,  wben  he  says  370b  '  three  stars  of  the  siebeng.  are  called 
tbe  horses,  near  wbich  stands  a  tiny  star,  tbe  waggoner,1  is  evidently  thinking  of  the 
Wain's  thill  [Germans  often  take  the  '  seven-stars'  for  Ursa  instead  of  Pleiades] . 

2  It  Las  long  been  thought  a  settled  point,  that  Suculae  (little  sows)  was  a  blun- 
dering imitation  of  'TaSej,  as  if  that  came  from  Cs  a  sow,  whereas  it  means  '  the 
rainers '  from  lieiv  to  rain  (' ab  imbribus,'  Cicero;  'pluvio  nomine,' Pliny).  Does 
the  author  mean  to  reopen  the  question  ?  Did  the  later  Greeks  and  Romans, 
ashamed  of  having  these  'little  sows'  in  the  sky,  invent  the  '  rainers '  theory  ? 
May  not  Suculae  at  all  events  be  a  genuine  old  Roman  name,  taken  from  some  meri- 
torious mythical  pigs? — Tkans. 

3  In  Hebr.  the  three  words  stand  in  the  order  '  ash,  k'sil,  kimah ;  and  their 
transposition  here  does  some  injustice  to  the  Vulg.  and  Luther.  As  a  fact,  two  out 
of  the  four  times  that  k'sil  occurs,  it  is  'ilpiwv  in  LXX,  and  the  other  two  times  it  is 
Orion  in  Vulgate.   Luther  and  the  Engl,  version  are  consistent  throughout. — Trans. 

4  Beschr.  von  Arabien  p.  11-4  ;  some  more  Arabian  names  of  stars,  pp.  112 — 6. 


CONSTELLATIONS.  731 

Pleiades  and  Sirius.  If  we  look  to  the  verbal  meanings,  ndsh, 
which  some  Arabs  do  change  into  ash,  is  feretrum,  bier  or 
barrow/  a  thing  not  very  difterent  from  a  '  wain  ' ;  Jcimeh,  Icima, 
seems  to  signify  a  thick  cluster  of  stars,  much  the  same  sense  as 
in  that  name  of  '  sieve ' :  Jcsil,  means  foolish,  ungodly,  a  lawless" 
giant,  hence  Orion. 

Constellations  can  be  divided  into  two  kinds,  according  to 
their  origin.  One  kind  requires  several  stars,  to  make  up  the 
shape  of  some  object,  a  man,  beast,  etc. ;  the  stars  then  serve  as 
ground  or  skeleton,  round  which  is  drawn  the  full  figure  as 
imagination  sees  it.  Thus,  three  stars  in  a  row  form  St.  James's 
staff,  distaff,  a  belt ;  seven  group  themselves  into  the  outline  of  a 
bear,  others  into  that  of  a  giant  Orion.  The  other  kind  is,  to  my 
thinking,  simpler,  bolder,  and  older :  a  whole  man  is  seen  in  a 
single  star,  without  regard  to  his  particular  shape,  which  would 
disappear  from  sheer  distance;  if  the  tiny  speck  drew  nearer  to 
us,  it  might  develop  itself  again.  So  the  same  three  stars  as 
before  are  three  men  mowing ;  the  seven  Pleiads  are  a  hen  and 
her  chickens ;  two  stars,  standing  at  the  same  distance  on  each 
side  of  a  faintly  visible  cluster,  were  to  the  ancient  Greeks  two 
asses  feeding  at  a  crib.  Here  fancy  is  left  comparatively  free 
and  unfettered,  while  those  outline-figures  call  for  some  effort  of 
abstraction ;  yet  let  them  also  have  the  benefit  of  Buttmann's  apt 
remark,2  that  people  did  not  begin  with  tracing  the  complete 
figure  in  the  sky,  it  was  quite  enough  to  have  made  out  a  portion 
of  it;  the  rest  remained  undefined,  or  was  filled  up  afterwards 
according  to  fancy.  On  this  plan  perhaps  the  Bear  was  first 
found  in  the  thi-ee  stars  of  the  tail,  and  then  the  other  four 
supplied  the  body.  Our  Wain  shews  a  combination  of  both 
methods  :  the  thill  arose,  like  the  Bear's  tail,  by  outline,  but  the 
four  wheels  consist  each  of  a  single  star.  One  point  of  agree- 
ment is  importaut,  that  the  Greek  gods  put  men  among  the 
stars,  the  same  as  Thorr  and  OSinn  do  (pp.  375.  723  ;  see  Suppl.). 

The  appearance  of  the  rainbow  in  the  sky  has  given  rise  to  a 
number  of  mythic  notions.  Of  its  rounded  arch  the  Edda  makes 
a  heavenly  bridge  over  which  the  deities  walk ;  hence  it  is  called 

1  Bockarti  hierorz.,  ed.  Itosenmiiller  2,  680. 

:  Origin  of  the  Grk  constcll.  (in  Abh.  der  Berl.  acad.  1826,  p.  19-63). 


732  SKY  AND    STAES. 

Asbru  (Ssern.  44a),  more  commonly  Bif-rbst  (OHG.  would  be  pipa- 
rasta)  the  quivering  tract,  for  rost,  Goth,  and  OHG.  rasta,  means 
a  definite  distance,  like  mile  or  league.  It  is  the  best  of  all 
bridges  (Seem.  46a),  strongly  built  out  of  three  colours;  yet  the 
day  cometh  when  it  shall  break  down,  at  the  end  of  the  world, 
when  the  sons  of  Muspell  shall  pass  over  it,  Sn.  14.  72.  The 
tail  of  this  bridge  l  extends  to  Himinbiorg,  Heiuidalfs  dwelling 
(Sn.  21),  and  Heimdallr  is  the  appointed  keeper  of  the  bridge; 
he  guards  it  against  hrimthurses  and  mountain-giants,3  lest  they 
make  their  way  over  the  bridge  into  heaven,  Sn.  18.  30.  The 
whole  conception  is  in  keeping  with  the  cars  in  which  the 
gods  journey  through  heaven,  and  the  roads  that  stretch  across 
it  (conf.  p.  361).  It  was  Christianity  that  first  introduced  the 
0.  Test,  notion  of  the  celestial  bow  being  a  sign  of  the  covenant 
which  God  made  with  men  after  the  rain  of  the  Deluge  :  OHG. 
reganpogo,  AS.  scurboga,  shower-bow,  Casdm.  93,  5.  Meanwhile 
some  ancient  superstitions  linger  still.  The  simple  folk  imagine, 
that  on  the  spot  where  the  rainbow  springs  out  of  the  ground, 
there  is  a  golden  disk,  or  a  treasure  lies  buried ;  that  gold  coins 
or  pennies  drop  out  of  the  rainbow.  When  gold-pieces  are  picked 
up,  they  are  called  regenbogen-schiisselein  (-dishes),  patellae  Iridis, 
which  the  sun  squanders  in  the  rainbow.  In  Bavaria  they  call 
the  rainbow  himmelring,  sonnenring,  and  those  coins  himmelring  - 
schusseln  (Schm.  2,  196.  3,  109  :  conf.  supra  p.  359  note).  The 
Romans  thought  the  bow  in  rising  drank  water  out  of  the  ground  : 
(  bibit  arcus,  pluet  hodie/  Plaut.  Curcul.  1,  2  ;  '  purpureus  pluvias 
cur  bibit  arcus  aquas  ?  '  Propert.  hi.  5,  32.  Tibull.  i.  4,  41.  Virg. 
Georg.  1,  380.  Ov.  Met.  1,  271.  One  must  not  point  ivith  fingers 
at  the  rainbow,  any  more  than  at  stars,  Braunschw.  anz.  1754,  p. 
1063.  Building  on  the  rainbow  means  a  bootless  enterprise  (note 
on  Freidank  p.  319.  320,  and  Nib.  Lament  1095.  Spiegel, 
161,    6)  ;    and    setting   on   the   rainbow    (Bit.   2016)    apparently 

1  Bruar-spordr  (we  still  speak  of  a  bridge's  head,  tete  de  pont),  as  if  an  animal 
had  laid  itself  across  the  river,  with  head  and  tail  resting  on  either  bank.  But  we 
must  not  omit  to  notice  the  word  spordr  (prop,  cauda  piscis) ;  as  rost,  rasta  denote 
a  certain  stadium,  so  do  the  Goth,  spaurds  OHG.  spurt  a  recurring  interval,  in  the 
sense  of  our  '(so  many)  times':  thus,  in  Fragm.  theot.  15,  19,  dhrim  spurtim 
(tribus  vicibus),  where  rastom  would  do  as  well.  Do  the  '  runar  a,  briiarsporSi,'' 
Sajm.  196a  mean  the  rainbow? 

2  Giants  are  often  made  bridge-keepers  (p.  556 n.):  the  maiden  MoSguSr  guards 
giallarbru,  Sn.  67. 


RAINBOW.  733 

exposing  to  great  danger?  Is  'behusen  unebene  uf  regenbogen' 
(Tit,  Halm  4061)  to  be  unequally  seated?  In  H.  Sachs  ii.  287  a 
man  gets  pushed  off  the  rainbow.  The  Finns  have  a  song  in 
which  a  maiden  sits  on  the  rainbow,  weaving  a  golden  garment. 
Might  not  our  heathen  ancestors  think  and  say  the  like  of  their 
piparasta  ?  There  is  a  remarkable  point  of  agreement  on  the 
part  of  the  Chinese:  'tunc  et  etiamnum  viget  superstitio,  qua 
iridem  orientalem  digito  monstrare  nefas  esse  credunt;  qui  banc 
monstraverit,  huic  subito  ulcus  in  manu  futurum.  Iridem  habent 
Sinae  pro  signo  libidinis  effrenatae  quae  regnat.' l 

The  Slavic  name  for  the  rainbow  is  0.  SI.  dug  a,  Serv.  and 
Russ.  duga,  dug  a  nebeskia,  Boh.  duha,  prop,  a  stave  (tabula,  of  a 
cask),  hence  bow ;  the  Servians  say,  any  male  creature  that 
passes  under  the  rainbow  turns  into  a  female,  and  a  female  into 
a  male  (Vuk  sub  v.).2  Two  Slovenic  names  we  find  in  Murko  : 
mdvra,  mdvritsa,  which  usually  means  a  blackish-brindled  cow; 
and  bozhyi  stolets,  god's  stool,  just  as  the  rainbow  is  a  chair  of 
the  Welsh  goddess  Geridwen  (Dav.  Brit.  myth.  204) ;  conf. 
'  God's  chair/  supra  p.  136.  Lett.  warrawiKksne,  liter,  the 
mighty  beech  ?  Lith.  Laumes  yosta,  Lauma's  or  Laima's  girdle 
(sup.  p.  416)  ;  also  dangaus  yosta  heaven's  girdle,  Mlpinnis 
dangaus  heaven's  bow,  uroryhszte  weather-rod  ;  more  significant 
is  the  legend  from  Polish  Lithuania,  noticed  p.  580,  which 
introduces  the  rainbow  as  messenger  after  the  flood,  and  as 
counsellor.  Finn,  taiwancaari,  arcus  coelestis.  In  some  parts 
of  Lorraine  courroie  de  8.  Lienard,  couronne  de  S.  Bernard.  In 
Superst.  Esth.  no.  65  it  is  the  thunder-god's  sickle,  an  uncom- 
monly striking  conception. 

To  the  Greeks  the  tpt?  was,  as  in  the  0.  Test.,  a  token  of  the 
gods,  II.  11,  27;  but  at  the  same  time  a  half-goddess  M/h?,  who 
is  sent  out  as  a  messenger  from  heaven.  The  Indians  assigned 
the  painted  bow  of  heaven  to  their  god  Indras.  In  our  own 
popular  belief  the  souls  of  the  just  are  led  by  their  guardian- 
angels  into  heaven  over  the  rainbow,  Ziska's  Oestr.  volksm. 
49.  110. 

As  for  that  doctrine  of  the  Edda,  that  before  the  end  of  the 


1  Cbi-king  ex  lat.  P.  Lacharme,  interpr.  Jul.  Mohl,  p.  242. 

1  Like  the  contrary  effects  of  the  planet  Venus  on  the  two  sexes  in  Superst.  1, 1G7. 


734  SKY  AND    STARS. 

world  Bifrost  will  break,  I  find  it  again  in  the  German  belief 
during  the  Mid.  Ages  that  for  a  number  of  years  before  the 
Judgment-day  the  rainbow  will  no  longer  be  seen  :  '  ouch  hurt 
ich  sagen,  daz  man  sin  (the  regenpogen)  nieht  ensehe  drizich  jar 
(30  years)  vor  deme  suontage/  Diut.  3,  61.  Hugo  von  Trim- 
berg  makes  it  40  years  (Renner  19837)  : 

S6  man  den  regenbogen  siht, 
so  enzaget  diu  werlt  niht 
dan  darnach  iiber  vierzec  jar  ; 

so  the  rainbow  appear,  the  world  hath  no  fear,  until  thereafter  40 
year.  Among  the  signs  the  Church  enumerates  of  the  approach 
of  the  Last  Day,  this  is  not  to  be  found  (see  Suppl.). 


CHAPTER   XXIII. 
DAY    AND     NIGHT. 

All  the  liveliest  fancies  of  antiquity  respecting  day  and  night 
are  intertwined  with  those  about  the  sun,  moon  and  stars  :  day 
and  night  are  holy  godlike  beings,  near  akin  to  the  gods.  The 
Edda  makes  Day  the  child  of  Night. 

Norvi,  a  iotunn,  had  a  daughter  named  Ndtt,  black  and  dingy 
like  the  stock  she  came  of  (svort  oc  dock  sem  hon  atti  sett  til)  ;l 
several  husbands  fell  to  her  share,  first  Naglfari,  then  Anar  (Onar)2 
a  dwarf,  by  whom  she  had  a  daughter  IorS,  who  afterwards 
became  ObWs  wife  and  ThoVs  mother.  Her  last  husband  was 
of  the  fair  race  of  the  ases,  he  was  called  Dellingr,  and  to  him 
she  bore  a  son  Dagr,  light  and  beautiful  as  his  paternal  ancestry. 
Then  All-father  took  Night  and  her  son  Day,  set  them  in  the  sky, 
and  gave  to  each  of  them  a  horse  and  a  car,  wherewith  to  journey 
round  the  earth  in  measured  time.  The  steeds  were  named  the 
rimy-maned  and  the  shiny-maned  (p.  655-6). 

The  name  Dellingr,  the  assimilated  form  of  Dcglingr,  includes 
that  of  the  son  Dagr,  and  as  -ling  if  it  mean  anything  means 
descent,  we  must  either  suppose  a  progenitor  Dagr  before  him, 
or  that  the  order  of  succession  has  been  reversed,  as  it  often  is 
in  old  genealogies. 

For  the  word  '  dags,  dagr,  dasg,  tac '  I  have  tried  to  find  a  root 
(Gramm.  2,  44),  and  must  adhere  to  my  rejection  of  Lat.  f  dies' 
as  a  congener,  because  there  is  no  consonant-change,  and  the 
Teutonic  word  develops  a  g,  and  resolves  its  a  into  o  (uo);  yet 
conf.  my  Kleinere  schriften  3, 11 7.3  On  the  other  hand,  in  '  dies' 
and  all  that  is  like  it  in  other  languages,  there  plainly  appeared 

1  This  passage  was  not  taken  into  account,  p.  528 ;  that  Night  and  Helle 
should  be  black,  stands  to  reason,  but  no  conclusion  can  be  drawn  from  that  about 
giants  as  a  body.  Notice  too  the  combination  '  svort  ok  dock,*  conf.  p.  445.  Here 
giant  and  dwarf  genealogies  have  evidently  overlapped. 

2  Conf.  Haupt's  Zeitsobr.  3,  111. 

3  [Sanskr.  dah  urere,  ardere  (Bopp's  Gl.  1G5)  does  seems  the  root  both  of  dies 
and  Goth,  dags,  which  has  exceptionally  kept  prim.  </  unchanged.  MHG.  tac  still 
retained  the  sense  of  heat :  '  fiir  der  heizen  sunnen  tac,'  MS.  2,  84*. — Suppl.] 

735 


736  DAY   AND   NIGHT. 

an  interlacing  of  the  notions  '  day,  sky,  god/  p.  193.  As  Day 
and  Donar  are  both  descended  from  Night,  so  Dies  and  Deus 
(Zeus)  fall  under  one  root;  one  is  even  tempted  to  identify  Donar, 
Thunor  with  the  Etruscan  Tina  (dies),  for  the  notion  day,  as  we 
shall  see,  carries  along  with  it  that  of  din  :  in  that  case  Tina 
need  not  stand  for  Dina,  but  would  go  with  Lat.  tonus  and  toni- 
trus.  Deus  is  our  Tiw,  Ziu,  for  the  same  name  sometimes  gets 
attached  to  different  gods  ;  and  it  is  an  additional  proof  how 
little  '  dies  '  has  to  do  with  our  '  daeg,  tag '  j  likewise  for 
coelum  itself  we  have  none  but  unrelated  words,  p.  698-9.  From 
the  root  div  the  Ind.  and  Lat.  tongues  have  obtained  a  number 
of  words  expressing  all  three  notions,  gods,  day  and  sky  ;  the 
Greek  only  for  gods  and  sky,  not  for  day,  the  Lith.  for  god  and 
day,  not  sky,  the  Slav,  for  day  alone,  neither  god  nor  sky,  and 
lastly  our  own  tongue  for  one  god  only,  and  neither  sky  nor  day. 
Here  also  we  perceive  a  special  affinity  between  Sanskrit  and 
Latin,  whose  wealth  the  remaining  languages  divided  amongst 
them  in  as  many  different  ways.  The  Greek  fyfiap,  ij/xepa  I  do 
regard  as  near  of  kin  to  the  Teut.  himins,  himil ;  there  is  also 
'Hfxepa  a  goddess  of  day. 

The  languages  compared  are  equally  unanimous  in  their  name 
for  night :  Goth,  nahts,  OHG.  naht,  AS.  niht,  ON.  nott  (for  natt), 
Lat.  nox  nodls,  Gr.  vv%  vvktos,  Lith.  naktis,  Lett,  nahts,  0.  SI. 
noshti,  Pol.  and  Boh.  noc  (pron.  nots),  Sloven,  nozh,  Serv.  notj, 
Sanskr.  nahta  chiefly  in  compounds,  the  usual  word  being  wis, 
nisd  (both  fern.).  Various  etymologies  have  been  proposed,  but 
none  satisfactory.1  As  day  was  named  the  shining,  should  not 
the  opposite  meaning  of  '  dark '  lurk  in  the  word  night  ?  Yet  it 
is  only  night  unillumined  by  the  moon  that  is  lightless.  There  is 
a  very  old  anomalous  verb  '  nahan '  proper  to  our  language,  from 
whose  pret.  nahta3  the  noun  nahts  seems  to  come,  just  as  from 
magan  mahta,  lisan  lista    come    the  nouns  mahts,   lists.      Now 

1  [Bopp  198»>  and  Pott  1,  160  explain  nisa  as  '  lying  down  *  from  si  to  lie  ;  and 
naktam  as  '  while  lying.'  Benfey  assumes  two  roots,  nakta  '  not-waking,'  2,  369 
and  nis  conn,  with  Lat.  niger  2,  57. — Suppl.] 

2  The  plurals  of  Goth,  ganah,  binah  are  lost  to  us;  I  first  assumed  ganahum, 
binahum,  but  afterwards  ganauhum,  because  binauht  =  ££e<m  in  1  Cor.  10,  23,  and 
ganauha  avrdpKeia  occurs  several  times.  The  u  (au  before  an  h)  is  the  same  as  in 
skal  skulum,  man  munum,  OHG.  mac  mugum,  in  spite  of  which  the  noun  is  maht. 
But  the  Goth,  mag  magum  proves  the  superior  claim  of  a,  so  that  nahts  (nox) 
would  presuppose  an  older  nab  nahum,  nahta,  even  though  Ulphilas  had  written 
nab  nauhuni,  nauhta. 


DAY.      NIGIIT.  737 

Goth,  gannhan,  OHG.  kinahan,  means  sufficere,  so  that  nahts 
would  be  the  sufficing,  pacifying,  restful,  quiet,  at  the  same  time 
<?/'ficierit,  strong,  aprcia,  which  seems  to  hit  the  sense  exactly. 
Add  to  this,  that  the  OHG.  duruh-naht  is  not  only  pernox,  totam 
noctem  durans,  but  more  commonly  perfectus,  consummatus, 
'  fullsummed  in  power,'  MHG.  durnehte,  durnehtec,  where  there 
is  no  thought  of  night  at  all.  Where  did  Stieler  1322  find  his 
'  durchnacht,  nox  illunis  ;?  =  the  Scand.  nrS  (p.  710),  and  meaniug 
the  height  of  night  (see  Suppl.). 

Both  day  and  night  are  exalted  beings.  Day  is  called  the 
holy,  like  the  Greek  lepov  rj^ap:  fsam  mir  der  heilic  tac  !  ' 
Ls.  2,  oil.  'sa  mir  daz  heilige  lieht I '  Roth.  llb.  'die  Ueben 
tage,'  Ms.  1,  165a.  '  der  liebe  tag,'  Simplic.  1,  5.  Hence  both 
are  addressed  with  greetings:  '  heill  Dagr,  heilir  Dags  synir, 
heil  Nott  ok  nipt !  ureiSom  augom  litit  ockr  hinnig,  ok  gefit 
sitjondom  sigur  ! '  they  are  asked  to  look  with  gracious  eyes 
on  men,  and  give  victory,  Sasm.  194a;  and  the  adoration  of  day 
occurs  as  late  as  in  Mart,  von  Amberg's  Beichtspiegel.  f  diu  edele 
naht,  Ms.  2,  196b.  '  diu  heilige  naht,'  Gerh.  3541.  (sam  mir  diu 
heilic  naht  hint !  '  so  (help)  me  Holy  Night  to-night,  Helbl.  2, 
1384.    8,  GOG.  (frau  Naht,  Ms  H.  3,428a  (see  Suppl.). 

Norse  poetry,  as  we  saw,  provided  both  Night  and  Day  with 
cars,  like  other  gods;  but  then  the  sun  also  has  his  chariot,  while 
the  moon,  as  far  as  I  know,  has  none  ascribed  to  her.  Night 
and  Day  are  drawn  by  one  horse  each,  the  Sun  has  two ;  con- 
sequently day  was  thought  of  as  a  thing  independent  of  the  sun, 
as  the  moon  also  has  to  light  up  the  dark  night.  Probably  the 
car  of  Day  was  supposed  to  run  before  that  of  the  Sun,1  and 
the  Moon  to  follow  Night.  The  alternation  of  sexes  seems  not 
without  significance,  the  masculine  Day  being  accompanied  by 
the  feminine  Sun,  the  fem.  Night  by  the  masc.  Moon.  The 
Greek  myth  gives  chariots  to  Helios  and  Selene,  none  to  the 
deities  of  day  and  night ;  yet  Aeschylus  in  Persae  386  speaks 
of  day  as  Xeu/coVtyXcx?  rj/^epa,  the  white-horsed.  The  riddle  in 
Eeiumar  von  Zweter,  Ms.  2,  136,  lets  the  chariot  of  the  year  be 
drawn  by  seven  white  and  seven  black  steeds  (the  days  and 
nights  of  the  week).     Here  also  the  old  heathen  notion  of  riding 

1  i.e.  day  or  morning  is  there  before  the  sun,  who  backs  them  up,  so  to  speak  : 
unz  daz  diu  sunne  ir  liehtez  schhien  hot  deni  morgeu  iibtr  berge,  Nib.  1504,  2. 


738  DAY  AND   NIGHT. 

or  driving  deities  peeps  out.  Again,  a  spell  quoted  in  Mone's 
Anz.  6,  459  begins  with  '  God  greet  thee,  holy  Sunday  !  I  see 
thee  there  come  riding.'  This  is  no  doubt  the  heathen  god  Tag 
riding  along  on  Scinfahso  with  his  shiny  mane  (ON.  Skinfaxi, 
Sn.  11)  ;  but  if  we  took  it  for  the  white  god  Paltar  on  his  foal 
(p.  222-4),  we  should  not  be  altogether  wrong.  We  shall  have 
more  to  say  presently  on  the  personification  of  Day;  but  that 
spell  is  well  worthy  of  consideration  (see  Suppl.) . 

Nevertheless  our  poets  express  the  break  of  day  by  the  sun's 
uprising,  and  more  especially  the  fall  of  night  by  his  setting; 
but  neither  the  beginning  nor  end  of  night  by  the  moon,  whose 
rising  and  settino-  are  seldom  simultaneous  with  them.  I  will 
now  give  the  oldest  set  phrases  that  express  these  phenomena. 

The  sun  rises,  climbs  r  Goth,  sunna  ur-rinnij),  Mk.  4,  6.  16,  2. 
OHG.  ar-rinnit;  daranah  ir-ran  diu  sunna,  N.  ps.  103,  22  ;  MHG. 
si  was  uf  er-runnen,  Mar.  189.  ON.  J?a  rami  dagr  upp,  01.  helg. 
cap.  220.  Rinnan  is  properly  to  run,  to  flow,  and  here  we  see 
a  strict  analogy  to  the  0.  Rom.  idiom,  which  in  like  manner  uses 
man  are  of  the  rising  day  :  '  diei  principium  mane,  quod  turn 
mdnat  dies  ab  oriente/  Varro  6,  4  (0.  Muller  p.  74)  ;  '  manar 
solem  dicebant  antiqui,  cum  solis  orientis  radii  splendorem  jacere 
coepissent '  (Festus  sub  v.).  Ulphilas  never  applies  ur-reisan 
(surgere)  to  the  sun.  The  Span,  language  attributes  to  the 
rising  sun  a  pricking  (apuntar)  :  (  yxie  el  sol,  dios,  que  fermoso 
apuntaba'  Cid  461 ;  '  quando  viniere  la  maiiana,  que  apuntare 
el  sol/  Cid  2190.  After  rising  the  sun  is  awake,  'with  the  sun 
awake'  means  in  broad  daylight  (Weisth.  2,  169.  173.  183), 
'when  sunshine  is  up'  (2,  250).  AS.  '  hador  heofonleoma  com 
llican,'  Andr.  838  (see  Suppl.). 

The  sun  sinks,  falls  :  Goth,  sagq  sunno  (pron.  sank),  Lu.  4,  40. 
gasagq  sauil,  Mk.  1,  32.  dissigqdi  (occidat),  Eph.  4,  26.  OHG. 
sunna , pifeal  (ruit) ,  pisluac  (occidit),1  Gl.  Ker.  254.  Diut.  1,  274a. 
MHG.  siget :  diu  sunne  siget  hin,  Trist.  2402.  diu  sunne  was  ze 
tal  gesigen,  Wh.  447,  8.  nu  begund  diu  sunne  sigen,  Aw.  1,  41. 
ON.  both  sol&rfail  and  sbhetr,  Engl.  suns<?£ ;  so  OHG.  '  denue 
sunna  hisaz,'  cum  sol  occumberet,  Diut.  1,  492%  implying  that  he 
sits  down,  and  that  there  is  a  seat  or  chair  for  him   to  drop  into 

1  Iutrans.,  as  we  still  say  niedersclilagen,  zu  boileii  scblagen. 


SUNRISE.      SUNSET.  739 

at  the  end  of  his  journey.  His  setting  is  called  OHG.  sedalkane, 
Hym.  18,1;  sedal  ira  kat  (goeth)  14,  2.  AS.  setelgong,1  setlrdd, 
Casdm.  181,  19.  o&Suet  sunne  geivdt  to  sete  glidan,  Andr.  1305. 
oSSast  beorht  geivdt  sunne  swegeltorlit  to  sete  glidan  121-8.  OS. 
seg  sunne  to  sedle,  Hel.  86,  12.  sunne  ward  an  sedle  89,  10. 
geng  tliar  aband  tuo,  sunna  ti  sedle  105,  6.  scred  wester  dag, 
sunne  te  sedle  137,  20.  so  thuo  gisegid  warth  sedle  nahor  hedra 
sunna  mid  hebantunglon  170,  1.  Dan.  for  vesten  gaaer  solen  til 
sdde,  DV.  1,  90,  in  contrast  to  '  sol  er  i  austri  (east)/  Vilk. 
saga  p.  58-9.  The  West  (occasus)  stands  opposed  to  the  East 
(oriens),  and  as  OHG.  kibil  means  pole,  and  Nordkibel,  Sunt- 
kibel  the  north  and  south  poles  (N.  Bth.  208),  a  set  phrase  in 
our  Weisthiimer  may  claim  a  high  antiquity :  '  bis  (until)  die 
sonne  unter  den  Westergibel  geht '  (1,  836);  'bis  die  sonne  an 
den  Wg.  schint'  (2,  195);  'so  lange  dat  die  sonne  in  den  Wes- 
tergevel  schint  '  (2,  159).  The  first  of  these  three  passages 
has  the  curious  explanation  added :  '  till  12  o'clock.'  2  Ovid's 
'  axe  sub  liesperio  '  Met.  4,  214  is  thus  given  by  Albrecht  : 
in  den  liehten  ivesternangen.  The  similar  expression  in  ON. 
seems  to  me  important,  Gragas  1,  26  :  '  fara  til  logbergs,  at  sol 
se  a  gidhamri  enum  vestra/  giahamarr  beiug  chasmatis  rupes 
occidentalis.  I  shall  have  more  to  say  about  that  in  another 
connexion;  conf.  however  Landnama  bok  215:  sol  i  austri  ok 
vestri.  MHG.  diu  sunne  gie  ze  sedele,  Diut.  3,  57.  als  diu 
sunne  in  ir  gesedel  solde  gan,  Morolt  38a;  but  what  place  on 
earth  can  that  be,  whose  very  name  is  told  us  in  14b,  '  ze  Geildt, 
da,  diu  sunne  ir  gesedel  hat '  ?  the  capital  of  India  ?  (see  p.  743 
note.)  I  suppose  laidam,  MHG.  gaden  (cubiculum),  Moi\  15a  is 
equivalent  to  sedal,  unless  the  true  reading  be  '  ze  gnaden.'  The 
sun  gets  way-worn,  and  longs  for  rest :  do  hete  diu  miiede  sunne 

1  ON.  and  AS.  distinguish  between  two  periods  of  the  evening,  an  earlier  aptati 
ccfen  =  vespera,  and  a  later  qveld,  cwiM= con  ticinium  :  'at  qveldi,'  Saem.  20.  73h, 
means  at  full  evening,  when  night  has  fallen  and  its  stillness  has  set  in.  I  derive 
cnrild,  qveld  from  cwellan,  qvelja  to  quell  or  kill,  as  in  many  passages  it  means  liter, 
interitus,  occisio,  nex  ;  so  we  may  explain  it  by  the  falling  or  felling  of  the  day 
(cadere,  whence  caedere),  or  still  better  by  the  deathlike  hush  of  night ;  conf.  Engl. 
'  dead  of  night,  deadtime  of  n.',  the  conticmium,  AS.  cwildtid.  If  '  chuiltiwcreh  ' 
in  a  doc.  of  817  means  cwildweorc,  work  in  the  late  evening,  which  is  not  to  be  put 
upon  maidservants,  then  OHG.  too  had  a  chuilt  corresp.  to  cwild  and  qveld,  qvold. 
In  Cffldm.  188,  11  I  propose  to  read  :  '  cwildrofu  eodon  on  la'6'ra  last,'  i.e.  (belluae) 
vesperi  famosae  ibant  in  vestigia  malorum. 

2  In  fixing  boundary-lines  Wvstergibcl  is  even  used  topographically,  Weisth.  1, 
464-5.  -185.  498.  5oO-G. 


740  DAY  AND   NIGHT. 

ir  liehten  blic  hinz  ir  gelesen,  Parz.  32,  24.  He  goes-  to  his 
bed,  his  bedchamber  :  Dan.  '  solen  ganger  til  senge,'  DV.  1,  107. 
'  solen  gik  til  hvile,'  1,  170.  MHG.  diu  sunne  gerte  lazen  sich 
zuo  reste,  Ernst  1326.  diu  sunne  do  ze  reste  gie,  Ecke  (Hag.) 
110.  nu  wolte  diu  sunne  ze  reste  und  ouch  ze  gemache  nider  gan, 
Dietr.  14d;  so  M.  Opitz  2,  286  :  'muss  doch  zu  Hide  gehen,  so 
oft  es  abend  wird,  der  schone  himmels-schild/  OE.  the  sun 
was  gon  to  rest,  Iwan  3612.  Our  gnade  (favour),  MHG.  genade, 
OHG.  kinada,  properly  means  inclining,  drooping,  repose 
(p.  710),  which  accounts  for  the  phrase  'diu  sunne  gienc  ze 
gnaden'  (dat.  pi.),  Mor.  37a.  Wolfdietr.  1402.  Even  Agricola  no 
longer  understood  it  quite,  for  he  says  in  Sprichw.  737 :  '  it 
lasted  till  the  sun  was  about  to  go  to  gnaden,  i.e.  to  set,  and  deny(!) 
the  world  his  gnade  and  light  by  going  to  rest/  Aventin  (ed. 
1580  p.  I9b)  would  trace  it  back  to  our  earliest  heathenism  and 
a  worship  of  the  sun  as  queen  of  heaven  :  '  never  might  ye  say 
she  set,  but  alway  that  she  went  to  rost  and  gnaden,  as  the  silly 
simple  folk  doth  even  yet  believe.'  The  last  words  alone  are 
worth  noticing;  the  superstition  may  be  of  very  old  standing, 
that  it  is  more  pious,  in  this  as  in  other  cases,  to  avoid  straight- 
forward speech,  and  use  an  old  half-intelligible  euphemism.  On 
this  point  Vuk  775  has  something  worthy  of  note  :  you  must  say 
'  smirilo  se  suntse'  (the  sun  is  gone  to  rest,  conquievit),  and  not 
zadye  (is  gone)  nor  syede  (sits)  ;  if  you  say  zadye,  he  answers 
f  zashao  pa  ne  izishao  '  (gone,  not  come  out) ; l  if  you  say  syede, 
he  tells  you  '  syeo  pa  ne  ustao  '  (sat  down,  not  risen)  ;  but  to 
'smirise'  the  answer  is  '  smiryd  se  i  ti '  (rest  thee  also  thou).2 
And  with  this  I  connect  the  Eddie  saw  on  the  peculiar  sacreduess 
of  the  setting  sun:  'engi  skal  gumna  i  gogn  vega  siffskinandi 
systor  Mana/  Saem.  184b,  none  shall  fight  in  the  face  of  the 
late-shining  sister  of  the  Moon  (see  Suppl.) 

Lye  quotes  an  AS.  phrase  faer  sun  go  to  glade/  which  he 
translates  '  priusquam  sol  vergat  ad  occasum,  lapsum/  The 
noun   formed  from  glidan    (labi)    would   be  glad,  and  glidan  is 

1  Kopitar  tells  me, '  zashao  etc.'  is  rather  an  imprecation  :  mayst  thou  go  in  (per- 
haps, lose  thy  way)  and  never  get  out !  So  '  syeo  etc.',  mayst  thou  sit  down  aud 
never  get  up  ! 

2  Mod.  Greek  songs  say,  6  ffXtos  ij3affi\eve,  ipaalXefe  (Fauriel  1,  56.  2,  300.  432), 
i.e.  has  reigned,  reigns  no  more  in  the  sky,  is  set ;  aud  the  same  of  the  setting 
moon  (2,  176). 


SUNSET.  741 

actually  used  of  the  sun's  motion  :  heofones  gim  glad  ofer 
grundas,  Beow.  4140  [and  ( t6  sete  glidan'  twice  in  Andreas]. 
But  '  gongan  to  glade '  seems  nonsense  ;  perhaps  we  ought  to 
suppose  a  noun  gla)de  with  the  double  meaning  of  splendor  and 
gaudium.  Both  the  ON.  glaftr  and  OHG.  klat  signify  first 
splendidus,  then  hilaris,  two  notions  that  run  into  one  another 
(as  in  our  heiter  =  serenus  aud  hilaris)  ;  klat  is  said  of  stars,  eyes, 
rays  (Graff  4,  288),  and  the  sun,  0.  ii.  1,  13  :  er  wurti  sunna  so 
glat  (ere  he  grew  so  bright).  The  MHG.  poet  quoted  on  p.  705 
says  (Warnung  2037)  : 

so  ir  die  sunnen  vro  sehet,  When  ye  see  the  sun  glad, 

schoanes  tages  ir  ir  jehet,  Ye  own  the  fine  day  is  hers, 

des  danktir  ir,  und  Gote  niht.      Ye  thank  her,  not  God. 

In  Switzerland  I  find  the  remarkable  proper  name  Simnenfroh 
(Anshelm  3,  89.  286).  But  now  further,  the  notions  of  bliss, 
repose,  chamber,  lie  next  door  to  each  other,  and  of  course 
brightness  and  bliss.  The  setting  sun  beams  forth  in  heightened 
splendour,  he  is  entering  into  his  bliss  :  this  is  what  '  gongan  to 
gleede '  may  have  meant.  In  ON.  I  have  only  once  fallen  in  with 
solarglacfan  (occasus),  Fornald.  sog.  1,  518.  We  learn  from 
Ihre's  Dialectics,  p.  57a  165%  that  in  Vestgotland  fgladas'  is  said 
of  the  sun  when  setting :  solen  gladas  or  glaas  (occidit),  sole- 
glanding,  solglddjen  (occasus),  which  may  mean  that  the  setting 
sun  is  glad  or  glitters.  That  is  how  I  explain  the  idiom  quoted 
by  Staid.  1,  4G3.  2,  520:  the  sun  goes  gilded  =  sets,  i.e.  glitters 
for  joy.  So  in  Kinderm.  no.  165  :  sunne  z'gold  gauge;  in  a  song 
(Eschenburg's  Denkm.  240)  :  de  sunne  ging  to  golde;  and  often 
in  the  Weisthiimer :  so  die  sun  fur  gold  gat  (1,  197),  als  die 
sonue  in  golt  get  (1,  501).  Again,  as  the  rising  sun  presents 
a  like  appearance  of  splendour,  we  can  now  understand  better 
why  the  vulgar  say  he  leaps  for  joy  or  dances  on  great  festivals 
(p.  291);  he  is  called  f  the  paschal  piper/  Haupt's  Zeitschr.  1, 
547.  Nor  would  I  stop  even  there,  I  would  also  account  for  that 
noise,  that  clang  once  ascribed  to  tho  rising  and  setting  sun 
(p.  720-1)  by  a  deep  affinity  between  the  notions  of  light  and 
sound,  of  colours  and  tones,  Gramm.  2,  86-7.  A  strophe  in 
Albrecht's  Titurel  describes  more  minutely  the  music  of  sunrise  : 


742  DAY  AND   NIGHT. 

Darnach  kund  sich  diu  sunne 

wol  an  ir  zirkel  riden  (writhe) : 

der  siieze  ein  iiberwunne, 

ich  ween  die  siieze  nieman  moht  erliden. 

mit  done  do  diu  zirkel  ruorte ; 

seitenklanc  und  vogelsanc 

ist  alsam  glick  der  golt  gen  kupfer  fuorte. 

(Then  in  his  orb  the  sun  to  whirling  took,  I  ween  such  glut  of 
sweetness  none  might  brook  ;  with  dulcet  din  his  orb  he  rolled, 
that  clang  of  strings  or  bird  that  sings  were  like  as  copper  beside 
gold.)  Who  can  help  thinking  of  the  time-honoured  tradition  of 
Memnon's  statue,  which  at  sunrise  sent  forth  a  sound  like  the 
clang  of  a  harpstring,  some  say  a  joyful  tone  at  the  rising  and  a 
sad  at  the  setting  of  the  sun.1  Further  on  we  shall  be  able  to 
trace  some  other  fancies  about  the  break  of  day  and  the  fall  of 
night,  to  light  and  sound  (see  Suppl.) . 

But  whither  does  the  evening  sun  betake  himself  to  rest,  and 
where  is  his  chamber  situated  ?  The  oldest  way  of  putting  it  is, 
that  he  dives  into  the  sea,  to  quench  his  glow  in  the  cool  wave. 
The  AS.  Bth.  (Eawl.  193a)  :  '  and  beah  monnum  bynceS  bset  hio 
on  mere  gange,  under  soe  swife,  ]?onne  hio  on  setl  glided.'  So 
the  ancients  said  Svvai  and  mergere  of  the  sun  and  stars, e  occasus, 
interitus,  vel  solis  in  oceanum  mersio  '  (Festus).2  Boeth.  4  (metr. 
5)  says  of  Bootes  :  cur  mergat  seras  aequore  flammas  ;  and  metr.  6  : 
nee,  cetera  cernens  sidera  mergi,  cupit  oceano  tingere  flammas ; 
which  N.  223  translates  :  alliu  zeichen  sehende  in  sedel  gan, 
niomer  sih  ne  gerot  hebadon  (bathe)  in  demo  merewazere.  So, 
'  sol  petit  oceanum,'  Rudlieb  4,  9.  But  the  expression  comes  so 
naturally  to  all  who  dwell  on  the  seacoast,  that  it  need  not  be  a 
borrowed  one  ;  we  find  it  in  ON.  '  sol  gengr  i  oegi,'  Fornm.  sog. 
2,  302,  and  in  MHG.  '  der  se,  da  diu  sunne  lif  get  ze  reste,'  MS. 
2,  66b.  And,  as  other  goddesses  after  making  the  round  of  the 
country  are  bathed  in  the  lake,  it  is  an  additional  proof  of  the 
Sun's  divinity  that  f  she '  takes  a  bath,  a  notion  universally  preva- 

1  Pausan.  1,  42.  Philostr.  Vita  Apoll.  6,  4.  Heroic.  4.  Pliny  36,  11.  Tac. 
Ann.  2,  61.     Juven.  15,  5. 

2  Setting  in  the  lake  is  at  the  same  time  depositing  the  divine  eye  as  a  pledge 
in  the  fountain.  I  will  add  a  neat  phrase  from  Wolfram,  Parz.  32,  24  :  d6  hete  diu 
miiede  sunne  ir  liehten  blic  hinz  ir  gelesen. 


DAYBREAK.  743 

lent  among  the  Slavs  also :  at  eve  she  sinks  into  her  bath  to 
cleanse  herself,  at  morn  she  emerges  clean  with  renewed  grandeur. 
The  sea  was  thought  to  be  the  Sun's  mother,  into  whose  arms 
she  sank  at  night.1 

To  inhabitants  of  the  inland,  the  horizon  was  blocked  by  a 
wood,  hence  the  phrases  :  sol  gengr  til  vi&ar  (Biorn  sub  v.  vidr) ; 
solen  gar  under  vide  (Ihre  sub  v.)  ?  But  the  AS.  word  in  : 
'  hador  sgegl  wuldortorht  gewat  under  waffa  scriSan/  Andr.  1456, 
seems  to  be  a  different  thing,  the  OHG.  weidi  (p.  132  n.).  We 
say  the  sun  goes  behind  the  hills,  to  which  corresponds  the  AS. 
'  sunne  gewat  under  nifian  nces,'  sub  terrae  crepidinem,  Andr. 
1306  (conf.  under  neolum  naesse,  El.  831);  a  Dan.  folksong: 
solen  gik  til  iorde,  down  to  earth,  DV.  1,  170;  Ecke  (Hagen)  129  : 
diu  sunne  uz  dem  himel  gie.  Or,  the  sun  is  down,  MHGr.  '  der 
sunne  (here  masc.)  hinder  gegat/  MS.  2,  192b  (see  Suppl.).3 

We  will  now  examine  other  formulas,  which  express  daybreak 
and  nightfall  without  any  reference  to  the  sun. 

What  is  most  remarkable  is,  that  day  was  imagined  in  the 
shape  of  an  animal,  which  towards  morning  advances  in  the  sky. 
Wolfram  begins  a  beautiful  watchman's  song  with  the  words  : 
'sine  hlawen  durch  die  wolken  shit  gestagen  (his  claws  through  the 
clouds  are  struck),  er  stiget  uf  mit  grozer  kraft,  ih  sih  ihn  grawen, 
den  tac;'  and  in  part  third  of  Wh.  (Cass.  31 7a)  we  read:  'daz 
diu  wolken  waren  gra,  und  der  tac  sine  eld  hete  gestagen  durch  die 
nald.4.  Is  it  a  bird  or  a  beast  that  is  meant  ?  for  our  language 
gives  claws  to  both.  In  AS.  there  is  a  proper  name  Dceg-hrefn, 
Beow.  4998,  which  in  OHG.  would  be  Taka-hraban  ;  and  Beow. 
3599  describes  daybreak  in  the  words :  '  hrasfn  blaca  heofones 
wynne  bli5-heort  bodode,'  niger  corvus  coeli  gaudium  laeto  corde 
nuntiavit.5  That  piercing  with  the  claw  to  raise  a  storm  (p.  633) 
makes  one  think  of  an  eagle,  while  an  Oriental  picture,  surprisingly 


1  Hanusch,  Slav.  myth.  p.  231,  who  connects  with  it  the  splashing  with  water 
at  the  Kupalo  feast,  and  derives  that  name  from  kupel,  kapiel. 

2  Estli.  paaw  katsub  metsa  ladwa,  the  sun  walks  on  the  tips  of  the  wood. 

3  Gndr.  116,  2  :  '  der  sunne  schin  gelac  verborgen  hinter  den  wolken  zc 
Gvstrdte  verre '  I  understand  no  better  than  Geildte  (p.  73'J)  ;  but  both  seem  to 
mean  the  same  thing. 

4  So  in  a  Weisthum  (3,  90) :  '  do  sunne  uppe  dem  hogesten  gewest  clawendichJ' 

5  Conf.  volucris  dies,  Hor.  Od.  hi.  28,  G.   iv.  13,  10. 

VOL.    II.  X 


744  DAY  AND   NIGHT. 

similar,  suggests  rather  the  king  of  beasts,  who  to  us  is  the  bear.1 
Ali  Jelebi  in  his  Humayun-nameh  (Diez  p.  153)  describes  the 
beginning  of  day  in  language  bombastic  it  may  be,  yet  doubtless 
a  faithful  reflex  of  ancient  imagery:  fWhen  the  falcon  of  the 
nest  of  the  firmament  had  scattered  the  nightbirds  of  the  flicker- 
ing stars  from  the  meadow  of  heaven,  and  at  sight  of  the  claws 
of  the  lion  of  day  the  roe  of  musk- scented  night  had  fled  from 
the  field  of  being  into  the  desert  of  non-existence.'  The  night, 
a  timid  roe,  retires  before  the  mighty  beast  of  day  :  a  beautiful 
image,  and  full  of  life.  Wolfram  again  in  another  song  makes 
day  press  forward  with  resistless  force  (see  Suppl.). 

But  the  dawn  is  also  pictured  in  human  guise,  that  of  a  beautiful 
youth,  sent  like  Wuotan's  raven  as  harbinger  of  day  :  '  deeg  byS 
Dryhtnes  sond"  says  the  Lay  of  Runes.  And  in  this  connexion 
we  ought  to  consider  the  formation  of  such  names  as  ISseldceg, 
Swipdceg,  etc.,  for  gods  and  heroes.  This  messenger  of  the  gods 
stations  himself  on  the  mountain's  top,  and  that  on  tiptoe,  like  the 
beast  on  his  claws,  that  he  may  the  sooner  get  a  glimpse  of  the 
land  :  c  jocund  day  stands  tiptoe  on  the  misty  mountain  tops,' 
Rom.  and  J.  3,  5;  a  popular  image,  I  have  little  doubt,  and  one 
that  Hebel  also  uses  about  Sunday  morning :  f  und  lisli  uf  de 
zeche  gold  und  heiter  uf  de  berge  stoht  de  sunntig.'  He  climbs 
and  pushes  on  swiftly,  irrepressibly  :  der  tac  stigende  wart,  Trist. 
8942.  der  tac  begund  herdringen,  Wolfd.  124.  In  AS.  '  ]>a  wses 
morgen  leoht  scofen  and  scynded '  (praecipitatus  et  festinatus, 
shoved  and  shindied),  Beow.  1828.  Hence  our  poets  call  him 
der  riche,  the  mighty,  as  they  do  Grod  (p.  20)  :  riche  also  der  tac, 
MS.  1,  163a.  riche  muotes  alsam  der  tac,  Wigal.  5222.  der  tac 
wil  gerichen  (prevail,  prosper),  MS.  1,  27b.  2,  23b;  he  is  not  to  be 
checked,  he  chases  night  away.  Put  impersonally  :  tho  iz  zi  dage 
want  (turned),  Otfr.  iii.  8,  21 ;  but  also  :  der  tac  wil  niht  erwinden 
(turn  aside,  give  it  up),  MS.  1,  147b.  morge  fruo,  als  der  tac 
erstarlcet  (gathers  strength),  Eracl.  587.  do  die  naht  der  tac 
vertreip,  Frauend.  47.  58.  He  hurls  her  from  her  throne,  and 
occupies  it  himself :  ez  taget,  diu  naht  muoz  ab  ir  trone.  den  sie 
ze  Kriechen  hielt  mit  ganzer  vrone,  der  tac  ivil  in  besitzen,  MS. 
1,  2b;  conf.  /3aai\eveiv  said  of  the  sun  (see  Suppl.). 

1  The  Arabs  call  the  first  glimmer  of  dawn  the  wolfs  tail,  Riickert's  Hariri  1, 
215. 


DAYBREAK.  743 

Sometimes  it  appears  as  if  the  day,  whether  pictured  as  man 
or  as  beast,  were  tethered,  and  delayed  in  dawning:  Ugata,fiine 
ligata  dies,  Reinh.  lxiv ;  he  approaches  slowly,  hindered  by  the 
bands  :  ein  nacht  doch  nicht  gepunden  ist  an  einen  stelcchen,  hocr 
ich  sagen,  Suchenw.  22,  30.  Has  that  in  Fergfit  1534,  'quarn 
die  dach  ghestrirt  in  die  sale/  anything  to  do  with  this  ?  In  a 
Hungarian  fairy-tale  (Mailath  1,  137),  midnight  and  dawn  are  so 
tied  up,  that  they  cannot  get  forward,  and  do  not  arrive  among 
men.  Stier's  Volksm.  pp.  3.  5.  One  MHG.  poem  represents  day 
as  on  sale  and  to  be  had  for  money,  Zeitschr.  f.  d.  a.  1,  27  ;  like 
a  slave  bound  by  a  cord  ? 

The  Eomance  tongues  (not  the  Teut.)  often  signify  the  break 
of  day  by  a  word  meaning  to  prick  :  Fr.  poindre,  Sp.  puntar, 
apuntar  (said  of  the  sun  also,  p.  738),  It.  spuntare ;  thus,  a  la 
pointe  du  jour,  at  daybreak.  This  may  indeed  be  understood  of 
the  day's  first  advance,  as  though  it  presented  a  sharp  point,  but 
also  it  may  refer  to  day  as  a  rider  who  spurs  his  steed,  or  to  the 
tramping  and  trotting  of  a  beast,  which  is  also  poindre,  Reinh. 
p.  xxxix  (see  Suppl.). 

But  more  significant  and  impressive  are  the  phrases  that 
connect  with  daybreak  (as  well  as  with  sunrise)  the  idea  of  a 
flutter  and  rustle,  which  might  be  referred  to  the  pinions  of  the 
harbinger  of  day,  but  which  carries  us  right  up  to  the  highest 
god,  whose  sovereign  sway  it  is  that  shakes  the  air.  Wuotan, 
when  spoken  of  as  Wuomo,  Wotna,  is  a  thrill  of  nature  (p.  141), 
such  as  we  actually  experience  at  dawn,  when  a  cool  breeze 
sweeps  through  the  clouds.  Expressions  in  point  are  the  AS. 
dceg-woma  Casdm.  190,  26.  Cod.  exon.  175,4.  dcegred-woma, 
Andr.  125,  8.  Cod.  exon.  179,  24.  morgen-sweg,  Beow.  257. 
dyne  on  dasgred,  Casdni.  289,  27.  asr  dsegrede  bast  se  dyne  becom, 
Caadm.  294,  4;  conf.  Introd.  to  Andr.  and  El.  xxx.  xxxi,  and  the 
allusion  to  Donar,  p.  73G.  To  this  I  would  trace  the  'clang' 
sent  forth  by  the  light  of  sunrise  and  sunset.  And  I  venture  to 
put  the  same  sense  on  an  0.  Fr.  formula,  which  occurs  only  in 
Carolingian  poems:  Gerard  De  Viane  1241,  flou  matin  par  son 
Vaube  esclarcie.'  Cod.  reg.  7183,  3a,  fun  matin  par  son  Vaube, 
quant  el  fu  aparue';  ibid.  5%  (uq  matin  par  son  Vaube,  quant 
li  jor  esclaira' ;  ibid.  1G1C, '  au  matin  par  son  Vaube,  si  con  chantc 
li  gaus   (gallus).'     Cod.   7535,  G9C,  {  a  matin  par  son  Vaube.     I 


746  DAY   AND    NIGHT. 

add  a  few  instances  from  the  Charlemagne,  ed.  Michel  239,  '  al 
matin  sun  la  (?)  lalbe' ;  248.  468.  727,  '  al  matin  par  sun  lalbe  ' ; 
564,  ( le  matin  par  sun  lalbe.'  Was  it  not  originally  per  sonum 
(sonitum)  albae  ?  Later  they  seem  to  have  taken  it  in  a  different 
sense,  viz.  son  =  summum,  summitas,  Fr.  sommet ;  Michel  in 
Gloss,  to  Charlem.  133  gives  a  passage  which  spells  '  par  som 
laube/  and  elsewhere  we  find  '  par  son  leve/  on  the  top  of  the 
water,  '  en  sun  eel  pin/  up  on  this  pine,  Charlem.  594.  760,  '  en 
son/  on  the  top,  Kenart  2617.  In  Provencal,  Ferabras  182,  'lo 
mati  sus  en  lalba ' ;  3484,  '  lo  matinet  sus  lalba/  In  It.,  Buovo 
p.  m.  84.  99.  155,  una  mattina  su  1'  alba,  i.e.  sur  l'aube,  which 
gives  only  a  forced  meaning,  as  though  it  meant  to  say  '  when  the 
alba  stood  over  the  mountain  top.' 

The  English  use  the  expression  'peep  of  day'  :  c the  sun  began 
to  peep '  says  a  Scotch  song,  Minstr.  2,  430 ;  so  the  Danes  have 
pipe  f rem  :  '  hist  piper  solen /rem,  giv  Gud  en  lyksom  dag  ! '  says 
Thorn.  Kingo,  a  17th  cent,  poet  (Nyerup's  Danske  digtek.  mid- 
delalder  1,  235).  Both  languages  now  make  it  a  separate  word 
from  '  to  pipe/  Dan.  'pibe.'  But,  just  as  in  the  Fr.  'par  son' 
the  sound  became  a  coming  in  sight,  so  the  old  meaning  of 
'  piping '  seems  to  have  got  obliterated,  and  a  new  distinction  to 
have  arisen  between  peep  and  pipe,  Dan.  pipe  and  pibe.  Our 
Gryphius  therefore  is  right  in  saying  (p.m.  740),  '  the  moon 
pipes  up  her  light/  It  is  the  simultaneous  breaking  forth  of 
light  and  noise  in  the  natural  phenomenon.  We  have  the  same 
thing  in  (  skreik  of  day'  (Hunter's  Hallamsh.  gloss,  p.  81),  which 
can  mean  nothing  but '  shriek  ' ;  and  in  the  Nethl.  f  kriek,  krieken 
van  den  dag/  Plattd.  '  de  krik  vam  dage '  for  the  morning 
twilight,  the  chirking  (so  to  speak)  of  day,  as  the  chirping  insect 
is  called  cricket,  kriek,  krikel,  ki'ekel  (cicada).  A  remarkable 
instance  of  the  two  meanings  meeting  in  one  word  is  found  in 
the  Goth,  svigla  (auXo?),  OHG.  su'ekala  (fistula),  by  the  side  of 
the  AS.  swegel  (lux,  aether),  OS.  suigli  (lux). 

Our  own  word  anbrechen  (on-break)  implies  a  crash  and  a 
shaking,  MHG.  sa  do  der  ander  tac  iif  brack  (Frauend.  53.  109) ; J 

i  Conf.  Bon.  48,  68  ;  and  I  must  quote  Ls.  3,  259  :  '  do  brach  der  tac  da  herfilr, 
diu  nabt  Yon  dem  tac  wart  kinent  (became  yawning,  was  split  ?  conf.  supra  p.  558), 
diu  sunne  wart  wol  schinent.'  The  Gute  Frau  has  twice  (1539.  2451)  :  'do  der  tac 
durch  daz  tach  (thatch)  luhte  unde  brack.'  We  might  perh.  derive  '  uf  brach  '  from 
brehen,  but  we  now  say  anbrechen,  anbruch. 


DAYBREAK.      TWILIGHT.  (-1. 

Engl,  break  (as  well  as  rush,  hltish)  of  day.  Span.  'el  alva 
rompe.'  0.  Sp.  '  apriessa  cantan  los  gallos,  e  quieren  quebrar 
alb  ores/  Cid  235.  '  ya  quiebran  los  albores,  e  vinie  la  mauanaJ 
460.  '  trocida  es  la  noche,  ya  quiebran  los  albores  '  3558.  0.  Fr. 
c  l'aube  crieve,'  Ren.  1186.  'ja  estoit  Paube  crevee '  1175.  'tantost 
con  l'aube  se  creva'  16057.  Prov.  ' can  lalba  fo  crevada,'  Ferabr. 
3977.  This  romper,  quebrar,  crevar  (Lat.  crepare)  is  the  quiver- 
ing and  quaking  of  the  air  that  precedes  sunrise,  accompanied 
by  a  perceptible  chill ;  and  crepusculum  contains  the  same  idea. 
The  Spaniard  says  also  c  el  alva  se  rie/  laughs ;  and  the  Arab 
'the  morning  sneezes'  (see  Suppl.).1 

But  here  the  notion  of  Twilight,  and  the  oldest  words  by  which 
it  is  expressed,  have  to  be  examined  more  minutely. 

The  very  first  glimmer  of  dawn,  or  strictly  that  which  precedes 
it,  the  latter  end  of  night,  is  expressed  by  the  Goth.  uhtvo 
(evwxov),  Mk.  1,  35,  OHG.  ulda,  or  as  N.  spells  it  uohta,  OS. 
uhta,  AS.  uhte  (most  freq.  '  on  uhtan/  Caadm.  20,  26.  289,  31. 
294,  2.  Cod.  exon.  443,  24.  459,  17.  460,  14.  fon  uhtan  mid 
asrdsege/  Beow.  251),  ON.  otta  (Biorn  says,  from  3  to  6  a.m.). 
The  root  has  never  been  explained  ;  probably  the  Swiss  Uchtland 
and  Westphalian  Uchte  may  be  named  from  uhta.  Closely 
bordering  on  it  is  the  AS.  cerdceg  (primum  tempus),  Beow.  251. 
2623.  5880;  ON.  drdagi  (conf.  ardegis,  mane)  ;  an  OHGr.  ertac  or 
crtago  is  unknown  to  me.  Next  comes  the  notion  of  diluculum, 
ON.  dagsbrun,  dagsblarmi,  dagsbirta,  from  brim=ora,  margo,  as 
if  supercilium,  and  biarmi,  birta  =  lux:  but  OHGr.  tagarod,  tagarot 
(Graff  2,  486-7)  ;  AS.  dcegrkl,  Ceedin.  289,  27.  294,  4;  MLG. 
dagerdt,  En.  1408 ;  M.  Nethl.  dagheraet  (Huyd.  op.  St.  2,  496)  : 
a  compound  whose  last  syllable  is  not  distinctly  traceable  to  rut 
(ruber),  but  is  perhaps  allied  to  the  rodur,  roSull  (coelum)  on 
p.  699.  The  gender  also  wavers  between  masc.  and  fern.2  Wu 
catch  glimpses  of  a  mythic  personality  behind,  for  N.  in  Cap. 
102  translates  Leucothea  (the  white  bright  goddess,  a  Perahta) 
by  '  der  tagerod,'  and  carries  out   the  personification  :  '  ube  der 

1  Ittickert's  Hariri  1,  375.  In  the  Novelas  of  Maria  cle  Zayas  1,  3  is  a  song 
oeginniug  :  'si  se  rie  el  alva,'  elsewhere  she  has  '  quaudo  el  alva  muestra  su  alegre 
risa  ;  '  conf.  p.  502  on  laughter  that  shakes  one.  The  Ital.  '  fare  ridere  una  botta  ' 
is  an  expressive  phrase  for  shaking  a  cask  so  that  it  runs  over. 

-  Yet  conf.  UHG.  morgan-rot,  -roto,  and  -rota  (Grail  2.  48G)  ;  MHG.  ufgemler 
morgenrot  (is  it  morgen  rot?),  Walth.  4,  6  ;  but  daz  rnorgenrGt,  Trist.  8285.     9402. 


743  DAY  AND  NIGHT. 

tagerod  sina  facchelun  inzundet  habe/  have  kindled  his  torches. 
And  in  urkunden  we  meet  with  a  man's  name  Dagharot  (Falke's 
Trad.  corb.  p.  5),  also  a  place  named  ^ 'win-tag  aroth  (Hofer's 
Zeitschr.  2,  170).  When  OHG.  glosses  put  tagarod  for  crepus- 
culum, it  comes  of  unacquaintance  with  the  Latin  idiom ;  it  can 
be  nothing  but  diluculum,  aurora.  In  O.Fr.  there  is  a  woman's 
name  Brunmatin  =  da,wn,  Een.  15666.  15712.  164-41  [conn,  with 
dagsbriin,  Suppl.]  .  The  ON.  has  no  dagsrod,  but  it  has  solarrod 
aurora,  Fornm.  sog.  8,  346.  [Suppl.  adds  'meS  dagroecFom,' 
Ssem.  24a].  The  M.  Nethl.  has  a  second  term  dachgrake, 
dagherake  (fern.),  graken  for  the  night's  blackness  brightening 
into  gray  ;  so  MHG.  der  grdwe  tac,  daz  grdwe  licht,  MS.  2,  49a, 
der  tac  wil  grdwen,  Wolfr.  4,  11;  '  si  kos  den  alten  jungen 
grdwen  grisen  (tac)' ;  ' junc  unde  grd  der  morgen  uf  gat/  MsH.  3, 
42 7b  (see  Suppl.). 

After  aurora  follows  the  full  morning,  Goth,  maurgins,  OHG. 
morkan,  OS.  morgan,  ON.  morgun,  strictly  avptop.  I  suspect  it 
has  a  sense  allied  to  the  day's  '  breaking  or  bursting/  for  the 
Goth,  gamaiirgjan  means  to  cut  and  shorten,  like  ginnen,  secare 
(see  Suppl.). 

To  names  for  the  rising  day  stand  opposed  those  for  the  sink- 
ing. For  oyjre,  6\frla  Ulphilas  puts  andanahti,  the  times  towards 
night,  but  also  seipu  (serum),  as  the  Mod.  Greeks  call  evening 
the  slow,  late,  to  fipdhv,  and  morning  the  swift,  early,  to  tcixv, 
therefore  also  the  short  (conf.  gamaiirgjan).  The  OHG.  dpant, 
OS.  dhand,  AS.  cefen,  ON.  aptan  is  of  one  root  with  aba,  aftar, 
aptr,  which  expresses  a  falling  off,  a  retrograde  movement.  The 
OHG.  demar,  our  dammerung,  stands  especially  for  crepusculum, 
and  is  connected  with  AS.  dim,  Lith.  tamsus,  Slav,  temni  [dark, 
from  tma,  tenebrge] .  AS.  cefenrim,  cefenglom  crepusculum.  What 
has  peculiar  interest  for  us,  the  Tagarod  above  is  supported  by 
an  undoubtedly  personal  Apantrod,  a  giant  of  our  heroic  legend  : 
Abentrot  is  the  brother  of  Ecke  and  Fasolt,  in  both  of  whom  we 
recognised  phenomena  of  the  sea  and  air  (pp.  239.  636).  If  day 
was  a  godlike  youth,  morning  and  evening  twilight  may  have 
been  conceived  as  the  giants  Tagarod  and  Apantrod  (see 
Suppl.).1 

1  MHG.  der  abentrot,  Walth.  30,  15  ;  but  '  do  diu  abentrot  (f.)  witen  ir  lieht  der 
erden  bot,'  Uolricb  1488. 


DAYBREAK.      TWILIGHT.  749 

To  the  Greeks  and  Romans  'Ho>?,  Aurora,  was  a  goddess,  and 
she  is  painted  in  the  liveliest  colours.  She  rises  from  the  couch 
(e/c  Xe^eW,  as  our  sun  goes  to  bed,  p.  71-0)  of  her  husband 
Tithonos,  Od.  5,  1;  she  is  the  early-born  (rjpi<ykveia),  the  rosy- 
fingered  (po8o8dicTv\o$,  II.  1,  477) ;  she  digs  her  ruddy  fingers 
into  the  clouds  as  day  does  his  claws,  p.  743 ;  she  is  also  called 
Xpvaodpovos  golden-throned,  like  Hera  and  Artemis.  The  Slavs, 
instead  of  a  goddess  of  dawn,  appear  to  have  had  a  god,  Yutri- 
bogh  (see  Suppl.). 

There  is  another  belief  of  the  Slavs  and  Hungarians,  which, 
having  strayed  over  to  us,  must  not  be  passed  over  in  silence. 
In  Hungary  dawn  is  called  hajnal  (Esth.  haggo),  and  the  watch- 
men there  cry  to  one  another  :  '  hajnal  vagyon  szep  piros,  hajnal, 
hajnal  vagyon  ! '  aurora  est  (erumpit)  pulcra  purpurea,  aurora, 
aurora  est.  The  same  word  heynal,  eynal  is  in  use  among  the 
Poles,  who  cry:  'heynal  swita !  '  aurora  lucet  (Linde  1,623). 
Now  Dietmar  of  Merseburg  tells  us  under  the  year  1017  (7,  50 
p.  858)  :  '  Audivi  de  quodam  baculo,  in  cujus  summitate  manus 
erat,  unum  in  se  ferreum  tenens  circulum,  quod  cum  pastore  illius 
villae  Silivellun  (Selben  near  Merseb.),  in  quo  (1.  qua)  is  fuerat, 
per  omnes  domos  has  singulariter  ductus,  in  primo  introitu  a 
portitore  suo  sic  salutaretur :  vigila  Hennil,  vigila !  sic  enim 
rustica  vocabatur  lingua,  et  epulantes  ibi  delicate  de  ejusdem  se 
tueri  custodia  stulti  autumabant/  And,  coming  to  our  own 
times,  I  quote  from  Ad.  Kuhn's  Mark,  sagen  p.  330  :  '  An  old 
forester  of  Seeben  by  Salzwedel  used  to  say,  it  was  once  the 
custom  in  these  parts,  on  a  certain  day  of  the  year,  to  fetch  a  tree 
out  of  the  common- wood,  and  having  set  it  up  in  the  village,  to 
dance  round  it,  crying  :  Hennil,  Hennil  wache  !  '  Can  this  have 
come  out  of  Dietmar  ?  and  can  this  '  Hennil,  wake ! '  and 
'Hennil  vigila ! '  so  far  back  as  the  11th  cent,  have  arisen 
through  misunderstanding  the  Hung,  vagyon  (which  means  '  est/ 
not  '  vigilat ')  ?  Anyhow,  the  village  watchman  or  shepherd, 
who  went  round  to  all  the  houses,  probably  on  a  certain  day  of 
the  year,  carrying  the  staff  on  which  was  a  hand  holding  an  iron 
ring,  and  who  called  out  those  words,  seems  to  have  meant  by 
them  some  divine  being.  A  Slovak  song  in  Kollar  (Zpievanky 
p.  247,  conf.  447)  runs  thus  : 


750  DAY   AND   NIGHT. 

Hainal  svita,  giz  den  biely,         H.  shines,  now  day  is  white, 

stavayte  velky  i  maly  !  arise  ye  great  and  small ! 

dosti  sme  giz  dluho  spali.  long  enough  have  we  now  slept. 

Bohemian  writers  try  to  identify  this  Hajnal,  Heynal,  Hennil 
with  a  Servian  or  Bohemian  god  of  herdsmen  Honidlo ; l  I  know 
not  how  it  may  be  about  this  god,  but  honidlo  is  neuter  in  form, 
and  the  name  of  a  tool,  it  must  have  been  gonidlo  in  Polish,  and 
totally  unconnected  with  eynal,  heynal  (see  Suppl.) . 

We  saw  that  the  rising  sun  uttered  a  joyful  sound,  p.  741-2 
that  the  rustling  dawn  laughed,  p.  747 ;  this  agrees  with  the 
oft-repeated  sentiment,  that  the  day  brings  bliss,  the  night  sorroiv. 
We  say,  '  happy  as  the  day/  and  Shaksp.  'jocund  day ' ;  Eeinolt 
von  der  Lippe  '  er  verblide  als  der  dag';  MS.  2,  192  of  depart- 
ing day,  '  der  tac  sin  wunne  verlat.'  Especially  do  birds  express 
their  joy  at  the  approach  of  day  :  '  geest  inne  swsef  o]?]?a3t  hrsefn 
blaca  heofenes  wynne  blid'-heort  bodode,'  Beow.  3598 ;  the  heaven's 
bliss  that  the  raven  blithe-hearted  announces  is  the  breaking  day. 
'  I  am  as  glad  as  the  hawks  that  dewy-faced  behold  the  dawn 
(dogglitir  dagsbrun  sid),'  Ssem.  167b;  '  nu  verSr  hann  sva  feginn, 
sem  fugl  degi/  Yilk.  saga,  cap.  39,  p.  94;  'Horn  was  as  fain  o' 
fight  as  is  the  foule  of  the  light  when  it  ginneth  dawe/  Horn  and 
Rimen.  64,  p.  307  ;  'ich  warte  der  fro u wen  min,  reht  als  des  tages 
diu  kleinen  vogellin,'  MS.  1,  51a;  '  froit  sich  min  gemiiete,  sam 
diu  kleinen  vogellin,  so  si  sehent  den  morgenschin,'  MS.  2,  102b. 
Hence  the  multitude  of  poetic  set-phrases  that  typify  the  break 
of  day  by  the  song  of  cocks  (han-krat)  or  nightingales.  Biarka- 
mal  near  the  beginning  :  '  dagr  er  upp  kominn,  dynja  hana 
fia'Srar,'  cocks'  feathers  make  a  din.  '  a  la  maiiana,  quando  los 
gallos  cantaran,'  Cid  317.  fli  coc  cantoient,  pres  fu  del  esclairier.' 
'  l'aube  est  percie,  sesclere  la  jornee,  cil  oisellon  chantent  en  la 
ramee.'  '  biz  des  morgens  vruo,  daz  diu  nahtigal  rief,'  En.  12545 
(see  Suppl.). 

Night  is  represented  as  swift,  overtaking,  taking  unawares, 
dor)  vv%,  II.  10,  394,  for  does  not  she  drive  a  chariot  ?  She  falls 
or  sinks  from  heaven,  'la  nuit  tombe,  nuit  tombante,  a  la  tombe'e  de 
la  nuit; '  she  bricht  ein  (breaks  or  bursts  in,  down),  whereas  day 
bricht  an  (on,  forth) ;  she  gathers  all  at  once,  she  surprises.      In 

1  Jungmann  1,  G70.  724.     Hauuscli  pp.  369-70. 


NIGHTFALL.  7-3 1 

Matth.  14,  15,  where  the  Vulg.  has  '  hora  jam  praeteriit/  Luther 
Germanizes  it  into  '  die  nacht  fdllt  daher'  (on,  apace) ;  and  O. 
Germ,  already  used  the  verbs  ana  gdn,fallan  in  this  sense  :  aband 
unsih  ana  gelt,  ther  dag  ist  sines  sindes,  0.  v.  10,  8.  in  ane 
gdenda  naht,  N.  Bth.  31.  der  abent  begunde  ane  gdn,  Mar.  171. 
schiere  viel  du  diu  naht  an,  Roth.  2653.  do  diu  naht  ane  gie,  Er. 
3108.  unz  daz  der  abent  ane  gie,  Flore  3468.  Ls.  1,  314. 
Wigal.  1927.  6693.  als  der  abent  ane  get,  Wigal.  4763.  biz  daz 
der  abent  ane  lac,  Ls.  1,  243.  diu  naht  diu  gat  mich  an,  Wolfd. 
1174.  diu  naht  get  uns  vaste  zuo,  Livl.  chron.  5078.  In  the  same 
way  sigen  (sink)  :  do  der  abent  zuo  seic,  Diut.  3,  68.  also  iz  zuo 
deme  abande  seic  3,  70.  nu  seig  ouch  der  abent  zuo,  Frauend.  95, 
20.  diu  naht  begunde  zuo  sigen,  Rab.  102.  begunde  sigen  an, 
367.  do  diu  naht  zuo  seic,  Dietr.  62b.  diu  naht  siget  an,  Ecke 
106.  der  abent  seic  ie  naher,  Gudr.  878,  1.  ze  tal  diu  sunne  was 
genigen,  und  der  abent  zuo  gesigen,  Diut.  351,  diu  naht  begunde 
sigen  an,  Mor.  1620.  3963.1  diu  tageweide  diu  wil  hin  (the  day's 
delight  it  will  away),  der  abent  siget  vaste  zuo,  Amgb.  2a.  der 
tach  is  ouch  an  uns  gewant,  uns  siget  der  avent  in  die  hant, 
Ssp.  pref.  193.  in  der  sinkenden  naht,  Cornel,  releg.,  Magd. 
1605,  F.  5\  in  sinklichter  nacht,  Schoch  stud.  D.  4a.  And  we 
still  say  '  till  sinking  night/ 3  Much  the  same  are :  nu  der 
abent,  diu  naht  zuo  gejtoz  (came  flowing  up),  Troj.  13676.  10499. 
AS.  'aefen  com  sigeltorht  swungen,'  Andr.  1246. — But  this  set- 
ting in,  gathering,  falling  can  also  come  softly,  secretly,  like 
a  thief:  diu  naht  begunde  slichen  an  (creep  on),  Dietr.  68b.  nvi 
was  diu  naht  geslichen  gar  iiber  daz  gevilde  (fields),  Christoph. 
413.  do  nu  diu  naht  her  sleich,  und  diu  vinster  in  begreif  (dark- 
ness caught  him)  376  :  so  thiu  naht  bifeng,  Hel.  129,  16.  do 
begreif  in  die  nacht,  Flcirsheim  chron.  in  Miinch  3,  188.  wie 
mich  die  nacht  bcgrif,  Simplic.  1,  18.  hett  mich  die  nacht  schon 
begriffen,  Gotz  v.  Berl.  p.  m.  164.  In  MHG.  we  find  predicated 
of  night  '  ez  benemen/  to  carry  off  (the  light  ?  the  victory  ?) : 
unz  inz  diu  naht  benam,  Gudr.  879,  1.  ne  hete  iz  in  diu  naht 
benomen,  Diut.  3,  81  (conf.  Gramm.  4,  334).  Hroswitha  says,  in 
Fides  et  spes  :  '  dies  abiit,  nox  incumbit.' 

1  Both  times  '  segen'  in  text ;  if  sigen  an  (viucere)  were  meant,  we  should  ex- 
pect the  word  day  in  the  datiw. 

-  Goethe  Bays  sweetly:  For  Evening  now  the  earth  was  rocking,  And  on  the 
mountains  hung  the  ^sight. 


752  DAY  AND   NIGHT. 

Clearly  in  many  of  these  expressions  Night  is  regarded  as  a 
hostile,  evil  power,  in  contrast  to  the  kindly  character  of  Day,  who 
in  tranquil  ease  climbs  slowly  up  above  the  mountains ;  hence 
night  is  as  leisurely  about  ending,  as  she  is  quick  in  setting  in  : 
1  diu  naht  gemechlich  ende  nam/  slowly  the  night  took  ending, 
Frauend.  206,  21.  '  Night  is  no  man's  friend  '  says  the  proverb, 
as  though  she  were  a  demon  (see  Suppl.). 

Between  Day  and  Night  there  is  perennial  strife.  Night  does 
not  rule  till  day  has  given  up  the  contest :  '  unz  der  tac  liez  sinen 
strit,'  Parz.  423,  15.  ( der  tac  nam  ein  ende,  diu  naht  den  sige 
gewan/  the  victory  won,  Wolfd.  2025.  (  do  der  tac  verquam,  und 
diu  naht  daz  lieht  nam,'  En.  78G6.  '  Nu  begunde  ouch  struchen 
der  tac,  daz  sin  schin  vil  nach  gelac,  unt  daz  man  durch  diu 
wolken  sach,  des  man  der  naht  ze  boten  jach,  manegen  stern  der 
balde  gienc,  wand  er  der  naht  herberge  vienc.  Nach  der  naht 
baniere  kom  sie  selbe  schiere.' x  In  this  pleasing  description 
the  stars  of  evening  precede  the  Night  herself,  as  pioneers  and 
standard-bearing  heralds,  just  as  the  morning  star  was  messenger 
of  Day.2 

On  p.  742  we  had  a  sunrise  taken  from  the  Titurel ;  a  de- 
scription of  failing  day,  which  immediately  precedes,  deserves  to 
stand  here  too  : 

Do  diu  naht  zuo  slichen 

durch  nieman  wolte  lazen, 

und  ir  der  tac  entwichen 

muoste,  er  fuor  sa  wester  hin  die  strdzen, 

also  daz  man  die  erd  in  sach  verslinden, 

unz  er  ir  moht  empfliehen, 

do  kund'  er  sich  von  orient  u£  winden.3 

Earth  devours  the  departing  day  (see  Suppl.). 

I  find  the  older  poets  dwelling  more  on  the  sense  of  gloominess  : 

i  The  Day  'gan  founder  then  and  fall,  and  much  was  shent  his  wonted  sheen, 
till  thro'  the  clouds  might  they  be  seen,  whom  couriers  of  the  Night  we  call,  full 
many  a  star  that  fleetly  fares,  and  harbourage  for  her  prepares.  Next  her  banners, 
soon  Night  herself  came  on. 

2  Lucifer  interea  praeco  scandebat  Olympo,  Walthar.  1188.  Lucifer  ducebat 
diem,  Aen.  2,  801.  Evening  is  called  in  S&nskr.rajanimukha,  night's  mouth,  which 
reminds  one  of  '  Hella's  mouth : '  so  is  morning  ahamukha,  day's  mouth.  Bopp's 
gloss.  27a.  28ib. 

3  Then  Night  came  creeping  on,  for  no  man  would  she  stay,  and  Day  must 
needs  be  gone,  retreating  down  the  western  way ;  the  earth  devouring  him  thou 
eee'st,  until  that  he  might  from  her  flee,  then  could  he  hoist  him  up  from  east. 


NIGHTFALL.      NIGHT.  753 

vv%  6p<pvai7j  the  dusky,  in  Homer.  '  tho  wartli  aband  cuman,  nalit 
mid  neflu,'  Hel.  170,  25.  '  die  Jinn tere  racjende  nacht/  gloomy  low- 
ring  (jutting),  Schreckensgast,  Ingolst.  1590,  p.  114.  'die  eiteJe 
und  Jinntere  nacht,'  Kornmann's  Mons  Ven.  329.  '  nipende  niht/ 
Beow.  1088.  1291,  conf.  genip  (caligo).  ' scaduhelm/  Beow.  1293. 
'  nihthelm  geswearc  deorc  ofer  dryhtguman  '  3576.  'nihthelm  to 
glad/  Andr.  123.  El.  78  :  to. her,  as  a  goddess,  is  ascribed,  quite 
iu  the  spirit  of  our  olden  time,  a  terrible  and  fearful  helmet,  like  a 
cloak-of-darkness,  'niht  helmade'  (put  on  her  helmet)  we  are  told 
in  Andr.  1306.  Still  finer  perhaps  is  that  '  eye  of  black  night/ 
KeXatvi]<;  vvktos  ofM/xa  in  Aeschylus  (Pers.  428)  for  thick  dark- 
ness as  opposed  to  the  bright  eye  of  night,  the  moon,  p.  702 
(see  Suppl.).1 

The  poetic  images  I  have  here  collected  remove  all  doubt  as  to 
Day  and  Night  having  been  in  the  remotest  antiquity  both  alive 
and  divine.  But  the  sentiment  must  very  early  have  lost  some 
of  its  hold  over  the  Teutons,  from  the  time  they  laid  aside  that 
name  for  day,  which  of  itself  bespoke  his  kinship  with  the  gods. 

Reckoning  by  nights  instead  of  days  does  indeed  rest  on  the 
observance  of  lunar  time  (p.  708),  but  may  have  another  reason 
too,  the  same  that  prompted  men  to  count  winters  and  not  sum- 
mers. The  heathens  used  to  fix  their  holy  festivals  for,  or  prolong 
them  into,  the  night,  especially  those  of  the  summer  and  winter 
solstices,  as  we  see  by  the  Midsummer  and  Christmas  fires ;  the 
fires  of  Easter  and  May  also  bear  witness  to  festal  nights.  The 
Anglo- Saxons  kept  a  hcerjestniht  (ON.  haustnott,  haustgrima), 
the  Scandinavians  a  hukunott  (F.  Magn.  Lex.  1021).  Beda  in  his 
De  temp.  rat.  cap.  13  has  preserved  a  notable  piece  of  informa- 
tion, though  its  full  meaning  is  beyond  our  ken  :  '  Incipiebant 
annum  (antiqui  Anglorum  populi)  ab  octavo  cal.  Jan.  die,  ubi  nunc 
natale  Domini  celebramus ;  et  ipsam  noctem,  nunc  nobis  sacro- 
sanctam,  tunc  gentili  vocabulo  modranecht  (modra  niht),3  i.e.  ma- 
trum  noctem  appellabant  ob  causam,  ut  suspicamur,  ceremoniarum 
quas  in  ea  pervigiles  agebant/     Who  were  these  mothers  ? 

1  Images  now  familiar  to  us,  about  quenching  the  lamps  of  day,  I  have  not  met 
with  iu  the  old  poets  ;  but  the  night  burns  her  tapers  too.  Shaksp.  describes  the 
end  of  night  by  '  night's  candles  are  burnt,'  lioin.  &  J.  3,  5. 

2  Afzelius  1,  4.  13  has  no  right  to  speak  of  a  modernatt,  which  is  not  founded 
on  Norse  docs.,  but  simply  borrowed  from  Beda.  [Can  'modie  niht '  have  meant 
'  muntere  nacht,'  wakeful  night  ?  conf.  '  pervigiles.'] 


CHAPTER  XXIV. 
SUMMER  AND  WINTER. 

The  Seasons,  which,  like  day  and  night,  depended  on  the  near- 
ness or  distance  of  the  sun,  have  maintained  their  personality  a 
great  deal  more  vigorously  and  distinctly.  Their  slow  revolution 
goes  on  with  a  measured  stateliness,  while  the  frequent  change  of 
day  and  night  soon  effaced  the  recollection  of  their  having  once 
been  gods. 

Day  and  night  resemble  summer  and  winter  in  another  point, 
viz.  that  the  break  of  day  and  the  arrival  of  summer  are  greeted 
with  joyful  songs  by  the  birds,  who  mourn  in  silence  during  night 
and  winter.  Hence  the  Eddie  kenningar  of  gle&L  fugla  (laetitia 
volucrum)  for  summer,  and  sut  ok  strid'  fugla  (dolor  et  angor 
avium)  for  winter.  This  sympathy  of  nature  finds  utterance  no 
end  of  times  in  the  lays  of  our  minnesingers  (see  Suppl.). 

The  olden  time  seems  at  first  to  have  recognised  only  two 
seasons  in  the  year,  afterwards  three,  and  lastly  four.  To  this 
the  very  names  bear  witness.  Our  jahr,  Goth,  jer,  OHG-.  jar,  M. 
Nethl.  jaer,  OS.  ger,  AS.  gear,  Engl,  year,  ON.  dr,  is  plainly  the 
Pol.  iar,  iaro,  Boh.  gar,  garo,  which  signify  spring.1  In  the 
same  way  the  Slavic  Veto,  lieto,  liato,  strictly  summer,  and  seem- 
ingly akin  to  our  lenz,  OHG.  lenzo,  lengiz,  MHG.  lenze,  lengez,- 
AS.  lencten,  lengten  (lent,  spring)  has  come  by  degrees  to  cover 
the  whole  year.  Thus  both  jar  and  leto  mean  the  warmer  season 
(spring  or  summer)  ;  and  southern  nations  reckoned  by  them,  as 
the  northern  did  by  winters. 

Ulphilas  renders  eros  by  jer,  and  iviavTos  either  by  a}>n,  Gal. 
4,  10,  or  atafrni,  John  18,  13,  a  word  that  has  died  out  of  our 
language  everywhere  else,  but  still  lingers  in  the  Gothic  names 
Athanagildus,    Athanaricus    (Ajmagilds,    AJmareiks)  ;    it    seems 

1  The  Pol.  iar  looks  like  eap,  but  this  is  understood  to  be  for  Fiap,  Fiaap,  Lat. 
ver  for  verer,  veser,  closely  conn,  with  Lith.  wasara  (aestas)  and  Sanskr.  vasanta, 
Benfey  1,  309.  Of  the  same  root  seems  the  Slav,  vesna,  wiosna  (spring),  but  hardly 
the  ON.  vasa'Sr,  which  means  sharp  winter. 

754 


SEASONS.  755 

akin  to  eVo?,  perhaps  to  the  Slavic  god,  godina,  which  in  Russ. 
and  Serv.  mean  a  year,  while  in  O.SL  they  stood,  as  the  Pol. 
god,  Boh.  hod,  hodine  still  stand,  for  time  in  general.  The 
relation  between  eVo?  and  eviavro?  remains  uncertain,  for  in  Od. 
1,  16  (eVo?  rfK.de  Trepi7r\ofj,iva)v  ivtavroiv,  a  year  went  past  with 
circling  seasons)  eviavroi  are  sections  of  a  year,  while  other 
accounts  make  an  eviavro?  contain  three  err).  This  comp. 
iviavros  holds  in  it  the  simple  eVo<?,  Lat.  annus1  (see  Suppl.). 

The  year  was  supposed  to  make  a  circle,  a  ring  (orbis,  circulus) : 
jares  umbi-hring,  jdr-hring,  umbi-huurft ;  MHG.  jares  umbe-ganc, 
-ring,  -vart,  -trit;  and  the  completion  and  recommencement  of 
this  ring  was  from  a  very  early  period  the  occasion  of  solemn 
festivities.  Eligius  preaches :  '  nullus  in  kal.  Jan.  nefanda  aut 
ridiculosa,  vetulos  aut  cervulos  aut  joticos  faciat,  neque  mensas 
super  noctem  componat,  neque  strenas  aut  bibitiones  superfluas 
exerceat.'  This  was  apparently  a  Celtic  and  Roman  custom, 
'  strenae  ineunte  anno'  are  mentioned  by  Suetonius  (Cal.  42.  Aug. 
57),  and  the  holy  mistletoe  was  plucked  amid  joyful  cries  of 
1  a-gui-lan-neuf  ! '  [Michelet  2,  17:  guy-na-ne,  maguillanneu, 
gui-gne-leu.  Suppl.].  Nothing  of  the  kind  seems  to  have  been 
known  in  Germany ;  but  it  is  worth  while  to  notice  the  New- 
year's  hymns  and  wishes  in  Clara  Hiitzlerin's  book  as  late  as  the 
14th  cent.  (57b.  77a,  espec.  196 — 201  in  Haltaus's  ed.)  where  the 
year  is  pictured  as  a  newborn  babe,  a  newborn  god,  who  will  grant 
the  wishes  of  mortals.  Immediately,  no  doubt,  this  referred  to 
Christmas  and  the  Saviour's  birth,  in  places  where  the  new  year 
began  with  that  day  ;  yet  some  heathen  practices  seem  to  have 
got  mixed  up  with  it  too,  and  I  cannot  overlook  the  use  in  these 
hymns  of  the  bare  adj.  new,  without  the  addition  of  'year'  or 
f  child'  (just  as  in  naming  the  new-moon,  p.  710,  ny,  niuwi)  : 
[f  des  gunn  dir  alles  der  newgebom ! '  this  the  Newborn  grant 
thee  all,  Hatzl.  196b.  So  in  other  new-year's  wishes :  '  wunsch 
ich  dir  am  vil  gut  jar  zu  disem  new/  Wolkenst.  p.  167.  ' gen 
disem  saeligen  guoten  neiven,'  Ad.  Keller's  Altd.  ged.  p.  10. — 
Suppl.]. 

Otherwise  I  hardly  find  the  year  as  a  lohole  (conf.  the  riddle, 
p.  737)  exalted  into  a  person,  except  in  adjurations,  spells  and 

1  For  amnus,  says  Bopp's  Gloss.  Skr.  16>> ;  Benfey  1,  310  explains  ivtavrus  by 
Skr.  amaTat,  ivt)  beiug  ania,  ne'w-inoon. 


756  SUMMER  AND   WINTER. 

curses  :  '  sani  mir  daz  heilecjdr  !  '  so  (help)  me  holy  year,  Ls.  1, 
287.  Haupt's  Zeitschr.  7,  104.  The  two  following  refer  to  the 
year's  commencement  only  :  '  ein  scelec  jar  gang  dich  an ! '  a 
blessed  year  betide  thee,  Ls.  3,  111 ;  and  '  daz  dich  ein  veiges  jar 
miiez  ane  komen ! '  a  doomed  (fey)  year  be  thy  dole,  Ls.  1,  317. 
In  AS.  fo3  ]?8et  o'Ser  com  gear  in  geardas/  Beow.  2260  (see 
Suppl.). 

But  even  in  the  earliest  times  the  year  had  fallen  into  halves, 
to  which  AS.  and  ON.  give  the  curious  name  of  missere,  misseri, 
and  the  AS.  poems  seem  to  reckon  chiefly  by  these.  We  find 
'  missera  worn/  store  of  m.,  Casdm.  71,  10;  '  fela  missera '  180, 
23.  Beow.  306;  '  hund  missera/  Beow.  2996.  3536  =  the  50 
winters  in  4413;  f  misserum  fr6d,  missarum  fr6d/  Casdin.  104, 
30.  .141,  16  (wise  with  age,  like  'gearum,  deegrime,  fyrndagum 
frod/  Gramm.  1,  750).  In  the  Edda  I  find  only  212ab,  <ein 
misseri'  (per  unum  annum),  and  'sams  misseris'  (eodem  anno)  ; 
but  the  Gragas  has  also  misseri  (semestrium).  The  etymology  of 
the  word  is  not  easy  :  one  would  expect  to  find  in  it  the  words 
half  (medius,  dimidius)  and  year,  but  the  short  vowel  of  the 
penult  conflicts  with  the  ON.  ar  and  AS.  gear,  and  it  appears 
to  be  masc.  besides  (einn  misseri,  not  eitt  m.) ;  the  ON.  misseri 
(bad  year,  annonae  caritas,  neut.)  is  quite  another  thing.  Again, 
why  should  the  d  of  the  AS.  midde  (Goth,  midja,  OHG.  mitti) 
have  passed  into  ss  ?  It  must  be  admitted  however,  that  in 
the  relation  of  Lat.  medius  to  Goth,  midja  we  already  observe  a 
distm-bance  in  the  law  of  change ;  misseri  may  have  come  down 
and  continued  from  so  remote  an  antiquity  that,  while  in  appear- 
ance denying  its  kindred,  it  will  have  to  own  them  after  all,  and 
the  '  miss '  is  in  the  same  predicament  as  the  Gr.  fxiaos,  /j,eacro<; 
compared  with  Sanskr.  madhyas,  ov  /3va<r6<i  =/3vdo<;.  No  '  mis- 
seri, missiri '  meets  us  in  the  OHG.  remains,  but  the  lost  hero- 
lays  may  have  known  it,  as  even  later  usages  retain  the  reckoning 
by  half-years ;  when  the  Hildebr.-lied  says  '  ih  wallota  suma.ro 
enti  wintro  sehstic  ur  lante/  it  means  only  60  misseri  (30  sum- 
mers and  30  winters),  which  agrees  with  the  '30  years'  of  the 
more  modern  folk-song;  and  we  might  even  guess  that  the 
'thirteen  years'  and  'seven  years'  in  Nib.  1082  and  1327,  2, 
which  make  Chriemhild  somewhat  old  for  a  beauteous  bride,  were 
at  an  older  stage  of  the  epos  understood  of  half-years.     In  the 


SEASONS.  757 

North,  -where  winter  preponderates,  so  many  winters  stood  for 
so  many  years,  and  'tolf  vetra  gamall'  means  a  twelve-year-old. 
That  in  OHG.  and  even  MHG.  summer  and  winter  represent  the 
essential  division  of  the  year,  I  infer  even  from  the  commonly 
used  adverbs  sumerlanc,  winterlanc,  while  we  never  hear  of  a 
lengezlanc  or  herbestlanc;  the  ON.  sumarlangr,  vetrlangr,  are 
supplemented  by  a  haustlangr  (the  whole  autumn) . 

The  Greek  year  has  only  three  seasons,  eap,  depot,  x€i^v' 
autumn  is  left  out.  Our  two  great  anniversaries,  the  summer 
and  winter  solstices,  marked  off  two  seasons;  the  harvest-feast 
at  the  end  of  Sept.  and  the  fetching-in  of  summer  are  perhaps 
sufficient  proof  of  a  third  or  fourth.  The  twofold  division  is 
further  supported  by  the  AS.  terms  midsumor  and  midwinter, 
ON.  micfsumar,  micfvetr,  which  marked  the  same  crises  of  solstice, 
and  had  no  midhearfest  to  compete  with  them  ;  an  AS.  midlenden 
(Engl,  midlent)  does  occur,  and  is  about  equivalent  to  our  mit- 
fasten.  Now  in  what  relation  did  the  missere  stand  to  midsumor 
and  midwinter  ?  The  day  (of  24  hours)  likewise  fell  into  two 
halves  of  12  hours  each,  the  AS.  dogor,  ON.  dcegr  ;  and  dogor 
bears  the  same  relation  to  dasg  as  missere  to  gear.  Our  ancient 
remains  have  no  tuogar  attending  upon  tac,  but  a  Gothic  dogr  by 
the  side  of  dags  may  be  inferred  from  fidurdugs  and  ahtaudogs 
in  Ulphilas  (see  Suppl.). 

Tacitus,  after  saying  that  the  Germans  cultivate  grain  only, 
and  neither  enclose  meadows  nor  plant  orchards,  adds  :  '  unde 
annum  quoque  ipsum  non  in  totidem  digerunt  species  :  hiems  et 
ver  et  aestas  intellectum  ac  vocabula  habent;  auctumni  perinde 
nomen  ac  bona  ignorantur/  Here  auctumnus  evidently  refers  to 
garden-fruit  and  aftermath,  while  the  reaping  of  com  is  placed 
in  summer,  and  the  sowing  in  spring.  But  when  we  consider, 
that  North  Germany  even  now,  with  a  milder  climate,  does  not 
get  the  grain  in  till  August  and  September,  when  the  sun  is 
lower  down  in  the  sky ;  and  that  while  August  is  strictly  the 
ernte-month !  and  Sept.  the  herbst-month,  yet  sometimes  Sept. 
is  called  the  augstin  and  October  the  herbst-month;  theTacitean 
view  cannot  have  been  universally  true  even  in  the  earliest  times. 
Neither  does   tho    OHG.   herpist,   herbist,  AS.  hearfest,  seem  at 

1  OHG.  aranmanut,  from  aran    (messis),  Goth,   asans ;   the  O.Saxons  said 
beivud  or  beo,  Hel.  78, 1-1.   79,  14;  Nethl.  louw,  bouwd. 


758  SUMMER   AND   WINTER. 

all  younger  than  other  very  old  words.  More  correct  surely  is 
the  statement  we  made  before,  that  as  we  go  further  north  in 
Europe,  there  appear  but  two  seasons  in  all,  summer  and  winter  ; 
and  as  we  go  south,  we  can  distinguish  three,  four,  or  even  five.1 
Then  also  for  mythical  purposes  the  two  seasons  are  alone  avail- 
able, though  sometimes  they  are  called  spring  and  winter,  or 
spring  and  autumn3  (see  Suppl.). 

With  the  Goth,  vintrus  (hiems)  we  have  a  right  to  assume  a 
masc.  sumrus  exactly  like  it,  though  Ulph.  in  Mk  13,  28  (and 
prob.  in  Matth.  24,  32  and  Lu.  21,  30)  rendered  depot  by  asans 
(harvest-time).  The  declension  follows  from  OHG.  sumar  = 
sumaru  (for  a  Goth,  sumrs  of  1  decl.  would  bring  in  its  train 
an  OHG.  somar)  ;  also  from  AS.  sumor  with  dat.  sumera,  not 
sumere.  The  ON.  sumar  being  neut.  in  the  face  of  a  masc.  vetr, 
OHG.  wintar,  AS.  winter,  seems  inorganic;  it  must  have  been 
masc.  once.  The  root  assumed  in  my  Gramm.  2,  55  runs  upon 
sowing  and  reaping  of  crops. 

The  Edda  takes  us  at  once  into  the  genealogy  of  these  two 
worthies.  Sumar  is  the  son  of  Svasu&r  (Seem.  34b.  Sn.  23. 127), 
a  name  derived  from  svas  (carus,  proprius,  domesticus),  Goth, 
sves,  OHG.  suas,  for  he  is  one  that  blesses  and  is  blest,  and  after 
him  is  named  all  that  is  sweet  and  blithe  (svaslegt,  blitt).  But 
the  father  of  Vetr  is  named  Vindloni  or  Vindsvalr  (windbringer, 
windcool),  whose  father  again  was  VdsacFr  (ibid.)  the  dank  and 
moist :  a  grim  coldhearted  kindred.  But  both  sets,  as  we  should 
anticipate,  come  before  us  as  giants,  SvasuSr  and  Sumar  of  a 
good  friendly  sort,  Vasa$r,  Vindsvalr  and  Vetr  of  a  malignant ; 

1  Spaniards  divide  spring  into  primavera  and  verano  (great  spring),  see  Don 
Quix.  2,  53  and  Ideler  6,  305.  After  verano  comes  estio,  Fr.ete,  both  masc.,  while 
Ital.  esta,  estate  remains  fem,  like  aestas. 

2  The  Slavs  too,  as  a  race,  hold  with  two  principal  seasons  :  summer  and  year 
are  both  leto,  i.e.  the  old  year  ends  with  winter,  and  with  summer  the  new  begins  ; 
leto,  like  ou'r  jahr,  is  neut.,  and  of  course  impersonal.  Winter  they  call  zima 
(fern.).  When  intermediate  seasons  have  to  be  named,  they  say  podleti  (subaestas) 
for  spring,  podzim  (subhiems)  for  autumn.  But  other  names  have  also  come  into 
vogue,  beside  the  garo,  iaro  above:  Russ.  and  Boh.  vesna,  Pol.  iviosna;  Sloven. 
vy-qred  (e-grediens,  in  Germ.  Carinthia  auswdrt),  mlado  leto  (young  summer), 
viladletie,po-mland,  s-pomlad,  s-prot-Utie  (fr.  s-prot,  against),  all  denoting  spring; 
the  South  Slavs  espec.  felt  the  need  of  parting  spring  from  summer.  Autumn  is 
in  Serv.  yisen,  Sloven,  yezen  or  predzima  (prae-hiems),  Russ.  osen.  Zima  must  be 
very  old.'Lith!  ziema,  Gr.  x"/*^".  Lat-  hiems,  Skr.  hemanta.  Our  fruhling,  fruhjahr 
(early  year)  is  neither  0.  nor  MHG.,  but  formed  during  the  last  few  cents,  on  the 
model  of  printemps  or  primavera ;  spoiling,  spatjahr  (late  year)  is  also  used  for 
autumn.     On  auswarts  and  einwarts  conf.  Schm.  1,  117.   4,  161. 


SUMMER.  750 

so  that  here  again  the  twofold  nature  of  giants  (p.  528-9)  is  set 
in  a  clear  light.  The  Skaldskaparnial  puts  them  down  among  the 
ancient  iotnar:  209b  Somr  (al.  Somir)  ok  Svasuftr,  210a  Vindsvalr 
ok  Vitfarr  (1.  Vetr).  Even  now  Summer  and  Winter  are  much 
used  as  proper  names,  and  we  may  suppose  them  to  have  been 
such  from  the  beginning,  if  only  because  [as  names  of  seasons] 
they  do  not  agree  with  any  in  the  Non-Teutonic  tongues.  An 
urkunde  in  Neugart  no.  373  (as  early  as  a.d.  958)  introduces  us 
to  two  brothers  named  Wintar  and  Sumar.  Graff  1,  631  has  the 
proper  name  Wintarolf  in  the  augmentative  form  (see  p.  762  n.) 

Now  I  will  produce  plain  marks  of  their  personality,  which 
have  long  maintained  themselves  in  popular  phrases  and  poetic 
turns  of  speech.  We  say  every  day  :  Summer,  Winter  is  at  the 
door,  comes  in,  sets  in.  H.  Sachs  iv.  3,  21a  :  '  till  Summer  step 
this  way/  :  In  MHG.  the  one  is  commonly  called  lieb  (lief, 
dear),  the  other  leid  (loathly,  sad)  :  '  der  Hebe  Sumer  urloup 
genam/  took  leave,  Ben.  344.  'urloup  nam  der  Winder,'  362. 
Both  are  provided  with  a  retinue  :  '  Sumer,  dine  holden  (retainers) 
von  den  huoben  sint  gevarn/  304.  (  Sumer,  din  gesinde,'  406. 
'  min  sane  siile  des  Winters  ivdpen  tragen/  my  song  should  W/s 
livery  wear,  MS.  1, 178b.  '  Winder  ist  mit  sinen  vriunden  komen/ 
Ben.  414.  Evidently  they  have  marched  up  with  their  men,  each 
with  intent  to  war  upon  and  chase  away  his  foe :  '  der  leide 
Winder  hat  den  Sumer  hin  verjaget/  381.  f  er  (der  Winter)  ist  dir 
gehaz,  er  en-weiz  niht  umbe  waz,  selten  er  des  ie  vergaz,  swenne 
er  dinen  stuol  besaz,  er  en-ructe  in  viir  baz,  sin  gewalt  wol  tusend 
ellen  viir  den  dinen  gat/  he  hateth  thee,  he  wot  not  why ;  he 
seldom  forgat,  when  thy  chair  he  besat,  but  he  pushed  it  further ; 
his  power  passeth  thine,  etc.  MsH.  3,  258.  Ben.  303.  *  Winter* 
hat  ez  hie  gerumet '  cleared  out,  Ben.  437. — Again,  as  summer 
begins  with  May , we  have  that  month  acting  as  its  representative, 
and  just  as  full  of  life  and  personality.  (All  three  receive  the 
title  of  lord  :  '  min  herre  Winter  ! '  MsH.  3,  267a.  '  her  Meie  ! ' 
3,  443b.  '  her  Meige  !  '  Walth.  46,  30).  May  makes  his  entry  : 
'  su  der  Meige  in  gat,'  Meist.  Alex.  144b.  f  so  der  vil  siieze 
Meige  in  gat,'  Trist.  537.     '  Meige  ist  komen  in  diu  lant/  Ms.  1, 

1  Alse  die  Somer  quam  int  lant,  Reinaert  2451.     alse  de  Sommcr  queme  int 
lant,  Beineke  2311.     do  hero  de  Summer  trat,  Wiggert  2,  48. 

-  "Without  article,  therefore  not  com.  noun ;  conf.  p.  704  note,  Solaus. 

VOL.    II.  Y 


760  SUMMER  AND   WINTER. 

13b.  Ben.  364.  '  der  Meie  sin  ingesinde  hat/  has  Ms  retinue  1, 
14b.  «  des  Meien  tilr  ist  uf  getdn,  MsH.  3,  296a.  '  der  Mei  ist  in 
den  landen  hie '  3,  230a.  '  so  der  Meie  sinen  Tcrame  schouwen 
lat  (his  store  displays),  unde  in  gat  mit  vil  manigem  liehten 
male '  30,  30b.  ' vil  manager  hande  varwe  (full  many  a  hue) 
hat  in  sinem  Tcrame  der  Meige/  MS.  1,  59a.  fder  Meie  hat 
brieve  fiir  gesant,  daz  sie  kiinden  in  diu  lant  sine  kunft  den 
vruoten/  Ben.  433;  like  a  king  who  after  a  long  absence 
returns  victorious,  he  sends  letters  on  before,  to  announce  his 
coming.  f  da  ist  der  Meie  und  al  sin  kraft,  er  und  sin  geselle- 
schaft  diu  (sic  1.)  ringent  manige  swsere  (lighten  many  a 
burden);  Meie  hat  im  angesiget'  overcome  him  (winter),  Ben. 
449.  '  ich  lobe  dich,  Meie,  diner  kraft,  du  tuost  Burner  sigehaft/ 
thou  makest  S.  victorious  (both  prop,  n.),  MS.  2,  57a.  '  ob  der 
Meige  ze  velde  lac/  Ls.  1,  199.  ( so  der  Meige  alrerst  in  gat' 
Frauend.  14.  '  der  Mei  hat  sin  gezelt  bestelt,'  set  up  his  tents, 
camp,  MsH.  3,  303b.  '  des  Meien  seliilt,'  3,  307a.  '  Sumer  der 
hat  sin  gezelt  nu  gerihtet  liberal/  Ms.  2,  57a.  'des  Meien 
waldencere  kiindet  an  die  sumerzit/  May's  forester  announces 
summertide,  MsH.  3,  230b.  f  die  (waldes  ougenweide,  forest's 
eye-feast)  hat  der  Meie  fiir  gesant,  daz  si  kiinden  in  diu  lant  sin 
kunft '  3,  22 7b.  '  der  Meie  viieret  den  wait  an  siner  liende/  leads 
the  wood  by  the  hand,  MS.  2,  81b;  he  is  provided  with  hands 
(like  Wish,  p.  142).  Men  worship  him  with  thanks  and  bowing, 
like  a  king  or  god  making  his  progress  (p.  213,  Freyr)  ;  like 
them  he  has  his  strete  (highway)  :  '  des  Meigen  straze/  Ben.  42. 
1  uf  des  Meien  strdzen,'  MS.  23a.  '  Meie,  ich  wil  dir  nigen,'  bow 
to,  Ben.  398.  '  erent  den  Meien/  Ben.  184.  MsH.  1,  147a-b. 
'  der  Meie  habe  des  danc  ! '  thanks  thereof,1  Ben.  434.  May  and 
Summer  put  on  their  verdant  attire  :  '  der  Meie  ist  uf  sin  grilenez 
zwi  gesezzen/  MS.  2,  75a.  May  hears  complaints,  he  commands 
his  flowers,  1,  3b.  fdes  Meigen  vriunt  (attendant),  der  griiene 
wase  (sward),  der  het  uz  bluomen  angeleit  (laid  on)  so  wiinecliche 
sumerkleit/  Trist.  562.  '  der  Sumer  sneit  sin  kleit/  Ben.  159. 
'  der  Meie  sendet  dem  walde  kleider'  436.     'der  Sumer  gab  diu 

1  In  Gramm.  4,  725  is  a  coll.  of  the  oft-recurring  phrases  '  des  Meigen  ere 
(honour),  d.  M.  giiete,  des  Sumers  gilete  (goodness),'  which  seem  to  imply  an  ancient 
worship  (p.  29,  era).  I  add  a  few  more  references  :  MsH.  1,  52a.  6CK  61a.  194*. 
305a.  348b.  3,  222b.  Notice :  '  Got  gebe  daz  der  herbest  sin  ere  volbringe ! '  that 
autumn  his  worship  fulfil,  MS.  2,  18Ua. 


WINTER.  761 

selben  kleit,  Abrelle  maz,  dor  Meie  sneit/  April  measured,  May- 
cut  out,  MS.  2,  94.b.  '  diu  (kleider)  liet  gegeben  in  (to  them) 
der  Meie  z'einer  niuwen  wat  (weeds,  clothing)/  MsH.  3,  286b. 
'  Mei  hat  enprozzen  berg  und  tal '  3,  188b.  '  Sumer  hat  gesendet 
uz  sin  wunne,  der  Meie  spreit  iif  diu  lant  sin  wat '  (2,  291).1  '  der 
bliienden  heide  voget  (heath's  controller)  ist  mit  gewalt  iif  uns 
gezoget  (has  rushed),  hcert  wi  er  mit  winde  broget  (blusters)  iif 
wait  und  im  gevilde/  MsH.  1,  193a  (see  Suppl.). 

But  more  especially  does  the  antithesis  demand  attention.  In 
Winter's  train  come  Rime  and  Snoiv,  still  personifications,  and 
giants  from  of  old  (p.  532).  They  declare  war  against  Summer: 
'dir  hat widerseit beidiu  llif  and  Sue,'  Ben.  398.  'der  Meie  loste 
bluomen  uz  Rifen  bande'  437.  'manegen  tac  stark  in  sinen 
banden  lac  diu  heide  (the  heath  lay  fast  in  Winter's  bonds) ;  uns 
was  verirt  der  wunne  hirt  von  des  argen  Winter's  nit/  long  did 
we  miss  our  shepherd  of  bliss  by  wicked  W.'s  envy,  MsH.  1, 
192a.  '  der  W.  und  sine  Tcnechte  (his  men),  daz  ist  der  Rife  und 
der  Wind,3  Hartm.  erst,  biichl.  834.  MsH.  3,  232a.  What 
Summer  clothed,  Winter  strips  bare:  ' iiber  diu  oven2  er  dem 
wald  sin  kleider  brack/  tore  the  wood's  clothes  over  his  ears 
(ibid.),  'da  daz  niuwe  loup  (leafage)  e  was  entsprungen,  des 
hastu  nu  gevullet  dinen  sac'  2,  386b;  like  an  enemy  or  robber, 
he  fills  his  sack  with  booty  (saccage).  'bluomen  unde  loup  was 
des  Rifen  erster  roup  (first  plunder),  den  er  in  die  secke  schoup 
(shoved  into  his  sacks),  er  euspielt  in  noch  enkloup/  Ben.  304. 
Yet,  'sunder  Rifen  danc,  allez  griienez  in  froiden  lit/  no  thanks 
to  Jack  Frost,  all  green  things  are  in  glee,  MS.  1,  34b.  'unbe- 
sungen  ist  der  wait,  daz  ist  allez  von  des  Rifen  ungenaden  (ill- 
will)  komen/  Ben.  275.  Wizlau  in  one  song  exclaims  :  '  Winder, 
dich  vorhote  (take  heed)  !  der  Sumer  komt  ze  mote/  to  meet 
thee,  Amgb.  29a;  and  Walther  39,  9  :  '  weizgot,  er  kit  ouch  dem 
Meien  den  strit/  Winter  gives  up  the  battle ;  conversely,  '  der 
Sumer  sinen  strit  dem  Winder  liit/  Warnung  2386.  And,  what 
is  more  than  all,  one  poem 3  has  preserved  even  the  mythic  name 

1  So  that  '  des  Meigen  wdt,  kleit '  MS.  2,  105-6-7  is  a  metaphor  for  foliage,  and 
'  boten  (messengers)  des  Suineres '  1,  97b  for  flowers. 

-  '  Walt  h:it  oren,  velt  hat  gesiht,'  wood  has  ears,  field  has  sight,  MS.  2,  131a ; 
1  velt  hat  6ren,  wait  hat  ougen,'  eyes,  135b. 

3  Nithart's,  Ben.  384.  To  this  poet  we  owe  the  liveliest  images  of  Summer 
and  Winter. 


762  SUMMER   AND   WINTER. 

of  the  Rime-giant :  it  is  Aucholf,  formed  just  with  the  suffix  -olf, 
which  like  -olt  is  characteristic  of  monstrous  ghostly  beings  ; l 
the  root  auka,  QHG.  ouhhu,  means  augeo,  so  that  Oucholf  may 
contain  the  notion  of  enormous,  gigantic  2  (see  Suppl.). 

Summer  and  Winter  are  at  war  with  one  another,  exactly  like 
Day  and  Night  (p.  752)  ;  Day  and  Summer  gladden,  as  Night 
and  Winter  vex  the'  world.3 

Now  the  arrival  of  Summer,  of  May,  or  as  we  now  say,  of 
Spring,  was  kept  as  a  holiday  from  of  old.  In  the  Mid.  Ages 
this  was  called  die  zit  empfdhen,  welcoming  the  season,  MS.  1, 
200a.  2,  78b.  Ben.  453 ;  die  zit  mit  sange  begen  (keep),  Misc. 
2,  198;  den  Sumer  empfdhen,  MsH.  3,  207a.  21  la.  232a.  '  Sumer, 
wis  (be)  empfangen  von  mir  hundert  tusent  stunt  (times)  ! '  Ben. 
328.  'vrouwen  und  man  empfiengen  den  Meien/  MsH.  3,  185b. 
'dawartder  Mei  empfangen  wol '  3,  218b.  219a.  '  den  Meigen 
enpf alien  und  tanzen''  1,  47b.  (nu  woluf  griiezen  (greet)  wir  den 
siiezen ! '  1,  60b.  'ich  wil  den  Sumer  griiezen'  3,  446b.  '  helfent 
grilezen  mir  den  Meien/  MS.  1,  202b.  '  si  (diu  vogellin,  small 
fowl)  wellent  alle  griiezen  nu.  den  Meien '  2,  8  ib.  '  willeJcome  her 
Meige  ! '  1,  57b.  '  sit  willeJcome  her  Meie  ! '  1,  59a.  e  so  wol  dir, 
lieber  Sumer,  daz  du  komen  bist  !  '  MsH.  2,  316b.  A  song  in 
Eschenburg's  Denkm.  458  has  the  burden  '  willkommen  Maie  !  ' 
(see  Suppl.). 

But  the  coming  in  of  Summer  did  not  happen  on  any  fixed 
day  of  the  year,  it  was  determined  by  accidental  signs,  the  open- 
ing of  flowers,  the  arrival  of  birds.  This  was  called  finding 
Summer  :   '  ich  han  den  Sumer  vimden,'  MsH.  3,  202b. 

Whoever  had  spied  '  den  ersten  viol ' 4  made  it  known ;  the 
whole  village  ran  to  the  spot,  the  peasants  stuck  the  flower  on  a 
pole,  and  danced  around  it.  On  this  subject  also  Nithart  has 
some  spirited  songs,  MsH.  3,  298-9 ;  conf.  202a  (den  ersten  viol 

1  Gramm.  2,  334—40;  conf.  Nahtolf,  Biterolf,  Egisgrimolt  (p.  238),  Fasolt 
(p.  529),  Mimerolt  (p.  379),  Kobolt  (p.  414). 

2  A  MHG.  poet  paints  the  battle  between  May  and  Autumn,  in  a  pretty  story 
(Fragm.  29),  but  it  does  not  come  within  the  mythic  province,  conf.  MS.  2,  105. 
More  to  the  point  is  H.  Sachs's  poem  1,  420-1.  A  M.  Nethl.  '  spel  van  den  winter 
ende  sommer '  is  printed  in  Hoffm.  hor.  belg.  6,  125 — 146.  Notker  in  Cap.  27  calls 
'  herbest  unde  lenzo,  zwene  genoza,'  fellows  twain. 

3  The  Fris.  Laws  too  couple  night  with  winter :  '  si  ilia  tenebrosa  nebula  et 
frigidissima  hiems  in  hortos  et  sepes  descendit,'  Richth.  46  (huersa  thiu  thiustera 
nacht  and  thi  nedkalda  winter  ur  tha  tuner  hleth). 

4  Florum  prima  ver  nuntiantium  viola  alba,  Pliny  21,  11  (38). 


HERALDS    OF    SUMMER.  763 

schouwen).  H.  Sachs  iv.  3,  49  seq.  describes  the  same  festival; 
round  the  first  summer  flower  they  dance  and  sing.  '  den  ersteu 
bluomen  vlehten,'  MS.  1,  41b  (see  Suppl.). 

That  the  first  cockchafer  also  was  fetched  in  with  ceremonies, 
we  saw  on  p.  693-4 ;  to  this  day  the  passion  for  hunting  these 
chafers  and  playing  with  them  is  indestructibly  rooted  among 
boys. 

In  like  manner  the  first  swallow,  the  first  stork  was  hailed  as 
messenger  of  spring  (ayyeXo?  eapo<;).  The  swallow's  return  was 
celebrated  even  by  the  Greeks  and  Romans:  Athenaeus  8,  15  p. 
360  gives  a  ^eXiSovio-fia,1  chanted  by  children  at  Rhodes,  who 
carried  a  swallow  about  and  collected  eatables.  The  custom  still 
survives  in  Greece;  the  young  people  assemble  on  March  1,  and 
traverse  all  the  streets,  singiug  a  sweet  spring-song ;  the  singers 
carry  a  swallow  carved  out  of  wood,  which  stands  on  a  cylinder, 
and  keeps  turning  round.2  '  Hirundine  prima,'  says  Horace 
Epist.  i.  7,  13.  That  in  Germany  also  the  first  swallow  was  taken 
notice  of  in  the  Mid.  Ages,  is  shewn  by  the  superstitious  obser- 
vance (Sup.  G,  and  I,  217)  of  digging  a  coal  out  of  the  ground 
on  her  appearance.  In  Sweden  the  country  folk  welcome  her 
with  a  thrice  repeated  shout  of  joy  (Westerdahl  p.  55).  Both 
swallow  and  stork  are  accounted  sacred  inviolable  creatures.  He 
that  first  announced  the  return  of  the  stork  to  the  Greeks, 
received  messenger's  pay.  As  late  as  last  century  the  warders 
of  many  German  towns  were  required  to  blow-in  the  approaching 
herald  of  spring, z  and  a  drink  of  honour  was  served  out  to  them 
from  the  town-cellar.     An  epigram  by  Joach.  Olearius  begins  : 

Ver  laetum  rediit,  rediitque  ciconia  grata, 
aspera  dum  pulso  frigore  cessat  hiems.1 

The  cuckoo  may  also  be  regarded  as  the  announcer  of  spring, 
and  an  O.Engl,  song  appeals  to  him  :  '  sumer  is  icumen  in,  lltudc 
sing  cucu  ! '     Hone's  Daybook  1,  739  (see  Suppl.). 

The  proclaiming  of  summer  by  songs  of  the  younger  folk  still 

1  Il»en.  opusc.  pbilol.  1,  165.  Zell's  Ferienscbr.  1,  53.  88.  Schneidewin's 
Delectus  2,  -165-6. 

-  Fauriel  2,  256.     Disc.  prclirn.  xxviii.     More  fully  iu  Tbcod.  Kind  p.  12. 

's  Alpenrosen  (Bern  1817)  p.  49  ;  conf.  Hebel's  song  Der  storch. 

*  Rostock  Kilo  ;  conf.  Job.  Praetorius's  '  Storcbs  und  schwalben-'winterquartier,' 
Franef.  1676,  p.  185. 


764  SUMMEE  AND   WINTER. 

prevails,  or  did  prevail  in  recent  centuries,  almost  everywhere  in 
German  and  Slav  countries,  and  bespeaks  a  very  ancient  origin. 
What  the  minnesingers,  with  their  elegant  phrases  about  the  old 
'chair,  entiy,  highway,  grace  and  glory  of  Summer '  as  a  king 
or  god,  may  have  led  us  to  guess,  is  supplemented  and  illus- 
trated by  abiding  customs  of  the  people,  which  in  rude  artless 
fashion  drive  at  the  main  point.  The  modes  of  celebration  and 
the  songs  vary  greatly.1  Often  there  is  only  a  wreath,  a  doll,  an 
animal  carried  about  in  a  basket,  and  gifts  demanded  from  house 
to  house.2  Here  it  is  a  cock,  there  a  crow  or  a  fox,3  that  the 
children  take  round,  as  in  Poland  at  the  time  of  coleda  (new- 
year)  they  go  about  with  a  stuffed  wolf,  collecting  gifts  (Lindo 
sub  v.  koleda).  These  animals  do  not  migrate,  and  I  leave  it 
undetermined,  what  right  they  can  have  to  represent  the  stork 
or  swallow,  or  whether  they  mean  something  altogether  different. 
The  approach  of  Summer  is  only  mentioned  in  a  few  words  and 
phrases,  or  not  at  all. 

In  many  places  however  the  collecting  of  gifts  is  only  the 
sequel  to  a  previous  performance  full  of  meaning,  in  which  youths 
and  maidens  take  part.  Two  disguised  as  Summer  and  Winter 
make  their  appearance,  the  one  clothed  with  ivy  or  singriln,  the 
other  with  straw  or  moss,  and  they  fight  one  another  till  Summer 
ivins.  Winter  is  thrown  on  the  ground,  his  wrappages  stripped 
off  and  scattered,  and  a  summer's  wreath  or  branch  is  carried 
about.  Here  we  have  once  moi'e  the  ancient  idea  of  a  quarrel  or 
war  between  the  two  powers  of  the  year,  in  which  Summer  comes 
off  victorious,  and  Winter  is  defeated ;  the  people  supply,  as  it 
were,  the  chorus  of  spectatoi's,  and  break  out  into  praises  of  the 
conqueror. 

1  The  most  diligent  collector  of  them,  though  in  a  scattered  disorderly  way,  is 
Chr.  Heinr.  Schmid  of  Giessen,  both  in  the  'Journal  von  und  fur  D.'  for  1787.  1, 
186-98.  480-5 ;  for  1788.  1,  566-71.  2,  409-11 ;  for  1790.  1,  310-4  ;  for  1791.  1002  ; 
and  in  the  '  Deutsche  monatschrift '  for  1798.  2,  58-67  ;  he  gives  references  to  a 
great  many  authors  old  and  new.  A  still  earlier  article  in  'Journal  v.  u.  f.  D.'  for 
1784.  1,  282  is  worth  consulting.  Isolated  facts  in  Krunitz's  Encyclop.  58,  681 
seq.,  Grater's  Idunna  1812  p.  41,  Biisching's  Woch.  nachr.  1,  183-6.  3,  166  and 
other  places  to  be  cited  as  they  are  wanted.  The  two  earliest  treatises  are  by  Paul 
Chr.  Hilscher  '  de  ritu  Dominicae  Laetare,  quern  vulgo  appellant  den  tod  austreiben,' 
Lips.  1690  (in  Germ.  1710),  and  Joh.  Casp.  Zeumer  'de  Dominica  Laetare,'  Jena 
1706. 

2  Let  the  summer-children  sell  you  a  summer,  and  your  cows  will  give  plenty 
of  milk,  Sup.  I,  1097. 

3  Eeinhart,  Introd.  p.  ccxix.  Athen.  also,  ubi  supra,  speaks  of  a  crow  being 
carried  about,  instead  of  the  swallow. 


EXPULSION   OF   WINTER.  765 

The  custom  just  described  belongs  chiefly  to  districts  on  the 
middle  Rhine,  beyond  it  in  the  Palatinate,  this  side  of  it  in  the 
Odenwald  betwixt  Main  and  Neckar.  Of  the  songs  that  are  sung 
I  give  merely  the  passages  in  point : 

Trarira  !   der  Sommer  der  ist  da  ; 
wir  wollen  hinaus  in  garten 
und  wollen  des  Sommers  warten  (attend). 
wir  wollen  hinter  die  hecken  (behind  the  hedges) 
und  wollen  den  Sommer  wecken  (wake). 
der  Winter  liats  verloren  (has  lost), 
der  Winter  liegt  gefangen  (lies  a  prisoner) ; 
und  wer  nicht  dazu  kommt  (who  won't  agree), 
den  schlagen  wir  mit  stangen  (we'll  beat  with  staves). 
Elsewhere  :    Jajaja  !  der  Sommertag  x  ist  da, 

er  kratzt  dem   Winter  die  augen  aus  (scratch   W.'s 

eyes  out), 
und  jagt  die   bauern  zur  stube  hinaus    (drive   the 

boors  out  of  doors). 
Or  :  Stab  aus  !  ~  dem  Winter  gehn  die  augen  aus  (W.'s 

eyes  come  out) ; 
veilchen,  rosenblumen  (violets  and  roses), 
holen  wir  den  Sommer  (we  fetch), 
schicken  den   Winter  iiber  'n  Bhein  (send  W.  over 

Rhine), 
bringt  uns  guten  kiihlen  wein. 
Also  :  Violen  und  die  blumen 

bringen  uns  den  Sommer, 

der  Sommer  ist  so  keck  (cheeky,  bold), 

und  wirft  den  Winter  in  den  drecJc  (flings  W.  in  the 

dirt). 
Or  :  Stab  aus,  stab  aus, 

bias  dem  Winter  die  augen  aus  (blow  W/s  eyes  out)  ! 

Songs  like  this  must  have  come  down  through  many  centuries  ; 
and  what  I  have  quoted  above  from  poets  of  the  13th  cent,  pre- 

1  For  Sommer  ?  conf.  Baddrcg  for  Bealdor,  p.  222-9,  and  Day,  p.  738. 

2  Also  '  stain  ana '  or  l  xta  mavs,'  and  '  heib  aus,  treib  aus,  dem  W.  ist  ein  aug' 
aus.'  Stabaus  may  be  for  ataubaim  =  up  and  away,  Schm.  3,  002 ;  conf.  Zingerle 
2,  147. 


766  SUMMER  AND  WINTER. 

supposes  their  existence,  or  that  of  songs  substantially  the  same. 
The  conception  and  setting  of  the  whole  are  quite  heathenish : 
valiant  Summer  found,  fetched,  wakened  from  his  sleep ;  van- 
quished Winter  rolled  in  the  dust,  thrown  into  chains,  beaten 
with  staves,  blinded,  banished ;  these  are  demigods  or  giants  of 
antiquity.  Violets  are  mentioned  with  evident  reference  to  the 
welcoming  of  Summer.  In  some  parts  the  children  march  out 
with  white  peeled  rods,  either  for  the  purpose  of  helping  Summer 
to  belabour  the  foe,  or  perhaps  to  represent  the  retinue  of  Winter, 
for  it  was  the  old  custom  for  the  conquered  and  captive  to  be  let 
go,  carrying  white  staves  (RA.  134).  One  of  the  band  of  boys, 
marching  at  their  head  wrapt  in  straw,  stands  for  Winter,  another 
decked  with  ivy  for  Summer.  First  the  two  fence  with  their  poles, 
presently  they  close  and  wrestle,  till  Winter  is  thrown  and  his 
straw  garment  stript  off  him.  During  the  duel,  the  rest  keep 
singing  : 

stab  aus,  stab  aus, 

stecht  dem  Winter  die  augen  aus  ! 

This  is  completely  the  f  rauba  birahanen,  hrusti  giwinnan,  caesos 
spoliare  armis '  of  the  heroic  age ;  the  barbarous  punching  out  of 
eyes  goes  back  to  a  still  remoter  antiquity.1  The  wakening  of 
Summer  is  like  the  wakening  of  Saelde. 

In  some  places,  when  the  fight  is  over,  and  Winter  put  to  flight, 
they  sing : 

So  treiben  wir  den  Winter  aus 

durch  unsre  stadt  zum  thor  hinaus  (out  at  the  gate) ; 

here  and  there  the  whole  action  is  compressed  into  the  shout : 
'  Sommer  'rein  (come  in),  Winter  'naus  (go  out)  !  ' 

As  we  come  back  through  the  Odenwald  toward  inner  Fran- 
conia,  the  Spessart  and  the  Klion  Mts,  the  words  begin  to  change, 
and  run  as  follows  : 

Stab  aus,  stab  aus, 

stecht  dem  Tod  (death)  die  augen  aus  ! 


1  The  MHG.  songs  keep  pace  :  '  der  Meie  hat  sinen  schaft  uf  den  Winter  ver- 
stochen,'  dug  his  shaft  into,  MsH.  3,  195b.  'Mai  hat  den  W.  erslagen',  slain, 
Hatzl.  131,  58.     '  vehten  wil  der  W.  kalt  gegen  dem  lieben  Sumer,'  MsH.  3,  423\ 


EXPULSION    OF   DEATH. 


m 


Then :       Wir  haben  den  Tod  hinausgetrieben  (driven  out), 
den  lieben  Sommer  bringen  wir  wieder  (again), 
den  Sommer  und  den  Meien 
mit  bliimlein  mancherleien  (of  many  a  sort). 

So  Death  has  stept  into  Winter's  place ;  we  might  say,  because 
in  winter  nature  slumbers  and  seems  dead;  but  it  may  also  be, 
that  at  an  early  time  some  heathenish  name  for  Winter  had  to 
give  place  to  the  christian  conception  of  Death. 

When  we  get  to  the  heart  of  Franconia,  e.g.  Niirnberg,  the 
songs  drop  ail  mention  of  Summer,  and  dwell  the  more  em- 
phatically on  the  expulsion  of  Death.1  There  country  lasses  of 
seventeen  or  eighteen,  arrayed  in  all  their  finery,  parade  the 
streets  of  the  whole  town  and  suburbs;  on  or  under  their  left 
arm  they  carry  a  little  open  coffin,  with  a  shroud  hanging  over 
the  sides,  and  a  puppet  lying  under  that.  Poor  children  carry 
nothing  but  an  open  box,  in  which  lies  a  green  bough  of  beech 
with  a  stalk  sticking  up,  on  which  an  apple  is  fixed  instead  of 
the  head.  Their  monotone  song  begins  :  '  To-day  is  Midlent, 
we  bear  Death  into  the  water,  and  that  is  well/  Amongst  other 
things  : 

Wir  tragen  den  Tod  in's  wasser, 

tragen  ihn  'nein,  und  wieder  'raus 2  (in,  and  out  again), 

1  Seb.  Frank's  Weltbuch  51a  thus  describes  the  Shrovetide  custom  in  Fran- 
conia :  'Four  of  thern  hold  a  sheet  by  his  4  corners,  whereon  is  laid  a  straw 
puppet  in  hose,  jerkin  and  mask,  like  a  dead  man,  the  which  they  toss  up  by  die 
4  corners,  and  catch  him  again  in  the  sheet.  This  they  do  the  whole  town  through. 
At  Midlent  they  make  in  some  places  a  strait)  man  or  imp,  arrayed  as  a  death,  him 
tbe  assembled  youth  bear  into  the  nigh  lying  villages.  And  by  some  they  be  well 
received,  eased  and  fed  with  dried  pears,  milk  and  peas ;  by  others,  which  hold  it 
a  presage  of  coming  death,  evil  entreated  and  driven  from  their  homesteads  with 
foul  words  and  oftentimes  with  buffets.' 

2  This  seems  to  indicate,  that  the  deity  of  Death  is  not  to  be  annihilated  by 
the  ducking,  but  only  made  sensible  of  the  people's  dissatisfaction.  Cruel  Death 
has  during  the  year  snatched  many  a  victim,  and  men  wish,  as  it  were,  to  be 
revenged  on  him.  This  is  of  a  piece  with  the  idea  brought  out  on  p.  20  :  when 
a  god  has  not  answered  your  expectations,  you  bully  him,  you  plunge  his  image 
into  water.  So  by  the  Franconians,  on  a  failure  of  the  wine-crop,  St.  Urbau's 
image,  who  had  neglected  to  procure  them  wine  (Fischart's  Garg.  11)  was  Jiang  into 
the  brook,  or  the  mud  (Seb.  Frank  51b),  or  the  water-trough,  even  in  the  mere  antici- 
pation of  a  poor  vintage  (Agricola's  Sprichw.  4'J8.  Grater's  Idunna  1812,  p.  87). 
So  the  Bavarians,  during  St.  Leonhard's  solemn  procession,  would  occasionally 
drop  him  in  the  river  (Schm.  2,  473).  We  know  how  the  Naples  people  to  this  day 
go  to  work  with  their  San  Gennaro,  how  seamen  in  a  storm  ill-use  St.  James's 
image,  not  to  speak  of  other  instances. 


763  SUMMER   AND   WINTER. 

tragen  ilin  vor  des  biederinanns  haus  (up  to  the  goodnian's 
house) . 

Wollt  ihr  uns  kein  schmalz  nicht  geben  (won't  give  us  no 
lard), 

lassen  wir  euch  den  Tod  nicht  sehen  (won't  let  you  see  D.). 

Der  Tod  der  hat  ein  panzer  an  (wears  a  coat  of  mail) . 
Similar  customs  and  songs  prevailed  all  over  Franconia,  and  in 
Thuringia,  Meissen,  Vogtland,  Lausitz  and  Silesia.     The  begin- 
ning of  the  song  varies  : 

Nun  treiben  wir  den  Tod  aus1  (drive  D.  out), 

den  alien  weibem  in  das  haus  (into  the  old  women's  house). 
Or  :  hinter's  alte  hirteuhaus3  (behind  the  old  shepherd's  house). 
Further  on  : 

hcitten  wir  den  Tod  nicht  ausgetrieben  (not  driven  D.  out), 

war  er  das  jahr  noch  inne  geblieben3  (he'd  have  staid  all  the 
year). 

Usually  a  -puppet,  a  figure  of  straw  or  wood,  was  carried  about, 
and  thrown  into  water,  into  a  hog,  or  else  burnt ;  if  the  figure 
was  female,  it  was  carried  by  a  boy,  if  male,  by  a  girl.  They 
disputed  as  to  where  it  should  be  made  and  tied  together ;  what- 
ever house  it  was  brought  out  of,  there  nobody  died  that  year. 
Those  who  had  thrown  Death  away,  fled  in  haste,  lest  he  should 
start  up  and  give  them  chase;  if  they  met  cattle  on  their  way 
home,  they  beat  them  with  staves,  believing  that  that  would 
make  them  fruitful.  In  Silesia  they  often  dragged  about  a  bare 
fir-tree  with  chains  of  straw,  as  though  it  were  a  prisoner.  Here 
and  there  a  strong  man,  in  the  midst  of  children,  carried  a  may- 


1  Luther  parodied  this  song  in  his  Driving  of  the  Pope  out,  Journ.  von  u.  fiir 
D.  1787.  2,  192-3. 

2  '  Dern  alten  Juden  in  seinen  bauch,  etc.',  into  the  old  Jew's  belly,  on  to  the 
young  Jew's  back,  the  worse  for  him ;  over  hill  and  dale,  so  he  may  never  come 
back  ;  over  the  heath,  to  spite  the  shepherds  ;  we  went  through  the  greenwood, 
there  sang  birds  young  and  old.  Finn  Magnusen  (Edda  2, 135)  would  have  us  take 
the  old  '  Juden  '  for  a  iotunn. 

3  J.  F.  Herri,  on  certain  antiquities  found  in  the  Erfurt  country  1787,  p.  28, 
has  the  line  :  '  wir  tragen  den  Krodo  in's  wasser,'  but  confesses  afterwards  (Journ. 
v.  u.  f.  D.  1787.  483-4)  that  he  dragged  the  dubious  name  into  the  text  on  pure  con- 
jecture. The  more  suspicious  becomes  the  following  strophe  in  Hellbach's  Suppl. 
to  the  Archiv  v.  u.  f.  Schwarzburg,  Hildburgh.  1789.  p.  52  :  '  wir  tragen  den  alten 
thor  (fool)  hinaus,  hinter's  alte  hirteuhaus,  wir  haben  nun  den  sommer  gewonnen, 
und  Erodes  macht  ist  weggekommen,'  K'.s  power  is  at  an  end.  The  expressions 
in  the  last  line  smack  of  recent  invention. 


SUMMER   FESTIVAL.  7G9 

pole.1  In  the  Altmark,  the  Wendish  villages  about  Salzwedel, 
especially  Seeben  (where  we  saw  Hermil  still  in  use,  p.  749), 
have  preserved  the  following  custom :  at  Whitsuntide  men- 
servants  and  maids  tie  fir-branches,  straw  and  hay  into  a  large 
firjure,  giving  it  as  much  as  possible  a  human  shape.  Profusely 
garlanded  with  field-flowers,  the  image  is  fastened,  sitting  up- 
right, on  the  brindled  cow  (of  which  more  hereafter),  and  lastly 
a  pipe  cut  out  of  alder  wood  stuck  in  its  mouth.  So  they  conduct 
it  into  the  village,  where  all  the  houses  are  barred  and  bolted, 
and  every  one  chases  the  cow  out  of  his  yard,  till  the  figure  falls 
off,  or  goes  to  pieces  (Ad.  Kukn's  Mark,  sagen,  p.  316-7). 

From  Switzerland,  Tobler  425-6  gives  us  a  popular  play  in 
rhymes,  which  betray  a  Swabian  origin,  and  contain  a  song  of 
battle  between  Summer  and  Winter.  Summer  is  acted  by  a  man 
in  his  bare  shirt,  holding  in  one  hand  a  tree  decorated  with 
ribbons  and  fruit,  in  the  other  a  cudgel  with  the  end  much  split. 
Winter  is  warmly  clad,  but  has  a  similar  cudgel ;  they  lay  on  to 
one  another's  shoulders  with  loud  thwacks,  each  renowning  him- 
self and  running  down  his  neighbour.  At  length  Winter  falls 
back,  and  owns  himself  beaten.  Schm.  3,  248  tells  of  the  like 
combat  in  Bavaria  :  Winter  is  wrapt  in  fur,  Summer  carries  a 
green  bough  in  his  hand,  and  the  strife  ends  with  Summer 
thrusting  Winter  out  of  doors.  I  do  not  find  the  custom  reported 
of  Austria  proper  ;  it  seems  to  be  known  in  Styria  and  the 
adjoining  mountains  of  Carinthia :  the  young  fellows  divide  into 
two  bands,  one  equipt  with  winter  clothes  and  snowballs,  the 
other  with  green  summer  hats,  forks  and  scythes.  After  fighting 
a  while  in  front  of  the  houses,  they  end  with  singing  jointly  the 
praises  of  victorious  Summer.2  It  takes  place  in  March  or  at 
St.  Mary's  Candlemas  (see  Suppl.). 

Some  of  the  districts  named  have  within  the  last  hundred  years 
discontinued  this  old  festival  of  announcing  Summer  by  the 
defeat  of  Winter,  others  retain  it  to  this  day.  Bygone  centuries 
may  well  have  seen  it  in  other  German  regions,  where  it  has 
not  left  even  a  historical  trace ;    there  may  however  bo   some 

1  At  Leipzig  in  the  17th  cent,  the  festival  had  become  so  discredited,  that  they 
had  the  straw  puppet  carried  about  and  immersed  by  women  of  ill  fame. 

-  Sartori's  Nuueste  Eeise  d.  Oestr.,  Vienna  1811.  2,  348.  The  Styrian  battle- 
song  is  printed  in  L'usching's  Wbch.  nachr.  1,  22(j-ti. 


770  SUMMEE  AND   WINTER. 

accounts  that  have  escaped  my  notice.  In  S.  Germany,  Swabia, 
Switzerland,  Bavaria,  Austria,  Styria,  the  ditties  are  longer  and 
more  formal,  but  the  ceremony  itself  not  so  artless  and  racy.  In 
Lower  Hesse,  Lower  Saxony,  Westphalia,  Friesland,  and  the 
Netherlands,  that  is  to  say,  where  Easter-fires  remained  in  vogue, 
I  can  hardly  anywhere  detect  this  annunciation  of  Summer ; 
in  lieu  of  it  we  shall  find  in  N.  Germany  a  far  more  imposing 
development  of  May-riding  and  the  Maigraf  feast.  Whether  the 
announcing  of  Summer  extended  beyond  the  Palatinate  into 
Treves,  Lorraine,  and  so  into  France,  I  cannot  say  for  certain.1 
Clearly  it  was  not  Protestant  or  Catholic  religion  that  deter- 
mined the  longer  duration  or  speedier  extinction  of  the  custom. 
It  is  rather  striking  that  it  should  be  rifest  just  in  Middle 
Germany,  and  lean  on  Slav  countries  behind,  which  likewise  do  it 
homage ;  but  that  is  no  reason  for  concluding  that  it  is  of  Slav 
origin,  or  that  Slavs  could  have  imported  it  up  to  and  beyond  the 
Rhine.  We  must  first  consider  more  closely  these  Slav  customs. 
In  Bohemia,  children  march,  with  a  straw  man  representing 
Death,  to  the  end  of  the  village,  and  there  burn  him  while  they 
sing  : 

Giz  nesem  Smrt  ze  wsy,  Now  bear  we  D.  from  the  village, 

nowe  Leto  do  wsy  ;  new  Summer  to  the  village  ; 

witey  Leto  libezne,  welcome  Summer  sweet, 

obiljcko  zelene  !  little  grain  so  green. 

1  C.  H.  Schmid  has  indeed  drawn  up  (Journ.  v.  u.  f.  D.  1790,  314-5)  a  list  of 
the  lands  and  spots  where  Winter  or  Death  is  carried  out,  and  it  includes  parts  of 
L.  Saxony,  Mecklenburg,  even  Friesland.  But  no  authorities  are  given  ;  and  other 
customs,  similar,  but  without  any  of  the  distinctive  features  of  the  subject  in  hand, 
are  mixed  up  with  it.  Aug.  Pfeiffer  (b.  Lauenstein  1640,  d.  Liibeck  '98)  in  Evang. 
Erquickungstunden,  Leipz.  1G98  mentions  a  '  battle  of  Sum.  and  Win.',  but  names 
no  places,  and  he  had  lived  long  in  Silesia  and  Leipzig.  H.  Lubbert  (preacher  at 
Bohlendorf  by  Liibeck,  b.  1640,  d.  1703)  in  his  Fastnachtsteufel  p.  6  describes  a 
March  (not  May)  procession,  but  does  not  sufficiently  bring  out  the  essential  fea- 
tures. I  extract  the  passage  (from  J.  P.  Schmidt's  Fastelab.  p.  132),  because  it 
illustrates  the  far  from  ineffectual  zeal  of  the  clergy  against  popular  amusements, 
almost  as  strikingly  as  the  diatribe,  560  years  older,  quoted  on  pp.  259  seq.  :  '  The 
last  year,  on  Dominica  Quinquag.  (4  weeks  bef.  Laetare),  I  again  publicly  prayed 
every  man  to  put  away,  once  for  all,  these  pagan  doings.  Alas,  I  was  doomed  to 
see  tbe  wicked  worldlings  do  it  worse  than  before.  Not  alone  did  cliildren  carrying 
long  sticks  wrapt  in  green  leaves  go  about  within  doors,  and  sing  all  manner  of  lewd 
jests,  but  specially  the  men-servants,  one  of  them  having  a  green  ■petticoat  tied  about 
him,  went  in  two  parties  through  the  village  from  house  to  house  with  a  bag-pipe, 
siDging,  swilling,  rioting  like  madmen  in  the  houses  ;  afterward  they  joined  together, 
drank,  danced,  and  kept  such  pother  several  nights  through,  that  one  scarce  could 
sleep  for  it.  At  the  said  ungodly  night-dances  were  even  some  lightminded  maids, 
that  took  part  in  the  accursed  business.' 


EXPULSION   OF  DEATH.  771 

Elsewhere : 

Smrt  plyne  po  wode,  D.  floats  down  the  water, 

nowe  Leto  k  nam  gede.1  new  Summer  to  us  rides. 

Or: 

Smrt  gsme  warn  zanesly,         D.  we've  from  you  taken, 

nowe  Leto  prinesly.  new  Summer  to  you  brought. 

In  Moravia : 

Nesem,  nesem  Mafenu.  We  bear,  we  bear  Marena. 

Other  Slavs  : 

Wyneseme,  wyneseme  Ma- 

muriendu.  Remove  we  Mamurienda. 

Or: 

wynesli  sme  Murienu  se  wsi,  we've  taken  Muriena  out,  and 

prinesli  sme  May  nowij  do  wsi.2  brought  new  May  to  the  town. 

At  Bielsk  in  Podlachia,  on  Dead  Sunday  they  carry  an  idol  of 
plaited  hemp  or  straw  through  the  town,  then  drown  it  in  a  marsh 
or  pond  outside,  singing  to  a  mournful  strain : 

Smierc  wieie  sie  po  plotu,         D.  blows  through  the  wattle, 
szukaiac  klopotu.        •  seeking  the  whirlpool. 

They  run  home  as  fast  as  they  can  :  if  any  one  falls  down,  he  dies 
within  the  year.3  The  Sorbs  in  Upper  Lausitz  make  the  figure 
of  straw  and  rags ;  she  who  had  the  last  coi*pse  must  supply  the 
shirt,  and  the  latest  bride  the  veil  and  all  the  rags  ; 4  the  scare- 
crow is  stuck  on  a  long  pole,  and  carried  away  by  the  biggest 
strongest  lass  at  the  top  of  her  speed,  while  the  rest  sing : 

Lecz  hore,  lecz  hore !  Fly  high,  fly  high, 

jatabate  woko,  twist  thyself  round, 

pan  dele,  pan  dele  !  fall  down,  fall  down. 


1  Celakowsky's  Slowanske  narodni  pisne,  Prague  1822.  p.  209.  He  quotes  other 
rhymes  as  well. 

2  J.  Kollar's  Zpiewanky  1,  4.  400. 

3  Hanusch  Slav.  myth.  413.  Jungmann  sub  v.  Marana,  who  puts  the  Polish 
rhyme  into  Bohem.  thus :  Smrt  wege  po  plotu,  sukagjc  klopotu.  Conf.  a  Moray. 
song  (Kulda  in  d'Elv  107-8-9). 

4  Indicul.  superst.  27-8  :  '  de  simulacris  de  ]>fi)inis  factis,  quae  per  campos  por- 
tant.'  The  Esthonians  on  New  year's  day  make  an  idol  of  straw  in  the  shape  of  a 
man,  to  which  they  concede  the  name  of  metziko  and  the  power  of  protecting  their 
cattle  from  wild  beasts  and  defending  their  frontier.  All  the  people  of  the  village 
accompany,  and  set  him  on  the  nearest  tree,  Thorn.  Hiarn,  p.  40. 


SUMMEE   AND   WINTER. 


They  all  throw  sticks  and  stones  at  it :  whoever  hits  Death  will 
not  die  that  year.  So  the  figure  is  borne  out  of  the  village  to  a 
piece  of  water,  and  drowned  in  it.  But  they  often  cany  Death 
to  the  boundary  of  the  next  village,  and  pitch  him  over  it ;  each 
picks  for  himself  a  green  twig,  and  carries  it  homeward  in  high 
glee,  but  on  arriving  at  his  village  throws  it  away  again.  Some- 
times the  youth  of  the  village  within  whose  bounds  they  have 
brought  Death  will  run  after  them,  and  throw  him  bach,  for  no 
one  likes  to  keep  him;  and  they  easily  come  to  words  and 
blows  about  it.1  At  other  places  in  Lausitz  women  alone  take 
part  in  this  Driving-out  of  Death,  and  suffer  no  men  to  meddle. 
They  all  go  in  black  veils  that  day,  and  having  tied  up  a  puppet 
of  straw,  put  a  white  shirt  on  it,  and  give  it  a  broom  in  one  hand, 
and  a  scythe  in  the  other.  This  puppet  they  carry  singing,  and 
pursued  by  boys  throwing  stones,  to  the  border  of  the  next  town, 
where  they  tear  it  up.  Then  they  hew  down  a  handsome  tree  in 
the  wood,  hang  the  shirt  upon  it,  and  carry  it  home  with  songs.2 
This  tree  is  undoubtedly  a  symbol  of  Summer  introduced  in  the 
place  of  Death  driven  out.  Such  decorated  trees  are  also  carried 
about  the  village  by  boys  collecting  gifts,  after  they  have  rid 
themselves  of  Death.  In  other  cases  they  demand  the  contribu- 
tions while  taking  the  puppet  round.  Here  and  there  they  make 
the  straw  man  peep  into  people's  windows  (as  Berhta  looks  in  at 
the  window,  p.  274)  :  in  that  case  Death  will  carry  off  some  one 
in  the  house  that  year,  but  by  paying  a  money  ransom  in  time,  you 
can  avert  the  omen.  At  Konigshain  by  Gorlitz  the  whole  village, 
young  and  old,  wended  their  way  with  torches  of  straw  to  a 
neighbouring  height  called  the  Todtenstein,  where  formerly  a 
god's  image  is  said  to  have  stood;  they  lit  their  torches  on  the 
top,  and  turned  home  singing,  with  constant  repetition  of  the 
words  :  '  we  have  driven  out  Death,  we  bring  back  Summer.'  3 

So  it  is  not  everywhere  that  the  banished  idol  represented 
Winter  or  Death  in  the  abstract ;  in  some  cases  it  is  still  the 
heathen  divinity  giving  way  to  Christianity,  whom  the  people 
thrust    out    half    in    sorrow,    and    uttering    songs    of   sadness. 

1  Lausitz.  Mag.  for  1770,  p.  84-5,  from  a  MS.  of  Abraham  Frencel. 

2  Chr.  Arnold's  Append,  to  Alex.  Rossen's  Unterschiedn.  gottesdienst,  Heidelb. 

1674.  p.  135. 

3  Anton's  first  Versuch  fiber  die  alten  Slaven,  p.  73-4. 


EXPULSION   OF   GODS.  773 

Dlugosz,1  and  others  after  him,  report  that  by  order  of  king 
Miecislaus  all  the  idols  in  the  land  were  broken  up  and  burnt ; 
in  remembrance  of  which  the  people  in  some  parts  of  Poland,  once 
a  year,  singing  mournful  songs,  conduct  in  solemn  procession 
images  of  Marzana  and  Zieivonia,  fixed  on  poles  or  drawn  on 
drags,  to  a  marsh  or  river,  and  there  drown  them;2  paying 
them  so  to  speak,  their  last  homage.  Dlugosz's  explanation  of 
Marzana  as  '  harvest-goddess '  seems  erroneous;  FrencePs  and 
Schaffarik's  '  death-goddess  ;  is  more  acceptable  :  I  derive  the 
name  from  the  Pol.  marznac,  Boh.  mrznauti,  Russ.  merznut',  to 
freeze,  and  in  opposition  to  her  as  winter-goddess  I  set  the  sum- 
mer-goddess Wiosna,  Boh.  Wesna.  The  Konigenhof  MS.  p.  72 
has  a  remarkable  declaration  :  '  i  iedinu  druzu  nam  iniieV  po  puti 
z  Wesny  po  Moranu/  one  wife  (only)  may  we  have  on  our  way 
from  Wesna  to  Morana,  from  spring  to  winter,  i.e.  ever.  Yet 
the  throwing  or  dipping  of  the  divine  image  in  a  stream  need  not 
have  been  done  by  the  Christians  in  mere  contempt,  it  may  have 
formed  a  part  of  the  pagan  rite  itself;  for  an  antithesis  between 
summer  and  winter,  and  an  exalting  of  the  former,  necessarily 
implied  a  lowering  of  the  latter.3 

The  day  for  carrying  Death  out  was  the  quarta  dominica  quad- 
ragesimae,  i.e.  Laetare  Sunday  or  Midlent,  on  which  very  day 
it  also  falls  in  Poland  (w  nieziele  srodopostna),  Bohemia,  Silesia 
and  Lausitz.  The  Bohemians  call  it  smrtedlna,  samrtna  nedele, 
the  Sorbs  smerdnitsa,  death  Sunday ;  coming  three  weeks  before 
Easter,  it  will  almost  always  occur  in  March.  Some  have  it  a 
week  earlier,  on  Oculi  Sunday,  others  (espec.  in  Bohemia)  a 
week  later,  on  Judica  Sunday ;  one  Boh.  song  even  brings  in 
'  Mag  nowy/  new  May.     But  in  the  Rhine  and  Main  country, -as 


1  Hist.  Polon.  lib.  2,  ad  a.  965.  Matth.  de  Mechovia  cbron.  Polon.  ii.  1,  22. 
Mart.  Cromer  lib.  3,  ad  a.  965.     Mart.  Hanke  de  Silesior.  nominibus,  p.  122-3. 

2  So  the  Russian  Vladimir,  after  his  conversion,  orders  the  image  of  Perun  to 
be  tied  to  a  horse's  tail,  beaten,  and  thrown  into  the  Dnieper.  Afterwards,  when 
the  Novgorod  Perun  was  in  like  manner  thrown  into  the  Volkhov,  he  set  up,  while 
in  the  river,  a  loud  lament  over  the  people's  ingratitude. 

3  The  Indian  Kali,  on  the  7th  day  after  the  March  new-moon,  was  solemnly 
carried  about,  and  then  thrown  into  the  Ganges  ;  on  May  13  the  Roman  vestals 
hore  puppets  plaited  of  rushes  to  the  Pons  Sublicius,  and  dropt  them  in  the  Tiber, 
Ov.  Fast.  5,  620 : 

Turn  quoque  priscorum  virgo  simulacra  virorum 
mittere  roboreo  scirpea  ponte  solet. 


774  SUMMER   AND   WINTER. 

in   most  places,  Laetare  is  the  festive   day,  and  is  there   called 
Summer  day. 

There  is  no  getting  over  this  unanimity  as  to  the  time  of  the 
festival.  To  the  ancient  Slavs,  whose  new  year  began  in  March, 
it  marked  the  commencement  of  the  year,  and  likewise  of  the 
summer  half-year,  i.e.  of  their  leto ;  to  Germans  the  arrival  of 
summer  or  spring,  for  in  March  their  stork  and  swallow  come 
home,  and  the  first  violet  blows.  But  then  the  impersonal  '  leto  ' 
of  the  Slavs  fights  no  battle  with  their  Smrt :  this  departing 
driven-out  god  has  the  play  nearly  all  to  himself.  To  our  an- 
cestors the  contest  between  the  two  giants  was  the  essential 
thino-  in  the  festival ;  vanquished  Winter  has  indeed  his  parallel 
in  Smrt,  but  with  victorious  Summer  there  is  no  living  personality 
to  compare.  And,  beside  this  considerable  difference  between 
the  Slav  ceremony  and  our  own,  as  performed  on  the  Rhine  or 
Neckar,  it  is  also  difficult  to  conceive  how  a  native  Slav  custom 
should  have  pushed  itself  all  the  way  to  the  Odenwald  and  the 
Palatinate  beyond  Rhine,  accountable  as  it  might  be  on  the  upper 
Main,  in  the  Fulda  country,  Meissen  or  Thuringia.  What  is  still 
more  decisive,  we  observe  that  the  custom  is  known,  not  to  all 
the  Slavs,  but  just  to  those  in  Silesia,  Lausitz,  Bohemia  and, 
with  a  marked  difference,  in  Poland  ;  not  to  the  South  Slavs  at 
all,  nor  apparently  to  those  settled  in  Pomerania,  Mecklenburg 
and  Liineburg.  Like  our  Bavarians  and  Tyrolese,  the  Carniolans, 
Styrians  and  Slovaks  have  it  not ;  neither  have  the  Pomeranians 
and  Low  Saxons.1  Only  a  central  belt  of  territory  has  preserved 
it,  alike  among  Slavs  and  Germans,  and  doubtless  from  a  like 
cause.  I  do  not  deny  that  in  very  early  times  it  may  have  been 
common  to  all  Slav  and  all  Teutonic  races,  indeed  for  Germany 
I  consider  it  scarcely  doubtful,  because  for  one  thing  the  old 
songs  of  Nithart  and  others  are  sufficient  proof  for  Austria,  and 
secondly  because  in  Scandinavia,  England,  and  here  and  there 
in  N.  Germany,  appears  the  custom  of  May-riding,  which  is  quite 
the  same  thing  as  the  Rhenish  « summer-day '  in  March. 

Olaus  Magnus  15,  4  says:    'The  Swedes  and    Goths  have   a 
custom,  that   on  the  first  day  of  May  the  magistrates  in  every 

1  The  Holstein  custom  of  going  round  (omgaan)  with  the  fox,  p.  764,  took 
place  in  summer  (says  Schiitze  3,  165),  therefore  not  on  Laetare ;  and  the  words 
they  sing  have  no  explicit  reference  to  summer  and  winter. 


MAY-RIDING.  77-3 


city  make  two  troops  of  horse,  of  tall  youths  and  men,  to  as- 
semble, as  tho'  they  would  go  forth  to  a  mighty  battle.  One 
troop  hath  a  captain,  that  under  the  name  of  Winter  is  arrayed 
in  much  fur  and  wadded  garments,  and  is  armed  with  a  winter- 
spear  :  he  rideth  arrogantly  to  and  fro,  showering  snowballs  and 
iceflakes,  as  he  would  fain  prolong  the  cold,  and  much  he  vaunteth 
him  in  speech.  The  other  troop  hath  contrariwise  a  captain,  that 
is  named  the  Blumengrave,  he  is  clad  in  green  boughs,  leaves  and 
flowers,  and  other  summer  raiment,  and  not  right  fencible ;  he 
rides  into  town  the  same  time  with  the  winter-captain,  yet  each 
in  his  several  place  and  order,  then  hold  a  public  tilting  and 
tourney,  wherein  Summer  hath  the  mastery,  bearing  Winter  to 
the  ground.  Winter  and  his  company  scatter  ashes  and  sparks 
about  them,  the  other  fend  them  with  birchen  boughs  and  young 
lime-twigs ;  finally,  by  the  multitude  around,  the  victory  is 
awarded  to  Summer.'' 

Here  Death  is  not  once  alluded  to ;  in  true  Teutonic  fashion, 
the  whole  business  is  made  to  lie  between  Summer  and  Winter ; 
only,  the  simple  procession  of  our  peasant-folk  has  turned  more 
into  a  chivalry  pageant  of  opulent  town-life.  At  the  same  time 
this  induction  of  May  into  the  city  ('  hisset  kommer  Sivard 
Snarensvend  [p.  3 72n.],  han  forer  os  sommer,'  or  f  och  bar  oss 
sommer  i  by,'  DV.  1,  14.  Sv.  forns.  ],  44.  ' bdra  ma]  i  by,' 
Dybeck  runa  2,  67;  in  Schonen  ' fore  somma  i  by  ')  cuts  a  neater 
statelier  figure  than  the  miserable  array  of  mendicant  children, 
and  is  in  truth  a  highly  poetic  and  impressive  spectacle.  These 
Mayday  sports  are  mentioned  more  than  once  in  old  Swedish 
and  Danish  chronicles,  town  regulations  and  records.  Lords 
and  kings  not  seldom  took  a  part  in  them,  they  were  a  great 
and  general  national  entertainment.  Crowned  with  flowers,  the 
majgrefve  fared  with  a  powerful  escort  over  highway  and  thorp  ; 
banquet  and  round-dance  followed.  In  Denmark  the  jaunting 
began  on  Walburgis  day  (May  1),  and  was  called  'at  ride  Som- 
mer i  bye,'  riding  S.  into  the  land  :  the  young  men  ride  in  front, 
then  the  May -grave  (floriger)  with  two  garlands,  one  on  each 
shoulder,  the  rest  with  only  one ;  songs  are  sung  in  the  town, 
all  the  maidens  make  a  ring  round  the  may-grave,  who  picks  out 
one  of  them  to  be  his  majinde,  by  dropping  a  wreath  on  her 
head.    Winter  and  his  conflict  with  May  are  no  longer  mentioned 

VOL.    II.  z 


776  SUMMER   AND   WINTER. 

in  the  Schonish  and  Danish  festival.     Many  towns  had  regularly 
organized  majgreve  glide.1      But  as  the    May-fire   in    Denmark 
was  called  '  gadeild/  gate   (street)  fire,  so  was  the  leader  of  the 
May-feast   a   gadebasse    (gate   bear),    and    his    maiden    partner 
gadelam   (gate  lamb)    or  gadinde;  gadebasse  and  gadinde  there- 
fore mean  the  same  as  maigreve  and  maigrevinde.2     There  is  a 
remarkable  description  in  Mundelstrup's  Spec,  gentilismi  etiam- 
num  superstitis,  Hafn.  1684  :  '  Qui  ex  junioribus  rusticis  contum 
stipulis    accensis    flammatum     efficacius    versus    sidera    tollere 
potuerit,    praeses    (gadebasse)     incondito    omnium    clamore    de- 
clarator, nee  non  eodem  tempore  sua  cuique  ex  rusticis  puellis, 
quae  tunc  temporis  vernacula  appellantur  gadelam,  distribuitur, 
et    quae    praesidi    adjicitur    titulum   hunc    gadinde   merebitur.3 
Hinc  excipiunt  convivia  per  universum  illud  temporis,  quod  inter 
arationem  et  foenisecium  intercedit,  quavis  die  dominica  celebrari 
sueta,  gadelams-gilder  dicta,   in   quibus  proceriorem  circum  ar- 
borem  in  antecessum  hurno  immissam  variisque  corollis  ac  signis 
ornatam,  corybantum   more   ad  tympanorum    stridentes    sonitus 
bene  poti  saliunt.' 

Now  this  May-riding,  these  May-graves,  were  an  old  tradition 
of  Lower  Germany  also  ;  and  that  apparently  is  the  very  reason 
why  the  Mid-German  custom  of  welcoming  summer  at  Laetare 
was  not  in  vogue  there.  How  could  spring,  which  does  not 
reappear  in  the  North  till  the  beginning  of  May,  have  been 
celebrated  there  in  March  ?  Besides,  this  May-festival  may  in 
early  times  have  been  more  general  in  Germany ;  or  does  the 
distinction  reach  back  to  the  rivalry  between  March  and  May  as 
the  month  of  the  folkmote  ?  4  The  maigreve  at  Greifswald,  May 
1,  1528,  is  incidentally  mentioned  by  Sastrow  in  his  Lebensbeschr. 
1,  65-6;  a  license  to  the  scholars  at  Pasewalk  to  hold  a  maigraf 

1  Ihre  sub  v.  rnajgrefve.  Skraordning  for  Knutsgillet  i  Lund  an.  1586,  §  123-7 
in  Bring's  Monum.  sc&nensia,  p.  207-10  ;  the  same  for  Malrno,  p.  211.  Er.  Tegel's 
Hist.  Gustavi  i.  1,  119.  Nyerup's  Danske  digtek.  1,  246.  2,  136.  143.  Thiele  1, 
145-58 ;  conf.  200.  For  the  Zealand  custom  see  Molbech's  Hist,  tidskrift  1840. 
1,  203.  The  maigreves  in  Ribe  are  mentioned  by  Terpager  in  Ripae  cimbricae, 
p.  723 ;  the  Aalburg  maigreve  in  Wilda's  Gildewesen  p.  285,  from  a  statute  of 
the  15th  century  ;  conf.  Molb.  dial.  lex.  p.  533. 

2  Molb.  dial.  lex.  pp.  150-1-2,  where  doubt  is  thrown  on  the  derivation  ol 
gade  from  ON.  gata  (gate,  road).     He  has  also  a  midsommers-lam,  p.  359. 

3  The  italics  here  are  mine.  Each  man  has  a  gadelam,  but  only  the  leader 
a  gadinde. — Teans. 

4  Conf.  RA.  821-6  on  the  time  of  assizes. 


MAY-HIDING.  i  i  i 

jaunt,  in  a  Church- visitation  ordinance  of  1503  (Baltische  studien 
0,  137)  ;  and  more  precise  information  has  lately  been  collected 
on  the  survival  of  May-riding  at  Hildesheiin,  where  the  beautiful 
custom  only  died  out  in  the  18th  century.1  Towards  Whitsun- 
tide the  maio-reve  was  elected,  and  the  forest  commoners  in  the 
Use  had  to  hew  timber  from  seven  villages  to  build  the  May- 
waggon;  all  loppiugs  must  be  loaded  thereon,  and  only  four 
horses  allowed  to  draw  it  in  the  forest.  A  grand  expedition  from 
the  town  fetches  away  the  waggon,  the  burgomaster  and  council 
receive  a  May-wreath  from  the  commoners,  and  hand  it  over 
to  the  maigreve.  The  waggon  holds  60  or  70  bundles  of  may 
(birch),  which  are  delivered  to  the  maigreve  to  be  further  dis- 
tributed. Monasteries  and  churches  get  large  bundles,  every 
steeple  is  adorned  with  it,  and  the  floor  of  the  church  strown 
with  clippings  of  boxwood  and  field-flowers.  The  maigreve 
entertains  the  commoners,  and  is  strictly  bound  to  serve  up  a 
dish  of  crabs.  But  in  all  this  we  have  only  a  fetching-in  of 
the  May-waggon  from  the  wood  under  formal  escort  of  the  May- 
grave  ;  not  a  word  now  about  the  battle  he  had  to  fight  with 
winter.  Is  it  conceivable  that  earlier  ages  should  have  done 
without  this  battle  ?  Assuredly  they  had  it,  and  it  was  only  by 
degrees  that  custom  left  it  out.  By  and  by  it  became  content  with 
even  less.  In  some  parishes  of  Holstein  they  keep  the  commence- 
ment of  May  by  crowning  a  young  fellow  and  a  girl  with  leaves 
and  flowers,  conducting  them  with  music  to  a  tavern,  and  there 
drinking  and  dancing  ;  the  pair  are  called  matgrev  and  maigron,  i.e. 
maigrafin  (Schiitze  3,  72).  The  Schles  wig  may  grave-feast  (festum 
frondicomans)  is  described  in  Ulr.  Petersen's  treatise  already 
quoted  (p.  694  n.).2  In  Swabia  the  children  at  sunrise  go  into  the 
wood,  the  boys  carrying  silk  handkerchiefs  on  staves,  the  girls 
ribbons  on  boughs ;  their  leader,  the  May-king,  has  a  right  to 
choose  his  queen.  In  Gelders  they  used  on  Mayday-eve  to  set  up 
trees  decorated  and  hung  with  tapers  like  a  Christmas-tree  ;  then 
came  a  song  and  ring-dance.3     All  over  Germany,  to  this  day, 


1  Koken  and  Liintzel's  Mittheilungen  2,  45-61. 

2  He  says  :  '  the  memory  of  this  ancient  but  useless  May-feast  finally  passed 
by  inheritance  to  the  town-cattle,  which,  even  since  1670,  had  every  Mayday  a  gar- 
land of  beech-leaves  thrown  about  the  neck,  and  so  bedizened  were  driven  home  ; 
for  which  service  the  cowherd  could  count  upon  his  fee.' 

3  Geldersche  Volksalmanak  voor  1835,  pp.  10-28.     The  song  is  given  in  Hoffm. 


778  SUMMER   AND   WINTER. 

we  have  may -bushes  brought  into  our  houses  at  Whitsuntide :  we 
do  not  fetch  them  in  ourselves,  nor  go  out  to  meet  them.1 

England  too  had  May -games  or  Mayings  down  to  the  16-1 7th 
century.  On  Mayday  morning  the  lads  and  lasses  set  out  soon 
after  miduight,  with  horns  and  other  music,  to  a  neighbouring 
wood,  broke  boughs  off  the  trees,  and  decked  them  out  with 
wreaths  and  posies  ;  then  turned  homeward,  and  at  sunrise  set 
these  May-bushes  in  the  doors  and  windows  of  their  houses. 
Above  all,  they  brought  with  them  a  tall  birch  tree  which  had 
been  cut  down;  it  was  named  maiepole,  maipoll,  and  was  drawn 
by  20  to  40  yoke  of  oxen,  each  with  a  nosegay  betwixt  his  horns; 
this  tree  was  set  up  in  the  village,  and  the  people  danced  round 
it.  The  whole  festival  was  presided  over  by  a  lord  of  the  May 
elected  for  the  purpose,  and  with  him  was  associated  a  lady  of 
the  May."  In  England  also  a  fight  between  Summer  and  Winter 
was  exhibited  (Hone's  Daybook  1,  359)  ;  the  Maypole  exactby 
answers  to  the  May-waggon  of  L.  Saxony,  and  the  lord  of  the 
May  to  the  May-grave.3  And  here  and  there  a  district  in  France 
too  has  undoubtedly  similar  May-sports.  Champollion  (Rech. 
sur  les  patois,  p.  183)  reports  of  the  Isere  Dept.  :  '  male,  fete  que 
les  enfans  celebrent  aux  premiers  jours  du  mois  de  mai,  en 
parant  un  d'entre  eux  et  lui  donnant  le  titre  de  roi.'  A  lawsuit 
on  the  ( jus  eundi  prima  die  mensis  maji  ad  majum  colligendum  in 
nernora'  is  preserved  in  a  record  of  1262,  Guerard  cart,  de  N.D. 
2,  117  (see  Suppl.).  In  narrative  poems  of  the  Mid.  Ages,  both 
French  and  German,  the  grand  occasions  on  which  kings  hold 
their  court  are  Whitsuntide  and  the  blooming  Maytime,  Rein.  41 
seq.  Iw.  33  seq.,  and  Wolfram  calls  King  Arthur  f  der  meienbrnre 
man/ Parz.  281,  16;  conf.  '  pfmgestlicher  (pentecostal)  kiiniges 
name/  MS.  2,  128a. 

On  the  whole  then,  there  are  four  different  ways  of  welcoming 


Horae  belg.  2,  178-180.     Conf.  '  ic  wil  den  mei  gaen  houwen  voor  mijns  liefs  vein- 
sterkyn,'  go  hew  before  my  love's  window,  Uhland's  Volksl.  178. 

1  Has  the  May-drink  still  made  in  the  Lower  Rhine  and  Westphalia,  of  wine 
and  certain  (sacred?)  herbs,  any  connexion  with  an  old  sacrificial  rite?  On  no 
account  must  woodroof  (asperula)  be  omitted  in  preparing  it. 

2  Fuller  descript.  in  J.  Strutt,  ed.  Lond.  1830,  p.  351-6.  Haupt's  Zeitschr.  5, 
477. 

3  The  AS.  poems  have  no  passage  turning  on  the  battle  of  S.  and  W.  In  Beow. 
22CG  '  H  wass  winter  scacen '  only  means  winter  was  past,  '  el  ibierno  es  esido,'  Cid 
1627. 


RECEPTION    OF    SUMMER.  779 

Summer,  that  we  have  learnt  to  know.  In  Sweden  and  Gothland 
a  battle  of  Winter  and  Summer,  a  triumphal  entry  of  the  latter. 
In  Schonen,  Denmark,  L.  Saxony  and  England  simply  May- 
liding,  or  fetching  of  the  May- waggon.  On  the  Rhine  merely  a 
battle  of  Winter  and  Summer,  without  immersion,1  without  the 
pomp  of  an  entry.  In  Frauconia,  Thuringia,  Meissen,  Silesia  and 
Bohemia  only  the  carrying-out  of  wintry  Death  ;  no  battle,  no 
formal  introduction  of  Summer.3  Of  these  festivals  the  first  and 
second  fall  in  May,  the  third  and  fourth  in  March.  In  the  first 
two,  the  whole  population  takes  part  with  unabated  enthusiasm; 
in  the  last  two,  only  the  lower  poorer  class.  It  is  however 
the  first  and  third  modes  that  have  retained  the  full  idea  of  the 
performance,  the  struggle  between  the  two  powers  of  the  year, 
whilst  in  the  second  and  fourth  the  antithesis  is  wanting.  The 
May- riding  has  no  Winter  in  it,  the  farewell  to  Death  no  Sum- 
mer; one  is  all  joy,  the  other  all  sadness.  But  in  all  the  first 
three  modes,  the  higher  being  to  whom  honour  is  done  is  repre- 
sented by  living  persons,  in  the  fourth  by  a  puppet,  yet  both  the 
one  and  the  other  are  fantastically  dressed  up. 

Now  we  can  take  a  look  in  one  or  two  other  directions. 

On  the  battle  between  Vetr  and  Sumar  ON.  tradition  is  silent,3 
as  on  much  else,  that  nevertheless  lived  on  among  the  people. 
The  oldest  vestige  known  to  me  of  a  duel  between  the  seasons 
amongst  us  is  that  '  Conflictus  hiemis  et  veris'  over  the  cuckoo 
(p.  G75-G).  The  idea  of  a  Summer-god  marching  in,  bringing 
blessings,  putting  new  life  into  everything,  is  quite  in  the  spirit 
of  our  earliest  ages  :  it  is  just  how  Nerthus  comes  into  the  land 
(p.  251)  ;  also  Freyr  (p.  213),  Isis  (p.  258),  Hulda  (p.  2G8),Berhta 

1  It  was  a  different  thing  therefore  when  in  olden  times  the  Frankfort  boys  and 
Kivls,  every  year  at  Candlemas  (Febr.  2),  threw  a  stuffed  garment  into  the  Main,  and 
sang  :  '  Reuker  Uder  schlug  sein  mntter,  schlug  ihr  arm  and  bein  entzwei,  dass  sie 
mordio  schrei,'  Lersner's  Chron.  p.  492.     I  leave  the  song  unexplained. 

2  Yet  Summer  as  a  contrast  does  occasionally  come  out  plainly  in  songs  or 
customs  of  Bohemia  and  Lausitz. 

3  Finn  Magnusen,  always  prone  to  see  some  natural  phenomenon  underlying  a 
myth,  finds  the  contrast  of  summer  and  winter  lurking  in  more  than  one  place  in  the 
Kdda:  in  Fif>llsvinnsm:'i]  and  llarbardsliod  (th.  2,  L55.  ;S,  11  of  his  Edda),  in  Saxo's 
Oiler  and  Othin  saga  (th.  1,  196.  Lex.  765),  in  that  of  Thiassi  (Lex.  887),  because 
Oo'hm  srts  the  eye  of  the  slain  giant  in  the  sky  (p.  ),  aud  Winter  is  also  to 
have  his  eyes  puuehed  out  (p.  765) ;  to  mo  Uhland  (Ueber  Trior  p.  117.  120)  seems 
more  profound,  in  regarding  Thiassi  as  the  storm-eagle,  and  kidnapped  ISunn  as 
thegre  n  of  summer  (ingrun,  so  to  speak)  ;  but  the  nature  of  this  goddess  remains  a 
secret  t">  us. 


780  SUMMER   AND    WINTER. 

(p.  273),  Fricg  (p.  304),  and  other  deities  besides,  whose  car"  or 
ship  an  exulting  people  goes  forth  to  meet,  as  they  do  the  waggon 
of  May,  who,  over  and  above  mere  personification,  has  from  of  old 
his  ere  and  strdze  (p.  670  n.) :  in  heathen  times  he  must  have  had 
an  actual  worship  of  his  own.  All  these  gods  and  goddesses 
appeared  at  their  appointed  times  in  the  year,  bestowing  their 
several  boons  ;  deified  Summer  or  May  can  fairly  claim  identity 
with  one  of  the  highest  divinities  to  whom  the  gift  of  fertility 
belonged,  with  Fro,  Wuotom,  Nerthus.  But  if  we  admit  goddesses, 
then,  in  addition  to  Nerthus,  Ostcvra  has  the  strongest  claim  to 
consideration.  To  what  was  said  on  p.  290  I  can  add  some  signi- 
ficant facts.  The  heathen  Easter  had  much  in  common  with  the 
May-feast  and  the  reception  of  spring,  particularly  in  the  matter 
of  bonfires.  Then,  through  long  ages  there  seem  to  have  lingered 
among  the  people  Easter-games  so-called,  which  the  church  itself 
had  to  tolerate  :  I  allude  especially  to  the  custom  of  Easter  eggs, 
and  to  the  Easter  tale  which  preachers  told  from  the  pulpit  for 
the  people's  amusement,  connecting  it  with  Christian  reminis- 
cences. In  the  MHG.  poets,  '  mines  herzen  osterspil,  ostertac,' 
my  heart's  Easter  play  or  day,  is  a  complimentary  phrase  for  lady 
love,  expressing  the  height  of  bliss  (MS.  2,  52b.  37".  Iw.  8120. 
Frib.  Trist.  804) ;  Conr.  Troj.  19802  makes  the  '  osterlichen  tac 
mit  lebender  wunne  spiln '  out  of  the  fair  one's  eye.  Later  still, 
there  were  dramatic  shows  named  osterspile,  Wackern.  lb.  1014, 
30.  One  of  the  strongest  proofs  is  the  summer  and  dance  song 
of  lord  Goeli,  MS.  2,  57a  (Haupt's  Neidh.  xxv)  :  at  the  season, 
when  ea  and  eyot  are  grown  green,  Fridebolt  and  his  companions 
enter  with  long  swords,  and  offer  to  play  the  osterspil,  which 
seems  to  have  been  a  sword-dance  for  twelve  performers,  one 
of  whom  apparently  was  leader,  and  represented  Summer  beating 
Winter  out  of  the  land  : 

Fridebolt  setze  uf  den  huot  F.,  put  on  thy  hat, 

wolgefriunt,  und  gang  ez  vor,  well  backed,  and  go  before, 

bint  daz  ostersalis  zer  linken  siten  bind  o.  to  thy  left  side, 

bis  dur  Kiinzen  hochgemuot,  be  for  K.'s  sake  merry, 

leite  uns  viir  daz  Tinkuftor,  lead  us  outside  the  T.  gate, 

la  den  tanz  al  uf  den  wasen  riten  !  let  dance  on  turf  be  rid. 

This  binding  on  of  the  '  Easter  seax/  or  sword-knife,  leads  us  to 


SAWING   THE    OLD   WIFE.  781 

infer  that  a  sword  of  peculiar  antique  shape  was  retained;  as 
the  Easter  scones,  osterstuopha  (RA.  298)  and  moonshaped  oster- 
mdne  (Brem.  wtb.)  indicate  pastry  of  heathenish  form.  The 
sword  may  have  been  brandished  in  honour  of  Ostara,  as  it  was 
for  Fricka  (p.  304).  Or  is  Ostersahs  to  be  understood  like 
Beiersahs  (Haupt's  Neidh.  xxv.  17,  note)  ? 

May  we  then  identify  Ostara  with  the  Slav  goddess  of  spring 
Vesna,  the  Lith.  vasara  (aestas),  Lett,  vassara,  and  with  ver  and 
eap  iu  the  forms  ascribed  to  them  on  p.  754  ?  True,  there  is  no 
counterpart,  no  goddess  answering  to  Marzana;  but  with  our 
ancestors  the  notion  of  a  conflict  between  two  male  antagonists, 
the  giants  Summer  and  Winter,  must  have  carried  the  day  at  a 
very  early  time  [to  the  exclusion  of  the  goddesses] . 

The  subject  was  no  stranger  to  the  Greeks  and  Romans  :  in 
one  of  Aesop's  fables  (Cor.  422.  Fur.  380)  %«puv  and  eap  have 
a  quarrel.1  The  Roman  ver  began  on  Feb.  7,  the  first  swallow 
came  in  about  Feb.  26,  though  she  does  not  reach  us  till  near 
the  end  of  March,  nor  Sweden  till  the  beginning  of  May  (Tiede- 
mann's  Zool.  3,  624).  The  Florealia  were  kept  from  Apr.  28  till 
May  1  :  there  were  songs,  dances  and  games,  they  wore  flowers 
and  garlands  on  their  heads,  but  the  contrast,  Winter,  seems  not 
to  have  been  represented.  I  am  not  informed  what  spring 
customs  have  lasted  to  this  day  in  Italy.  Polydore  Vergil,  of 
Urbino  in  Umbria,  tells  us  (de  invent,  rer.  5,  2)  :  (  Est  consuetu- 
dinis,  ut  juventus  promiscui  sexus  laetabunda  Cal.  Maji  exeat  in 
agros,  et  cantitans  inde  virides  reportet  arborum  ramos,  eosque 
ante  domorum  fores  ponat,  et  denique  unusquisque  eo  die  aliquid 
viridis  ramusculi  vel  herbae  ferat ;  quod  non  fecisse  poena  est, 
praesertim  apud  Italos,  ut  madefiat/  Here  then  is  a  ducking 
too ;  this  May-feast  cannot  have  meant  there  a  fetching-in  of 
spring,  for  that  comes  earlier,  in  March  (see  Suppl.). 

Much  more  remarkable  is  the  Italian  and  Spanish  custom  of 
tying  together  at  Mid  Lent,  on  that  very  Dominica  Lastare,  a 
puppet  to  represent  the  oldest  woman  in  the  village,  which  is 
carried  out  by  the  people,  especially  children,  and  sawn  through 
the  middle.  This  is  called  segare  la  vecchia.  At  Barcelona  the 
boys  on  that  day,  in  thirties  and  forties,  run  through   all  the 

1  Creuzer's  Synib.  2,  429.  491,  following  Hermann's  interpret,  of  names,  makes 
of  the  giant  Briareus  a  fighting  u-intcr-demon. 


782  SUMMER   AND   WINTER. 

streets,  some  with  saws,  some  with  billets  of  wood,  and  some 
with  napkins  in  which  people  deposit  their  gifts.  They  declare 
in  a  song,  that  they  are  looking  for  the  very  oldest  woman  in  the 
town,  to  saiv  her  through  the  body  ;  at  last  they  pretend  they 
have  found  her,  and  begin  sawing  something,  and  afterwards 
burn  it.1  But  the  same  custom  is  also  found  amoug  the  South 
Slavs.  In  Lent  time  the  Croats  tell  their  children,  that  at  the 
hour  of  noon  an  old  woman  is  sawn  in  pieces  outside  the  gates  ; 
in  Carniola  it  is  at  Mid  Lent  again  that  the  old  wife  is  led  out  of 
the  village  and  sawn  through  the  middle.3  The  North  Slavs  call 
it  bdbu  re'zati,  sawing  old  granny,  i.e.  keeping  Mid  Lent  (Jungm. 
1,  56).  Now  this  sawing  up  and  burning  of  the  old  wife  (as  of 
the  devil,  p.  606)  seems  identical  with  the  carrying  out  and 
drowning  of  Death,  and  if  this  represented  Winter,  a  giant,  may 
not  the  Romance  and  South  Slav  nations  have  pictured  their 
hiems,  their  zima,  as  a  goddess  or  old  woman  (SI.  baba)  ?  *  Add 
to  this,  that  in  villages  even  of  Meissen  and  Silesia  the  straw 
figure  that  is  borne  out  is  sometimes  in  the  shape  of  an  old  woman 
(p.  768),  which  may  perhaps  have  meant  Marzana  (p.  773)  ?  I 
should  not  be  surprised  if  some  districts  of  Bavaria,  Tyrol  and 
Switzerland  were  yet  to  reveal  a  similar  sawing  of  the  old  wife.3 
The  Scotch  Highlanders  throw  the  auld  wife  into  the  fire  at 
Christmas  (Stewart's  Pop.  superst.  p.  236  seq.). 

But  Lower  Germany  itself  presents  an  approximation  no  less 
worthy  of  attention.  On  p.  190  we  mentioned  that  it  was  the 
custom  at  Hildesheim,  on  the  Saturday  after  Laetare,  to  set  forth 
the  triumph  of  Christianity  over  the  heathen  gods  by  knocking 
down  logs  of  wood.  The  agreement  in  point  of  time  would  of 
itself  invite  a  comparison  of  this  solemnity  with  that  Old-Polish 
one,  and  further  with  the  carrying-out  of  Death;  one  need  not 
even  connect  the  expulsion  of  the  old  gods  with  the  banishment 

1  Alex.  Laborde's  Itineraire  de  l'Espagne  1,  57-8;  conf.  Doblados  briep. 
Hone's  Dayb.  1,  369. 

-  Anton's  Versuch  fiber  die  Slaven  2,  66. 

3  Linhart's  Gesebicbte  von  Krain  2,  274. 

4  The  Ital.  inverno,  Span,  invierno,  is  however  masc. 

5  In  Swabia  and  Switz.,  fronfasten  (Lord's  fast  =  Ember  days,  Scheffer's 
Haltaus  p.  53)  has  been  corrupted  into  a  frau  Faste,  as  if  it  were  the  fast-time 
personified  (Staid.  1,  394.  Hebel  sub  v.).  Can  cutting  Mid  Lent  in  two  have  sig- 
nified a  break  in  the  fast  ?  I  think  not.  "What  means  the  phrase  and  the  act  of 
'  breaking  the  neck  of  the  fast,'  in  an  essay  on  Cath.  superst.  in  the  16th  cent.  ?  see 
Forstemann's  Records  of  Augsburg  Diet,  Halle  1833,  d.  101  (see  Suppl.). 


LOG-FELLING.      GOSSAMER. 


783 


of  Winter  at  all.  In  Geo.  Torquatus's  (unpublished)  Annul. 
Magdeb.  et  Halberst.  part  3  lib.  1  cap.  9  we  are  told  that  at 
Halberstadt  (as  at  Hildesheim  above)  they  used  once  a  year  to 
set  up  a  log  in  the  marketplace,  and  throw  at  it  till  its  head  came 
off.  The  log  has  not  a  name  of  its  own,  like  Jupiter  at  Hildes- 
heim ;  it  is  not  unlikely  that  the  same  practice  prevailed  at  other 
places  in  the  direction  of  these  two  cities.  At  Halberstadt  it 
lasted  till  markgraf  Johan  Albrecht's  time ;  the  oldest  account 
of  it  is  by  the  so-called  'monk  of  Pirna,'  Joh.  Lindner  (Tilianus, 
d.  ab.  1530)  in  his  Onomasticon :  '  In  the  stead  of  the  idol's 
temple  pulled  in  pieces  at  Halberstadt,  there  was  a  dome-church 
(cathedral)  edified  in  honour  of  God  and  St.  Stephen ;  in  memory 
thereof  the  dome-lords  (dean  and  chapter)  young  and  old  shall 
on  Letare  Monday  every  year  set  up  a  wooden  skittle  in  the  idol's 
stead,  and  throw  thereat,  every  one  ;  moreover  the  dome-provost 
shall  in  public  procession  and  lordly  state  let  lead  a  bear  (barz,  1. 
baren)  beside  him,  else  shall  his  [customary  dues  be  denied  him; 
likewise  a  boy  beareth  after  him  a  sheathed  sword  under  his  arm.' 
Leading  a  bear  about  and  delivering  a  bear's  loaf  was  a  custom 
prevalent  in  the  Mid.  Ages,  e.g.  at  Mainz  (Weisth.  1,  533)  and 
Strassburg  (Schilter's  Gloss.  102). 

This  Low  Saxon  rejection,  and  that  Polish  dismissal,  of  the 
ancient  gods  has  therefore  no  necessary  connexion  with  a  bring- 
ing in  of  summer,  however  apt  the  comparison  of  the  new  religion 
to  summer's  genial  warmth.  In  the  Polish  custom  at  all  events 
I  find  no  such  connexion  hinted  at.  At  the  same  time,  the 
notion  of  bringing  summer  in  was  not  unknown  to  the  Poles. 
A  Cracow  legend  speaks  of  Lei  and  Po-lel  (after-lel),  two  divine 
beings  of  heathen  times,  chasing  each  other  round  the  field,  and 
bringing  Summer ;  they  are  the  cause  of  '  flying  summer,  i.e. 
gossamer. l  Until  we  know  the  whole  tradition  more  exactly, 
we  cannot  assign  it  its  right  place.  Lei  and  Polel  are  usually 
likened  to  Castor  and  Pollux  (Linde  i.  2,  1250b),  to  whom  they 
bear  at  least  this  resemblance,  that  their  names,  even  in  old  folk- 
songs, make  a  simple  interjection,  ~  as  the  llomans  used  the  twin 

1  Hall.  allg.  lz.  1807.  no.  256,  p.  807. 

2  Pol.  lelum,  polelum  ;  Serv.  lele,  leljo,lelja  (Vuksub  v.) ;  Walacb.  leruni  (couf. 
liruuilnrum,  verba  elTutitia).  It  seems  to  me  hazardous  to  suppose  them  sous  of 
Lada   as  C.  and  P.  were  of  Leda.     Couf.  supra  p.  3U6.  „ 


784  SUMMER   AND  WINTER. 

demigods  to  swear  by.  Fliegender  sommer,  flugsommer,  sommer- 
flug,  graswebe,  are  our  names  for  the  white  threads  that  cover  the 
fields  at  the  beginning  of  spring,  and  still  more  of  autumn ;  the 
spring  tissue  is  also  called  maidensummer ,  Mary's  yarn,  Mary's 
thread  (p.  471),  that  of  autumn  aftersummer,  autumn  yarn,  old- 
wives'  summer ;  but  generally  both  kinds  are  covered  by  the  one 
name  or  the  other.  Nethl.  slammetje  (draggletail  ?  Brem.  wtb.  4, 
799)  ;  Engl,  gossamer  (God's  train,  trailing  garment),  also  samar, 
slmar  (train) ;  Swed.  dvdrgsndt  (dwarf's  net),  p.  471.  Boh.  wlacka 
(harrow,  because  the  threads  rake  the  ground  ?)  ;  Pol.  lato  swieto 
marcinsTcie,  Mary's  holy  summer.  Here  again  the  Virgin's  name 
seems  to  have  been  chosen  as  a  substitute  or  antidote  for  heathen 
notions :  the  ancient  Slavs  might  easily  believe  the  gauzy  web 
to  have  been  spread  over  the  earth  by  one  of  their  gods.  Bat 
the  autumn  gossamer  has  another  Slavic  name  :  Pol.  babie  lato, 
old  wives'  summer,  Boh.  babshe  Veto,  or  simply  babj,  which  puts 
us  in  mind  once  more  of  that  antithesis  between  summer  and 
the  old  wife  (p.  782) .  She  rules  in  winter,  and  the  god  in  sum- 
mer (see  Suppl.).  Can  the  words  of  the  Wendish  ditty,  quoted 
p.  771,  be  possibly  interpi*eted  of  the  film  as  it  floats  in  the  air  ? 

I  hope  I  have  proved  the  antiquity  and  significance  of  the 
conceptions  of  Summer  and  Winter ;  but  there  is  one  point  I 
wish  to  dwell  upon  more  minutely.  The  dressing-up  of  the  two 
champions  in  foliage  and  flowers,  in  straw  and  moss,  the  dialogue 
that  probably  passed  between  them,  the  accompanying  chorus 
of  spectators,  all  exhibit  the  first  rude  shifts  of  dramatic  art, 
and  a  history  of  the  German  stage  ought  to  begin  with  such 
performances.  The  wrappage  of  leaves  l'epresents  the  stage-dress 
and  masks  of  a  later  time.  Once  before  (p.  594),  in  the  solemn 
procession  for  rain,  we  saw  such  leafy  garb.  Popular  custom 
exhibits  a  number  of  valuations,  having  preserved  one  fragment 
here,  and  another  there,  of  the  original  whole.  Near  Willings- 
hausen,  county  Ziegenhain,  Lower  Hesse,  a  boy  is  covered  over 
and  over  with  leaves,  green  branches  are  fastened  to  his  body : 
other  boys  lead  him  by  a  rope,  and  make  him  dance  as  a  bear, 
for  doing  which  a  present  is  bestowed ;  the  girls  carry  a  hoop 
decked  out  with  flowers  and  ribbons.  Take  note,  that  at  the 
knocking  dqwn  of  logs  at  Halberstadt  (p.  783),  there  was  also 


DRESSING  UP   IN   GREEN.  785 

a  bear  and  a  boy  with  a  sword  (conf.  supra  p.  304  n.)  in  the  pro- 
cession ;  that  Vildifer,  a  hero  disguised  in  a  bearskin,  is  led  about 
by  a  musician,  and  dances  to  the  harp. l  Doubtless  a  dramatic 
performance  of  ancient  date,  which  we  could  have  judged  better, 
had  the  M.  Nethl.  poem  of  here  Wislau  3  been  preserved ;  but 
the  name  Vildifer  seems  to  be  founded  on  an  OS.  Wild-efor, 
which  originated  in  a  misapprehension  of  the  OHG.  Wildpero 
('pero'  ursus  being  confounded  with  'per5  aper),  as  only  a 
dancing  bear  can  be  meant  here,  not  a  boar.  Now  this  bear 
fits  well  with  the  gaclebasse  of  the  Danish  May  feast  (p.  776). 
Schmid's  Schwab,  wtb.  51 8b  mentions  the  Augsburg  waterbird  : 
at  Whitsuntide  a  lad  wrapt  from  head  to  foot  in  reeds  is  led 
through  the  town  by  two  others  holding  birch-boughs  in  their 
hands  :  once  more  a  festival  in  May,  not  March.  The  name  of 
this  '  waterfowl '  shews  he  is  meant  to  be  ducked  in  the  brook  or 
river  ;  but  whether  Summer  here  is  a  mistake  for  Winter,  whether 
the  boy  in  reeds  represents  Winter,  while  perhaps  another  boy 
in  leaves  played  Summer,  or  the  mummery  was  a  device  to  bring 
on  rain,  I  leave  undetermined.  Thuringian  customs  also  point 
to  Whitsuntide  :  the  villagers  there  on  Whit-Tuesday  choose  their 
green  man  or  lettuce-Icing ;  a  young  peasant  is  escorted  into  the 
woods,  is  there  enveloped  in  green  bushes  and  boughs,  set  on 
a  horse,  and  conducted  home  in  triumph.  In  the  village  the 
community  stands  assembled  :  the  bailiff  is  allowed  three  guesses 
to  find  who  is  hidden  in  the  green  disguise ;  if  he  fails,  he  must 
pay  ransom  in  beer.3  In  other  places  it  is  on  Whit-Sunday 
itself  that  the  man  who  was  the  last  to  drive  his  cattle  to  pasture, 
is  wrapt  in  fir  and  birch  boughs,  and  whipt  through  the  village 
amidst  loud  cries  of  '  Whitsun-sleeper  !  *  At  night  comes  beer- 
drinking  and  dancing.  In  the  Erzgebirge  the  shepherd  who 
drives  out  earliest  on  Whit-Sunday  may  crack  his  whip,  the  last 
comer  is  laughed  at  and  saluted  Whitsun-loobij  ;  so  with  the 
latest  riser  in  every  house.     The  sleeping  away  of  sacred  festive 

1  Vilk.  saga,  cap.  120-1 ;  mark,  that  the  minstrel  gives  him  the  name  of  Vitrleo 
(wise  liou),  which  should  of  course  have  heen  Vitrbiom ;  for  a  bear  lias  the  sensed 
L2  men  (Reinh.  p.  445).  The  people's  '  king  of  beasts'  has  been  confounded  with 
that  of  scholars. 

2  Horae  belg.  1,  51.  Monc's  Niederl.  volkslit.  p.  35-6.  Conf.  Wenezlan,  Altd 
bl.  1,  333.     Wislau  is  the  Slav.  Weslav,  Waslav  (Weoceslaus). 

3Reichsanz.  1796.  no.  90,  p.  947.     The  herdsman  that  drives  earliest  to  the 
Ipine  pastures  on  May  1,  earns  a  privilege  for  the  whole  year. 


786  SUMMER   AND   WINTER. 

hours  (conf.  p.  590  n.),  and  the  penalty  attached  to  it,  of  acting 
the  butze  and  being  ducked,  I  look  upon  as  mere  accessories, 
kept  alive  long  after  the  substance  of  the  festival  had  perished 
(see  Suppl.). 

Kuhn  (pp.  314-29)  has  lately  furnished  us  with  accui'ate  ac- 
counts of  Whitsun  customs  in  the  Marks.  In  the  Mittelmark 
the  houses  are  decollated  with  '  mai/  in  the  Altmark  the  farm- 
servants,  horse-keepers  and  ox-boys  go  round  the  farms,  and 
carry  May-crowns  made  of  flowers  and  birch  twigs  to  the  farmers, 
who  used  to  hang  them  up  on  their  houses,  and  leave  them  hang- 
ing till  the  next  year.  On  Whitsun  morning  the  cows  and  horses 
are  driven  for  the  first  time  to  the  fallow  pasture,  and  it  is  a  great 
thing  to  be  the  first  there.  The  animal  that  arrives  first  has  a 
bunch  of  '  mai '  tied  to  its  tail,  which  bunch  is  called  dau-slevpe 
(dew-sweep),1  while  the  last  comer  is  dressed  up  in  fir-twigs, 
all  sorts  of  green  stuff  and  field  flowers,  and  called  the  motley 
cow  or  motley  horse,  and  the  boy  belonging  to  it  the  pingst-Tcddm 
or  jaingst-lcaar el.  At  Havelberg  the  cow  that  came  home  first 
at  night  used  to  be  adorned  with  the  crown  of  flowei*s,  and  the 
last  got  the  thau-schleife ;  now  this  latter  practice  is  alone  kept 
up.3  In  some  of  the  Altmark  villages,  the  lad  whose  horse  gets 
to  the  pasture  first  is  named  thau-schlepper,  and  he  who  drives 
the  hindmost  is  made  motley  boy,  viz.  they  clothe  him  from  head 
to  foot  in  wild  flowers,  and  at  noon  lead  him  from  farm  to  farm, 
the  dew-sweeper  pronouncing  the  rhymes.  In  other  places  a  pole 
decked  with  flowers  and  ribbons  is  carried  round,  and  called  the 
bammel  (dangle)  or  jpings-kaam,  though,  as  a  rule,  this  last  name 
is  reserved  for  the  boy  shrouded  in  leaves  and  flowers,  who 
accompanies.  He  is  sometimes  led  by  two  others  called  hunde- 
brbsel.  In  some  parts  of  the  Mittelmark  the  muffled  boy  is  called 
the  kaudernest.  On  the  Dromling  the  boys  go  round  with  the 
pingst-kiidm,  and  the  girls  with  the  may-bride,  collecting  gifts. 
Some   villages   south    of  the    Dromling    have  a  more  elaborate 


1  So  named,  because  it  has  to  touch  the  dewy  grass:  which  confirms  my 
interpretation  of  the  Alamannic  tau-dragil  (R.A.  94,  630),  supra  p.  387  note. 

a  In  some  places  a  winning  horse  has  a  stick  cleft  in  three  fixed  on  his  head 
and  richly  encircled  with  the  finest  flowers ;  the  boy  who  rides  him,  beside  many 
garlands,  receives  a  cap  woven  of  rushes,  and  must  preserve  a  serious  countenance 
while  the  procession  slowly  advances:  if  he  can  be  provoked  to  laughter,  he  loses, 
Kuhn,  p.  32y. 


DRESSING   UP   IN    GEEEX.  787 

ceremonial.  On  '  White  Sunday/  a  fortnight  before  Easter,  the 
herdboys  march  to  the  pasture  with  white  slicks  (supra  p.  7G6), 
and  with  these  they  mark  off  a  spot,  to  which  no  one  may  drive 
his  cattle  till  Whitsuntide.1  This  being  done,  the  smaller  boys 
name  their  brides*  to  the  bigger  ones,  and  no  one  must  reveal 
the  name  till  Whitsuuday,  when  the  railed-off  pasture  is  thrown 
open,  and  any  one  may  tell  the  brides'  names.  On  Whitmonday 
one  of  the  boys  is  disguised  by  having  two  petticoats  put  on  him, 
and  one  of  them  pulled  over  his  head  and  tied  up ;  then  they 
swathe  him  in  may,  hang  flower-wreaths  about  his  neck,  and 
set  a  flower-crown  on  his  head.  They  call  him  the  fitstge  mai 
(well-appointed,  armed),  and  lead  him  round  to  all  the  houses; 
at  the  same  time  the  girls  go  round  with  their  may-bride,  who  is 
completely  covered  with  ribbons,  her  bridal  band  hanging  to  the 
ground  behind ;  she  wears  a  large  nosegay  on  her  head,  and  keeps 
on  singing  her  ditties  till  some  gift  is  handed  to  her. 

Other  villages  have  horse-races  on  Whitmonday  for  a  wreath 
which  is  hung  out.  Whoever  snatches  it  down  both  times  is 
crowned,  and  led  in  triumph  to  the  village  as  May-hing. 

A  work  composed  in  the  13th  ceut.  by  Aegidius  aureae  vallis 
religiosus  reports  the  Netherland  custom  of  electing  a  Whitsun 
queen  in  the  time  of  bp.  Albero  of  Liittich  (d.  1155)  :  '  Sacer- 
dotes  ceteraeque  ecclesiasticae  personae  cum  universo  populo,  in 
solemnitatibus  paschae  et  pentecostes,  aliquam  ex  sacerdotum 
concubinis,  purpuratam  ac  diademate  renitentem  in  eminentiori 
solio  constitutam  et  cortinis  velatam,  reginam  creabant,  et  coram 
ea  assistentes  in  choreis  tympanis  et  aliis  musicalibus  instrumentis 
tota  die  psallebant,  et  quasi  idolatrae  effecti  ipsam  tanquam 
idohim  colebant,'  Chapeaville  2,  98.  To  this  day  poor  women 
in  Holland  at  Whitsuntide  carry  about  a  girl  sitting  m  <t  little 


1  While  this  fallow  pasture  is  being  railed  off,  the  new  lads  (those  who  are  tend- 
ing for  the  first  time)  have  to  procure  bones  to  cover  the  branches  of  a  fir-tree  which 
is  erected.  The  tree  is  called  the  gibbet  of  bones,  and  its  top  adorned  with  a  horse  8 
skull  (Ivuhn  323-4):  plainly  a  relic  of  some  heathen  sacrificial  rite,  conf.  the 
elevation  of  animals  on  trees,  pp.  53,  75,  esp.  of  horses'  heads,  p.  47;  the  good 
Lubbe's  hill  of  bones  is  also  in  point,  p.  526. 

-  This  naming  of  brides  resembles  the  crying  of  fief s  on  Walburgis  eve  in 
Hesse,  on  the  L.  Rhine,  the  Ahr  and  the  Eifel,  Zeitschr.  f.  Hess,  gesch.  2,  272-7. 
Dieffenbach's  Wetterau  p.  234.  Ernst  Weyden's  Ahrthal,  Bonn  1839,  p.  210. 
And  who  can  help  remembering  the  ON.  fieit  strengja  at  Yule-tide?  when  the 
heroes  likewise  chose  their  loved  ones,  e.ij.  in  Seem.  L46a :  '  Heftinn  strengdi  heit  til 
Svavo.' 


78S  SUMMEE   AND   WINTEK. 

carriage,  and  beg  for  money.  This  girl,  decked  with  flowers  and 
ribbons,  and  named  pinxterbloem,  reminds  us  of  the  ancient  god- 
dess on  her  travels.  The  same  pinxterbloem  is  a  name  for  the 
iris  pseudacorus,  which  blossoms  at  that  very  season ;  and  the 
sword-lily  is  named  after  other  deities  beside  Iris  (perunika,  p. 
183-4).  On  the  Zaterdag  before  Pentecost,  the  boys  go  out  early 
in  the  morning,  and  with  great  shouting  and  din  awake  the  lazy 
sleepers,  and  tie  a  bundle  of  nettles  at  their  door.  Both  the 
day  and  the  late  sleeper  are  called  luilap  or  luilak  (sluggard). 
Summer  also  had  to  be  wakened,  p.  765. 

Everything  goes  to  prove,  that  the  approach  of  summer  was 
to  our  forefathers  a  holy  tide,  welcomed  by  sacrifice,  feast  and 
dance,  and  largely  governing  and  brightening  the  people's  life. 
Of  Easter  fires,  so  closely  connected  with  May  fires,  an  account 
has  been  given;  the  festive  gatherings  of  May-day  night  will 
be  described  more  minutely  in  the  Chap,  on  Witches.  At  this 
season  brides  were  chosen  and  proclaimed,  servants  changed, 
and  houses  taken  possession  of  by  new  tenants. 

With  this  I  conclude  my  treatment  of  Summer  and  Winter ; 
i.e.  of  the  mythic  meanings  mixed  up  with  the  two  halves  of 
the  year.  An  examination  of  the  twelve  solar  and  thirteen  lunar 
months x  is  more  than  I  can  undertake  here,  for  want  of  space ; 
I  promise  to  make  good  the  deficiency  elsewhere.  This  much 
I  will  say,  that  a  fair  proportion  of  our  names  of  months  also 
is  referable  to  heathen  gods,  as  we  now  see  by  the  identifi- 
cation of  May  with  summer,  and  have  already  seen  in  the  case 
of  Erede  (March)  and  Eastre  (April),  p.  289.  Phol,  who  had 
his  Phol-day  (p.  614),  seems  also  to  have  ruled  over  a  Phol-manot 
(May  and  Sept.),  conf.  Diut.  i.  409,  432*,  and  Scheffer's  Haltaus 
36.  The  days  of  our  week  may  have  been  arranged  and  named 
on  the  model  of  the  Roman  (p.  127) ;  the  names  of  the  three 
months  aforesaid  are  independent  of  any  Latin  influence.2  A 
remarkable  feature  among  Slavs  and  Germans  is  the  using  of  onu 
name  for  two  successive  months,  as   when   the  Anglo-Saxons 


1  That  there  were  lunar  years  is  indicated  by  the  moon's  being  given  '  at  artali,' 
for  year's  tale,  p.  710. 

2  Martins  rests  on  Mars,  Aprilis  must  contain  a  spring-goddess  answering  to 
Ostara,  Majus  belongs  to  Maja,  a  mother  of  gods.  The  same  three  consecutive 
months  are  linked  in  the  Latin  calendar,  as  in  ours,  with  divinities. 


MONTHS.  780 

speak  of  an  asrra  and  a3ftera  Geola,  aerra  and  geftera  LicSa,  and 
we  of  a  great  and  little  Horn  (Jan.  and  Feb.),  nay,  Ougest  is 
followed  up  by  an  Ougstin,  the  god  by  a  goddess ;  I  even  see 
a  mythical  substratum  in  popular  saws  on  certain  months,  thus 
of  February  they  say  :  ( the  Sporkelsin  has  seven  smocks  on, 
of  different  lengths  every  one,  and  them  she  shakes/  i.e.  raises 
wind  with  them.  '  Sporkel/  we  know,  is  traced  to  the  Roman 
spurcalia. 


CHAPTER  XXV. 
TIME    AND    WORLD. 

In  the  last  chapter  we  examined  myths  having  reference  to  the 
alternation  of  seasons,  to  phenomena  of  the  year.  Oar  language 
affords  several  instances  of  transition  from  the  notion  of  time  to 
that  of  spaee. 

Ulphilas  translates  %povos,  Kcupos,  copa  alternately  by  mel, 
liveila,  peihs,  yet  so  that  '  mel '  usually  stands  for  %povo<;  or 
Kaipo<;,  rarely  for  copa,  and  f  liveila'  mostly  for  copa,  seldomer  for 
%povo<i  and  /caipos ;  the  former  expressing  rather  the  longer 
section  of  time,  and  the  latter  the  shorter.  Mel,  OHG.  mdl,  AS. 
mcel,  ON.  mdl,  lit.  mark  or  measure,  is  applied  to  measured 
speech  or  writing  as  well  as  to  a  portion  of  time ;  on  the  contrary, 
liveila,  OHG.  huila,  MHG.  wile,  AS.  livoil  (p.  702),  denotes  rest, 
and  is  purely  a  notion  of  time,  whei-eas  mel  was  transferred  from 
space  to  time.  We  come  across  fieihs  (neut.  gen.  ]>eihsis)  only 
twice,  viz.  Rom.  13,  11  :  '  vitandans  ]?ata  ]>eihs,  ]?atei  mel  ist/ 
et'Sore?  rbv  /caipov,  otl  copa,  and  1  Thess.  5,  1  :  '  bi  ]>6  ]?eihsa  jah 
mela/  vrepl  tcov  yjpbvcov  teal  tcov  icaipcov.  Each  passage  contains 
both  ]?eihs  and  mel,  but  the  choice  of  the  former  for  xpovos  and 
the  latter  for  tcatpos  shews  that  ]?eihs  is  even  better  adapted  than 
mel  for  the  larger  fuller  notion,  and  the  most  complete  arrange- 
ment would  be  :  )>eihs  xpovos,  mel  icaipos,  hveila  copa.  I  derive 
Jjeihs  from  ]?eihan  (crescere,  proficere,  succedere),  as  veihs  gen. 
veihsis  (propugnaculum)  from  veihan  (pugnare)  ;  so  that  it  ex- 
presses profectus,  successus,  the  forward  movement  of  time,  and 
is  near  of  kin  to  OHG.  dihsmo,  dehsmo  (profectus),  probably  also 
to  dihsila  (temo),  our  deichsel,  AS.  |?isl,  thill,  for  which  we  may 
assume  a  Goth.  ]?eihslo,  ]?eihsla,  the  apparatus  by  which  the 
wao-gon  is  moved  on.  Schmeller  4,  294  cleverly  connects  temo 
itself  with  tempus  :  the  celestial  waggon-thill  (p.  724)  marks  the 
movement  of  nocturnal  time  (Varro  7,  72-5),  and  ]?eihsla  becomes 
a  measure  like  the  more  general  ]>eihs.  Even  if  the  connexion  of 
the  two  Latin  words  be  as  yet  doubtful,  that  of  the  two  Gothic 

790 


TIME. 


791 


ones  can  hardly  be  so.  But  now,  as  the  Goth.  J>eihs  has  no 
representative  in  the  other  Teutonic  tongues,  and  in  return  the 
OHG.  zit,  AS.  tid,  ON.  fj^  seems  foreign  to  Gothic,  it  is  natural, 
considering  the  identity  of  meaning,  to  suppose  that  the  latter 
form  arose  from  mixing  up  ]>eihan  (crescere)  with  teihan  (nun- 
tiare),  and  therefore  that  the  AS.  tid  stands  for  ]nd,  and  OHG. 
zit  for  dit;  besides,  the  OHG.  zit  is  mostly  neut.,  like  ]?eihs, 
whereas  the  fem.  zit,  tid  would  have  demanded  a  Goth.  ]?eiha]?s. 
Of  course  a  Goth.  ]>eihs  ought  to  have  produced  an  OHG.  dihs  or 
dih  (as  veihs  did  wih)  ;  but,  that  derivation  here  branched  in  two 
or  three  directions  is  plain  from  the  ON.  timi,  AS.  time  (tempus, 
hora),  which  I  refer  to  the  OHG.  dihsmo1  above,  and  a  Goth, 
beihsina,  with  both  of  which  the  Lat.  tempus  (and  tcmo?)  would 
perfectly  agree  (see  Suppl.). 

Like  hveila,  the  OHG.  stulla,  and  stunt,  stunta,  AS.  ON.  stund 
(moment,  hour),  contain  the  notion  of  rest,  and  are  conn,  with 
stilli  (quietus),  standan  (stare),  while  conversely  the  Lat.  mo- 
mentum  (movi-mentum)  is  borrowed  from  motion.3  We  express 
the  briefest  interval  of  time  by  augenblich,  eye-glance;  Ulph. 
lenders  Luke  4,  5  ev  ariy/xyj  yjpovov  '  in  stika  melis/  in  a  prick 
of  time,  in  ictu  temporis ;  1  Cor.  15,  52  ev  pnrj}  6j)da\fiov,  '  in 
brahva  augins,'  brahv  being  glance,  flash,  micatus,  AS.  twincel, 
and  traceable  to  braihvan  (micare,  lucere),  OHG.  prehan,  MHG. 
brehen;3  AS.  'on  beorhtm-hwih'  from  bearhtm  ictus  oculi,  '  on 
eagan  beorhtm,'  Beda  2,  13  ;  ON.  ( i  augabragefi,'  conf.  Saam.  llb. 
14a.  19b.  OHG. '  in  slago  dero  brawo,'  N.  ps.  2,  12,  in  a  movement 
of  the  eyelid   (conf.  slegiprdwa  palpebra,   Graff  3,  316);  fante- 

1  In  dihan,  dihsmo  the  d  remained,  in  zit  it  degenerated.  Just  so  the  Goth, 
hvahan  first  hecame  regularly  OHG.  duahan,  then  irregularly  tuahan,  now  zwagen  ; 
the  OS.  thuingan  first  OHG.  duingan,  then  tuingan,  now  zwingen.  Less  anomal- 
ous hy  one  degree  arc  OHG.  zi  for  Goth,  du  (to),  and  our  zwerg  for  ON.  dvergr 
(dwarf),  MHG.  twerc. 

2  Numeral  adverbs  of  repetition  our  language  forms  with  stunt  as  well  as  mal, 
but  also  by  some  words  borrowed  from  space,  Gramm.  3,  230. 

3  Beside  the  inf.  brShen  (MS.  1,  -47*.  185\  Gudr.  1356,  2)  we  are  only  sure  of 
the  pres.  part.:  ouge- bre hender  kle,  MS.  1,  3b.  brehemler  scliin  2,  231*;  for  the 
pret.  brack,  MS.  2,  52».  Bon.  48.  68,  could  be  referred  to  brechen,  conf.  '  break  of 
day,'  p.  747,  yet  the  two  verbs  themselves  may  be  congeners.  In  OHG.  the  perf. 
part,  appears  in  prgftan-ougi  (lippus),  a  compound  formed  like  zoran-ougi,  Gramm. 
2,693.  The  Goth,  brahv  assures  us  of  the  princ.  parts  in  full,  braihva,  brahv, 
brehvum  (like  saihva,  sabv,  sShvum).  But  instead  of  an  adj.  Lraihts  (bright),  even 
the  Gothic  has  only  a  transposed  form  bairhts,  OHG.  peraht,  AS.  beorht,  ON. 
biartr ;  yet  our  Berahta  is  afterwards  also  called  Prehta,  Brehte  (pp.  277-0),  and  other 
proper  names  waver  between  the  two  forms,  as  Albreeht  Albert,  lluprecht  llobert. 

VOL.  II.  A   A 


792  TIME    AND   WORLD. 

quam  supercilium  superius  inferiori  jungi  possit/  Caesar,  heisterb. 
12,  5.  '  minre  wilen  (in  less  time)  dan  ein  oucbra  zuo  der  an- 
dern  muge  geslahen/  Grieshaber  p.  274.  'als  ein  oucbra  mac 
uf  und  zuo  gegen/  can  open  and  shut,  Berth.  239.  '  e  ich  die 
hant  umbkerte,  oder  zuo  gesluege  die  (or  better,  diu)  bra/  Er. 
5172.  'also  schier  so  (as  fast  as)  ein  brawe  den  andern  slahen 
mac/  Fundgr.  1,  199  (see  Suppl.).1 

A  great  length  of  time  is  also  expressed  by  several  different 
words:  Goth,  divs  (m.),  OHG.  ewa  (f.),  Gr.  aloov,  Lat.  aevunt 
shading  off  into  the  sense  of  seculum,  0.  Fr.  ae  (p.  678) ;  the 
OS.  eo  (m.)  means  only  statutum,  lex,  as  the  Goth,  mel  was 
scriptura  as  well  as  tempus.  Then  Goth,  alps  (f.),  by  turns  aloov 
(Eph.  2,  2.  1  Tim.  1,  17.  2  Tim.  4,  10),  and  £109  or  yeved; 
ON.  old;  OHG.  with  suffix  altar  (aevum,  aetas),  though  the 
simple  word  also  survives  in  the  compound  weralt  (assimil. 
worolt),  MHG.  werlt,  our  welt,  AS.  werold,  Engl,  world,  Fris. 
wrald,  ON.  verald,  verold,  Swed.  werld,  Dan.  verd  :  constant  use 
accounts  for  the  numerous  distortions  of  the  word.2  Its  Gothic 
form,  wanting  in  Ulph.,  would  have  been  vair-alps  or  '  vaire 
albs/  virorum  (hominum)  aetas,  aetas  (lifetime)  passing  into  the 
local  sense  of  mundus  (world),  just  as  seculum,  siecle,  has  come 
to  mean  mundus,  monde.  We  saw  on  p.  575  that  Greek  myth- 
ology supposes  four  ages  of  the  world,  golden,  silver,  brazen 
and  iron  :  a  fancy  that  has  travelled  far,3  and  was  apparently 
no  stranger  in  Scandinavia  itself.     Snorri  15  gives  the  name  of 

1  Can  brawe,  OHG.  prawa,  ON.  bra,  be  derived  from  brehen?  Perbaps  the 
set  phrases  in  the  text  reveal  the  reason  for  it.  In  that  case  the  OHG.  prawa  raust 
be  for  praba,  and  we  might  expect  a  Goth,  brehva?  Then  the  Sanskr.  bhru,  Gr. 
64>pvs,  would  be  left  without  the  vivid  meaning  of  the  Teut.  word. 

2  Its  true  meaning  was  so  obscured,  that  other  explanations  were  tried. 
Maerlant  at  the  beginn.  of  his  Sp.  Hist. :  '  die  de  iverelt  erst  werrelt  hiet,  bine  was 
al  in  dole  niet.  Adam  die  werelt  al  verwerrede.' ,  This  deriv.  from  werren  (impedire, 
intricare)  was,  if  I  mistake  not,  also  hit  upon  by  MHG.  poets,  e.g.  Eenner  2293. 
Equally  wrong  are  those  from  wern  to  last,  and  werlen  to  whirl.  It  is  quite  possi- 
ble, that  wero  alt  (virorum  aetas)  was  intended  as  an  antithesis  to  a  risono  alt 
(gigantum  aetas)  which  preceded  it. 

3  In  our  Mid.  Ages  the  World  was  personified,  like  Death,  and  the  various  ages 
were  combined  in  a  statue  with  a  head  of  gold,  arms  of  silver,  a  breast  of  brass  and 
iron,  and  feet  of  earth,  MS.  2,  175b ;  another  representation  gave  the  figure  a 
golden  head,  silver  breast  and  arms,  brazen  belly,  steel  thighs,  iron  legs,  eartben 
feet,  MS.  2,  22oa;  a  third,  a  golden  head,  silver  arms,  brazen  breast,  copper  belly, 
steel  thighs,  earthen  feet,  Amgb.  27b.  This  medley,  though  borrowed  from  Daniel 
2,  31-43,  reminds  us  of  ancient  idols  formed  out  of  various  metals,  and  also  of 
Hrungnir  with  the  stone  heart,  and  Mockrkalfi  who  was  made  of  loam,  and  had  a 
mare's  heart  put  into  him,  Sn.  109.  Hugo  in  his  Eenner  13754  speaks  of  a  steel, 
diamond,  copper,  wood,  and  straw  world. 


WORLD.  793 

gull-aldr  to  the  period  when  the  gods  had  all  their  utensils  made 
of  gold,  which  was  only  cut  short  by  the  coming  of  giantesses 
out  of  Iotunheini.  Had  he  merely  borrowed  this  golden  age 
from  the  classics,  he  would  have  taken  the  trouble  to  discover 
the  other  metals  too  in  Norse  legend.1  But  in  the  Voluspa 
(Saem.  8a)  we  see  that  other  ages  are  spoken  of,  skegg-old  (see  p. 
421),  skalm-old,  vind-old  and  varg-old,  which  are  to  precede  the 
destruction  of  the  world. 

To  translate  tcoo-fios,  Ulph.  takes  by  turns,  and  often  one  im- 
mediately after  the  other,  the  two  words  fairhvas  and  manasefis ; 
both  must  have  been  in  common  use  amoug  the  Goths.  Maria- 
sefis  2  means  virorum  satus  (seed  of  men),  and  is  used  at  once  for 
\ao<>  and  for  /coo-fios,  thus  fully  conciding  with  the  above  developed 
sense  of  weralt.  Fairhvus  I  take  to  be  near  of  kin  to  OHG. 
ferah,  AS.  feorh,  MHG.  verch,  so  that  it  expressed  lifetime  again, 
like  aevum;  it  is  also  connected  with  OHG.  firahi  (homines),  and 
would  mean  first  '  coetus  hominum  viventium/  then  the  space 
in  which  they  live.  It  has  nothing  to  do  with  fairguni,  earth, 
mountain  (see  Suppl.). 

As  /coafios  properly  means  the  ordered,  symmetrical  (world), 
mundus  the  clean,  well-trimmed,  bright,  and  as  the  Frisian  laws 
126,  26  speak  of  'thi  skene  wrald ' ;  so  the  Slavic  sviet,  svet,swiat 
is,  first  of  all,  light  and  brightness,  then  world,  the  open,  public/5 
all  that  the  sun  illumines,  whatsoever  is  '  under  the  sun.J  4  So 
the  Wallach.  lame,  the  Hung,  vildg,  signify  both  light  and  world. 
The  Lith.  sivietas,  0.  Pruss.  switai,  world,  is  borowed  from  Slavic. 
Like  mundus,  the  Slav,  sviet  passes  into  the  time-sense  of 
seculum,  viek  (Dobrowsky's  Inst.  149).  The  older  Slavs  called 
the  world  mir  and  ves'mir,  Dobr.  24.  149 ;  mir  is  also  the  word 
for  peace,  quietness,  and  seems  akin  to  mira  or  mera,  measure 
(order?).  The  Finnic  for  world  is  maa3  ilma,  the  Esth.  ma  Urn 
(from  ilma,  the  expanse  of  air,  and  maa,  earth) ,  the  Lapp,  ilbme. 


1  We  may  connect  the  golden  age  with  FnVSi,  whose  mill  ground  gold  and 
peace.  The  Finns  say,  in  Ukko's  time  gold  was  ground  in  the  mills,  honey  trickled 
from  the  oaks,  and  milk  Uowed  in  the  rivers  (couf.  p.  G97),  Ganander  98. 

"  Always  with  single  n,  as  in  mana-niaur)n-ja,  mana-riggvs,  manage  (many), 
manauli,  and  as  in  OHG.  mana-houpit,  mana-luomi,  manac,  conf.  MHG.  sune- 
wende,  p.  617  n.     The  reason  of  this  peculiarity  grammar  must  determine. 

3  To  bring  to  light,  impart  to  the  world,  is  in  Scrv.  '  na  sviet  izdati.' 

4  The  Lett,  word  ]»i.<,,ulr  s. cms  to  have  been  modelled  on  this' sub  sole'  in 
Eccles.  1,  3.    2,  22.     So  '  unter  disem  v/olken,'  Bol.  9,  31. 


794  TIME   AND   WORLD. 

The  ON.  heimr  is  mundus,  domus,  and  akin  to  himinn,  himil 
(p.  698),  as  mundus  also  is  applied  both  to  world  and  sky  ; 
heimsJcringla,  orbis  terrarum.  Ulphilas  renders  OLKovfj,ev7),  Luke 
2,  1.  4,  5.  Rom.  10,  18,  by  midjungards ;  to  this  correspond  the 
AS.  middangeard,  Csedm.  9,  3.  177,  29.  Beow.  150.  1496;  the 
OHG.  mittingart,  Is.  340.  385-6.  408.  Fragm.  theot.  17,  6. 
mittigart,  Fragm.  th.  17,  3.  20,  20.  25,  9.  mittUigart,  Gl.  Jun. 
216.  T.  16,  1.  mitfilgart,  T.  155,  1.  178,  2.  179,  1;  the  OS. 
middilgard;  the  ON.  miSgarffr,  Seem.  1*.  45".  77b.  90\  114b.  115b. 
Sn.  9.  10.  13.  45.  61 ;  and  even  a  Swed.  folksong  1,  140  has 
retained  medjegard.  O.  Engl,  middilerd,  medilearth,  like  the  Gr. 
/xea-oryaia.  Fischart's  Garg.  6Q3,  has  mittelhreiss,  mid-circle.  We 
saw  (p  560)  that  mi&gar&r  was,  to  the  Norse  way  of  thinking, 
created  out  of  Ymir's  eyebrows,  and  appointed  to  men  for  their 
habitation.  The  whole  compound,  doubtless  very  ancient,  is  of 
prime  importance,  because  it  is  native  to  our  oldest  memorials, 
and  at  the  same  time  strictly  Eddie.  Nor  is  that  all  :  in  similar 
harmony,  the  world  is  called  in  ON.  OegisJieimr,  Stem.  124b.  125a, 
and  in  MHG.  mergarte,  Annolied  444.  Eol.  106,  14.  Kaiserchr. 
501.  6633.  Karl.  38b;  i.e.  the  sea-girt  world,  conf.  Goth, 
marisaivs  (ocean),  and  OHG.  meriherti  (aetherium),1  Diut.  1,  250. 
Lastly,  OHG.  woroUring,  O.  ii.  2,  13.  iii.  26,  37.  iv.  7,  11.  v.  1, 
33.  19,  1.  erdring,  O.  i.  11,  47.  MHG.  erdrinc,  Mar.  198-9,  orbis 
terrarum,  Graff  4,  1163. 

According  to  the  Edda,  a  huge  serpent,  the  mi&gard's  ormr,  lies 
coiled  round  the  earth's  circumference,  'umgiorS  allra  landa': 
evidently  the  ocean.  When  Alexander  in  the  legend  was  carried 
up  in  the  air  by  griffins,  the  sea  appeared  to  him  to  twine  like  a 
snake  round  the  earth.  But  that  '  world-serpent/  hateful  to  all 
the  gods  (su  er  go;S  fia,  Seem.  55a)  was  the  child  of  Loki,  and 
brother  to  the  Fenris-ulfr  and  Hel ;  he  was  called  Iormwigandr 
(Sn.  32),  the  great,  the  godlike  (conf.  p.  351),  and  like  Hel  he 
opens  wide  his  jaws,  Sn.  63  (see  Suppl.). 

Everything  shews  that  the  notions  of  time,  age,  world,  globe, 
earth,  light,  air  and  water  ran  very  much  into  one  another ;  in 
1  earth-ring/  ring  indicates  the  globular  shape  of  the  earth  and 


1  The  Finnic  ilma  ?    Festus  says  mundus  meant  coelum  as  well  as  terra,  mare, 
aer. 


WORLD.  795 

its  planetary  revolution.     Mauasefis,  fairkous,  and  weralt  point  to 
spaces  and  periods  filled  by  men.1 

So  far  as  '  world '  contains  the  notion  of  seculum  and  life,  it  is 
significantly  called,  even  by  the  OS.  poet,  a  dream  :  liudio  drum, 
Hel.  17,17.  104,7.  109,20.  mawno  drom  23,  7.  103,4.  AS. 
gumdredm,  Beow.  4933;  Ma  vida  es  suerio.'  Its  perishableness 
and  painfulness  have  suggested  yet  other  designations  :  '  diz 
ellende  wuoftal  (weep-dale),'  Tod.  gehugde  983,  as  we  say  '  this 
vale  of  tears,  house  of  sorrow  ;  (see  Suppl.). 

From  its  enormous  superficial  extent  is  borrowed  the  phrase 
•thius  brede  werold,'  Hel.  50,  1.  131,21;  MHG.  '  diu  breite 
merit,'  Mar.  1G1 ;  our  weite  breite  welt.  Also:  '  thiz  lant  breitd' 
O.  ii.  2,  18.  daz  breite  gevilde,  Mar.  34.  Wigal.  2269.  diu  breite 
erde,  Roth.  4857.  Wh.  60,  29.  Geo.  4770,  evpela  xe<*v-  This 
reminds  one  of  the  name  of  Balder's  dwelling  spoken  of  on 
p.  222-3,  brei&a  blik,  which  seems  to  include  the  two  notions 
of  breadth  and  brightness.  An  expression  used  by  miners  is 
remarkable  in  this  connexion:  '  blickgold,  blicksilber'  is  said  of 
the  clear  molten  metal  gleaming  on  the  fining-hearth,  and  :  der 
breite  Mick  *  when  there  is  a  plentiful  yield  of  it.2  The  beautiful 
bright  world  is,  as  it  were,  a  wide  glance. 

When  '  world  '  or  '  heinir '  is  merely  used  in  the  general  sense 
of  dwelling  place,  we  can  think  of  several  worlds.  The  Yoluspa, 
Sa3in.  la,  supposes  nine  worlds  and  nine  firmaments  (ivrSir),  couf. 
Ssem.  36b.  49a,  just  as  Sn.  222b  speaks  of  nine  heavens  (see 
Suppl.).3 

Of  these  worlds,  not  abodes  of  the  living  human  race,  those 
that  demand  a  close  investigation  are  :  the  Flame-world,  the 
Dead- world,  and  Paradise;  but  all  are  connected   more  or  less 

1  As  we  often  use  '  world '  and  '  earth '  indifferently,  so  did  the  MHG.  poets. 
The  beginning  of  time  is  expressed  at  option  either  thus  :  '  von  anegeuges  zit,  daz 
sich  diu  werlt  erhuop  (up-hove),  und  muoter  ir  kint  getruoc  (bore),'  Bol.  285,  12. 
'  sit  (since)  diu  werlt  erste  wart,'  Ulr.  Trist.  3699 J  or  thus:  'sit  di&iu  erde  geleget 
wart,'  llol.  187,  7.  '  sit  diu  erde  alrerst  begunde  bern  (to  bear),'  Karl  70b. 

-  In  Matthesius's  Sermons  84":  'Now  this  Cyrus  hath  a  silver  kingdom, 
wherein  the  word  of  God,  as  silver  refined  in  the  fire,  is  preached  zu  breitem 
plush.'  91b  :  'He  hath  sent  his  apostles  into  all  the  world,  that  they  may  preach  tbe 
gospel  zu  breitem  plick,  as  ye  mining  folk  say.'  101a  :  '  Elsewhere  lead  ap- 
peareth  in  blocks,  as  at  Goslar,  where  the  ltamelsberg  is  zu  breitempHck  almost  all 
lead.' 

3  Nine  choirs  of  angels,  Fundgr.  1,  101.  Pass.  339.  341.  '  nfu  fylkingar  eugla,' 
Fornald.  sog.  3,  6G3  ;  conf.  the  nine  punishments  of  Hell,  Wackernagel's  Basel 
.MSiS.  21h  [Luddhist  books  describe  18  hells,  some  hot,  some  cold.; . 


796  TIME    AND   WORLD. 

with  the  upper  world,  that  inhabited  by  man,  and  passages  exist 
froni  the  one  to  the  other. 

The  ON.  system  supposes  a  world-tree,  askr  Yggdrasils,  which 
links  heaven,  earth  and  hell  together,  of  all  trees  the  greatest 
and  holiest.  It  is  an  ash  (askr),  whose  branches  shoot  through-^ 
all  the  world,  and  reach  beyond  heaven.  Three  roots  spread  out 
in  three  directions,  one  striking  toward  the  ases  into  heaven, 
another  to  the  hrlmhurses,  the  third  to  the  under  world.  Prom 
under  each  root  gushes  a  miraculous  spring,  namely,  by  the  ^j 
heaven  root  Urffarbrunnr  (p.  407),  by  the  giants'  root ■  Mimis- 
brunnr,  by  the  hell  root  Hvergelmir,  i.e.  the  roaring  (or  the  old) 
cauldron,  olla  stridens  (p.  563).  All  these  wellsprings  are  holy: 
at  the  UrSar-well  the  ases  and  norns  hold  their  council,  the 
giants'  well  is  watched  by  a  wise  man  Mimir  (p.  379),  I  know 
not  whether  a  sage  old  giant  himself  or  a  hero,  anyhow  a  semi- 
divine  being,  or  nearly  so.  Every  day  the  norns  draw  water 
from  their  well,  to  water  the  boughs  of  the  ash :  so  holy  is  this 
water,  that  it  imparts  to  anything  that  gets  into  the  well  the 
colour  of  the  white  of  an  e°r°r;  from  the  tree  there  trickles  a 
bee-nourishing  dew,  named  hunangsfall  (fall  of  honey).  On 
its  boughs,  at  its  roots,  animals  sit  or  dart  about :  an  eagle, 
a  squirrel,  four  stags,  and  some  snakes;  and  all  have  proper 
names.  Those  of  the  stags  are  elsewhere  names  of  dwarfs, 
notably  Bainn  and  Dvalinn.  The  snake  Nicfhbggr  (male  pun- 
gens,  caedens)  lies  below,  by  Hvergelmir,  gnawing  at  the  root. 
The  squirrel  Ratatoskr 1  runs  up  and  down,  trying  to  sow  discord 
between  the  snake  and  the  eagle  who  is  perched  aloft.  The 
eagle's  name  is  not  given,  he  is  a  bird  of  great  knowledge  and 
sagacity;  betwixt  his  eyes  sits  a  hawk  Ve&rfolnir? 

The   whole    conception    bears    a   primitive    stamp,    but  seems 
very  imperfectly  unfolded  to  us.     We  get  some  inkling  of  a  leud 
between  snake  and  eagle,  which  is  kept  alive  by  Ratatoskr ;  not  V 
;\    word   as    to    the   purpose    and    functions    of   hawk   or   stags. 
Attempts  at  explaining  Yggdrasil  I  have  nothing  to  do  with ;  at 

1  The  word  contains  rata  (elabi,  permeare),  Goth,  vratdn,  and  perh.  taska,  pi. 
toskur,  pera :  peram  pernieans  ?  Wolfram  in  Parz.  G51,  13  has  'wenken  als  ein 
dehorn,'  dodging  like  a  squirrel.  The  squirrel,  is  still  an  essential  feature  in  the 
popular  notion  of  a  forest,  conf.  EA.  497  and  the  catching  of  squirrels  at  Easter 
(supra  p.  616),  perhaps  for  old  heathen  uses. 

2  The  eagle's  friend,  for  haukr  i  horni  (hawk  in  the  corner)  means  a  hidden 
counsellor. 


WORLD-TREE.  797 

present,  before  giving  my  own  opinion,  I  must  point  out  two 
coincidences  very  unlike  each  other.  This  tree  of  the  Edda  has 
suggested  to  others  before  me  the  tree  of  the  Cross,  which  in 
the  Mid.  Ages  gave  birth  t6  many  speculations  and  legends.  Well, 
a  song  in  the  '  Wartburg  War/  MsH.  3,  181    sets  the  following 

riddle : 

Ein  edel  bourn  gewahsen  ist 

in  eime  garten,  der  ist  gemacht  mit  hober  list ; 

sin  wurzel  kan  der  helle  grunt  erlangen, 

sin  tolde  (for  'zol  der')  rtieret  an  den  tron 

da  der  siieze  Got  bescheidet  vriunde  Ion, 

sin  este  breit  hdnt  al  die  werlt  bevangen : 

der  boum  an  ganzer  zierde  stab  und  ist  geloubet  schoene, 

dar  ufe  sitzent  vogelin 

siiezes  sanges  wise  nacb  ir  stimme  fin, 

nacb  maniger  kunst  so  haltents  ir  gedoene. 

(A  noble  tree  in  a  garden  grows,  and  high  the  skill  its  making 
shews;  its  roots  the  floor  of  hell  are  grasping,  its  summit  to 
the  throne  extends  where  bounteous  God  requiteth  friends, 
its  branches  broad  the  wide  world  clasping:  thereon  sit  birds 
that  know  sweet  song,  etc.)  This  is  very  aptly  interpreted  of 
the  Cross  and  the  descent  into  hell.  Before  this,  O.  v.  1,  19  had 
already  written : 

Thes  hruzes  horn  tbar  obana  zeigot  uf  in  himila, 
thie  arma  joh  tbio  henti  thie  zeigont  worolt-enti, 
tber  selbo  mittilo  boum  tber  scowot  tbesan  ivorolt-fioum, 

tbeiz  innan  erdu  stentit, 

mit  tbiu  ist  tbar  bizeinit,  tbeiz  imo  ist  al  gimeinit 
in  erdu  job  im  liimile  inti  in  abgrunte  oub  biar  nidare. 

(The  cross's  top  points  to  heaven,  the  arms  and  hands  to  the 
world's  ends,  the  stem  looks  to  this  earthly  plain,  .  .  .  stands 
in  the  ground,  thereby  is  signified,  that  for  it  is  designed  all  in 
earth  and  "heaven  and  the  abyss  beneath.)  It  matters  little  if 
the  parallel  passage  quoted  by  Schilter  from  cap.  18  de  divinis 
officiis  comes  not  from  Alcuin,  but  some  later  author  :  Ofcfried 
may  have  picked  up  his  notion  from  it  all  the  same.1  It  says  : 
'  Nam  ipsa  crux  magnum  in  se  mysterium  continet,  cujus  positio 

1  I  do  not  know  if  Lafontaine  bad  Virgil's  verses  in  bis  mind,  or  followed  bis 
own  prompting,  when  he  says  of  an  oak: 

Celui,  de  qui  la  t&te  au  cicl  6tait  voisine, 

et  dont  les  pieds  touchaient  a  Tempae  des  moils. 


798  TIME    AND   WORLD. 

talis  est,  ut  superior  pars  coelos  petat,  inferior  terrae  inhaereat, 
fixa  infemorum  ima  contingat,  latitudo  autem  ejus  partes  mundi 
appetat.'  I  can  never  believe  that  the  myth  of  Yggdrasil  in  its 
complete  and  richer  form  sprang  out  of 'this  christian  conception 
of  the  Cross ;  it  were  a  far  likelier  theory,  that  floating  heathen 
traditions  of  the  world-tree,  soon  after  the  conversion  in  Germany, 
France  or  England,  attached  themselves  to  an  object  of  christian 
faith,  just  as  heathen  temples  and  holy  places  were  converted 
into  christian  ones.  The  theory  would  break  down,  if  the  same 
exposition  of  the  several  pieces  of  the  cross  could  be  found  in 
any  early  Father,  African  or  Oriental;  but  this  I  doubt.  As  for 
the  birds  with  which  the  loth  cent,  poem  provides  the  tree,  arid 
which  correspond  to  the  Norse  eagle  and  squirrel,  I  will  lay  no 
stress  on  them.  But  one  thing  is  rather  surprising  :  it  is  pre- 
cisely to  the  ash  that  Virgil  ascribes  as  high  an  elevation  in  the 
air  as  its  depth  of  root  in  the  ground,  Georg.  2,  291  : 

Aesculus  in  primis,  quae  quantum  vortice  ad  auras 
aetherias,  tantum  radice  in  tartara  tendit ; 

upon  which  Pliny  16,  31  (56)  remarks:  '  si  Virgilio  credimus, 
esculus  quantum  corpore  eminet  tantum  radice  descendit.;  1  So 
that  the  Norse  fable  is  deeply  grounded  in  nature;  conf.  what 
was  said,  p.  096,  of  the  bees  on  this  ash-tree, 

Another  and  still  more  singular  coincidence  carries  us  to 
Oriental  traditions.  In  the  Arabian  (  Calila  and  Dimna '  the 
human  race  is  compared  to  a  man  who,  chased  by  an  elephant, 
takes  refuge  in  a  deep  well :  with  his  hand  he  holds  on  to  the 
branch  of  a  shrub  over  his  head,  and  his  feet  he  plants  on  a 
narrow  piece  of  turf  below.  In  this  uneasy  posture  he  sees  two 
mice,  a  black  and  a  white  one,  gnawing  the  root  of  the  shrub  ; 
far  beneath  his  feet  a  horrible  dragon  with  its  jaws  wide  open ; 
the  elephant  still  waiting  on  the  brink  above,  and  four  worms' 
heads  projecting  iroin  the  side  of  the  well,  undermining  the  turf 
he  stands  on;  at  the  same  time  there  trickles  liquid  honey  from  a 
branch  of  the  bush,  and  this  he  eagerly  catches  in  his  mouth.2 

1  Perhaps  Hrabanus  Maurus's  Carmen  in  laudem  sanctae  crucis,  which  I  have 
not  at  hand  now,  contains  the  same  kind  of  thing. 

-  Calila  et  Dimna,  ed.  Silvestre  de  Sacy.  Mem.  hist.  p.  28-9,  ed.  Knatchlmll, 
p.  80-1 ;  conf.  the  somewhat  different  version  in  the  Exempeln  tier  alten  weisen, 
p.m.  22. 


WORLD-TREE.  799 

Hereupon  is  founded  a  rebuke  of  man's  levity,  who  in  the  ut- 
most stress  of  danger  cannot  withstand  the  temptation  of  a  small 
enjoyment.  Well,  this  fable  not  only  was  early  and  extensively 
circulated  by  Hebrew,  Latin  and  Greek  translations  of  the  entire 
book,1  but  also  found  its  way  into  other  chanuels.  John 
Damascenus  (circ.  740)  inserted  it  in  his  BapXda/j,  icai  'iWcra^,' 
which  soon  became  universally  known  through  a  Latin  repro- 
duction.3 On  the  model  of  it  our  Rudolf  composed  his  Barlaam 
and  Josaphat,  where  the  illustration  is  to  be  found,  p.  116-7; 
in  a  detached  form,  Strieker  (Ls.  1,  253).  No  doubt  a  parable 
so  popular  might  also  reach  Scandinavia  very  early  in  the  Mid. 
Ages,  if  only  the  similarity  itself  were  stronger,  so  as  to  justify 
the  inference  of  an  immediate  connexion  between  the  two  myths. 
To  me  the  faint  resemblance  of  the  two  seems  just  the  main 
point ;  a  close  one  has  never  existed.  The  ON.  fable  is  far  more 
significant  and  profound;  that  from  the  East  is  a  fragment, 
probably  distorted,  of  a  whole  now  lost  to  us.  Even  the  main 
idea  of  the  world-tree  is  all  but  wanting  to  it;  the  only  startling 
thing  is  the  agreement  in  sundry  accessories,  the  trickling  honey 
(conf.  p.  793  n.),  the  gnawed  root,  the  four  species  of  animals. 

But  if  there  be  any  truth  in  these  concords  of  the  Eddie  myth 
with  old  Eastern  tenets,  as  well  as  with  the  way  the  Christians 
tried  to  add  portions  of  their  heathen  faith  to  the.  doctrine  of  the 
Cross;  then  I  take  a  further  step.  It  seems  to  me  that  the 
notion,  so  deeply  rooted  in  Teutonic  antiquity,  of  the  Irminsul, 
that  '  altissima,  universalis  colwmna,  quasi  sustinens  omnia'  (p. 
115-7),  is  likewise  nearly  allied  to  the  world-tree  Yggdrasil.  As 
this  extended  its  roots  and  boughs  in  three  directions  (standa  a 
]ma  vega),  so  did  three  or  four  great  highways  branch  out  from 
the  Irminsul  (pp.  356.  361)  ;  and  the  farther  we  explore,  the 
richer  in  results  will  the  connexion  of  these  heathen  ideas  prove. 
The  pillars  of  Hercules  (p.  364),  of  Bavo  in  Ilainault,  and  the 
Thor  and  Roland  pillars  (p.  394)  may  have  had  no  other  purpose 
than  to  mark  out  from  them  as  centre  the  celestial  and  terrestrial 
direction  of  the  regions  of  the  world ;  and  the  sacred  Yggdrasil 

1  Also  in  the  East,  conf.  Jelaleddin's  Divan  in  Hammer's  Pers.  redek.  p.  183. 
-  First  publ.  in  Boissonade's  Anecd,  Graeca,  torn.  4,  Paris  1832,  pp.  1—305. 
3  Hist,  duorum  Christi  miiitum  (Opera,  Basil.  1575.  pp.  815—902)  ;  also  printed 
separately,  Antv.  s.a.  (the  illustration  at  p.  107)  ;  another  version  in  Surius  7,  «5S 

seep,  the  parable  at  p.  889. 


800  TIME    AND   WORLD. 

subserved  a  very  similar  partition  of  the  world.  The  thing  might 
.even  have  to  do  with  ancient  land-surveying,  and  answer  to  the 
Roman  cardo,  intersected  at  right  angles  by  the  decumanus.  To 
the  ashtree  we  must  also  concede  some  connexion  with  Asciburg 
(p.  350)  and  the  tribal  progenitor  Askr  (p.  571-2).  Another 
legend  of  an  ashtree  is  reserved  for  chap.  XXXII  (see  Suppl.). 

Niflheimr,  where  Nicfhoggr  and  other  serpents  (named  in  Saem. 
44b.  Sn.  22)  have  their  haunt  round  the  spring  Hvergelmir,  is 
the  dread  dwelling-place  of  the  death-goddess  Hel  (p.  312),  Goth. 
Halja  ('or  heljo/  Sasm.  94a,  <i  heljo'  49.  50.  51,  is  clearly 
spoken  of  a  place,  not  a  person),  it  is  gloomy  and  black,  like  her; 
hence  a  Nebelheim,  cold  land  of  shadows,  abode  of  the  departed,1 
but  not  a  place  of  torment  or  punishment  as  in  the  christian  view, 
and  even  that  was  only  developed  gradually  (p.  313).  When  Ul- 
philas  uses  halja,  it  is  always  for  ahrjs  (Matt.  11,  23.  Luke  10, 15. 
16,  23.  1  Cor.  15,  55),  the  infemus  of  the  Vulg. ;  whenever  the 
text  has  >yeevva,  Vulg.  gehenna,  it  remains  gaiainna  in  Gothic 
(Matt.  5,  29.  30.  10,  28),it  was  an  idea  for  which  the  Gothic  had 
no  word.  The  OHG.  translator  T.  renders  t  infernus '  by  hella 
(Matt.  11,  23),  'gehenna'3  by  hellafiur  (5,  29.  30)  or  hellawizi 
(-torment  10,  28),  and  only  c  filium  gehennae'  by  hella  sun  (23, 
15),  where  the  older  version  recently  discovered  is  more  exact: 
qualu  sunu,  son  of  torment.  When  the  Creed  says  that  Christ 
'nrSar  steig  zi  helliu'  (descendit  ad  inferna),  it  never  meant  the 
abode  of  souls  in  torment.  In  the  Heliand  72,  4  a  sick  man  is 
said  to  be  'fiisid  an  helsia",  near  dying,  equipped  for  his  journey 
to  Hades,  without  any  by-thought  of  pain  or  punishment.  That 
AS.  poetry  still  remembered  the  original  (personal)  conception  of 
Hel,  was  proved  on  p.  314,  but  I  will  add  one  more  passage  from 
Beow.  357:  '  Helle  gemundon,  MetoS  ne  cuSon/  Helam  venera- 
bantur,  Deum  verum  ignorabant  (pagani).  So  then,  from  the 
4th  cent,  to  the  10th,  halja,  hella  was  simply  Hades  or  the  death- 
kingdom,  the  notion  of  torment  being  expressed  by  another  word 
or  at  any  rate  a  compound ;  and  with  this  agrees  the  probability 


1  A  dead  man  is  called  m'fl-farinn,  Ssem.  249 J.  The  progenitor  of  the  Nihelungs 
was  prob.  Nebel  (Fornald.  sog.  2,  9.  11,  Nasnll  for  Nefill) :  a  race  of  heroes  doomed 
to  Hades  and  early  death.  '  Nibelunge :  spirits  of  the  death-kingdom,'  Lachmann 
on  Nib.  342. 

2  From  gehenna  comes,  we  know,  the  Fr.  gehene,  gene,  i.e.  supplice,  though  in 
a  very  mitigated  sense  now. 


HELL.      NI1-L-HEIM. 


801 


that  as  late  as  Widekind  of  Corvei  (1,  23)  Saxon  poets,  chanting 
a  victory  of  Saxons  over  Franks,  used  this  very  word  hella  for 
the  dwelling-place  of  the  dead  :  '  ut  a  mirnis  declaniaretur,  ubi 
tantus  ille  infemus  esset,  qui  tantara  rnultitudinem  caesoram  capere 
posset  t,x  A  Latin  poem  on  Bp.  Heriger  of  Mentz,  of  perhaps 
the  10th  cent.,2  describes  how  one  that  had  been  spirited  away 
to  the  underworld  declared  'totum  esse  infemum  accinctum  densis 
ndique  silvis/  meaning  evidently  the  abode  of  the  dead,  not  the 
place  of  punishment.  Even  in  a  poem  of  the  12th  cent.  (Diut.  3, 
104)  Jacob  says  :  '  so  muoz  ich  iemer  cholen,  unze  ich  so  vare  ze 
der  helle,'  until  I  fare  to  hell,  i.e.  die.  The  13th  cent,  saw  the 
present  meaning  of  helle  already  established,  the  abode  of  the 
damned ;  e.g.  in  Iw.  1472  :  '  God  bar  thee  out  of  helle  ! '  take 
thee  to  heaven,  not  guard  thee  from  death,  for  the  words  are 
addressed  to  a  dead  man  (see  Suppl.). 

Hell  is  represented  as  a  lodging,  an  inn,  as  Valhbll,  where  those 
who  die  put  up  the  same  evening  (p.  145) :  '  ver  skulum  d  Valholl 
gista  %  qyeld,'  Fornald.  sog.  1,  106  ;  *  vrS  munum  i  aptan  Offin 
gista'  1,  423;  singularly  Abbo  1,555  (Pertz  2,  789),  '  plebs 
inimica  Deo  pransura  Plutonis  in  urna.'  No  doubt,  people  used 
to  say  :  '  we  shall  put  up  at  Nobis-haus  to-night ! '  The  Saviour's 
words,  a-rjjxepov  /xer  i/xov  eery  iv  rco  irapahelaw,  Luke  23,  43  have 
'this  day/  but  not  ' to-night' (see  Suppl.). 

Here  and  there  in  country  districts,  among  the  common  people, 
helle  has  retained  its  old  meaning.  In  Westphalia  there  are 
still  plenty  of  common  carriage-roads  that  go  by  the  name  oi 
hellweg,  now  meaning  highway,  but  originally  death-way,  the 
broad  road  travelled  by  the  corpse.  My  oldest  example  I  draw 
from  a  Record  of  890,  Ritz  1,19:  '  helvius  sive  strata  publica.' 
Later  instances  occur  in  Weisth.  3,  87.  106,  in  Tross's  Rec.  of 
the  feme  p.  61,  and  in  John  of  Soest    (Fichard's  Arch.  1,  89).3 

1  Trad.  Corbeiens.  pp.  465.  G04  makes  a  regular  hexameter  of  it :' tantus  ubi 
infernus,  caesos  qui  devoret  omnes?'  This  overcrowding  of  Hades  with  the  dead 
reminds  one  of  Calderon's  fanatic  fear,  lest  heaven  stand  empty,  with  all  the  world 
running  to  the  other  house  after  Luther  : 

Que  vive  Dios,  que  ha  de  tener  en  cielo 
pocos  que  aposentar,  si  considero 
que  estau  ya  aposentado  con  Lutero. 

(Sitio  de  Breda,  jorn.  primera). 

2  Lat.  gedichte  des  X.  XI.  jh.  p.  335,  conf.  344. 

3  Also  in  Lower  Hesse:  hellweg  by  Wettesingen  and  Oberlistingen  (Wochenbl. 
for  1833,  052.  1)84.  H>23.  1138),  Iwlleweg  by  Calden  (951.  982.  1022),  hdllepfad  bj 
Kothfelden  (923). 


802  TIME    AND   WOBLD. 

In  the  plains  of  Up.  Germany  we  sometimes  find  it  called  todten- 
weg  (Moue's  Anz,  1838.  pp.  225.  316).  The  ON.  poetry  makes 
the  dead  ride  or  drive  to  the  underworld,  ' fara  til  heljar  '  or  '  til 
Heljar,'  to  the  death-goddess :  Brynhildr,  after  she  is  burnt, 
travels  to  Hel  in  an  ornamental  car,  '  ok  meS  reiSinni  a  Jtelveg,' 
and  the  poem  bears  the  title  Helreiff,  Sasrn.  227.  In  our  Freidank 
105,  9.  151,  12  it  is  the  christian  notion  that  is  expressed  by 
'  zer  helle  varn '  and  '  dri  straze  zer  helle  gtint/  For  the  rest,  a 
hellweg  would  necessarily  bring  with  it  a  hellwagen  (p.  314),  just 
as  we  meet  with  a  Wodan's  way  and  waggon  both  (p.  151). 
Nay,  the  Great  Bear  is  not  only  called  himelwagen  and  herren- 
wagen,  but  in  the  Netherlands  hellewagen  (Wolfs  Wodana  i.  iii. 
iv.)  ;  see  a  '  Wolframus  dictus  hellewagen'  MB.  25,  123  a.d.  1314 
(see  Suppl.). 

The  0.  Saxons  at  first,  while  their  own  hellia  still  sounded  too 
heathenish,  preferred  to  take  from  the  Latin  Bible  ivfern,  gen. 
infernes,  e.g.  Hel.  44,  21,  and  even  shortened  it  down  to  fern, 
Hel.  27,  7.  103,  16.  104,  15.  164,  12 ;  so  that  the  poet  cited  by 
Widekind  may  actually  have  said  in/em  instead  of  hellia.1 

The  heathen  hellia  lay  low  down  toward  the  North;  when 
HermoSr  was  sent  after  Baldr,  he  rode  for  nine  nights  through 
valleys  dark  and  deep  (dokva  dala  ok  diupa),  the  regions  peopled 
by  the  dark  elves  (p.  445)  ;  he  arrived  at  the  river  Gibll  (strepens), 
over  which  goes  a  bridge  covered  with  shining  gold ;  a  maiden 
named  MoSgnSr  guards  the  bridge,  and  she  told  him  that  five 
fylki  of  dead  men  2  had  come  over  it  the  day  before,  and  that 
from  this  bridge  the  '  hellway  '  ran  ever  lower  and  northwarder  : 
'  niSr  ok  norSr  liggr  helvegr.'  This  1  understand  of  the  proper 
hall  and  residence  of  the  goddess,  where  she  is  to  be  met  with, 
for  all  the  country  he  had  been  crossing  was  part  of  her  kingdom. 
This  palace  is  surrounded  by  lofty  railings  (hel-grindr),  Sn.  33. 
07.  The  hall  is  named  Eliu&nir  (al.  Elvionir),  the  threshold 
fallanda  forad  (al.  the  palisade  is  fallanda  forad,  the  threshold 
J'olmuSnir),  the  curtain  blikjandi  Vol,  Sn.  33.  It  is  probably  a 
door  of  this  underworld   (not  of   Valholl,  which  has   540  huge 


1  A  place  Infernisi  (Erhard  p.  140,  a.d.  1113) ;  Gael,  ifrinn,  Ir.  ifeam,  Wei. 
y/ern,  uffern. 

-  A  fylki  contains  50  (EA.  207),  so  that  Baklr  rode  clown  with  an  escort  of  250, 
though  one  MS.  doubles  the  number:  '  rei'3  Baldr  her  nice'  500  manna.' 


NIFL-HEL. 


803 


gates)  that  is  meant  in  Sa3m.  226 a  and  Fornakl.  sog.  1,204, 
where  Brynhildr  wishes  to  follow  SigurS  in  death,  lest  the  door 
fall  upon  his  heel :  a  formula  often  used  on  entering  a  closed 
cavern.1  But  Hel's  kingdom  bears  the  name  of  Niflheimr  or  Nifl- 
hel,  mist-world,  mist-hell,2  it  is  the  ninth  world  (as  to  position), 
and  was  created  many  ages  before  the  earth  (p.  558)  ;  in  the 
middle  of  it  is  that  fountain  Hvergelmir,  out  of  which  twelve 
rivers  flow,  Gioll  being  the  one  that  comes  nearest  the  dwelling 
of  the  goddess,  Sn.  4.  From  this  follows  plainly  what  I  have 
said  :  if  Hvergelmir  forms  the  centre  of  Niflheimr,  if  Gioll  and 
the  other  streams  pertain  exclusively  to  hell,  the  goddess  Hel's 
dominion  cannot  begin  at  the  '  hel-grindr/  but  must  extend  to 
those  '  dank  dales  and  deep/  the  '  dense  forests '  of  the  Latin 
poem.  Yet  I  have  nothing  to  say  against  putting  it  in  this  way : 
that  the  dark  valleys,  like  the  murky  Erebos  of  the  Greeks,  are 
an  intermediate  tract,  which  one  must  cross  to  reach  the  abode 
of  Aides,  of  Halja.  Out  of  our  Halja  the  goddess,  as  out  of  the 
personal  Hades,  the  Roman  Orcus  (orig.  uragus,  urgus,  and  in 
the  Mid.  Ages  still  regarded  as  a  monster  and  alive,  pp.  314, 
486)  there  was  gradually  evolved  the  local  notion  of  a  dwelling- 
place  of  the  dead.  The  departed  were  first  imagined  living  with 
her,  and  afterwards  in  her  (it).  In  the  approaches  dwelt  or 
hovered  the  dark  elves  (see  Suppl.). 

Niflheimr  then,  the  mist-world,  was  a  cold  underground  region 
covered  with  eternal  night,  traversed  by  twelve  roai-ing  waters, 
and  feebly  lighted  here  and  there  by  shining  gold,  i.e.  fire.  The 
rivers,  especially  Gioll,  remind  us  of  Lethe,  and  of  Styx,  whose 
holy  water  gods  and  men  swore  by.     With  Hvergelmir  we  may 

1  The  0.  Fr.  poem  on  the  '  quatre  filsAi'mon'  (Cod.  7183  fol.  126b)  makes 
Richart,  when  about  to  be  hung,  offer  a  prayer,  in  which  we  are  told  that  the 
Saviour  brought  back  all  the  souls  out  of  hell  except  one  woman,  who  would  stop 
at  the  door  to  give  hell  a  piece  of  her  mind,  and  is  therefore  doomed  to  stay  there 
till  the  Judgment- day  :  all  were  released, 

Ne  mes  que  une  dame,  qui  dist  une  raison  : 
'  hai  enfer '  dist  ele,  '  eon  vos  remanez  solz, 
noirs,  hisdoz  et  obscurs,  et  laiz  et  tenebrox  ! ' 
a  Ventrer  <l<-  In  parte,  si  con  lisant  trovon. 
jusquau  terme  i  sera,  que  jugerois  le  mont. 
The  source  of  this  strange  legend  is  unknown  to  me. 

2  '  Diu  inre  helle,  wo  nebel  and  finster.'  The  Lucidarius  gives  ten  names  of 
hell:  stagnum  ignis,  terra  tcnebrosa,  terra  oblivionis,  swarziu  ginunge,  etc.  Mone'a 
An/.,  for  1834,  313;  conf.  expressions  in  the  OS.  poet:  het  endi  thiustri,  suart 
sinnahti,  Hel.  65,  12 ;  an  dalon  thiustron,  an  themo  alloro  ferrosten  feme  65,  9  ; 
under ferndalu  33,  16  ;  diap  dudes  dalu  157,  22. 


804  TIME   AND   WORLD. 

connect  Hellebome  in  Brabant,  the  source  of  Hellebelce ;  several 
places  are  named  Hellepid  (Wolf's  Wodana  1,  v.  and  35).  Hel- 
voetsluis  was  cited,  p.  315  note;  the  name  Helle-voet  (-foot)  is, 
we  are  told,  still  to  be  seen  on  signboards  (uithangborden)  in  the 
Netherlands  (see  Suppl.). 

Gloomy  and  joyless  as  we  must  imagine  Niflheirnr,1  there  is  no 
mention  anywhere  of  its  denizens  being  punished  and  tormented ; 
ueither  is  it  the  wicked  especially  that  are  transported  thither  at 
the  end  of  their  life,  but  all  and  sundry,  even  the  noblest  and 
worthiest,  as  the  examples  of  Brynhildr  and  Baldr  may  shew.2 
The  only  exceptions  seem  to  be  the  heroes  that  fall  in  battle, 
whom  OSinn  takes  to  himself  into  Valholl. 

In  contradiction  with  this  view  stands  another  and,  I  think, 
a  later  one,  that  presented  in  Sn.  4 :  Allfather  the  highest  god 
has  given  to  all  men  an  immortal  soul,  though  their  body  rot  in 
the  ground  or  burn  to  ashes;  all  good  men  (rett  srSa'Sir)  go  to 
him  in  Gimill  or  Vingolf,  all  the  wicked  (vaudir)  to  Niflheimr  or 
hell  (conf.  Sn.  21  and  75,  of  which  more  hereafter).  This  is 
already  the  christian  idea,  or  one  extremely  like  it. 

For  the  old  heathen  hell,  pale  and  dim,  the  Christian  substi- 
tuted a  pool  filled  with  flames  and  pitch,  in  which  the  souls  of 
the  damned  burn  for  evei^,  at  once  pitch-black  and  illumined 
with  a  glow.  Gehenna  is  interpreted  hellafiuri,  MHG.  hellefiwer 
Parz.  116.  18;  the  poet  of  the  Heliand,  when  he  wants  to  picture 
vividly  this  black  and  burning  hell,  turns  the  old  fern,  form  into 
a  masc.  :  'an  thene  hetan  hel'  76,  22.  'an  thene  suartan  hel ' 
103,  9.  Erebi  fornax,  Walther  867.  Nay,  0.  and  other  OHG. 
writers  make  the  simple  beh  (pix)  stand  for  hell3:  'in  dem  beche,' 


1  Cffidmon  still  pictures  the  witehiis  (house  of  torment)  as  '  deop,  dreama  leas, 
sinnihte  beseald.'  Striking  images  occur  in  a  doc.  of  the  11th  cent.  (Zeitsehr.  f. 
d.  a.  3  445) :  swevilstank,  genibele,  tvdes  scategruobe,  wallente  stredema,  etc. 

2  So  all  the  Greek  heroes  sink  into  Hades'  house  under  the  earth.  But  it  is 
hard  to  distinguish  from  it  Tartarus,  which  lies  lower  down  the  abyss,  and  where 
the  subjugated  giants  sit  imprisoned.  This  denoted  therefore,  at  least  in  the  later 
times,  a  part  of  the  underworld  where  the  wicked  dwelt,  fur  their  punishment,  which 
answers  to  the  christian  hell.  But  that  the  '  roots  of  earth  and  sea  from  above 
grow  down '  into  Tartarus  (Hes.  Theog.  728)  suggests  our  Norse  ashtree,  whose 
root  reaches  down  to  Niflheim.  Conf.  also  Ovid's  description  of  the  underworld 
(Met.  4,  432  seq.),  where  '  Styx  nebulas  exhalat  iners'  fits  in  with  the  conception 
of  Niflheim. 

3  Quotations  in  my  ed.  of  the  Hymns  p.  51.  Add  Muspilli  5,  on  which  Schm. 
quotes  a  line  from  Walafrid:  'At  secum  iufelix  piceo  spatiatur  averwo?  Eugenius 
in  Dracont.  p.  m.  30  :  '  Ut  possiin  picei  poenam  vitare  barathri.' 


HELL.  805 

Warnung  547  and  Wernher  v.  Niederrh.  40,  10;  f  die  pechwelle,' 
Anegenge  28,  19.  It  is  a  fancy  widely  scattered  over  Europe; 
the  Mod.  Greeks  still  say  irlaaa  for  hell,  as  in  a  proverb  of  Alex. 
Negri :  e^et  TTiaaav  not  irapdSetaov,  putting  hell  and  heaven  side 
by  side.  This  pitchy  hell  the  Greeks  seem  to  have  borrowed 
from  the  Slavs,  the  O.  SI.  peklo  meant  both  pitch  and  hell  (Dobr. 
instit.  294),  so  the  Boh.  peklo,  hell,  Pol.  pieklo,  Serv.  pakao, 
Sloven,  pekel,  some  masc,  some  neuter;  Lith.  pekla  (fern.),  0. 
Truss.  picJcullis  (pickullien  in  the  Catechism  p.  10  is  Ace),  the 
devil  himself  is  in  Lith.  pyculas,  O.  Pruss.  pickuls,  conf.  Pausch 
p.  484.  The  Hungarians  took  their  pokol,  hell,  from  the  Slavic, 
as  our  ancestors  did  '  gaiainna '  and  '  infern '  from  Greek  and 
Latin.  And  the  smela,  hell,  of  the  Liineburg  Wends  seems 
allied  to  the  Boh.  smola,  smula,  resin  or  pitch.  With  the  heat 
of  boiling  pitch  was  also  combined  an  intolerable  stench;  Reineke 
5918  :  'it  stank  dar  alse  dat  helsclie  pek.}  Conf.  generally  Eu. 
2845.  3130  (see  Suppl.). 

Since  the  conversion  to  Christianity  therefore,  there  has  clung 
to  the  notion  of  hell  the  additional  one  of  punishment  and  pain  : 
kvollheimr,  mundus  supplicii,  in  Solarl.  53  (Sasm.  127a)  is  unmis- 
takably the  christian  idea.  The  OHG.  hellawizi,  OS.  helliwiti, 
Hel.  44,  17,  AS.  hellewite,  expresses  supplicium  inferni,  conf. 
Graff  1,  1117  on  wizi,  MHG.  wize,  MsH.  2,  105b;  upon  it  are 
modelled  the  Icel.  helviti,  Swed.  helvete,  Dan.  helvede,  which 
mean  simply  our  hell;  from  the  Swedes  the  converted  Finns 
received  their  helwetti  (orcus),  the  Lapps  their  helvete,  and  from 
the  Bavarians  the  Slovens  in  Carniola  and  Styria  got  their  vize 
(pui'gatorium),  for  the  Church  had  distinguished  between  two 
fires,  the  one  punitive,  the  other  purgative,  and  hanging  midway 
betwixt  hell  and  heaven.1 

But  the  christians  did  not  alter  the  position  of  hell,  it  still  was 
down  in  the  depths  of  the  earth,  with  the  human  world  spread  out 
above  it.  It  is  therefore  called  abijssus  (Ducange  sub  v.),  and 
forms  the  counterpart  to  heaven:  fa  coelo  usque  in  abyssum.' 
From  abyssus,  Span,  abismo,  Fr.  abime,  is  to  be  explained  the 
MHG.  abis  (Altd.  bl.  1,  295;  in  abisses  grunde,  MsH.  3,  1G7), 
later  obis,  nobis  (en  abis,  en  obis,  in  abyssum).     OS.  helligruTid, 

1  Of  one  in  purgatory  the  Esthoniaus  say:   ta  on  kabha  ilrna  walihel,  lie  is  be- 
tueeii  two  worlds. 


80G  TIME   AND   WORLD. 

Hel.  44,  22;  in  afgrunde  gan,  Roth.  2334;  ir  verdienet  daz  af- 
grnnde,  1970  ;  '  varen  ter  helle  in  den  donkren  Jcelre,'  dark  cellar, 
Floris  1257.1  AS.  se  neowla  grund  (imus  abyssus),  Caedni.  267,  1 . 
270,  16;  ]?8efc  neowle  genip  (profunda  caligo)  271,  7.  275,  31. 
This  veowel,  niwel  (profundus)  may  explain  an  expression  in  the 
Frisian  Asega-bok  (Rickth.  130,  10),  'thin  niuent  hille,'  where  a 
M.  Nethl.  text  has  '  de  grandiose  helle,'  bottomless  hell.  Hell 
[sinking  downwards  is  contrasted  with  heaven  mounting  upwards: 
1  der  himel  allez  uf  get,  dm  helle  siget  allez  ze  tal,'  Warnung 
3375-81  (see  Suppl.). 

It  appears  that  men  imagined,  a3  lying  at  the  bottom  of  our 
earth,  like  a  ceiling  or  grating  of  the  underworld,  a  stone,  called 
in  MHG.  poems  dille-stein  (fr.  dille,  diele,  deal  =  tabula,  pluteus, 
OHG.  dil,  dili,  ON.  bil,  ]?ili):  '  griiebe  ich  uf  den  dille-stein,'  if 
I  dug  down  to  the  d.,  Schmiede  (smithy,  forge)  33  ;  '  des  hcehe 
viir  der  himele  dach  und  durch  der  helle  bodem  vert,'  its  height 
passes  over  heaven's  roof  and  through  hell's  floor,  ibid.  1252  ; 
1  viir  der  himele  dach  du  blickest,  u.  durch  der  helle  dillestein  [is 
not  this  floor  rather  than  ceiling?],'  MS.  2,  199  b;  'wan  ez  kumt 
des  tiuvels  schrei,  da  von  wir  sin  erschrecket :  der  dillestein  del- 
ist enzwei  (in-two,  burst),  die  toten  sint  uf  gewecket,'  Dietr. 
drachenk.  cod.  pal.  226a.  This  makes  me  think  of  the  6/j,4>a\6^ 
at  Delphi,  a  conical  stone  wrapt  in  net  (Gerhard's  Metroon  p.  29), 
still  more  of  the  lapis  manalis  (Festus  sub  v.)  which  closed  the 
mouth  of  the  Etruscan  mundus,  and  was  lifted  off  on  three  holy 
days  every  year,  so  that  the  souls  could  mount  into  the  upper 
world  (Festus  sub  v.  mundus)  Not  only  this  pit  in  the  earth, 
but  heaven  also  was  called  mundus,2  just  as  Niflheimr  is  still 
a  heimr,  i.e.  a  world.  And  that  hell-door  (p.  802)  is  paralleled 
by  the  '  descensus  Averni,'  the  'fauces  grave  olentis  Averni,'  the 
'  atri  janua  Ditis'  in  Virgil's  description,  Aen.  6,  126.  201  (conf. 
helle  infart,'  Veldeck's  En.  2878.  2907);  fairytales  of  the  Slavs 
too  speak  of  an  entrance  to  the  lower  world  by  a  deep  pit, 
Hanusch  p.  412  (see  Suppl.). 

The  mouth  or  jaws  of  hell  were  spoken  of,  p.  314;  Hel  yawns 

1  Does  '  eggrnnt '  stand  for  eck-grunt  ?  '  Das  iuwer  sele  komen  uzer  eggrunde,' 
Cod.  pal.  349,  19d. 

2  Conf.  O.  Miiller's  Etrusker  2,  96-7.  The  Finn,  manala  is  'locus  subterranens, 
ubi  versantur  niortui,'  sepulcrum,  orcus,  but  derived  from  maa  (terra,  mundus), 
and  only  accidentally  resembling  '  manalis.' 


DILLE-STEIN.      MUSPILLI.  807 

like  her  brother  Fenrir,  and  every  abyss  gapes:1  os  gehennae 
in  Beda  363,  17  is  the  name  of  a  fire-spouting  well  (puteus);2 
in  an  AS.  gloss  (Mone  887)  mu&  (os)  means  orcus.  The  same 
Coll.  of  glosses  742  puts  down  sed&  (puteus,  barathrum)  for  hell, 
and  2180  cutis  for  tartarus,  1284  cwis-husle,  where  undoubtedly 
we  must  read  cwis-susle.  To  civ  is  I  can  find  no  clue  but  the  ON. 
qvis  calumnia  [quiz,  tease  ?  queror,  questus  ?] ;  susl  is  apparently 
tormentum,  supplicium,  the  dictionaries  having  no  ground  for 
giving  it  the  sense  of  sulphur  (AS.  swefel)  ;  '  susle  ge-innod/ 
Caadm.  3,  28, 1  take  to  be  supplicio  clausum.  The  notion  of  the 
well  agrees  remarkably  with  the  fable  in  the  Eeinhart,  where 
the  hero  having  fallen  into  a  well  wheedles  the  wolf  into  the 
bucket ;  he  pretends  he  is  sitting  in  paradis  down  there,  only 
there  is  no  getting  to  it  but  by  taking  '  einen  tuk  (plunge)  in  die 
helle.'  The  well  easily  leads  to  the  notion  of  bathing  :  '  ze  helle 
baden,'  MsH.  2,  254a;  for  you  can  bathe  in  fire  and  brimstone 
too  (see  Suppl.). 

Christian  and  heathen  notions  on  the  punishments  of  the  lost 
are  found  mixed  in  the  SolarlioS  of  the  Edda,  Saetn.  128-9. 
Snakes,  adders,  dragons  dwell  in  the  christian  hell  (Caedm. 
270-1),  as  at  the  Hvergelmir  root  (p.  796).  It  is  striking  how 
the  poem  of  Oswald  (Haupt's  Zeitschr.  2,  125)  represents  a 
dead  heathen  woman  as  a  she-wolf,  with  the  devils  pouring  pitch 
and  brimstone  down  her  throat.  Dante  in  his  Purgatorio  and 
Inferno  mixes  up  what  he  finds  handed  down  by  the  Mid.  Ages 
and  classical  literature.  Read  also  the  conclusion  of  Casdmon 
(Fundgr.  202);  and  in  the  Barlaam  310,  Rudolf's  brief  but 
poetic  picture  of  hell3  (see  Suppl.). 

That  the  heathen  Mist-world  lying  far  to  the  north  was  not 
filled  with  fire,  comes  out  most  clearly  from  its  opposite,  a  Flame- 
world  in  the  south  (p.  558),  which  the  Edda  calls  Muspell  or 
Muspells-heimr.     This  is  bright  and  hot,  glowing  and  burning,4 

1  Wallach.  iad  (hiatus),  iadul  hell. 

2  As  evening  is  the  '  mouth  of  night.' 

3  Here  we  may  sum  up  what  living  men  have  reached  Hades  and  come  back :  of 
the  Greeks,  Orpheus  in  search  of  Eurydice;  Odysseus;  Aeneas.  Of  Norsemen,  Her- 
mtnNr  when  dispatched  after  Baldr,  and  Hadding  (Saxo  Gram.  p.  16).  Medieval 
legends  of  Brandanus  and  Tundalus ;  that  of  Tanhauser  and  others  like  it  shall 
come  in  the  next  chap.  Monkish  dreams,  visions  of  princes  who  see  their  ancestors 
in  hell,  are  coll.  in  D.S.  nos.  461.  527.  530.  554 ;  of  the  same  kind  is  the  vision  of 
the  vacant  chair  in  the  Annolied  724,  conf.  Tundalus  05,  7. 

4  Muspellsheimr  is  not  heaven,  nor  are  the  sons  of  Muspell  the  same  as  the 
lujht  elves  that  live  in  heaven  (p.  445);  when  Surtr  has  burnt  up  heaven  and  earth, 

VOL.    IIt  B    B 


808  TIME    AND   WORLD. 

natives  alone  can  exist  in  it,  hence  human  beings  from  our  world 
never  pass  into  it,  as  into  the  cold  one  of  the  north.  It  is  guarded 
by  a  god  (?)  named  Surtr,  beai^er  of  the  blazing  sword. 

In  the  word  Muspell  we  find  another  striking  proof  of  the 
prevalence  of  ON.  conceptions  all  over  Teutondom.  Not  only 
has  the  Saxon  Heliand  a  mudspelli  79,  24,  mutspelli  133,  4,  but 
a  High  German  poem,  probably  composed  in  Bavaria,  has  at  line 
62  muspilli  (dat.  muspille).  Besides,  what  a  welcome  support 
to  the  age  and  real  basis  of  the  Edda,  coming  from  Saxon  and 
Bavarian  manuscripts  of  the  9th  cent,  and  the  8th !  Every- 
where else  the  term  is  extinct :  neither  Icelanders  nor  other 
Scandinavians  understand  it,  in  Anglo-Saxon  writings  it  has 
never  shewn  itself  yet,  and  later  specimens  of  German,  High 
and  Low,  have  lost  all  knowledge  of  it.  Assuredly  a  primitive, 
a  heathenish  word.1 

On  its  general  meaning  I  have  already  pronounced,  p.  601  : 
it  can  scarcely  be  other  than  fire,  flame.  The  Heliand  passages 
tell  us  :  '  mudspelles  megin  obar  man  ferid/  the  force  of  fire 
fareth  over  men ;  '  mutspelli  cumit  an  thiustrea  naht,  al  so  thiof 
ferid  darno  mid  is  dadiun/  fire  cometh  in  dark  night,  as  thief 
fareth  secret  and  sudden  with  his  deeds  (Matth.  24,  43.  2  Pet. 
3,  10)  ;  and  the  OHG.  poet  says  :  '  dar  ni  mac  denne  mak  an- 
dremo  helfan  vora  demo  vnuspille,  denna  daz  preita,  wasal  (Graff 
1,  1063)  allaz  varprennit,2  enti  viur  enti  luft  allaz  arfurpit/  then 
no  friend  can  help  another  for  the  fire,  when  the  broad  shower 
of  glowing  embers  (?)  burns  up  all,  and  fire  and  air  purge 
(furbish)  everything. 

It  must  be  a  compound,  whose  latter  half  spilli,  spelli,  spell 
we  might  connect  with  the  ON.  spioll  (corruptio),  spilla  (corrum- 
pere),  AS.  spillan  (perdere),  Engl,  spill,  OHG.  spildan,  OS. 
spildian  (perdere)  ; 3  ON.  mannspioll  is  clades  hominum,  lsespioll 
(Nialss.  c.  158)  perhaps  bellum.     But  we  are  left  to  guess  what 

there  lies  above  this  heaven  a  second,  named  Andlangr,  and  above  that  a  third 
named  Viffblainn,  and  there  it  is  that  light  elves  alone  live  now,  says  Snorri  22. 

1  In  Nemnich,  among  the  many  names  given  for  the  bittern  (OHG.  horotumbil, 
onocrotalus,  ardea  stellaris),  there  is  also  muspel,  which  probably  has  to  do  with 
moss  and  moor,  not  with  our  word. 

2  So  I  read  (trans.)  for  '  varprinnit'  (intrans.),  as  '  wasal '  cannot  otherwise  be 
explained. 

3  OHG.  W  =  ON.  II;  conf.  'wildi,  kold'  with  '  villr,  gull.'  But  then  why  is  it 
not  muspildi  in  the  OHG.  and  OS.  poems  ? 


MUSPILLI.  809 

mud,  mu  (mu  ?)  can  be,  whether  earth,  land,  or  else  wood,  tree. 
In  the  latter  case,  mudspelli  is  a  descriptive  epithet  of  fire,  an 
element  aptly  named  the  wood-destroying,  tree-consuming,  as 
elsewhere  in  the  Edda  it  is  bani  vi&ar  (percussor,  inimicus  ligni), 
grand  vi&ar  (perditio  ligni),  Sn.  126  ;  the  Lex  Alam.  96,  1  has 
medela,  medula  in  the  sense  of  lancwitu,  lancwit  (Gramm.  3,  455), 
the  Lex  Rothar.  305  modula,  apparently  for  quercus,  robur  (Graff 
2,  707),  and  the  ON.  mei&r.  (perh.  for  meySr,  as  sefSr  for  seySr) 
is  arbor,  Lith.  medis  [Mongol,  modo]  arbor,  lignum.  The  other 
supposition  would  make  it  land-destroying,  world-wasting ;  but 
still  less  do  I  know  of  any  Teutonic  word  for  land  or  earth  that 
is  anything  like  mud  or  mu.  We  may  fairly  regard  it  as  a  much 
obscured  and  distorted  form;  Finn,  maa  is  terra,  solum  (see 
Suppl.).1 

Surtr  (gen.  Surtar,  dat.  Surti,  Ssem.  9a)  is  the  swart,  swarthy, 
browned  by  heat,  conn,  with  svartr  (niger),  yet  distinct  from  it ;  ~ 
it  occurs  elsewhere  too  as  a  proper  name,  Fornald.  sog.  2,  114. 
islend.  sog.  1,  66.  88.  106.  151.206;  and  curiously  '  Surtr  enn 
hviti,'  ibid.  1,  212.  But  there  must  have  been  another  form 
Surti,  gen.  Surta,  for  in  both  Eddas  we  meet  with  the  compound 
Surtalogi,  Ssem.  37b.  Sn.  22.  76.  90.  A  certain  resinous 
charred  earth  is  in  the  North  still  called  Surtarbrandr  (Surti 
titio,  Biorn  sub  v.,  F.  Magn.  lex.  730),  a  mode  of  naming  indica- 
tive of  a  superior  being,  as  when  plants  are  named  after  gods. 
Volcanic  rock-caves  in  Iceland  are  called  Surtarhellir  (F.  Magn. 
lex.  729);  the  Landnamabok  3,  10  (Isl.  sog.  1,  151)  tells  how 
one  Thorvaldr  brought  to  the  cave  of  the  iotunn  Surtr  a  soner 
composed  about  him  :  '  ha  for  hann  upp  til  hellisins  Swrts,  oc 
fcerSi  har  drapu  ]?a,  er  hann  hafSi  ort  um  iotuninn  i  hellinum ' ; 
and  Sn.  209b  210a  includes  Surtr  and  Svartr  among  the  names 
of  giants.     Nowhere  in  the  two  Eddas  does  Surtr  appear  as  a 

1  Should  any  one  reject  these  explanations,  and  take  e.g.  OS.  mudspelli  for 
'  muth-spelli,'  oris  eloquium,  or  '  mut-sp.,'  mutationis  nuntius  (as  I  proposed  in 
Gramm.  2,  525),  he  is  at  once  met  by  the  objection,  that  the  Bav.  poet  writes 
neither  '  mund-sp.'  nor  '  muz-sp.,'  any  more  than  the  ON.  has  munu-spiall '  or 
'  mut-sp.' ;  and  then  how  are  these  meanings  to  be  reconciled  with  that  of  '  heimr '  ? 
let  alone  the  fact  that  there  is  no  later  (christian)  term  for  the  world's  end  or  the 
judgment-day  pointing  at  all  that  way. 

2  Surtr  might  stand  related  to  svartr,  as  the  Goth,  name  Svartus  to  the  adj. 
svarts.  Procopius  de  bello  Goth.  2,  15.  4,  25  has  a  Herulian  name  Zouoprovas, 
Svartva  ?  The  AS.  geneal.  of  Deira  has  Swearta  and  Swerting,  conf.  Beow.  2-10G, 
and  '  sweart  racu  '  below. 


810  TIME   AND   WOELD. 

god,  but  always,  like  other  giants,  as  an  enemy  and  assailant  of 
the  gods.  In  Voluspa  48  (Sarni.  8a)  fire  is  called  '  Surta  sen/ 
Surti  amicus ;  and  in  52  (Seem.  8b)  we  read : 

Surtr  fer  sunnan  meS  sviga  leifi, 
skin  af  sverSi  sol  valtiva, 

i.e.  Surtus  tendit  ab  austro  cum  vimine  gigas,  splendet  e  gladio 
(ejus)  sol  deorurn :  'leifi '  is  plainly  another  word  for  giant,  Sn. 
209a;  ' valtiva'  can  only  be  a  gen.  pi.  (conf.  Saem.  10a  52a)  and 
dependent  on  sol,  not  gen.  sing,  of  valtivi  (which  never  occurs, 
p.  194)  dep.  on  sverSi;  what  can  be  the  meaning  here  of  f  svigi' 
(usually  twisted  band,  wisp  ?)  I  cannot  say,  one  would  think  it 
also  referred  to  the  brandished  sword.  Surtr  then  is  expressly 
called  a  giant,  not  a  god.  Sn.  5  says  :  '  sa  er  Surtr  nefndr,  er 
]?ar  sitr  a  landzenda  til  landvarnar,  hann  hefir  loganda  svercF', 
Surtus  vocatur,  qui  sedet  in  fine  regionis  (i.e.  Muspellsheims)  ad 
earn  tuendam,  ensemque  gestat  ardentem  (see  Suppl.). 

The  authors  of  the  Heliand  and  the  OHG.  poem,  both  christian, 
but  still  somewhat  versed  in  heathen  poetry,  alike  introduce 
muspilli  at  the  end  of  the  world,  at  the  approach  of  the  Judgment- 
day,  when  the  earth  and  all  it  contains  will  be  consumed  by  fire. 
And  that  is  exactly  how  the  Edda  describes  the  same  event : 
Surtr  arises  with  the  sons  of  muspell,  makes  war  upon  all  the 
gods  and  overcomes  them,  the  whole  world  perishes  by  his  fire, 
Sn.  5.  73.  When  he  with  his  blazing  brand  comes  on  from  the 
South,  the  rocks  in  the  mountains  reel,  the  giantesses  flee,  men 
go  the  way  of  the  dead,  heaven  cracks  asunder,  Sasm.  8b ;  the 
Ases  do  battle  with  Surtr  and  his  host  on  a  holm  called 
Oskopnir  (supra  p.  144),  they  are  all  slain,  and  the  world  comes 
to  an  end  (see  Suppl.). 

It  is  only  the  Edda  that  brings  in  the  name  of  Surtr ;  but  our 
OHGr.  poetry  seems  to  have  interwoven  features  of  him  into  the 
church  doctrine  about  Antichrist,  OHG.  Aiitichristo  (p.  173-4), 
which,  originally  founded  on  the  11th  chap,  of  Revelation,  was 
afterwards  worked  out  further  on  Jewish-christian  lines  of 
thought.  The  name  occurs  in  two  epistles  (1  John  2,  18.  4,  3. 
2  John  7),  not  in  the  Apocalypse,  where  he  is  meant  by  the 
many-headed  beast.  In  his  time  two  prophetic  witnesses  are  to  be 
sent  from  heaven  to  earth,  but  to  be  conquered  and  slain  by  him. 


MUSPILLI. 


811 


Their  names  are  not  given  either ;  that  they  are  Enoch  and  Ellas 
follows  from  the  power  given  them  to  shut  heaven  that  it  rain 
not,  and  is  expressly  acknowledged  by  the  Fathers.1  Their 
bodies  lie  unburied  in  the  street :  after  this  victory  the  power  of 
Antichrist  attains  its  greatest  height,  until  he  gets  upon  the 
Mount  of  Olives,  to  ascend  into  heaven ;  then  the  angel  Michael 
appears,  and  cleaves  his  skull.2 

With  this  narrative  our  0.  Bavarian  poet  had  become  acquainted 
through  learned  men  (weroltrehtwise),  but  still  the  old  heathen 
pictures  of  the  world's  destruction  come  floating  before  him  as 
'  muspilli'  draws  nigh:  he  makes  much  of  the  flames,  he  sees 
the  mountains  set  on  fire  by  the  blood  of  the  mortally  wounded 
Elias  dropping  on  the  earth ;  no  such  circumstance  is  found  in 
any  christian  tradition.  The  shy  swelters  in  a  blaze  (suilizot 
lougiii),  the  earth  burns  (prinnit  mittilagart),  and  his  already 
quoted  (  dar  ni  mac  denne  mak  andremo  helfan  vora  demo  mus- 
pillc',  supported  as  it  may  be  by  Mark  lo,  12.  Luke  21,  16, 
sounds  very  like  the  Eddie 

brceSr  muno  berjaz  ok  at  bonom  verSa, 

muno  systrungar  sifjum  spilla, 

man  ecki  mabr  oSrum  byrma  (Saem.  7b  8a). 

He  has  '  mano  fallit/  as  Saatnund  has  '  sol  tekr  sortna,  hverfa 
af  himni  heiSar  stiornur.'  Again  Sn.  71  :  '  ]>i\  drepaz  broeSr  fyrir 
agirni  sakar,  oc  engi  byrniir  foSr  eSa  syn  i  manndrapum  oc 
sifjasliti.'  3  So  even  a  MHG.  poet  of  the  12th  cent.  (Fundgr. 
194)  :  '  so  ist  danneniht  triuwe  diu  frowe  der  diuwe  (maid),  noch 
der  man  dem  wibe ;  si  lebent  alle  mit  nide ;  so  hazzet  der  vater 
den  sun/    etc.       One  would  like  to  know  what  heathen  figure 


1  Justin  Martyr's  Dial,  cum  Tryph.  ed.  Sylb.  p.  208;  Tertull.  de  anima  cap.  50, 
de  resurr.  carnis  cap.  58  ;  Hippolytus  in  Aoyos  irepl  r^s  o-wreAeias  rod  n6<Tfiov  kcu  wepl 
tov  avTixpLvrov  ;  Dorotheus  Tyr.  de  vita  prophet,  cap.  18  ;  Ambrose  on  Apocal.  cap. 
11 ;  Aug.  de  civ.  Dei  20,  29 ;  Greg.  Magn.  in  moral.  15,  18.  And  see  authors 
quoted  in  Hoiim.  Fundgr.  2,  102  seq.  and  Kausler's  Anl.  denkin.  1,  486.  For  later 
times,  couf.  N.  ps.  58,  7.  73,  10 ;  Burcard.  Woimat.  20,  93-7 ;  Otto  Frising.  8,  1-8; 
Discip.  de  tempore,  serm.  10. 

2  12-13th  cent,  accounts  of  Antichrist  in  the  Hortus  delici.  of  Herrat  of  Lands- 
berg  (Engelhard  p.  48) ;  in  Cod.  vind.  053,  121-2  ;  Fundgr.  1,  195-6.  2,  106—134  ; 
Martina  191  seq.;  Wackernag.  Basle  MSS.  22B;  and  conf.  Introd.  to  Freidank 
lxxi.  lxxii. 

3  No  stronger  argument  do  I  know  for  the  theory  that  Vciluspa  is  an  echo  of 
our  Scriptures,  than  the  agreement  of  the  Edda  and  the  Bible  in  this  particular  ;  if 
only  the  rest  would  correspond  ! 


812  TIME   AND   WOELD. 

Antichristo  took  the  place  of  to  Bavarians  and  Alamanns,  it  must 
have  been  one  similar  to  the  Norse  Surtr.  Antichristo  plays  the 
fiendish  hypocrite,  Surtr  is  painted  as  the  adversary  of  the  Ases, 
as  a  giant,  and  his  fire  consumes  the  world.  The  muspells-synir 
are  all  drawn  up  in  squadrons  of  light,  they  and  Surtr  by  their 
fighting  bring  about  a  higher  order  of  things,  while  Antichrist  is 
but  transiently  victorious,  and  is  finally  overthrown  by  a  mightier 
power  (see  Suppl.). 

What  adds  new  weight  to  the  whole  comparison  is  the  affinity 
between  JDonar  and  Elias,  which  was  made  out  on  p.  173-4  and 
is  clear  on  other  grounds.  To  the  8th  cent.  Elias  might  well  seem 
something  more  than  the  Hebrew  prophet,  viz.  a  divine  hero, 
a  divinity.  The  Edda  makes  all  the  Ases,  O&inn,  Thorr,  Freyr, 
and  Tyr,  unite  their  powers  to  do  battle  with  the  sons  of  fire 
and  their  confederates,  yet  they  are  beaten  like  Enoch  and  Elias  : 
Elias  bears  a  marked  resemblance  to  Thorr  (or  Donar),  Michael 
to  the  queller  of  Garrnr  or  Fenris-iilfr  ;  I  do  not  say  that  Enoch 
is  equally  to  be  identified  with  any  particular  god,  but  he  might. 
Surtr  with  the  flaming  sword  may  remind  us  of  the  angel  that 
guards  Paradise,  but  he  also  finds  his  counterpart  in  the  story  of 
Enoch  and  Elias,  for  these  two,  at  least  in  the  legend  of  Brandan 
(in  Bruns  p.  187),  have  an  angel  ivith  a  fiery  sword  standing  by 

their  side.1 An  AS.  homily  De  temporibus  Antichristi  quoted 

by  Wheloc  on  Beda  p.  495  (supra  p.  161n.)  contains  remarkable 
statements.  Arrogant  Antecrist,  it  says,  not  only  strives  against 
God  and  his  servants,  but  sets  himself  up  above  all  heathen  gods  : 
'  He  ahef'S  hine  silfne  ofer  ealle  ]?a  ]?e  hsehene  men  cwsedon  J?aet 
godas  beon  sceoldon,  on  haehene  wisan.  Swylc  swa  wses  Erculus 
se  ent,  and  Apollinis,  ]>e  hi  masrne  god  leton,  Dhor  eac  and  Eow&en, 
|?e  ha3]?ene  men  heria'S  swrSe.  Ofer  ealle  J?ses  he  hine  aenne  up 
ahefS,  for 3am  he  last  facet  he  ana  si  strengra  ponne  hi  ealle.'  W  hy 
does  the  preacher  say  all  this  ?  Had  Saxon  songs  also  identified 
the  advent  of  Antichrist  with  heathen  traditions,  and  recognised 
his  victory,  like  that  of  Surtr,  over  Woden  and  Thunor  ?  The 
un- Saxon   forms    EowSen   and   Dhor   indicate   Norse  or  Danish 

influence. But   a    decisive   connexion   is   established    by    the 

AS.  Salomon  and  Saturn  (Kemble  p.  148)  :  in  the  great  battle 

1  M.  Netlil.  poems  in  Blommaert  1,  105a.  2,  12a  have  simply  an  'out  man'  in 
Enoch's  place,  but  they  mention  the  cherubin  vied  enen  swerde  vierin. 


MUSPILLI.      RAGNA-R0K. 


813 


between  God  and  Antichrist,  we  are  told,  Thunder  was  threshing 
with  his  fiery  axe,  '  se  Thunor  hit  brysceS  mid  bajre  fyrenan  cecxe,' 
by  which  is  unmistakably  meant  Thor's  Miolnir,  the  torrida 
chalybs  (p.  180),  and  the  confluence  of  heathen  beliefs  with 
those  about  Antichrist  is  placed  beyond  the  reach  of  doubt.  The 
devil  too  is  called  malleus,  hammer,  chap.  XXXIII. 

Whoever  is  inclined  to  refer  the  characteristics  of  our  antiquity 
as  a  whole  to  Roman  and  christian  tradition,  could  easily  take 
advantage  of  this  harmony  between  the  two  pictures  of  the  world's 
destruction,  to  maintain  that  the  Eddie  doctrine  itself  sprang  out 
of  those  traditions  of  Antichrist.  This  I  should  consider  a  gross 
perversion.  The  Norse  narrative  is  simple,  and  of  one  piece  with 
all  the  rest  of  the  Edda  ;  the  myth  of  Antichrist  is  a  jumble,  nay 
artificially  pieced  together.  The  two  leading  personages,  Surtr 
and  Antichrist,  have  totally  different  characters.  How  should 
the  Scandinavians  have  foisted-in  a  number  of  significant  acces- 
sories, notably  this  of  muspell,  and  again  a  H.  German  poet 
unconnected  in  time  and  place  have  tacked  on  the  very  same  ? 

What  the  Edda  tells  of  Surtr  and  his  combat  with  the  Ases  is 
the  winding-up  of  a  fuller  representation  of  the  end  of  the  world,1 
whose  advent  is  named  aldar  rok  (Sasm.  36a),  aldar  lag,  aldar  rof 
(37b.  167a),3  but  more  commonly  ragna  rok  (7a.  38b.  96\  166b)  or 
ragna  rokr  (65a.  Sn.  30.  36.  70.  88.  165),  i.e.  twilight,  darkening, 
of  time  and  the  sovran  gods  (supra  p.  26).  Rok  and  rokr  both 
mean  darkness,  rok  rokra  in  Ssem.  113a  is  an  intensified  expres- 
sion for  utter  darkness  ;  Biorn  renders  roekur  (neut.)  crepus- 
culum,  rockva  vesperascere.  It  is  akin  to  the  Goth,  riqis  o-kotos, 
riqizeins  <tkot€iv6$,  riqizjan  cr/coTi^ecrOat,  only  that  is  increased 
by  a  suffix  -is,  and  has  its  radical  vowel  alien  from  the  Norse  6, 
which  must  be  a  modified  a,  so  that  rok  stands  for  raku.  This 
is  confirmed  by  the  Jutish  rag  nebula,  still  more  by  the  AS. 
racu  :  '  bonne  sweart  racu  stigan  onginne'S/  Casdm.  81,  34  must 
be  rendered  (  cum  atra  caligo  surgere  incipit.'  Rokstolar  (Sa3m. 
lb,  conf.  supra  p.  136)  are  the  chairs  of  mist  whereon  the  gods  sit 
up  in  the  clouds.     To  this  rok,  racu  I  refer  the  expression  quoted 

1  It  is  worth  noting,  that  it  is  proclaimed  by  prophetesses,  Vala,  Ilyndla;  and 
later,  Thiota  (p.  i)G)  announced  consumrnationis  seculi  diem. 

-  Ro/raptura;  as  they  said  '  regin  riufaz,'  dii  ruinpuntur,  the  world  is  going 
to  pieces. 


814  TIME    AND   WORLD. 

on  p.  753,  '  die  finstre  ragende  nacht/  which  can  hardly  be  ex- 
plained from  our  ragen  (rigere)  stick  out.1  Ragnarbh  then  is 
the  night  of  the  gods,  which  conies  over  all  beings,  even  the 
highest,  p.  316  (see  Suppl.). 

Then  the  evil  beings,  long  held  in  check  and  under  spell,  break 
loose  and  war  against  the  gods:  a  wolf  swallows  the  sun,  another 
the  moon  (p.  705-6),  the  stars  fall  from  heaven,  the  earth  quakes, 
the  monstrous  world-snake  Iormungaudr,  seized  with  giant  fury 
(iotunmuSr,  p.  530),  rises  out  of  the  waters  on  to  the  land, 
Fenrisulfr  is  set  free  (p.  24-1),  and  Naglfar  afloat,  a  ship  con- 
structed out  of  dead  men's  nails.2  Loki  brings  up  the  hrimthurses 
and  the  retinue  of  Hel  (Heljar  sinnar),  all  the  hellish,  wolfish  kin- 
dred have  mustered  together.  But  it  is  from  the  flame-world 
that  the  gods  have  most  danger  to  dread :  Surtr  and  his  glitter- 
ing host  come  riding  over  Bifrost  the  rainbow  (p.  732)  in  such 
strength  that  they  break  it  down.  The  single  combatants  are 
disposed  thus  :  OSinn  fights  with  Fenrisulfr,  Thorr  with  Iormun- 
gaudr, Freyr  with  Surtr,  Tyr  with  Garmr,3  Heimdall  with  Loki; 
in  every  case  the  old  gods  go  down,  though  Garmr  and  Loki  fall 
too,  and  Fenrisulfr  is  slain  by  ViSar.4  That  Loki  and  all  his  kin 
should  come  out  as  allies  to  the  sons  of  flame,  follows  from  his 


1  Pers.  rache  is  said  to  mean  vapour ;  may  the  Sanskr.  rajani  (nox)  be  also 
brought  in?  The  Slav,  rok  tempus,  annus,  terminvis,  faturn,  Lith.  rakus,  is  worth 
considering  ;  its  abstract  meaning  may  have  sprung  out  of  a  material  one,  and  fits 
in  perfectly  with  the  notions  of  time  and  world  developed  on  p.  790  [rok,  fate,  is 
from  reku,  I  speak] .  Neither  rok,  rokr,  nor  riqis  has  anything  to  do  with  our 
rauch,  reek,  ON.  reykr.  It  is  not  correct  for  Danish  writers  to  use  the  form  ragna- 
rok;  ON.  rok  must  in  their  dialect  be  rag  (as  sok  is  sag) ;  the  OHG.  form  of  ragna- 
rok  would  be  regino-rahha,  or  -rah,  -rahhu,  according  as  it  were  fern,  or  neuter. 
In  Swed.  and  Dan.  the  term  is  extinct,  but  they  both  have  a  word  for  crepusculum, 
Swed.  thysmnrker,  Dan.  tusmorke,  which  may  be  from  J?uss,  burs,  imj^lying  an  ON. 
jbursmyrkr,  giant's  murk,  and  that  would  tally  with  the  giant  nature  of  Surtr. 

2  This  is  intended  to  express  the  enormous  distance  and  tardy  arrival  of  the 
world's  end:  before  such  a  vessel  can  be  built  of  the  tiny  nail-parings  of  dead  bodies 
a  longish  time  must  elapse,  which  is  still  further  protr acted  by  the  wholesome  pre- 
cept, always  to  pare  the  nails  of  the  dead  before  burying  or  burning  them  ;  conf.  F. 
Magnusen's  Lex.  520. 820.  Not  unlike  is  the  image  of  the  mountain  of  eternity,  to 
which  a  bird  adds  one  grain  of  sand  every  hundred  years. 

3  Garmr,  the  hugest  of  all  hounds  (Saern.  46a),  no  doubt,  like  K^p/Sepos,  only 
a  metamorphosed  giant,  seems  like  him  also  to  be  a  native  of  the  under-world ; 
when  O'Sinn  journeys  to  Nirihel,  '  mcetti  hann  hvelpi  J?eim  er  or  heljo  kom,'  met  he 
the  whelp  that  came  out  of  hell  (94a) ;  he  barks  long,  he  lies  chained  and  barks  'for 
Gnypahellir  '  (7a.  8a).  The  hell-hound  of  christian  legend  comes  nearer  the  Norse 
wolf  (see  next  note). 

4  VrSar's  victory  over  the  wolf,  in  whose  jaws  he  plants  a  foot  mythically  shod 
(Sn.  73),  resembles  the  description  in  christian  traditions  of  how  the  hell-hound  was 
assailed  ;  conf.  Fundgr.  1,  178-9. 


END    OF   THE    WORLD. 


815 


very  nature,  lie  being  a  god  of  fire  (p.  241).  After  tie  world- 
conflagratiun  or  Surtalogi,  a  new  and  happier  earth  rises  out 
of  the  sea,  with  gods  made  young  again,  but  still  called  Aesir, 
Sasm.  10  :  a  finale  bearing  an  indisputable  likeness  to  the  Last 
Judgment  *  and  New  Jerusalem  of  the  christians.  Strophe  65  of 
the  Voluspa,  .which  expressly  mentions  the  regmdomr,  has  been 
pronounced  an  interpolation,  because  it  is  wanting  in  some  MSS.; 
but  interpolation  is  not  a  thing  to  be  gauged  by  the  contents 
alone,  it  must  be  incontrovertibly  established  by  explicit  proofs. 
Even  if  it  did  take  place,  neither  the  heathen  character  of  the 
myth  nor  the  age  of  the  poem  as  a  whole  is  thereby  brought 
under  suspicion.  For,  as  the  heathen  faith  among  early  converted 
races  was  not  demolished  at  a  blow,2  so  here  and  there  a  chris- 
tian dogma  may  also  have  penetrated  even  to  nations  that  were 
still  heathen;  conversely  some  heathen  ways  of  thinking  lingered 
on  amonsr  christians.  Consider  how  the  author  of  the  Heliand 
(131-2-3),  while  following  the  Gospels  in  describing  the  approach 
of  the  Last  Day,  yet  admits  such  rank  heathenisms  as  c  Gebanes 
strom '  and  '  MudspelhV  In  the  very  personifying  of  the  Judg- 
ment day  ('verit  stuatago  in  lant/  like  '  muspelli  kumit ')  there  is 
a  flavour  of  heathenism. 

There  seem  to  have  existed  some  other  traditions  about  the 
world's  destruction,  which  have  not  come  down  to  us  in  their 
fulness.  Among  these  1  reckon  the  folk-tale  mentioned  on  p.  429, 
of  the  ring  which  the  swan  will  drop  from  his  mouth  :  it  sounds 
altogether  antique,  and  possibly  harks  back  to  the  notion  of  the 
world-ring,  p.  794. 

To  the  destruction  of  the  world  by  fire,  which  heathens  and 
christians3  look  forward  to  as  future,  stands  opposed  that  by 
water,  which  the  histories  of  both  represent  as  past.  The  Burn- 
ing, like  the  Deluge  (pp.  576 — 81),  is  not  to  destroy  for  ever,  but 
to  purify,  and  bring  in  its  wake  a  new  and  better  order  of  things 
(see  Suppl.). 

'  OHG.  antitago,  suonotac,  suonotago,  tuomistae,  tuomtae,  stuatago  (Goth, 
stauadags?) ;  MHO.  endetac,  siienetac,  tuomtae;  OS.  'the  lazto  dag;  d&mdag,  ddmes- 
dag,  AS.  domdeeg,  Engl,  dooms-day,  ON.  ddmsdagr. 

-  In  Leyden's  Coinplaynt  p.  98  is  actually  mentioned  a  story,  'the  tayl  of  the 
•wolfe  and  the  warldis  end,'  which  was  current  in  Scotland  and  elsewhere  (supra 
p.  2-45)  as  late  as  the  15th  cent.  Worth  reading  is  an  Icel.  free  adaptation  of  the 
Vaticinium  Merlini,  said  to  have  been  composed  towards  the  end  of  the  12th  cent., 
in  which  are  mixed  ON.  ideas  of  the  world's  end,  F.  Magn.  lex.  C58-9. 

3  2  Pet.  3,  12 ;  conf.  Freidank  179,  4. 


816  TIME    AND   WORLD. 

The  church  tradition  of  the  Mid.  Ages  (based  on  Matth.  24, 
Mark  13,  Luke  21)  accepts  fifteen  signs  as  premonitions  of  the 
Judgment-day  ; 1  these  do  not  include  the  unearthly  winter,  jim- 
bulvetr,  that  wind-age  (vindold,  p.  793,  Haupt's  Zeitschr.  7, 
309),  which  according  to  both  Eddas  (Seem.  36b.  Sn.  71)  pre- 
cedes the  ragnarokr,  and  is  doubtless  a  truly  Teutonic  fancy ; 3 
but  we  have  a  darkening  of  the  sun  and  moon  described  (p.  244), 
and  an  earthquake,  which  equally  precedes  the  twilight  of  the 
gods  :  '  griotbiorg  gnata,  himinn  klofnar,  gnyr  allr  Iotunheiinr,' 
Seem.  8b;  the  ordinary  term  in  ON.  is  land-skidlfti,  Sn.  50,  or 
'iord  skdlf ,- '  'landit  skalf,  sem  a  ]?rae'$i  leki/  Fornald.  sog.  1, 
424.  503.3  For  a-eicr/mos  Ulphilas  gives  the  fem.  reiro,  he  says 
*  air]?a  reirdida ; '  OS.  'ertka  bivoda,'  Hel.  168,  23;  OHG.  '  erda 
bibinota,'  0.  iv.  34,  1,  and  the  subst.  erdpipa,  erdbibunga,  erd- 
giruornessi.  Reinardus  1,  780  puts  in  juxtaposition :  fnec  tremor 
est  terrae,  judiciive  dies ;'  and  Servian  songs  :  '  ili  grmi,  il  se 
zemlia  trese  ?'  does  it  thunder,  or  does  the  earth  shake  ?  (Vuk  2, 
1.  105).  But  the  earth's  quaking,  like  the  Deluge,  is  oftener 
represented  as  a  past  event,  and  is  ascribed  to  various  causes. 
The  Greek  fable  accounts  for  it  by  imprisoned  cyclops  or  titans 
(Ov.  Met.  12,  521)  ;  the  Norse  by  the  struggles  of  chained  Loki 
when  drops  of  poison  fall  upon  his  face  (Seem.  69.  Sn.  70),  or  by 
Fafnir's  journey  to  the  water  (Fornald.  sog.  1,  159.  160).  The 
earth  also  quakes  at  the  death  of  certain  heroes,  as  Heimir  (For- 
nald. sog.  1,  232),  and  of  the  giant  (Vilk.  saga  cap.  176).  At 
Roland's  death  there  is  lightning,  thunder  and  earthquake,  Rol. 
240,  22.  To  the  Indians  the  earth  quakes  every  time  one  of  the 
eight  elephants  supporting  the  globe  is  tired  of  his  burden,  and 
gives  his  head  a  shake.4  The  Japanese  say  of  an  earthquake  : 
'  there  is  another  whale  crept  away  from  under  our  country ;'  the 


1  Thorn.  Aquinas  (d.  1274)  in  Librum  4  sententiar.  Petri  Lomb.  dist.  48.  qu.  1. 
art.  4  (Tkomae  opp.  Venet.  13,  442).  Asegabok  (Riebth.  130-1).  Haupt's  Zeitschr. 
1,  117.  3,  523.  Hoffm.  Fundgr.  1,  196-7.  2,  127.  Amgb.  39.  Wackernagel's  Basle 
MSS.  22b.  Massm.  denkm.  6.  Berceo  (d.  1268)  de  los  signos  que  aparceran  ante 
del  Juicio,  in  Sanchez  coleccion  2,  273.  Thomas,  Asegabok  and  Berceo  all  refer  to 
Jerome,  but  no  such  enumeration  of  the  15  signs  is  to  be  found  in  his  works.  Rol. 
289-90  and  Karl  89a  have  similar  signs  at  Roland's  death  (see  Suppl.). 

2  Notice  Sasm.  119a:  '  pa'San  koma  sniofar  oksnarir  vindar,'  and  the  poetic  de- 
scriptions of  winter  in  AS.  writers:  Andr.  1256-63.     Beow.  2258. 

3  '  Lond  611  skulfu,''  Sn.  66  ;  '  fold  for  skidlfandi,'  148. 

4  Schlegel's  Ind".  bibl.  no.  2. 


EARTHQUAKES.   WALAHALLA.  817 

Tahitians:  'God  shakes  the  earth;'1  the  Lettons:  'Drebkuls  beats 
the  earth,  and  makes  her  tremble/  just  as  the  Greeks  call  their 
Poseidon  (Neptune)  'Evvoal^aio^,  ''Evvoa&as  (see  Suppl.). 

Our  forefathers  thought  of  the  sky  not  only  as  a  roof  to  the 
earth  (p.  698),  but  as  a  heavenly  kingdom,  the  dwelling-place  of 
gods  and  of  blessed  men  whom  they  had  taken  up.  The  bridge 
of  the  heavenly  bow  leads  into  it  (p.  732),  so  does  the  milky  way 
(p.  356). 

We  must  first  suppose  all  that  to  have  happened  which  was 
told  in  chap.  XIX  about  the  creation  of  the  world  according  to 
ON.  views.  After  the  gods  had  set  in  order  heaven  and  earth, 
created  Ask  and  Embla,  and  appointed  MrbgarS  to  be  the 
habitation  of  man,  they  fitted  up  for  themselves  in  the  centre 
of  the  world  a  dwelling-place  named  Asgar&r,  in  whose  vast  ex- 
tent however  a  number  of  particular  spots  are  specified. 

None  of  these  separate  mansions  is  more  celebrated  than  the 
Odinic  Valholl  (OHG.  Walahalla?),  whose  name  has  an  obvious 
reference  to  the  god's  own  appellation  of  Valfddr  and  to  the 
valkyrs  (p.  41 7). 2  Into  this  abode,  sometimes  known  as  Offins 
salir  (Seem.  148b),  the  war-maidens  have  conducted  to  him  all 
the  heroes  that  from  the  beginning  of  the  world  have  fallen  in 
valr,  on  the  battle-field  (the  vapn-bitnir,  weapon-bitten,  Yngl. 
saga  c.  10)  ;  these  he  adopts  as  children,  they  are  oskasynir,  sons 
by  wishing,  ad-option,3  and  likewise  sons  of  the  god  Wish  (p. 
143).  Their  usual  name  is  einherjar,  egregii,  divi,  as  OSinn  him- 
self is  called  Herjan  and  HerjafocFr,  and  heri  means  the  fighting 
hero  (p.  342-3).  It  must  not  be  overlooked,  that  Thorr  himself 
is  called  an  einheri,  Ssem.  68a,  as  if  a  partaker  of  Valholl.  From 
the  existence  of  a  proper  name  Einheri  in  OHGr.  (e.g.  Meichelbeck 
no.  241.  476.  Schannat  137),  I  argue  the  former  prevalence  of 
the  mythical  term  amongst  us  also  j  yet  not  with  certainty,  as  it 
may  be  a  contracted  form  of  Eginheri,  Aganheri,  like  Einhart  for 
Eginhart,  Reinhart  for  Reginhart.    Valholl  is  covered  with  shields 

1  Ziinnierm.  Taschenb.  f.  reisen,  jabrg.  9  abth.  2.     Adelung's  Mithrid.  1,  634. 

2  Prob.  also  to  Valaxkialf,  the  hall  covered  with  silver,  Sfflm.  41a.  Sn.  21 ;  conf . 
ffl&Fskialf,  p.  135.  Skidlf  expresses  the  quivering  motion  of  the  airy  mansion, 
like  bif  in  Bifrost.  Our  OHG.  '  ivalaeht  des  ewigen  libcs,'  Is.  73,  4  seems  not 
merely  possessio  vita?  (eternal,  but  an  emphatic  term  purposely  chosen. 

s  '  Got  setzet  si  in  sine  schoz,'  in  his  bosom,  Ls.  3,  (J2. 


818  TIME   AND   WOELD. 

(Sn.  2)  and  numbers  540  doors,  each  affording  passage  to  800 
einheries  at  once,  or  432,000  in  all,  Saem.  43a.  In  the  midst  of 
it  stands  a  mighty  tree  Ljera&r,  Lceracfr,  whose  foliage  is  cropt  by 
the  she-goat  Hei&run ;  the  goat's  udder  yields  (as  Amalthea's 
horn  did  nectar)  a  barrelful  of  mead  a  day,  enough  to  nourish  all 
the  einheries.  The  stag  Wkpyrnir  gnaws  the  branches  of  the 
tree,  and  out  of  his  horus  water  trickles  down  into  Hvergelinir 
continually,  to  feed  the  rivers  of  the  underworld  (pp.  558.  561). 

This  mansion  of  bliss  all  valiant  men  aspired  to,  and  attained 
after  death ;  to  the  evildoer,  the  coward,  it  was  closed  1  :  '  mun 
sa  maSr  braut  rekinn  ur  Valhollu,  ok  bar  aldrei  koma/  Nialss. 
cap.  89.  To  wage  a  life-and-death  conflict  with  a  hero  was 
called  shewing  him  to  Walhaila  (visa  til  Valhallar),  Fornald. 
sog.  1,  424.  Sagas  and  panegyric  poems  paint  the  reception  of 
departed  heroes  in  Walhaila:  when  Helgi  arrives,  OSinn  offers 
to  let  him  reign  with  him,  Seem.  166b;  the  moment  Helgi  has 
acquired  the  joint  sovereignty,  he  exercises  it  by  imposiug  menial 
service  on  Hundingr,  whom  he  had  slain.  Thus  the  distinctions 
of  rank  were  supposed  to  be  perpetuated  in  the  future  life.  On 
the  approach  of  Eyrikr,  OSinn  has  the  benches  arranged,  the 
goblets  prepared,  and  wine  brought  up  (Fragm.  of  song,  Sn.  97) ; 
Sigmund  and  Sinfiotli  are  sent  to  meet  him  (Miiller's  Sagabibl. 
2,  375).  The  Hakonarmal  is  a  celebrated  poem  on  Hakon's  wel- 
come in  Valholl.  Bnt  even  the  hall  of  a  king  on  earth,  where 
heroes  carouse  as  in  the  heavenly  one,  bears  the  same  name 
Valholl  (Seem.  244a.  246a  anent  Atli).  The  abodes  and  pleasures 
of  the  gods  and  those  of  men  are  necessarily  mirrored  in  each 
other;  conf.  pp.  336.  393  (see  Suppl.). 

Indian  mythology  has  a  heaven  for  heroes,  and  that  of  Greece 
assigns  them  an  elysium  in  the  far  West,  on  the  happy  isles  of 
Okeanos ;  we  may  with  perfect  confidence  assert,  that  a  belief  in 
Walhaila  was  not  confined  to  our  North,  but  was  common  to  all 
Teutonic  nations.  A  c  vita  Idae '  in  Pertz  2,  571  uses  the  ex- 
pression 'coelorum  palatinae  secies,'  implying  that  a  court  is 
maintained  like  the  king's  palatium,  where  the  departed  dwell. 
Still  more  to  the  point  is  the  AS.  poet's  calling  heaven  a  shield- 

1  A  13th  cent,  poem,  to  be  presently  quoted,  has  already  an  unmistakable  refer- 
ence to  our  tale  of  the  spielmann  or  spielhansel  (Jack  player),  who  is  turned  out  of 
heaven,  because  he  has  led  a  bad  life,  and  performed  no  deeds. 


WALAHALLA.  819 

burg,  which,  like  Valholl,  was  covered  with  golden  shields  (p.  700). 
In  the  'vita  Wulframi'  there  is  shewn  to  the  Frisian  king  Radbot 
a  house  glittering  with  gold,  prepared  for  him  when  he  dies  (D.S. 
no.  447.  V.  d.  Bergh's  Overlev.  93)  ;  like  that  described  in  MS. 
2,  229b  : 

In  himelrich  ein  hiis  stat, 

ein  guldin  wee  darin  gat, 

die  siule  die  sint  mermeliu, 

die  zieret  unser  trehtin 

mit  edelem  gesteine. 

A  poem  of  the  13th  cent.  (Warnung  2706 — 98)  declares  that 
the  kingdom  of  heaven  is  to  be  won  by  heroes  only,  who  have 
fought  and  bear  upon  them  scars  from  stress  of  war  (nach  ur- 
liuges  not),  not  by  a  useless  fiddler  : 

Die  herren  vermezzen 

ze  gemache  sint  gesezzen, 

unt  ruowent  immer  mere 

nach  verendetem  sere. 

Versperret  ist  ir  burctor, 

beliben  miiezen  da  vor 

die  den  strit  niht  en-vahten 

unt  der  fliihte  gedahten. — 

Swa  so  helde  sain  beliben 

ir  herren  ir  miiezet  vehten, 

welt  ir  mit  guoten  knehten 

den  selben  gmach  niezen  (see  Suppl.). 

(There  men  high-mettled  to  repose  are  settled,  they  rest  ever- 
more from  ended  sore.  Barred  is  their  borough-gate ;  and  they 
without  must  wait  who  the  fight  ne'er  fought,  but  of  flight  took 
thought,  etc.) 

But  another  thing  must  have  been  inseparable  from  the  heathen 
conception,  viz.  that  in  Walhalla  the  goblet  goes  round,  and  the 
joyous  carouse  of  heroes  lasts  for  ever.1     Several  expressions  may 

1  The  same  thought  is  strongly  expressed  in  a  well-known  epitaph  : 

Wiek,  diivel,  wiek !  wiek  wit  van  mi  (get  away  from  me)  ! 

ik  scher  mi  nig  (I  care  not)  en  har  um  di, 

ik  ben  en  meklenlmrgsch  edelman  : 

wat  geit  di  diivel  min  supen  an  (to  do  with  my  quaffing)  ? 


820  TIME    AND   WORLD. 

be  accepted  as  proofs  of  this.  Gla&s-heimr  is  the  name  of  the 
spot  on  which  Valholl  is  reared,  Seem.  41a;  in  Glaffsheim  stands 
the  high  seat  of  Allfather,  Sn.  14.  A  house  by  the  side  of  it, 
built  for  goddesses,  bears  the  name  of  Yin-golf,  but  it  seems  also 
to  be  used  synonymously  with  Valholl,  as  one  poet  sings  :  (  vildac 
glaSr  i  Vingolf  fylgja  ok  me'S  einherjum  61  drecka.'  Vingolf  is 
literally  arnica  aula,  and  it  is  by  the  almost  identical  words  win- 
burg,  winsele,  as  well  as  goldbnrg,  goldsele,  that  AS.  poets  name 
the  place  where  a  king  and  his  heroes  drink  (Pref.  to  Andr.  and 
El.  xxxvii.-viii.).  Gla'Ssheimr  or  glaSheimr  may  mean  either 
glad,  or  bright,  home;  even  now  it  is  common  to  call  heaven  a 
hall  of  joy,  vale  of  joy,  in  contrast  to  this  vale  of  tears  (p.  795). 
I  do  not  know  if  the  ancient  term  mons  gaudii,  mendelberc  (p. 
170n.)  had  any  reference  to  heaven  ;  but  much  later  on,  a  joyful 
blissful  abode  was  entitled  sasldenberc  (Diut.  2,  35),  wonnenberg, 
freudenberg :  '  to  ride  to  the  freudenberg  at  night '  says  a  Rec. 
of  1445  (Arnoldi's  Misc.  102);  'thou  my  heart's  freudensal'  is 
addressed  to  one's  lady  love  (Fundgr.  1,  335),  like  the  more 
usual  '  thou  my  heaven  ' ;  and  in  thieves'  slang  freudenberg  and 
wonnenberg  =  doxy.  Freud en-thal,  -berg,  -garten  often  occur  as 
names  of  places  (see  Suppl.).1 

Let  us  see  how  much  of  these  heathen  fancies  has  survived 
among  christian  ones,  or  found  its  counterpart  in  them.  The 
name  Valholl,  Walahalla,  seems  to  have  been  avoided;  winsele 
may  indeed  have  been  said  of  heaven,  but  I  can  only  find  it  used 
of  earthly  dwellings,  Csedm.  270,  21.  Beow.  1383.  1536.  1907. 
On  the  other  hand  our  later  and  even  religious  poets  continue 
without  scruple  to  use  the  term  freudensal  for  heaven,  for  heavenly 


ik  sup  mit  min  herr  Jesu  Christ, 

wenn  du,  diivel,  ewig  dorsten  must, 

un  drink  mit  en  fort  kolle  schal, 

wenn  du  sittst  in  de  hollequal. 
This  is  not  mere  railing,  but  the  sober  earnest  of  heroes  who  mean  to  drink  and 
hunt  with  Wuotan  ;  conf.  Lisch's  Mekl.  jahrb.  9,  447. 

1  Such  a  land  of  bliss  is  part  of  Celtic  legend  too,  the  fay  Morgan  (p.  412  n.) 
conducts  to  it ;  I  read  in  Parz.  56,  18  :  den  fuort  ein  i'eie,  hiez  Murgan,  in  Ter  de  la 
schoye  (joie;  see  Suppl.).  Eemember  also  the  Norse  glerhiminn  (coelum  vitreum), 
a  paradise  to  which  old  heroes  ride  (Iarlmagus  saga  p.m.  320-2)  ;  legends  and  lays 
have  qlass-bergs  and  glass-burps  as  abodes  of  heroes  and  wise  women,  e.g.  Brynild's 
smooth  unscalable  glarbjerg  (Dan.  V.  1,  132),  and  the  four  glassbergs  in  Wolfdiet. 
(Cod.  Dresd.  289),  conf.  the  Lith.  and  Pol.  glass-mountain  of  the  underworld, 
p  836  n.  A  glass-house  in  the  air  (chateau  en  l'air)  occurs  as  early  as  Tristan, 
ed.  Michel  2,  103,  conf.  1,  222 


PARADISE.  821 

joy  is  christian  too.  Also  :  '  stigen  ze  himel  iif  der  seel  Jen  here,' 
climb  the  mount  of  bliss,  Wackern.  Basle  MSS.  p.  5.  The 
christian  faith  tells  of  two  places  of  bliss,  a  past  and  a  future. 
One  is  where  the  departed  dwell  with  God  j  the  other,  forfeited 
by  our  first  parents'  sin,  is  represented  as  a  garden,  Eden.  Both 
are  translated  TrapdSetaos  in  the  LXX,  whence  paradisus  in  the 
Vulg. ;  this  is  said  to  be  a  Persian  word,  originally  denoting 
garden  or  park,  which  is  confirmed  by  the  Armenian  bardez 
(hortus).  The  only  passage  we  have  the  advantage  of  consulting 
in  Ulph.,  2  Cor.  12,  4,  has  vaggs,  the  OHG.  wane  (campus  amoe- 
nus,  hortus).  Our  OHG.  translators  either  retain paradisij  Fragm. 
theot.  41,  21,  or  use  wunnigarto,  Gl.  Jun.  189.  217.  Hymn  21, 
6.  wunnogarto,  N.  ps.  37,  5;  conf.  '  thaz  wunnisama  feld/  0.  ii. 
6,  11 .  'after  paradises  ivunnen,'  Diut.  3,  51.  MHG.  'der  wunne 
garte,'  Fuozesbr.  126,  27.  'der  wolliiste  garte/  MsH.  3,  463a. 
OHG.  zartgarto,  N.  ps.  95,  10.  The  name  wunnigarto  may  be 
substantially  the  same  as  vingoJf,  winsele,  as  wunna  for  wunia, 
Goth,  vinja,  lies  close  to  wini  (amicus).  A  strange  expression  is 
the  AS.  neorxena-ivong,  neorxnawong,  Caedm.  11,  6.  13,26.  14, 
12.   115,  23,  of  which  I  have  treated  in  Gramm.  1,  268.    2,  267. 

3,  726  ;  it  is  apparently  field  of  rest,1  and  therefore  of  bliss,  and 
may  be  compared  to  Goth,  vaggs,  OS.  heben-wang,  Hel.  28,  21. 
176,  1 ;  the  'norns'  are  out  of  the  question,  especially  as  heaven 
is  never  called  norna-vangr  in  ON.  poems.  Beside  hebenwang, 
the  OS.  poet  uses  oelas-hem  96,  20  and  up-odas-liem  28,  20. 
85,  21,  domus  beatitudinis,  the  '  hem '  reminding  us  of  heimr  in 
glaSsheimr,  as  the  c  garto  '  in  wunnigarto  does  of  asgarftr.  Up- 
odashem  is  formed  like  uphimil,  and  equally  heathen.  All  the 
Slavs  call  paradise  red,  Serv.  raj,  Pol.  ray,  Boh.  rag,  to  which 
add  Lith.  rojus,  sometimes  called  rojaus  sodas  (garden  of  par.), 
or  simply  elarzas  (garden).  Bai  as  a  contraction  of  paradise 
(Span,  parayso)  is  almost  too  violent ;  Anton  (Essay  on  Slavs  1, 
35)  says  the  Arabic  arai  means  paradise.2 

Like  Valholl,  the  Greek  Elysium  too,  rjkvaLov  irehiov  (Plutarch 

4,  1156.  Lucian  de  luctu  7)  was  not  a  general  abode  of  all  the 


1  The  piiforr)  /3toT77,  Od.  4,  565. 

2  To  me  the  connexion  of  rai  (and  perh.  of  rdd  glad,  willing)  with  pais,  pg., 
p?'5tos  (pa.ios.os)  easy,  and  pela  easily,  seems  obvious.  Homer's  gods  are  ptia  fJiovres 
living  in  ease. — Trans. 


822  TIME   AND   WORLD. 

dead,  but  of  picked  heroes :  the  Greeks  too  made  the  highest 
blessedness  wait  upon  the  warrior's  valour.  Neither  were  all 
heroes  even  admitted  there,  Menelaos  was  as  son-in-law  of  Zeus, 
Od.  4,  569 ;  others  even  more  renowned  were  housed  with 
Aides,  in  Hades.  Achilles  paces  the  flowery  mead,  the  acr</)oSe\o? 
Xeificov  of  the  underworld,  whither  Hermes  conducts  the  souls 
of  the  slain  suitors,  Od.  11,  539.  24,  13.  Lucian  de  luctu  5. 
philops.  24. 

This  '  ea'  of  the  blest  is  no  less  known  to  our  native  song  and 
story.  Children  falling  into  wells  pass  through  green  meadows  to 
the  house  of  friendly  Holla.  Flore  24,  22  :  '  swer  im  selber  den 
tot  tuot,  den  geriuwet  diu  vart,  und  ist  im  ouchverspart  diuwise, 
dar  dii  komen  wilt,  an  der  Blancheflur  spilt  (plays)  mit  andern 
genuogen  (enow),  die  sich  niht  ersluogen;'  who  slays  himself 
will  rue  such  jouruey,  to  him  is  eke  denied  that  mead,  etc.  Floris 
1107:  fint  ghebloide  velt  (flowery  field),  ten  paradise/  1248: 
'  waenstu  dan  comen  int  ghebloide  velt,  daer  int  paradis  ? '  1205  : 
'  ic  sal  varen  int  ghebloide  velt,  daer  Blancefloeren  siele  jeghen  die 
mine  a-adert,  ende  leset  bloemekine/  The  French  Flores  in  the 
corresponding  passages  has  camp  flori  (Altd.  bl.  1,  373),  in 
Bekker's  ed.  of  Flore  786.  931.  1026.  But  our  older  poets,  pro- 
bably even  those  of  heathen  times,  imagined  heaven,  like  the 
earth,  as  a  green  plain  :  '  teglidid  groni  wang '  (the  earth),  Hel. 
131,  1 ;  'himilriki,  groni  Godes  wang  '  94,  24.  '  groni  wang  para- 
dise gelic'  96,  15.  '  the  groneo  wang'  23,  4  is  said  of  Egypt. 
Cgedm.  32,  29  :  '  brade  sind  on  worulde  grene  geardas.'  Hako- 
narmal  13  :  '  rifta  ver  nu  sculom  groena  heima  go'Sa/  i.e.  to  heaven. 
In  many  parts  of  Germany  paradis  and  goldne  aue  are  names  of 
places  to  this  day.  So  viretum  in  Virgil  has  the  sense  of  para- 
dise, Aen.  6,  638 : 

Devenere  locos  laetos  et  amoena  vireta 
fortunatorum  nemorum  sedesque  beatas. 

Paradise  then  is  twofold,  a  lost  one,  and  a  future  one  of  the 
earth  emerging  newly  green  out  of  the  wave :  to  IcFavollr,  in 
whose  grass  the  gods  pick  up  plates  of  gold  (for  play),  Sasm.  9b 
10%  corresponds  that  older  I&avollr  where  the  ases  founded  As- 

1  The  M.  Nethl.  poem  Beatris  1037  places  the  Last  Judgment  '  hit  soete  dal, 
daer  God  die  werelt  doemen  sal.' 


ELYSIUM*  823 

gar<5,  to  the  renovated  realm  of  the  future  a  vanished  golden  age 
that  flowed  with  milk  and  honey  (see  Suppl.)  .* 

The  younger  heaven  has  in  the  Edda  another  name,  one  pecu- 
liar to  itself,  and  occurring  only  in  the  dative  fa  gimli/  Sasm. 
10.b  Sn.  4,  75  [but  21  gimli  as  nom.  ?],  for  which  I  px*opose  a 
nom.  gimill  (not  gimlir)  standing  for  himill,  a  form  otherwise 
wanting  in  ON.,  and=  OHG.  OS.  himil  by  the  same  consonant- 
change  as  Gymir  for  Hymir  ;  and  this  is  confirmed  by  the  juxta- 
position '  a  gimli,  a  himni/  Sn.  75.  Now  this  Gimill  is  clearly 
distinct  from  the  Odinic  Valholl :  it  does  not  make  its  appearance 
till  ragnarokr  has  set  in  and  the  ases  have  fallen  in  fight  with  the 
sons  of  muspell.  Then  it  is  that  a  portion  of  the  ases  appear  to 
revive  or  become  young  again.  Baldr  and  Hoffr,  who  had  gone 
their  way  to  the  underworld  long  before  the  twilight  of  the  gods, 
Iloenir  who  had  been  given  as  a  hostage  to  the  Vanir,  are  named 
in  Voluspa  (Seeni.  10b),  as  gods  emerging  anew;  they  three  were 
not  involved  in  the  struggle  with  Surtr.  Then  again  Sn.  76 
gives  us  Vi&ar  and  Vali,  who  unhurt  by  Surtalogi  revive  the  old 
AsgarS  on  ISavollr,  and  with  them  are  associated  Mocfi  and  Magni, 
beside  Baldr  and  H63r  from  the  underworld ;  Hcenir  is  here 
passed  over  in  silence.  YiSar  and  Vali  are  the  two  avengers,  one 
having  avenged  OSin's  death  on  Fenrisulf,  the  other  Baldr's  death 
on  HoSr  (hefniass  Baldrs  dolgr  Ha'Sar,  Sn.  106).  They  two,  and 
Baldr  the  pure  blameless  god  of  light,  are  sons  of  OSinn,  while 
Muoi  and  Magni  appear  as  sons  of  Thorr  by  a  gy'gr,  and  from 
that  time  they  bear  the  emblem  of  his  might,  the  all-crushing 
Miolnir.  Unquestionably  this  means,  that  Oftinn  and  Thorr,  the 
arch-gods  of  old  AsgarS,  come  into  sight  no  more,  but  are  only 
renewed  in  their  sons.  Baldr  signifies  the  beginning  of  a  mild 
spring  time,  p.  614  (see  Suppl.). 

1  It  is  natural  that  this  paradise,  past  or  to  come,  should  have  Riven  hirth  to 
various  tales  of  an  earthly  paradise,  lying  in  regions  far  away,  which  has  been 
reached  by  here  and  there  a  traveller  :  thus  Alexander  in  his  Indian  campaign  is 
said  to  have  arrived  at  paradise.  Not  the  Eddas  themselves,  but  later  Icel.  sagas 
tell  of  Oddins-akr  (immortalitatis  ager)  ;  a  land  where  no  one  sickens  or  dies,  conf. 
dainn  mortuus,  morti  obnoxius  (p.  453) ;  the  Hervararsaga  (Fornald.  sog.  1,  411. 
513)  places  it  in  the  kingdom  of  a  deified  king  Gotfmundr  (conf.  GoSormr  p.  161) ; 
ace.  to  the  Saga  Ereks  vio'fbrla  (Fornald.  sbg.  3,  519.  661-6.  670)  it  lay  in  the  east, 
not  far  from  India.  Can  this  '  Erekr  hinn  vi'Sforli '  be  the  hero  of  the  lost  MHG. 
poem  Erek  der  wallasre  (pilgrim)?  The  name  Odainsakr  may  however  be  an 
adaptation  of  an  older  and  heathen  Oo"insakr  =  Vallh6ll,  conf.  the  Oden  saker  in 
Sweden,  p.  158,  last  line. 

VOL.    II.  C    C 


824  TIME   AND   WOELD. 

Again,  as  Valholl  had  only  received  men  who  died  by  weapons 
(vapn-dau<5a  vera),  whilst  other  dead  men  were  gathered  in  Folk- 
vangr  with  Freyja  (p.  304),  and  virgins  with  Gefjon  (Sn.  36) ; 
from  this  time  forward  Gimill  takes  in  without  distinction  all  the 
just,  the  good,  and  Hel  all  the  bad,  the  criminal;  whereas  the 
former  Hel,  as  a  contrast  to  Valholl,  used  to  harbour  all  the  resi- 
due of  men  who  had  not  fallen  in  fight,  without  its  being  implied 
that  they  were  sinners  deserving  punishment. 

The  most  difficult  point  to  determine  is,  how  matters  exactly 
stand  with  regard  to  Surtr,  to  whom  I  must  now  return.     That 
he  is  represented,  not  as  a  god,  but  as  a  giant   of  the  fire-world, 
has  been  shown,  p.  809 ;  nor  is  he  named  among  the  renovated 
gods   '  a  gimli '  in   Seem.  10a  or   Sn.  76,  which  would  have  been 
the  place  for  it.     In  one  MS.  alone  (Sn.  75,  var.  3)  is  apparently 
interpolated  '  a  Gimli  me&r  Surti ; '  and  it  is  mainly  on  this  that 
Finn  Magnusen  rests  his  hypothesis,  that  Surtr  is  an  exalted  god 
of  light,  under  whose  rule,  as  opposed  to  that  of  OSinn,  the  new 
and  universal  empire  stands.     He  takes  him  to  be  that  mightier 
one  from  whose  power  in  the   first  creation  days  the  warmth 
proceeded  (p.  562),  the  strong  (oflugr)  or  rich  one  revealed  by  the 
vala,  who  shall  direct  all  things  (sa  er  ollu  rae'Sr,  Sasm.  10b),  like- 
wise the  mighty  one  foreseen  by  Hyndla,  whose  name  she  dare 
not  pronounce  (ba  kemr  annar  enn  mattkari,  ]>o  ]?ori  ec  eigi  bann 
at  nefna,  Sasm.  119a)  ;  conf.  the  strengra  of  the   AS.  homily   (p. 
812).     But  why  should  she  have  slrrunk  from  naming  Surtr,  of 
whom  no  secret  is  made  in  Sasm.  8ab.  9a.  33a,  the  last  passage 
positively  contrasting  him  with  the  mild  merciful  gods  (in   svaso 
goS)  ?     The  invasion  of  Surtr  in  company  with  the  liberated  Loki 
must  anyhow  be  understood  as  a  hostile  one  (of  giant's  or  devil's 
kin) ;  his  very  name  of  the  swart  one  points  that  way. 

The  unuttered  god  may  be  likened  to  the  ayvwcrros  deos  (Acts 
17,  23),  still  more  to  the  word  that  OSinn  whispered  in  the  ear 
of  his  son  Baldr's  corpse,  as  it  ascended  the  funeral  pile  :  a  secret 
which  is  twice  alluded  to,  in  Saem.  38a  and  Hervarars.  p.  487;  so 
an  Etruscan  nymph  speaks  the  name  of  the  highest  god  in  the 
ear  of  a  bull.1  It  has  already  been  suggested  (p.  815)  that 
presentiments  of  a  mightier  god  to  come  may  have  floated  before 

1  0.  Miiller's  Etr.  2,  83,  -with  which  must  be  conn,  the  medieval  legend  of 
Silvester  (Conrad's  poem,  pref.  p.  xx). 


SURTK.  825 

the  heathen  imagination,  like  the  promise  of  the  Messiah  to  the 
Jews.1 

The  world's  destruction  and  its  renewal  succeed  each  other  in 
rotation  ;  and  the  interpenetration  of  the  notions  of  time  and 
space,  world  and  Creation,  with  which  I  started,  has  been  proved. 
Further,  as  the  time-phenomena  of  the  day  and  the  year  were 
conceived  of  as  persons,  so  were  the  space-phenomena  of  the 
world  and  its  end  (Halja,  Hades,  Surtr). 


1  Martin  Hammerich  om  Ragnaroks-mythen,  Copenh.  1836,  argues  plausibly 
that  the  twilight  of  the  gods  and  the  new  kingdom  of  heaven  are  the  expression  of 
a  spiritual  monotheism  opposed,  though  as  yet  imperfectly,  to  the  prevailing  Odinic 
paganism.  But  then  there  are  renovated  gods  brought  on  the  scene  '  a  gimli '  too, 
though  fewer  than  in  AsgarS,  and  there  is  nothing  to  shew  their  subordination  to 
the  mighty  One.  Still  less  do  I  think  the  author  entitled  to  name  this  new  god 
firribultyr,  a  term  that  in  the  whole  of  the  Edda  occurs  bat  once  (Saain.  9b),and  then 
seems  to  refer  to  O'Sinn.  Others  have  ventured  to  identify  the  word  fimbul-  (which 
like  the  prefix  irman-,  heightens  the  meaning  of  a  word,  as  in  fimbulfambi,  fimbul- 
Jjulr,  fimbulvetr,  fimbullio'S,  as  well  as  fimbultyr)  with  the  AS.  fifel  (p.  239)  ;  to 
tuis  also  I  cannot  assent,  as  fifill  itself  occurs  in  ON.,  and  is  cited  by  Biorn  as 
the  name  of  a  plant. 


CHAPTER  XXVI. 
SOULS. 

Languages  treat  the  living  life-giving  soul  as  a  delicate  feminine 
essence :  Goth,  sdlvala,  akin  to  saivs  the  sea,  an  undulating  fluid 
force,  OHG.  seola,  sela,  MHG.  sele,  NHG.  seele,  AS.  sdwl,  ON. 
sal,  Swed.  Dan.  sjal,  and  hence  Finn,  sielu;  Gr.  tyv-%ri;  Lat.  Ital. 
anima,  Fr.  ame,  0.  Fr.  sometimes  arme,  Span,  alma ;  Russ.  Serv. 
dusha,  Slov.  duzha,  Boh.  efotse,  Pol.  dusza,  Lith.  duszia,  Lett. 
dwehsele.  They  all  distinguish  it  from  the  masc.  breath  and 
spirit,  ave/ios,  which  goes  in  and  out  more  palpably ;  often  the 
two  names  are  next  door  to  each  other,  as  Lat.  animus  and 
anima,  Slav,  dukh  and  dusha.1 

And  this  intimate  connexion  may  be  recognised  in  the  myths 
too.  The  soul  freed  from  the  fetters  of  the  body  is  made  to  re- 
semble those  airy  spirit  forms  of  chap.  XVII  (conf.  pp.  439. 
630) .  It  hovers  with  the  same  buoyancy,  appears  and  vanishes, 
often  it  assumes  some  definite  shape  in  which  it  is  condemned 
to  linger  for  a  time  (see  Suppl.). 

It  is  a  graceful  fancy  which  makes  the  departing  soul  either 
break  into  blossom  as  a  flower,  or  fly  up  as  a  bird.  Both  these 
notions  are  connected  with  metamorphosis  into  plants  and  animals 
in  general,  and  are  founded  on  the  doctrine  of  metempsychosis 
so  prevalent  in  early  antiquity.  Immortality  was  admitted  in  this 
sense,  that  the  soul  still  existed,  but  had  to  put  up  with  a  new 
body. 

Its  passing  into  a  flower  I  can  only  infer.  A  child  carries 
home  a  bud,  which  the  angel  had  given  him  in  the  wood ;  when 
the  rose  blooms,  the  child  is  dead  (Kinder-leg.  no.  3).  In  Rhesas 
dainos  p.  307,  a  rosebud  is  the  soul  of  the  dead  youth.  The  Lay 
of  Runzifal  makes  a  blackthorn  shoot  up  out  of  the  bodies  of  slain 
heathens,  a  white  flower  by  the  heads  of  fallen  christians,  Karl 

1  Where  soul  stands  for  life,  vitality,  a  neuter  word  is  used,  OHG.  ferah,  MHG. 
verch,  AS.  feorh,  ON.  fi'or  ;  but  we  saw  (p.  793),  how  from  vita  and  fiLos  there  arose 
tbe  sum  total  of  all  that  lives,  the  world,  Goth,  fairhvus. 

826 


THE    SOUL   A   FLOWER.  827 

118b.  When  the  innocent  are  pat  to  death,  white  lilies  grow  out 
of  their  graves,  three  lilies  on  that  of  a  maiden  (Uhland's  Volksl. 
241),  which  no  one  but  her  lover  may  pluck;  from  the  mounds 
of  buried  lovers  flowering  shrubs  spring  up,  whose  branches 
intertwine.  In  Swedish  songs  lilies  and  limes  grow  out  of  graves, 
Sv.  vis.  1,  101.  118.  In  the  ballad  of '  fair  Margaret  and  sweet 
William '  : 

Out  of  her  brest  there  sprang  a  rose, 

And  out  of  his  a  briar  ; 

They  grew  till  they  grew  unto  the  church-top, 

And  there  they  tyed  in  a  true  lovers  knot.1 

In  Tristan  and  Isote  I  believe  it  to  be  a  later  alteration,  that  the 
rose  and  vine,  which  twine  together  over  their  graves,  have  .first 
to  be  planted.  In  a  Servian  folksong  there  grows  out  of  the 
youth's  body  a  green  fir  (zelen  bor,  m.),  out  of  the  maiden's  a  reel 
rose  (rumena  ruzhitsa,  f.),  Vuk  1,  no.  137,  so  that  the  sex  is  kept 
up  even  in  the  plants  : 2  the  rose  twines  round  the  fir,  as  the  silk 
round  the  nosegay.  All  these  examples  treat  the  flower  as  a 
mere  symbol,  or  as  an  after-product  of  the  dead  man's  intrinsic 
character :  the  rose  coming  up  resembles  the  ascending  spirit  of 
the  child ;  the  body  must  first  lie  buried,  before  the  earth  sends 
up  a  new  growth  as  out  of  a  seed,  conf.  chap.  XXXVII.  But 
originally  there  might  lie  at  the  bottom  of  this  the  idea  of  an 
immediate  instantaneous  passage  of  the  soul  into  the  shape  of  a 
flower,  for  out  of  mere  drops  of  blood,  containing  but  a  small 
part  of  the  life,  a  flower  is  made  to  spring  :  the  soul  has  her  seat 
in  the  blood,  and  as  that  ebbs  away,  she  escapes  with  it.  Greek 
fables  tell  us  how  the  bodies  of  the  persecuted  and  slain,  espe- 
cially women,  assumed  forthwith  the  figure  of  a  flower,  a  bush,  a 
tree  (p.  653),  without  leaving  any  matter  behind  to  decay  or  be 
burnt ;  nay,  life  and  even  speech  may  last  while  the  transforma- 
tion is  taking  place.  Thus  Daphne  and  Syrinx,  when  they 
cannot  elude  the  pursuit  of  Apollo  or  Pan,  change  themselves 
into  a  laurel  and  a  reed ;  the  nymph  undergoing  transformation 
speaks  on  so  long  as  the  encrusting  bark  has  not  crept  up  to 

1  Percy  3,  123  ;  variant  in  Rob.  Jamieson  1,  33-4. 

-  Therefore  der  rebe  (vine)  belongs  to  Tristan's  grave,  diu  rose  to  Isote's,  as  in 
Eilhaxt  and  the  chap-book  ;  Uirich  and  Heinrich  made  the  plants  change  places. 


828  souls. 

her  mouth.  Viutler  tells  us,  the  wecje-warte  (OHG.  wegawarta, 
wegapreita),  plantago,  was  once  a  woman,  who  by  the  wayside 
waited  (wartete)  for  her  lover ;  lie  suggests  no  reason  for  the 
transformation,  conf.  Kinderm.  no.  160  (see  Suppl.). 

In  the  same  way  popular  imagination,  childlike,  pictures  the 
soul  as  a  bird,  which,  comes  flying  out  of  the  dying  person's 
mouth.  That  is  why  old  tombstones  often  have  doves  carved,  on 
them,  and  these  the  christian  faith  brings  into  still  closer  prox- 
imity to  spirit.1  A  ship  founders :  the  people  on  shore  observe 
the  souls  of  those  who  have  sunk  ascending  from  the  wave  to- 
ward heaven  in  the  shape  of  white  doves?  The  Romance  legend 
of  the  tortured  Eulalia  lays:  ( in  figure  de  colomb  volat  a  ciel/  As 
a  bird  the  little  brother,  when  killed,  flies  out  of  the  juniper-tree 
(machandelbom,  Kinderm.  47).  To  the  enigma  of  the  green  tree 
and  the  dry,  each  with  a  little  bird  sitting  on  it,  the  interpretation 
is  added  :  '  ir  sele  zen  vogelen  si  gezalt ! '  their  (the  christians') 
soul  be  numbered  among  birds,  MS.  2,  248b.  In  the  underworld 
there  fly  scorched  birds  who  were  souls  (svrSnir  fuglar  er  salir 
voro),  like  swarms  of  flies,  Ssem.  12 7a.  The  heathen  Bohemians 
thought  the  soul  came  out  of  the  dying  lips  as  a  bird,  and  hovered 
among  the  trees,  not  knowing  where  to  go  till  the  body  was 
buried ;  then  it  found  rest.  Finns  and  Lithuanians  call  the  Milky- 
way  the  path  of  birds  (p.  357n.),  i.e.  of  souls. 

The  Arabs  till  the  time  of  Mahomet  believed  that  the  blood  of 
a  murdered  man  turns  into  an  accusing  bird,  that  flits  about  the 
grave  till  vengeance  be  taken  for  the  dead. 

According  to  a  Polish  folk-tale  every  member  of  the  Herburt 
family  turns  into  an  eagle  as  soon  as  he  dies.  The  first-born 
daughters  of  the  house  of  Pileck  were  changed  into  doves  if  they 
died  unmarried,  but  the  married  ones  into  owls,  and  to  each 
member  of  the  family  they  foretold  his  death  by  their  bite  (Woy- 
cickfs  Klechdy  1,  16).  When  the  robber  Madej  was  confessing 
under  an  appletree,  and  getting  quit  of  his  sins,  apple  after  apple 
flew  up  into  the  air,  converted  into  a  white  dove  :  they  were  the 
souls  of  those  he  had  murdered.     One  apple  still   remained,  the 

1  Servati  Lupi  vita  S.  Wigberhti,  cap.  11 :  Verum  hora  exitus  ejus  .  .  . 
circumstantibus  fratribus,  visa  est  avis  quaedam  specie  pulcherrima  supra  ejus  cor- 
pusculum  ter  advolasse,  nusquamque  postea  cornparuisse.  Not  so  much  the  soul 
itself,  as  a  spirit  who  escorts  it. 

2  Maerlant  2,  217,  from  a  Latin  source. 


THE    SOUL   A   BIRD.      MEADOW.  829 

soul  of  his  father,  whose  murder  ho  had  suppressed ;  when  at 
length  he  owned  that  heinous  crime,  the  last  apple  changed  into 
a  gray  dove,  and  flew  after  the  rest  (ibid.  1,  180).  This  agrees 
with  the  unresting  birds  of  the  Boh.  legend.  In  a  Podolian  folk- 
song, on  the  grave-mound  there  shoots  up  a  little  oak,  and  on  it 
sits  a  snow-white  dove  (ibid.  1,  209) } 

Instances  of  transformation  into  birds  were  given  above, 
(pp.  673-6.  680),  under  woo dpeclcer  and  cuclcoo.  Greek  mythology 
has  plenty  of  others  (see  Suppl.). 

The  popular  opiuion  of  Greece  also  regarded  the  soul  as  a 
winged  being  (^fv^rj  irvev^ia,  kol  %cov<f)iov  ttttjvov  2  says  Hesy- 
chius),  not  bird,  but  butterfly,  which  is  even  more  apt,  for  the 
insect  is  developed  out  of  the  chrysalis,  as  the  soul  is  out  of  the 
body;  hence  ^jrv^V  is  also  the  word  for  butterfly.  A  Roman 
epitaph  found  in  Spain  has  the  words :  M.  Porcius  M.  haeredibus 
mando  etiam  cinere  ut  meo  volitet  ebrius  papilio.3  In  Basque, 
'arima'  is  soul  (conf.  arme,  alma,  p.  826),  and  '  astoaren  arima' 
(ass's  soul)  butterfly.  We  shall  come  across  these  butterflies 
again  as  will  o'  the  wisps  (ziebold,  vezha),  and  in  the  Chap,  on 
Witches  as  elvish  beings  (see  Suppl.). 

When  men  are  in  a  trance,  or  asleep,  the  soul  runs  out  of  them 
in  the  shape  of  a  snake,  weasel  or  mouse  (chap.  XXXIV  and  Suppl.) . 

Of  will  o'  the  wisps  a  subsequent  chapter  will  treat;  synony- 
mous with  them  I  find  wiesenhiipfer,  wiesenhiipfer  in,  meadow- 
hopper,  e.g.  in  the  Miigdelob  (printed  1688)  p.  46;  its  explana- 
tion, from  their  dancing  on  marshy  meadows,  is  right  enough, 
but  perhaps  too  limited.  Hans  Sachs  is  not  thinking  of  ignes 
fatui,  when  he  more  than  once  employs  the  set  phrase  :  '  mit  im 
schirmen,  dass  die  seel  in  dem  gras  umbhupfen,'  fence  with  him 
till  their  souls  hop  about  in  the  grass  iii.  3,  13*.  iv.  3,  28\  '  und 
schmitz  ihn  in  ein  fiderling,  dass  sein  seel  muss  im  gras  umbhupfen' 
iv.  3,  51b;  he  simply  means  that  the  soul  flies  out  of  him,  he 
dies.  Therefore  the  same  superstition  again,  that  the  soul  of 
the  dying  flutters  (as  bird  or  butterfly)  in   the  meadow,  i.e.   the 

1  Na  tej  mogile  wyrost  ci  dabeczek, 
na  niej  bieluchny  siada  gotabeczek. 

2  \pvxv  o  Ik  auixaros  lirrT),  flew  out  of  the  body,  Batrach.  207.     \pvxy  Si  /xeXtw 
i^TTTri  211.     £k  fieXiuv  Ov/ibs  ttt6.to,  II.  23,  880. 

3  First  in  Ambr.  de  Morales's  Antiguidades  de  las  ciudades  de  Espafia,  Alcala 
1575,  fol.  31b;  thence  in  Gruter,  and  in  Spon's  Miacell.  erud.  antiq.  p.  8. 


830  souls. 

meadow  of  the  underworld  spoken  of  in  p.  822. l  Just  so  the 
Bohemians  make  the  soul  fly  about  in  trees,  Koniginh.  hs.  p.  88. 
106 ;  hence  both  souls  and  elves  dance  to  and  fro  in  the 
meadows  at  night.  Strange,  that  a  minnesanger  already  makes 
the  soul  of  a  drunken  (as  if  entranced)  man  jump  :  '  min  sele  uf 
eime  rippe  stat,  wafen !  diu  von  dem  wine  daruf  gehiippet  hat ' 
(MS.  2,  105b).3  So  the  souls  of  the  drowned  keep  jumping  up 
out  of  the  jars,  p.  496  (see  Suppl.).  Shooting  stars  are  supposed 
to  be  the  souls  of  dying  men  (p.  722)  ;  not  only  heroes  and 
other  men,  but  separate  limbs  of  their  bodies  were  fixed  in  the 
sky  as  stars,  chap.  XXII. 

These  are  the  simplest  (if  you  will,  rudest)  notions  as  to  the 
nature  of  the  soul,  and  to  them  I  ascribe  a  high  antiquity. 

More  polished,  more  deeply  rooted  in  ancient  myths,  is  the 
opinion  of  the  souPs  passage  into  the  domain  of  the  underworld 
across  a  water  which  divides  the  realm  of  living  men  from  that  of 
the  dead. 

The  Norse  narrative  of  the  death  of  Baldr  has  the  remarkable 
incident,  that  the  ases  placed  his  body  on  board  a  vessel,  in  which 
they  erected  the  funeral  pile,  set  it  on  fire,  and  so  committed  it  to 
the  sea  at  high  water  (Sn.  QQ).3  In  the  same  way  the  corpse  of 
the  deified  hero  Scild  (p.  369)  is  adorned  and  carried  into  a  ship, 
which  drifts  away  on  the  sea,  nobody  knows  whither,  Beow.  55 — 
105.  Sigmundr  bears  the  body  of  his  beloved  son  Sinfiotli  to 
the   seashore,   where    a   stranger  waits  with  a  skiff,   and  offers 


1  Those  who  are  neither  saved  nor  damned  come  into  the  green  meadoiv, 
Heinse's  Ardinghello  1,  96. 

3  Conf.  Helbl.  1,  354  :  '  vrou  Sele,  tretet  uf  tin  rippe.'1  Eenart  in  his  bucket 
at  the  bottom  of  the  well  (p.  807),  to  humbug  Ysengrin,  pretends  he  is  living  in 
paradise  there,  and  that  every  soul,  on  parting  from  the  body,  has  to  sit  on  the 
bucket-pole  till  it  is  penitent,  then  it  may  clirub  down,  and  leave  all  its  ills  behind, 
Eenart  6804-13. 

3  What  deep  root  this  custom  had  taken  in  the  North,  may  be  gathered  from 
the  fact  that  bodies  were  also  buried  in  a  boat  [on  land] ,  doubtless  so  that  on  their 
journey  to  the  underworld,  when  they  came  to  a  water,  tbey  might  have  their  ferry 
at  hand.  '  Hakon  konungr  tok  bar  skip  oil  et  att  hof'6'o  Eiriks  synir,  ok  let  draga 
a  land  upp  ;  J>ar  let  Hakon  leggja  Egil  Ullserk  i  skip,  oc  nieS  hanom  alia  }>a  menn 
er  af  Jjeirra  lrSi  hofSo  fallit,  let  bera  par  at  iorS  oc  griot.  Hakon  konungr  let  oc 
fleiri  skip  uppsetja,  oc  bera  a  valinn,'  Saga  H.  gofta,  cap.  27.  '  Unnr  var  logff  i 
skip  i  hauginum,'  Laxd.  p.  16.  '  Asmundr  var  Ueygffr  ok  i  skip  lagSr,  Jrasll  hans 
lagftr  i  annan  stafn  skipsins,'  Islend.  sog.  1,  66.  '  Geirmundr  heygcfr  ok  lag&r  i  skip 
J>ar  uti  skoginn  fra  garSi,'  ibid.  1,  97.  Probably  the  bodies  of  the  great  were  first 
laid  in  a  coffin,  and  this  put  in  the  boat,  which  was  then  buried  in  the  hill.  Gudrun 
says:  '  kn'dr  mun  ek  kaupa  ok  kisto  stein'Sa,'  Sa?m.  264b.  No  boats  have  been 
found,  that  I  know  of,  in  ancient  barrows  of  Continental  Germany. 


CROSSING   THE   WATER.  831 

a  passage ;  Sigmundr  lays  the  dead  in  the  boat,  which  has  then 
its  full  freight,  the  unknown  pushes  off  and  sails  away  with  the 
corpse,  Seem.  170-1.  Fornald.  sog.  1,  142.  Frotho's  Law  p.  87 
lays  down  distinctions  of  rank  :  '  Centurionis  vel  satrapae  corpus 
rogo  propria  nave  constructo  funerandum  constituit ;  dena  autem 
gubernatorum  corpora  unius  puppis  igne  consumi  praecepit; 
ducem  quempiam  aut  regem  interfectum  proprio  injectum  navigio 
concremari.'  The  dead  Iarlmagus  is  conveyed  in  a  ship  by  his 
widow  to  a  holy  land,  Iarlm.  saga  cap.  45.  A  Swedish  folk-tale 
(Afzelius  1,  4)  speaks  of  a  golden  ship  lying  sunk  near  the 
schliisselberg  at  Runeinad;  in  that  ship  Odin  is  said  to  have 
carried  the  slain  from  Bravalla  to  Valhall.  In  the  O.  Fr.  romance 
of  Lancelot  du  lac,  ed.  1591,  p.  147  the  demoiselle  d'Escalot 
arranges  what  is  to  be  done  with  her  body  :  '  le  pria,  que  soji 
corps  fid  mis  en  une  nef  richemeut  equippee,  que  Von  laisseroit 
aller  au  gre  du  vent  sans  conduite.' 1  And  in  the  romance  of 
Gawan  a  swan  tows  a  boat  in  which  lies  a  dead  knight  (Keller's 
Romvart  670).  Was  it  believed  that  the  corpse,  abandoned  to 
the  sacred  sea  and  the  winds,  would  of  itself  arrive  at  the  land 
of  death  that  was  not  to  be  reached  under  human  guidance  ? 

Here  it  is  the  corpse  that  is  transported,  in  other  legends 
merely  the  soul  when  released  from  the  body :  it  is  over  again 
the  distinction  we  noticed  above,  p.  827.  In  the  Nialss.  cap. 
1 60,  old  Flosi,  weary  of  life,  is  even  said  to  have  taken  a  battered 
boat,  and  thrown  himself  on  the  mercy  of  the  sea- waves  :  '  bar  a 
skip  ok  let  i  haf,  ok  hefir  til  J?ess  skips  aldri  spurt  siSan/  never 
heard  of  since. 

The  Greeks  believed  that  Charon  ferried  the  souls  in  a  narrow 
two- oared  boat  over  the  Styx,  Acheron  or  Cocytus  to  the  kingdom 
of  Hades.  For  this  he  charged  a  fare,  ra  7rop0fxia,  therefore 
they  placed  an  obolos  (the  danaka)  in  the  mouth  of  the  dead.2 
This  custom  of  putting  a  small  coin  in  the  month  of  a  corpse 
occurs  among  Germans  too,  Superst.  I,  207  where  a  modern  and 


»  Cento  novelle  antichc  81 :  La  damigella  di  Scalot ;  the  '  navicella  sanza  vela, 
sanza  renii  e  sanza  neuno  sopra  sagliente  '  is  carried  down  to  Camalot,  to  the  court 
of  Re  Artu. 

-  Diodor.  1,  90.  Eurip.  Ale.  253.  441.  Aen.  6,  298.  At  Hermione  in  Argolis, 
supposed  to  be  no  great  distance  from  the  underworld,  no  money  was  given  to  the 
dead,  Strabo  8,  373.  These  coins  are  often  found  in  ancient  tombs,  K.  Fr. 
Hermann's  Antiq.  198. 


832  souls. 

mistaken  reason  is  alleged  for  it  [lest  they  come  back  to  visit 
buried  hoards]:  originally  the  money  could  be  no  other  than  that 
same  naulum. 

One  stormy  night  a  monkish  figure  wakes  a  boatman  who  lies 
buried  in  sleep,  puts  passage-money  in  his  hand,  and  demands  to 
be  taken  across  the  river.  At  first  six  monks  step  into  the  boat, 
but  no  sooner  is  it  fairly  launched,  than  suddenly  it  is  filled  by 
a  throng  of  friars  black  and  white,  and  the  ferryman  has  scarcely 
room  left  for  himself.  With  difficulty  he  rows  across,  the 
passengers  alight,  and  a  hurricane  hurls  the  ferryboat  back  to 
the  place  of  starting,  where  another  set  of  travellers  wait  and 
take  possession  of  the  boat,  the  foremost  of  whom  with  fingers 
cold  as  ice  presses  the  fare-penny  into  the  boatman's  hand.  The 
return  voyage  is  made  in  the  same  violent  way  as  before.1  The 
like  is  told,  but  less  completely,  of  monks  crossing  the  Rhine  at 
Spire.2  In  neither  story  can  we  detect  the  purpose  of  the 
voyage;  they  seem  to  be  early  heathen  reminiscences,  which, 
not  to  perish  entirely,  had  changed  their  form  (see  Suppl.). 

Procopius  de  bello  Goth.  4,  20  (ed.  Bonn.  2,  567),  speaking  of 
the  island  of  Brittia,  impai'ts  a  legend  which  he  had  often  heard 
from  the  lips  of  the  inhabitants.  They  imagine  that  the  souls 
of  the  dead  are  transported  to  that  island.  On  the  coast  of  the 
continent  there  dwell  under  Frankish  sovereignty,  but  hitherto 
exempt  from  all  taxation,  fishers  and  farmers,  whose  duty  it  is 
to  ferry  the  souls  over.5      This  duty  they  take  in  turn.     Those  to 


1  Neue  volksrnjirchen  der  Deutschen,  Leipz.  1792.  3,  45-7. 

';  D.S.  no.  275  ;  earliest  auth.  an  account  by  Geo.  Sabinus  (b.  1508  d.  1560). 
Melander's  Joe.  no.  664. 

3  Ta  pev  aXXa  Qpdyycov  KarriKooi.  6Vres,  <p6pov  fxtvroi  dTraywyrjV  ovbeiruTTOTe 
irapacrxopevoi,  v(petp.evov  avrols  £k  TraXaioi/  TovSe  tov  cixOovs,  vwovpyias  Tiros,  &s  (fiacrir, 
Ive/ca.  Xeyovcn  ol  ravry  dvdpwiroi  €K  TrepiTpovTJs  ewiKeiaOai  rds  twv  \pvx&v  it  a  paw  o  par  as 
acplai.  On  this  passage  and  one  in  Tzetzes,  consult  Welcker  in  Khein.  mus.  1,  238 
seq.  Conf.  Plutarch  de  defectu  oracul.  cap.  18  (ed.  Eeiske  7,  652) :  '0  Se  Aj]prjTpios 
i<prj  tG)v  irepl  tt\v  UpeTavvlav  vr\uu>v  elvai.  iroXXas  eprjpovs  airopddas,  &v  ev'ias  b~aip,6viav 
Kal  Tjpwwv  dvopafecrdai,  irXevffai  5e  avros  laroplas  Kal  8eas  eveKa,  iropirrj  tov  paaiXe'ws,  els 
ttjv  eyyiara  Keipevriv  twv  ep-qpwv,  t'xovo~av  ov  iroXXovs  eiroiKOvvras,  lepovs  5e  Kal  davXovs 
irdvias  viro  tu>v  Bperavvwv  tivras.  d<pLKop.ivov  5'  avrov  veuo-Ti,  avyxvcnv  p.eydXr]v  irepl 
tov  depa  Kal  tioo-qpelas  iroXXas  yeveadai,  Kal  irvevpaia  Karappayyvai  Kal  weaeiv 
TrpTjaTTjpas.  eirel  d'  eXw<pT]o-e,  Xeyeiv  tous  vijaicoTas,  otl  twv  Kpeiacrbvwv  twos  ZKXei\}/is 
yeyovev.  <l>s  yap  Xvxvos  dvaiTTopevos  (pqvai  deivbv  ovSev  exei,  ajSevvvpievos  de  iroXXols 
XvwTipos  eariv,  ovtws  at  p.eydXat.  ij/vxal  ras  pev  dvaXdp.\f/ets  evpevels  Kal  dXvirovs  e"xovo-iv, 
at  de  a(3eo-ets  avTwv  Kal  cpdopal  iroXXaKis  fiev,  ws  vvvl,  irveiip.aTa  Kal  fdXas  rpeirovat, 
ttoXXolkis  de  XoipiKols  irddeaiv  dtpa  <papp.aTT0V(riv.  e/ce?  pevroi  plav  elvai  vijo-ov,  iv  17  tov 
Kpbvov  KaTelpx^ai  (ppovpovpevov  vtto  toO  Bpidpew  KadevSovTa.  decrpbv  yap  avrip  t6v 
virvov  /xep.7]xaviio-dai,  iroXXoiis  5e  irepl  avrov  elvai  daip.ovas  oiraoovs  Kal  OepdirovTas.     This 


CBOSSING  THE   WATER.  833 

whom  it  falls  on  any  night,  go  to  bed  at  dusk ;  at  midnight  they 
hear  a  knocking  at  their  door,  and  muffled  voices  calling.  Im- 
mediately they  rise,  go  to  the  shore,  and  there  see  empty  boats, 
not  their  own  but  strange  ones,  they  go  on  board  and  seize  the 
oars.  When  the  boat  is  under  way,  they  perceive  that  she  is  laden 
choke-full,  with  her  gunwales  hardly  a  finger's  breadth  above 
water.  Yet  they  see  no  one,  and  in  an  hour's  time  they  touch 
land,  which  one  of  their  own  craft  would  take  a  day  and  a  night 
to  do.  Arrived  at  Brittia,  the  boat  speedily  unloads,  and  be- 
comes so  light  that  she  only  dips  her  keel  in  the  wave.  Neither 
on  the  voyage  nor  at  landing  do  they  see  any  one,  but  they  hear 
a  voice  loudly  asking  each  one  his  name  and  country.  Women 
that  have  crossed  give  their  husbands'  names. 

Procopius's  Brittia  lies  no  farther  than  200  stadia  (25  miles) 
from  the  mainland,  between  Britannia  and  Thule,  opposite  the 
Rhine  mouth,  and  three  nations  live  in  it,  Angles,  Frisians  and 
Britons.  By  Britannia  he  means  the  NW.  coast  of  Gaul,  one 
end  of  which  is  still  called  Bretagne,  but  in  the  6th  century 
the  name  included  the  subsequent  Norman  and  Flemish-Frisian 
country  up  to  the  mouths  of  Scheldt  and  Rhine ;  his  Brittia  is 
Great  Britain,  his  Thule  Scandinavia. 

Whereabouts  the  passage  was  made,  whether  along  the  whole 
of  the  Gallic  coast,  I  leave  undetermined.  Villemarque  (Barzas 
breiz  1,  136)  places  it  near  Raz,  at  the  farthest  point  of  Armorica, 
where  we  find  a  bay  of  souls  (baie  des  ames,  boe  ann  anavo) . 
On  the  R.  Treguier  in  Bretagne,  commune  Plouguel,  it  is  said 
to  be  the  custom  to  this  day,  to  convey  the  dead  to  the  church- 
yard in  a  boat,  over  a  small  arm  of  the  sea  called  passage  de 
I'enfer,  instead  of  taking  the  shorter  way  by  land;  besides,  the 
people  all  over  Armorica  believe  that  souls  at  the  moment  of 
parting  repair  to  the  parson  of  Braspar,  whose  dog  escorts  them 
to  Britain  :  up  in  the  air  you  hear  the  creaking  ivheels  of  a 
waggon  overloaded  with  souls,  it  is  covered  with  a  white  pall, 
and  is  called  carr  an  ancou,  carrilcel  an  ancou,  soul's  car  (Mem. 
de  l'acad.  celt.  3,  141).  Purely  adaptations  to  suit  the  views  of 
the  people.     As  christians,  they  could  no  longer  ferry  their  dead 

Kronos  asleep  on  the  holy  island  far  away,  with  his  retinue  of  servants,  is  like 
a  Wuotan  enchanted  in  a  mountain,  conf.  Humboldt  in  Herm.  Miiller  p.  440-1. 
Welcker's  Kl.  schr.  2,  177. 


834  souls. 

to  the  island :  well,  they  will  take  them  to  the  churchyard  by 
water  anyhow;  and  in  their  tradition  they  make  the  voyage 
be  performed  no  longer  by  ship,  but  through  the  air  (as  in  the 
case  of  the  Furious  Host),  and  by  waggon.  Closer  investigation 
must  determine  whether  similar  legends  do  not  live  in  Normandy, 
Flanders  and  Friesland.  Here  I  am  reminded  once  more  of  old 
Helium  and  Hel-voet,  pp.  315  n.  804. 

Procopius's  account  is  re-affirmed  by  Tzetzes  (to  Lycoph.  1204) 
in  the  12th  century;  but  long  before  that,  Claudian  at  the  be- 
ginning of  the  5th  (in  Rufinum  1,  123—133)  had  heard  of  those 
Gallic  shores  as  a  try  sting-place  of  flitting  ghosts  : 

Est  locus,  extremum  qua  pandit  Gallia  littus, 
oceani  praetentus  aquis,  ubi  fertur  Ulixes 
sanguine  libato  populum  movisse  silentem. 
Illic  umbrarum  tenui  stridore  volantum 
flebilis  auditur  questus  :  simulacra  coloni 
pallida,  defunctasque  vident  migrare  figuras  ; 

and  not  far  from  that  region  are  Britain,  the  land  of  the  Senones, 
and  the  Ehine.  This  faint  murmur  of  the  fleeting  shades  is 
much  the  same  thing  as  the  airy  waggon  of  the  Bretons.  The 
British  bards  make  out  that  souls,  to  reach  the  underworld,  must 
sail  over  the  pool  of  dread  and  of  dead  bones,  across  the  vale  of 
death,  into  the  sea  on  whose  shore  stands  open  the  mouth  of 
hell's  abyss1  (see  Suppl.).  A  North  English  song,  that  used  to 
be  sung  at  lykewakes,  names  '  the  bridge  of  dread,  no  trader 
than  a  thread,'  over  which  the  soul  has  to  pass  in  the  under- 
world (J.  Thorns'  Anecd.  and  trad.  pp.  89.  90).  The  same 
bridge  is  mentioned  in  the  legend  of  Tundalus  (Hahn's  ed.  pp. 
49.  50)  :  the  soul  must  drive  a  stolen  cow  over  it.2 

The  same  meaning  as  in  the  voyage  of  souls  over  the  gulf  or 

J  Owen's  Diet.  2,  214.     Villemarque  1,  135. 

2  The  narrow  bridge  is  between  purgatory  and  paradise,  even  Owain  the  hero 
had  to  cross  it  (Scott's  Minstr.  2,  3*50-1).  In  striking  harmony  with  it  (as  supra 
p.  574)  is  a  Mahom.  tradition  given  in  Sale's  Koran  (ed.  1801,  introd.  120)  :  in 
the  middle  of  hell  all  souls  must  walk  over  a  bridge  thinner  than  a  hair,  sharper 
than  the  edge  of  a  sword,  and  bordered  on  both  sides  by  thorns  and  prickly  shrubs. 
The  Jews  also  speak  of  the  hell-bridge  narrow  as  a  thread,  but  only  unbelievers 
have  to  cross  it  (Eisenmenger  2,  258)  ;  conf.  Thorns  p.  91.  Ace.  to  Herbelot,  the 
Mahometans  believe  that  before  the  judgment-day  they  shall  pass  over  a  redhot 
iron  rod,  that  spans  a  bottomless  deep  ;  then  the  good  works  of  each  believer  will 
put  themselves  under  his  feet. 


BRIDGE.      HELL-SHOE.  835 

river  of  the  underworld  appears  to  lie  in  their  walking  the  bridge 
that  spans  the  river.  The  bridge-keeper's  words  to  (the  living) 
IierraoSr  are  remarkable  :  c  my  bridge  groans  more  beneath  thy 
single  tread,  than  under  the  five  troops  of  dead  men  who  yesterday 
rode  over  it/  Sn.  67.  I  see  in  this  a  very  strong  resemblance  to 
the  soft  patter  of  the  dwarfs'  feet  on  the  bridge  when  quitting  the 
country,  as  also  their  ferrying  over  by  night  (pp.  275.  459)  ;  and 
the  affinity  of  souls  with  elvish  beings  comes  out  very  plainly. 
When  the  dwarfs  moved  out  of  Voigtland,  they  were  a  whole 
night  crossing  the  Elster  (Jul.  Schmidt  p.  143-8).  At  their  de- 
parture from  the  Harz,  it  was  agreed  that  they  should  pass  over 
a  narrow  bridge  at  Neuhof,  each  dropping  his  toll-money  in  a 
vessel  fixed  upon  it,  but  none  of  the  country  folk  were  to  be 
present.  Prying  people  hid  under  the  bridge,  and  heard  for 
hours  tJwir  pit-a-pat,  as  though  a  flock  of  sheep  were  going  over 
(Deut.  sagen  no.  152-3).  The  bridge-toll  brings  to  mind  the  ferry  - 
money  of  souls.  With  all  this  compare  the  story  of  the  elf  making 
his  passage  in  a  boat  by  night  (D.S.  no.  80).  Then  again  'the 
bridge  of  dread  no  brader  than  a  thread '  is  a  kindred  notion, 
which  moreover  connects  itself  with  the  iron  sword- bridge 
crossed  by  the  soul  that  has  crept  out  of  a  sleeping  man  (see 
Suppl.). 

A  minute  examination  of  the  various  funeral  ceremonies  of 
European  nations,  which  is  no  part  of  my  purpose  here,  would 
throw  some  more  light  on  the  old  heathen  views  as  to  the  nature 
of  the  soul  and  its  destiny  after  death.  Thus  the  dead,  beside 
the  passage-money  and  the  boat,  had  a  particular  shoe  called 
todtenschuh,  ON.  hel-sko,  given  them  for  setting  out  on  their 
journey,  and  tied  on  their  feet.  The  Gisla  Surssonarsaga  says : 
'  ]?at  er  ti*Sska  at  binda  monnum  helsko,  sem  menn  skulo  a  ganga 
til  Valhallar,  ok  mun  ek  Vesteini  J>at  giora'  (conf.  Midler's 
Sagabibl.  1,  171).  Sir  W.  Scott  in  Minstr.  2,  357  quotes  a 
Yorkshire  superstition  :  f  They  are  of  beliefe,  that  once  in  their 
lives  it  is  good  to  give  a  pair  of  new  shoes  to  a  poor  man,  foras- 
much as  after  this  life  they  are  to  pass  barefoote  through  a  great 
launde  full  of  thornes  and  furzen,  except  by  the  meryte  of  the 
almes  aforesaid  they  have  redeemed  the  forfeyte ;  for  at  the  edge 
of  the  launde  an  oulde  man  shall  meet  them  with  the  same  shoes 
that  were  given  by  the  partie  when  he  was  lyving,  and  after  he 


836  souls. 

hath  shodde  them,  dismisseth  them  to  go  through  thick  and  thin, 
without  scratch  or  scalle.'  The  land  to  be  traversed  by  the  soul 
is  also  called  whinny  moor,  i.e.  furzy  bog  (Thorns  89).  In  Henne- 
berg,  and  perhaps  other  places,  the  last  honours  paid  to  the  dead 
are  still  named  todtenschnh  (Reinwald  1,  165),  though  the  practice 
itself  is  discontinued;  even  the  funeral  feast  is  so  denominated. 
Utterly  pagan  in  character,  and  suited  to  the  warlike  temper  of 
old  times,  is  what  Burkard  of  Worms  reports  p.  195°:  Quod 
quidam  faciunt  homini  occiso,  cum  sepelitur :  dant  ei  in  manum 
unguentum  quoddam,  quasi  illo  unguento  post  mortem  vulnus 
sanari  possit,  et  sic  cum  unguento  sepeliunt.1  For  a  similar 
purpose,  slaves,  horses,  dogs  were  burnt  with  a  dead  man,  that  he 
might  use  them  in  the  next  world.  King  Ring  had  king  Harald 
buried  in  a  great  barrow,  his  horse  killed  that  he  had  ridden  in 
Bravalla  fight,  and  his  saddle  buried  with  him,  so  that  he  could 
ride  to  Walhalla.  It  was  thought  that  to  convey  the  corpse  by 
any  road  but  the  traditional  one  (the  hellweg,  p.  801)  was  bad 
for   the  soul  of  the    deceased,    Ledebur's   Archiv    5,    369    (see 

Suppl.).  _ 

The  poems  of  the  Mid.  Ages  occasionally  describe  a  conflict 
of  angels  and  devils  round  the  parting  soul,  each  trying  to  take 
possession  of  it.  At  the  head  of  the  angels  is  an  archangel, 
usually  Michael,  who,  as  we  shall  see  in  chap.  XXVIII,  has  also 
the  task  of  weighing  souls ;  sometimes  he  is  called  Cherubim  : 
'  vor  dem  tievel  nam  der  sele  war  der  erzengel  Kerubin,'  he  saw 
the  soul  first,  Wh.  49,  10. 

Laza  laza  tengeln ! 

da  wart  von  den  engeln 

1  The  Lithuanians  hury  or  burn  with  the  dead  the  claws  of  a  lynx  or  bear,  in 
the  belief  that  the  soul  has  to  climb  up  a  steep  mountain,  on  which  the  divine  judge 
(Kriwe  Kriweito)  sits  :  the  rich  will  find  it  harder  to  scale  than  the  poor,  who  are 
unburdened  with  property,  unless  their  sins  weigh  them  down.  A  wind  wafts  the 
poor  sinners  up  as  lightly  as  a  feather,  the  rich  have  their  limbs  mangled  by  a 
dragon  Wizunas,  who  dwells  beneath  the  mountain,  and  are  then  carried  up  by 
tempests  (Woycicki's  Klechdy  2,  134-5.  Narbutt  1,  284).  The  steep  hill  is  called 
Anafielas  by  the  Lithuanians,  and  szklanna  gora  (glass  mountain)  by  the  Poles,  who 
think  the  lost  souls  must  climb  it  as  a  punishment,  and  when  they  have  set  foot  on 
the  summit,  they  slide  off  and  tumble  down.  This  glass  mountain  is  still  known  to 
our  German  songs  and  fairytales,  but  no  longer  distinctly  as  an  abode  of  the 
deceased,  though  the  little  maid  who  carries  a  huckle-bone  to  insert  (like  the  bear's 
claw)  into  the  glass  mountain,  and  ends  with  cutting  her  little  finger  off  that  she 
may  scale  or  unlock  it  at  last,  may  be  looked  upon  as  seeking  her  lost  brothers  in 
the  underworld  (Kinderm.  no.  25). 


SCRAMBLE    FOR    SOULS.  837 

manec  sele  empfangen 

e  der  strit  was  zegangen. 

Daz  weinete  manec  amie  : 

von  wolken  wart  nie  snie 

also  dicke  sunder  zal 

beidiu  uf  bergen  und  ze  tal, 

als  engel  unde  tievel  flugen, 

die  do  ze  widerstrite  zugen 

die  sele  her  und  widere, 

&'  einen  uf,  die  ander  nidere.     Geo.  1234. 

Der  engelfiirste  Michahel 

empfienc  des  marcgraven  sel, 

und  manec  engel  lielitgevar 

die  kamen  mit  gesange  dar 

und  fuorten  in  vrceliche 

inz  schcene  himelriche. 

Geo.  6082,  conf.  Diut.  1,  470.  In  the  Brandan  (Bruns  p.  192-3) 
we  read :  '  de  duvele  streden  umme  de  sele  mit  sunte  Michaele ' ; 
conf.  Fundgr.  1,  92. 

Gebt  mir  eine  gabe, 
daz  des  kiiniges  sele 
von  sante  Michahele 
hiute  gecondwieret  si.          Gute  frau  2674  ; 

Michael  having  taken  upon  him  the  office  of  Mercury  or  the 
Walchure.  A  record  of  the  13th  cent.  (MB.  7,  371)  calls  him 
'  praepositus  paradisi  et  princeps  animarum/  A  still  more  im- 
portant passage,  already  noticed  at  p.  446,  occurs  in  Morolt  28*- b, 
where  three  troops  are  introduced,  the  black,  white  and  pale  : 
'  den  strit  mahtu  gerne  schouwen,  dens  umb  die  sole  sulu  han.' 
For  similar  descriptions  in  the  elder  French  poets,  conf.  Meon  1, 
239.4,  114-5.   3,284. 

And   even  so  early  as  the  8-9th   cent,   we  find   quite  at  the 
beginning  of  the  Muspilli  fragment : 

Wanta  sar  so  sih  diu  sela  in  den  sind  arhevit  (rises) 
enti  si  den  lihhamun  likkan  lazit  (leaves  the  body  lying), 
so  quimit  ein  heri  (comes  one  host)  fona  himilzungalon, 
daz  andar  fona  pehhe  (pitch,  hell)  ;  dar  pCvjant  siu  v/m/pi. 
I  have  questioned  (p.  420)    whether  this   '  pac  umpi  dia   sela  ' 


838  souls. 

(tussle  for  the  soul)  between  the  hosts  of  heaven  and  hell  be 
traceable  to  christian  tradition.  The  Ep.  of  Jude  v.  9  does  tell 
of  archangel  Michael  and  the  devils  striving  for  the  body  of 
Moses,1  and  the  champion  Michael  at  all  events  seems  borrowed 
thence.  But  jealousy  and  strife  over  the  partition  of  souls  may 
be  supposed  an  idea  already  present  to  the  heathen  mind,  as  the 
Norse  Oftinn,  Thorr  and  Freyja  appropriated  their  several  por- 
tions of  the  slain.  At  pp.  60  and  305  we  identified  Freyja  with 
Gertrude  :  '  some  say  the  soul,  on  quitting  the  body,  is  the  first 
night  with  St.  Oerclraut,  the  next  with  St.  Michael,  the  third  in 
such  place  as  it  has  earned,'  Superst.  F,  24.  Now  as  Antichrist 
in  the  great  world-fight  is  slain  by  Michael  (p.  811),  while  Surtr 
has  for  adversaries  OSinn  and  Thorr :  '  Gerdrut  and  Michael ' 
may  fairly  be  translated  back  into  '  Frowa  and  Wuotan  (or 
Donar)'.  So  at  p.  198  a  fmons  sancti  Michaelis '  was  found 
applicable  to  Wuotan  or  Zio  (see  Suppl.). 

An  Irish  fairytale  makes  the  spirits  of  the  Silent  Folk  maintain 
a  violent  contest  for  three  nights  at  the  cross-roads,  as  to  which 
churchyard  a  human  corpse  shall  be  buried  in,  Ir.  elfenm.  p.  68. 
So  that  elves  and  dwarfs,  as  they  steal  live  children  and  maidens, 
(p.  386-8),  would  seem  also  to  have  a  hankering  for  our  bodies 
and  souls.  The  souls  of  the  drowned  the  water-nix  keeps  in  his 
house  (p.  496). 

All  this  leads  up  to  a  more  exact  study  of  the  notions  about 
Death. 

i  The  passage  is  supposed  to  be  founded  on  a  lost  book  named  '  'Avdfiatris 
Moyses',  conf.  Grotius  ad  S.  Judae  ep.  9,  and  Fabricii  Cod.  pseudepigr.  V.  T.  p.  839. 


CHAPTER  XXVII. 
'     DEATH. 

To  the  olden  time  Death  was  not  a  being  that  killed,  but  simply 
one  that  fetched  away  and  escorted  to  the  underworld.  Sword 
or  sickness  killed;  Death  came  in  as  messenger  of  a  deity,  to 
whom  he  conducted  the  parting  soul.  Dying  is  announced,  not 
caused,  by  his  arrival.  So  to  that  child  in  the  fairytale  the  angel 
of  death  had  given  a  flower-bud  :  when  it  blossomed,  he  would 
come  again. 

And  the  Jewish  notion,  which  Christianity  retained,  is-  in 
harmony  with  this.  The  soul  of  the  beggar  is  fetched  away  by 
angels  of  God,  and  carried  into  Abraham's  bosom,  Luke  16,  22  ; 
or,  as  the  Heliand  103,  5  expresses  it :  '  Godes  engilos  andfengon 
is  ferh,  endi  leddon  ine  an  Abrahaines  barm' ;  *  and  it  completes 
the  picture  of  the  rich  man's  fate  by  adding  the  counterpart 
(103,  9)  :  'letha  wihti  bisenkidun  is  seola  an  thene  suarton  hel/ 
loathly  wights  (devils)  sank  his  soul  into  swart  hell.  A  sermon 
in  Leyser  126  has:  'wane  ir  ne  wizzit  niht,  zu  welicher  zit  der 
hote  (messenger)  misers  herren  Gotis  zu  ture  clopfe  (may  knock 
at  the  door).  Welich  ist  der  bote  ?  daz  ist  der  Tot  (death)' ;  and 
161:  'nu  quam  ouch  der  gemeine  hote  (general  messenger),  der 
nieman  ledic  hit  (lets  alone),  wie  lange  im  maniger  vorgat,  daz  ist 
der  gewisse  tot.'  '  Do  der  Tot  im  sin  zuokunft  enbot  (an- 
nounced), so  daz  er  in  geleite,'  he  might  escort  him,  Greg.  20. 

There  is  no  substantial  difference  between  this  and  the  older 
heathen  view.  Ualja,  Hel,  the  death- goddess,  does  not  destroy, 
she  receives  the  dead  man  in  her  house,  and  will  on  no  account 
give  him  up.     To  kill  a  man  is  called  sending  him  to  her.     Hel 

1  It  is  a  beautiful  image,  that  the  dying  return  to  God's  bosom,  children  to  that 
of  their  father,  whence  they  had  issued  at  birth.  But  the  same  thing  was  known  to 
our  heathenism,  which  called  newborn  and  adopted  children  '  bosom-children,  wish- 
children,'  RA..  455.  464,  and  interpreted  dying  as  departing  to  Wuotan,  to  Wish  (p. 
1  15).  To  heathens  then,  as  well  as  christians,  to  die  was  to  fare  to  God,  to  enter 
into  God's  rest  and  peace,  '  Metod  seon,'  Beow.  2360,  '  feran  on  Frean  ware,'  the 
Lord's  peace  52.  So,  to  be  buried  is  to  fall  into  the  mother's  bosom  (p.  642) ;  mother 
and  father  take  their  children  into  their  keeping  again. 

VOL.    II.  839  D    D 


840  DEATH. 

neither  comes  to  fetch  the  souls  fallen  due  to  her,1  nor  sends 
messengers  after  them.  The  dead  are  left  alone  to  commence 
the  long  and  gloomy  journey ;  shoes,  ship  and  ferry-money,  ser- 
vants, horses,  clothes,  they  take  with  them  from  home  for  the 
hell-way.  Some  ride,  others  sail,  whole  companies  of  souls  troop 
together :  no  conductor  comes  to  meet  them. 

There  were  other  gods  besides,  who  took  possession  of  souls. 
The  sea-goddess  Ran  draws  to  herself  with  a  net  all  the  bodies 
drowned  within  her  province  (p.  311).  Water-sprites  in  general 
seem  fond  of  detaining  souls :  dame  Holle  herself,  at  whose 
dwelling  arrive  those  who  fall  into  the  well  (pp.  268.  822),  has  a 
certain  resemblance  to  Hel  (see  Suppl.). 

It  is  another  matter  with  the  souls  destined  for  Valholl.  OSinn 
sends  out  the  valkijrs  to  take  up  all  heroes  that  have  fallen  in 
fight,  and  conduct  them  to  his  heaven  (p.  418)  :  wish-maidens 
fetch  his  wish-sons,  '  ]?a3r  kiosa  feigS  a  menu/  Sn.  39.  Their 
attendance  and  the  heroes'  reception  are  splendidly  set  forth  in 
the  Hakonarmal.  But  these  messengers  also  take  charge  of  heroes 
while  alive,  and  protect  them  until  death :  they  are  guardian- 
anqels  and  death-angels.  How  beautiful,  that  the  gracious  god, 
before  he  summons  them,  has  provided  his  elect  with  an  attendant 
spirit  to  glorify  their  earthly  path  ! 

I  can  see  a  connexion  between  valkyrs  and  Hermes,  who  is 
wielder  of  the  wishing-rod  (p.  419)  and  conductor  of  souls  to 
the  underworld,  yjrv^ayuiyo'i,  -»/rf^07ro/Lt7r6?,  veKpoiro^iro^.  These 
maids  are  OSin's  messengers,  as  Hermes  is  herald  of  the  gods, 
nay  Hermes  is  O&inn  himself,  to  whom  the  souls  belong.  Thus 
the  god's  relation  to  the  dead  is  an  additional  proof  of  the  iden- 
tity between  Wuotan  and  Mercury.  A  distinction  appears  in  the 
fact  that  Hermes,  like  the  Etruscan  Gharun  (0.  Miiller  2,  100), 
conducts  to  Hades,  but  not,  as  far  as  I  know,  to  Elysium  ;  valkyrs, 
on  the  contrary,  to  Valholl,  and  not  to  Hel.  Further,  the  function 
of  guardian-spirit  is  wanting  to  Hermes. 

This  idea  of  a  protecting  spirit  finds  expression  more  in  the 
personified  Thanatos  (death)  of  the  Greek  people's  faith.  He  is 
pictured  as  a  genius,  with  hand  on  cheek  in  deep  thought,  or 

1  It  is  only  in  a  dream-vision  that  she  appears  :  '  postera  nocte  eidem  Proser- 
pina per  quietem  adstare  aspecta  postridie  ejus  complexu  usurain  denmiciat.  nee 
inane  somnii  praesagium  fuit.'     Saxo  Gram.  p.  43. 


THANATOS.      MORS.      DAUDUS.  841 

setting  his  foot  on  the  psyche  (soul)  as  if  taking  possession  of  her ; 
often  his  hands  are  crossed  over  the  extinguished  torch.  At 
times  he  appears  black  (like  Hel,  p.  313)  or  black-ivinged  (atris 
alis)  :  tov  he  neaovra  el\e  fieXas  Odvaros,  ~^rv-)(ri  8'  e/c  crcofiaros 
errrr}  (Batrach.  207) l,  and  aXevaro  Krjpa  /neXacvav  (ibid.  85). 
But  usually  the  departing  dead  is  represented  riding  a  horse, 
which  a  genius  leads  :  an  open  door  betokens  the  departure,  as  we 
still  throw  open  a  door  or  window  when  any  one  dies  (Superst.  I, 
664).  As  a  symbol,  the  door  alone,  the  horse's  head  alone,  may 
expz-ess  the  removal  of  the  soul.2  The  Roman  genius  of  death 
seems  to  announce  his  approach  or  the  hour  of  parting  by  knock- 
ing at  the  door ;  3  a  knocking  and  poking  at  night  is  ghostly  and 
ominous  of  death  (see  Suppl.). 

Roman  works  of  art  never  give  Death  the  shape  of  a  female 
like  Halja,  though  we  should  have  expected  it  from  the  gender 
of  mors,  and  originally  the  people  can  scarcely  have  conceived  it 
otherwise ;  the  Slavic  smrt,  smert  (the  same  word)  is  invariably 
fern.,  the  Lith.  smertis  is  of  either  gender,  the  Lett,  nahwe  fern, 
alone.  And  the  Slav.  Morena,  Marana  (Moi-ena,  Marzana),  de- 
scribed p.  771,  seems  to  border  closely  on  smrt  and  mors. 

These  words  find  an  echo  in  Teutonic  ones.  Schmerz,  smart,  we 
now  have  only  in  the  sense  of  pain,  originally  it  must  have  been 
the  pains  of  death,  as  our  qual  (torment)  has  to  do  with  quellan, 
AS.  cwellan,  Eng.  kill:*  the  OHG.  MHG.  and  AS.  have  alone 
retained  the  strong  verb  smerzan,  smerzen,  smeortan  (dolere). 
OHG.  smerza  is  fern.,  MHG.  smerze  rnasc,  but  never  personified. 
N'tJiwe  answers  to  the  Goth.  masc.  ndus,  pi.  naveis,  funus  (conf. 
ON.  ndr,  ndinn  p.  453),  as  ddvaros  too  can  mean  a  corpse.5  Bat 
this  Grk.  word  has  the  same  root  as  the  Goth,  ddufius,  OHG.  tod 


One  would  suppose  from  this  passage,  that  Death  took  only  the  corpse  of  the 
fallen  to  himself,  that  the  soul  flew  away  to  Hades,  for  it  is  said  of  her  in  v.  235 
fii'oJs  8e  f$efSrjKei. 

2  0.  Miiller's  Archaol.,  ed.  2,  pp.  604.  696.  For  the  horse's  head,  conf. 
Coeckh's  Corp.  inscr.  no.  800.  Marin.  Oxon.  p.  2,  no.  63-7.  R.  Rochette  s 
Munum.  in.'d.  1,  126.     Pausan.  vii.  25,  7.     Gerhard's  Autike  bildw.  p.  407. 

•'  Hor.  Od.  i.  4,  13  :  pallida  mors  aequo  pulsat  pede  pauperum  tabernas  regum- 
que  turres. 

4  Constant  use  will  sjften  down  the  meaning  of  the  harshest  terms  ;  we  had 
an  instance  in  the  Fr.  gene,  p.  800n. 

s  Goth,  leik  (corpus,  caro),  our  leiche,  leichnam,  Eng.  lich  (cadaver)  ;  the  OHG. 
hreo,  AS.  hraw,  MHG.  re  (cadaver,  fanus),  and  Goth,  hrdiv  (whence  hraiva-dubo, 
mourner-dove)  are  the  Lat.  corpus. 


842  DEATH. 

(orig.  todu)  masc.,  OS.  dod,  doff,  AS.  ded&,  ON.  dauffi,  all  masc, 
the  M.  Nethl.  dot  having  alone  preserved  the  fern,  gender,  which 
is  however  compatible  with  the  Gothic  form.  The  verb  in  Gothic 
is  diva,  dau  (morior),  standing  in  the  same  relation  to  Ovrjo-icco, 
eOavov,  ddvaros  as  the  Gothic  Tiv  to  the  Slavic  dan  (day,  p.  195). 
The  ON.  dairSi  I  find  used  only  of  the  condition,  not  of  the 
person,  while  the  Goth,  ddufrus  does  express  the  latter  in  1  Cor. 
15,  55  (see  Suppl.). 

To  this  affinity  of  words  corresponds  a  similarity  of  senti- 
ments. The  most  prominent  of  these  in  our  old  poets  seem  to 
be  the  following. 

As  all  spirits  appear  suddenly?-  so  does  Death;  no  sooner 
named  or  called,  than  he  comes :  '  hie  ndhet  der  Tot  manigem 
manne/  Roth.  277b.  '  daz  in  ndhet  der  Tot/  Nib.  2106,  4.  'do 
ndhte  im  der  Tot '  2002,  3.  '  Mors  praesens,'  Walthar.  191.  f  der 
Tot  get  dir  vaste  zuo/  Karl  69b.  He  lurks  in  the  background 
as  it  were,  waiting  for  call  or  beck  (Freidank  177,  17.  f  dem  Tode 
winken/  beckon  to  D.,  Renn.  9540).  Like  fate,  like  Wurt,  he  is 
nigh  and  at  hand  (p.  406).  Like  the  haunting  homesprite  or  will 
o'  wisp,  he  rides  on  people's  necks :  '  der  Tot  mir  sitzet  uf  dem 
Tcragen,'  Kolocz.  174.  '  stet  vor  der  tiir,'  Diut.  2,  153.  A  story  in 
Reusch  (no.  36)  makes  Death  sit  outside  the  door,  waiting  for  it 
to  open  ;  he  therefore  catches  the  soul  as  it  goes  out. 

Luckless  life-weary  men  call  him  to  their  side,  complain  of  his 
delay  :  '  Tot,  nu  nim  din  teil  an  mir ! '  now  take  thy  share  of  me, 
Wh.  61,  2.  '  Tot,  daz  du  mich  nu  kanst  sparn  ! '  61,  12.  '  wa  nil 
Tot,  du  nim  mich  hin  ! '  Ecke  145.3  '  Mort,  qar  me  pren,  si  me 
delivre ! '  Ren.  9995.  '  Mors,  cur  tam  sera  venis  ? '  Rudl.  7,  58. 
'  6  we  Tot,  dazt'  ie  so  lange  min  verbaere ! '  shouldst  forbear, 
shun  me,  MsH.  1,  89a.  '  por  ce  requier  a  Dieu  la  mort/  Meon 
nouv.  rec.  2,  241.  We  know  the  Aesopic  fable  of  the  old  man 
and  Thanatos.  To  wish  for  death  is  also  called  seeking  Deatlt,z 
sending  for  Death,  having  him  fetched  :  '  ja  wasnet  des  der  degen, 


1  Supra  p.  325.     Eeinhart  \i.  liii.  exxx. ;  like  Night,  Winter,  and  the  Judgment- 
day,  Death  '  breaks  in.' 

2  So  beasts  of  prey  are  invited,  Er.  5832  :  '  wd  ml  hungerigiu  tier,  bede  wolf 
und  ber,  iwer  einez  (one  of  you)  kume  her  und  ezze  uns  beide  !' 

3  Straparola  4,  5  tells  of  a  young  man  who  from  curiosity  started  off  to  hunt 
up  Death. 


FETCHES   THE    SOUL. 


843 


ich  Kobe  gesant  nach  Tude  (he  fancies  I  have  sent  for  D.) :  ich 
wil's  noch  lenger  pflegen/  Nib.  486,  5.  Of  a  slothful  servant  it  is 
said  lie  is  a  good  one  to  send  after  Death,  i.e.  he  goes  so  slow,  you 
may  expect  to  live  a  good  while  longer.  This  saying  must  have 
been  widely  diffused :  '  en  lui  avon  bon  mesagier  por  querre  la 
Mort  et  cerchier,  que  il  revendroit  moult  a  tart/  Ren.  5885.  '  du 
werst  ein  bot  gar  guot  zuo  schicken  nach  dem  Todt,  du  kommst 
nit  bald/  H.  Sachs  1,  478c.  '  werst  gut  nach  dem  Tod  zu  schicken' 
*v.  3,  43d.  Fischart  geschichtkl.  84a.  '  du  ar  god  att  skicka 
efter  Doden/  Hallman  p.  94.  *  bon  a  aller  chercher  la  mort/ 
Pluquet  contes  p.  2.  In  Boh. :  ' to  dobre  gest  pro  Smrt  posjlati/ 
•Jungmann  4,  193a.  Can  this  lazy  servant  be  connected  with 
G&nglati  and  Ganglot,  the  man  and  maid  servant  of  the  ancient 
Hel  ?     Sn.  33. 

Death  takes  the  soul  and  carries  it  away:  '  hlna  fuartanan 
Tod/  0.  i.  21,  1.  'do  quam  der  Tot  und  nam  in  kin'  Lohengr. 
186.  'er  begrifet,'  Gregor.  413.  Diut.  3,53.  ergreif,  gript, 
Greg.  19,  an  expression  used  also  of  Sleep,  the  brother  of  Death, 
when  he  falls  upon  and  overpowers  :  '  der  Slaf  in  begreif'  Pf. 
Chuonr.  7076.  He  presses  men  into  his  house,  the  door  of  which 
stands  open  :  '  gegen  im  het  der  Tot  sines  huses  tilr  entlochen 
(unlocked)/  Bit.  12053.  'der  Tot  weiz  manige  saze  (trick),  swa 
er  wil  dem  menschen  schaden  und  in  helm  ze  hits  laden  (entice)/ 
Tiirh.  Wh.  2281.  'do  in  der  Tot  helm  nam  in  sin  gezimmer 
(building)/  '  braht  heim  in  sin  gemiure  (walls)/  Lohengr.  143. 
150.  These  are  deviations  from  the  original  idea,  which  did  not 
provide  him  with  a  dwelling  of  his  own  ;  or  is  he  here  an  equiva- 
lent for  Hel  ? 

Probably,  like  all  messengers  (RA..  135),  like  Hermes  the  con- 
ductor of  souls,  he  carries  a  staff,  the  symbol  of  a  journey,  or 
of  delegated  authority.  With  this  wand,  this  rod  (of  wish),  he 
touches  whatever  has  fallen  due  to  him  :  '  la  Mort  de  sa  verge  le 
toucha;  Meon  4,  107.1 

To  Death  is  ascribed  a  highway,  levelled  smooth  and  kept  in 
repair,  on  which  the  dead  travel  with  him  :  '  des  Todes  pfat  wart 
g'ebenet/  Turl.  Wh.  22\  23b.  '  da  moht  erbouiven  der  Tot  sin 
straze,'  Bit.  10651.    'nu  seht,  wie  der  Tot  uinbe  sich  mit  kreften 

1  In  Danse  Macabre  p.  m.  55,  trois  verges  are  wielded  by  Death. 


844  DEATH. 

hat  gebouwen,'  Kl.  829.  Like  a  shifty  active  servant,  he  greases 
the  boots  of  the  man  he  comes  to  fetch,  in  preparation  for  the 
great  journey;  in  Burgundy  his  arrival  is  expressed  in  the 
phrase :  '  quan  la  Mor  venre  graisse  no  bote/  quand  la  Mort 
viendra  graisser  nos  bottes;  Noei  Borguignon  p.  249  (see 
SuppL). 

A  thoroughly  heathen  feature  it  is,  to  my  thinking,  that  he 
appears  mounted,  like  the  valkyrs  ;  on  horseback  he  fetches  away, 
he  sets  the  dead  on  his  own  horse.  In  a  folksong  of  wide  cir- 
culation the  lover,  dead  and  buried  far  away,  comes  at  midnight 
and  rides  off  with  his  bride.1  Possibly  that  horse's  head  at  p. 
841  stands  more  for  Death's  horse  than  for  the  dead  man's.  Both 
Hel  and  her  messenger,  like  other  gods,  had  doubtless  a  horse 
at  their  service  ;  this  is  confirmed  by  certain  phrases  and  fancies 
that  linger  here  and  there  among  the  people.  One  who  has  got 
over  a  serious  illness  will  say  :  'jeg  gav  JDoden  en  shiappe  havre' 
(Thiele  1,  138),  he  has  appeased  Death  by  sacrificing  to  him  a 
bushel  of  oats  for  his  horse.  So  the  heathen  fed  the  horse  of 
Wuotan  (p.  154),  of  dame  Gaue  (p.  252) ;  the  Slavs  did  the  same 
for  their  Svantevit  and  Radegast  (p.  661).  Of  one  who  blunders 
in  noisily  they  say,  in  Denmark  as  above  :  '  han  gaaer  som  en 
helhest,'  he  goes  like  a  hel-horse,  Dansk  ordb.  2,  545a.  There 
are  more  things  told  of  this  hel-hest :  he  goes  round  the  church- 
yard on  his  three  legs,  he  fetches  Death.  One  folktale  has  it, 
that  in  every  churchyard,  before  it  receives  human  bodies,  a  live 
horse  is  buried,  and  this  is  what  becomes  the  walking  dead-horse 
(Thiele  1,  137);  originally  it  was  no  other  than  the  Death- 
goddess  riding  round.  Arnkiel  quotes  1,  55  the  Schleswig 
superstition,  that  in  time  of  plague  '  die  Hell2  rides  about  on  a 
three-legged  horse,  destroying  men ' ;  if  at  such  a  time  the  dogs 
bark  and  howl  in  the  night  (for  dogs  are  spirit- seers),  they  say 
'  Hell  is  at  the  dogs ' ;  when  the  plague  ceases,  '  Hell  is  driven 
away ' ;  if  a  man  on  the  brink  of  death  recovers,  '  he  has  come 


1  '  The  moon  shines  bright,  the  dead  ride  fast,'  Burger's  life  p.  37.  Wh.  2, 
20.  't  maantje  schijnt  zo  hel,  mijn  paardtjes  lope  zo  snel,'  Kinderm.  3,  77. 
'  m;\nan  skiner,  dodman  rider,'  Sv.  vis.  1,  liii.  and  even  in  the  Edda :  '  rida  menn 
dauSir,'1  Sasm.  166b.  167a.  Norw.  'manen  skjine,  doman  grine.varte  du  ikkje  rad?' 
Conf.  the  Mod.  Grk.  song  in  Wh.  Muller  2,  64,  and  Vuk  1,  no.  404. 

-  He  writes  '  der  Hell,'  masc.  ;  but  the  Plattdeutsch,  when  they  attempt  H. 
Germ  ,  often  misuse  the  article,  e.g.  '  der  Pest '  for  '  die  Pest.' 


RIDES   A   HORSE. 


845 


to  terms  with  Hell'  Here,  as  in  other  cases,  the  notion  of  Death 
has  run  into  one  with  the  personified  plague.  In  our  own 
medieval  poems  we  never  read  of  Death  riding  about,  but  we  do 
of  his  loading  his  horse  with  souls.  Thus,  in  describing  a  battle  : 
'  seht,  ob  der  Tot  da  iht  sin  soumer  liiede  (loaded  his  sumpter 
at  all)  ?  ja  er  was  unmiiezec  gar  (high  busy)/  Lohengr.  71.  '  daz 
ich  des  Todes  vuoder  mit  in  Hied  und  vazzei ! '  Ottocar  448a. 
The  Mod.  Greeks  have  converted  old  ferryman  Xdpuiv  into  a 
death's-messenger  Xdpos ;  you  see  him  crossing  the  mountains 
with  his  dusky  throng,  himself  riding,  the  young  men  walking 
before  him,  the  old  following  behind,  and  the  tender  babes 
ranged  on  his  saddle.1  The  Liibeck  Dance  of  Death  makes  him 
ride  on  a  lion,  and  he  is  so  represented  in  a  picture  also,  Douce 
p.  160.  'Mortis  habenae,3  Abbo  de  bellis  Paris.  1,  187.  322  (see 
Suppl.). 

The  dead  march  like  captives  in  Death's  bonds ;  to  the  Indian 
imagination  likewise  he  leads  them  away  bennd.2  '  ei,  waz  ml 
dem  Tode  geschicket  wart  an  sin  sell  (to  his  rope)  ! '  Lohengr. 
115.  'maneger  quam  an  des  Todes  seil'  123.  'in  Todes  sil 
stigen,'  Ls.  3,  440.  '  zuo  dem  Tode  wart  geseilet,'  Geo.  2585.  '  we 
dir  Tot !  din  sloz  und  din  gebende  bindet  und  besliuzet,'  Wigal. 
7793.    '  der  Tot  hat  mich  gevangen,'  Karl  81b.     Greg.  50. 

As  the  old  divinity  of  the  lower  world  fell  into  the  background, 
and  Death  came  forward  acting  for  himself,  there  could  not  but 
ensue  a  harsher  reading  of  his  character,  or  a  confounding  of 
him  with  other  gods.  From  the  silent  messenger  who  did  no 
more  than  punctually  discharge  his  duty,  he  becomes  a  grasping 
greedy  foe,  who  will  have  his  bond,  who  sets  traps  for  mortals. 
Already  0.  v.  23,  260  imputes  to  him  crafty  besuichan  (decipere), 
and  Conrad  strik  (meshes)  and  netzegam,  Troj.  12178,  which 
reminds  of  the  goddess  Ean  with  her  net  (pp.  311.  840).  We 
think  of  him  still  under  the  familiar  figure  of  a  fowler  or  fisher, 
spreading  his  toils  or  baiting  his  hook  for  man  :  '  do  kam  der 
Tot  als  ein  diep  (thief),  und  stal  dem  reinen  wibe  daz  leben  uz 
ir  libe  (the  life  out  of  her  body)/  Wigal.  8033.3     But  he  uses 

1  To.  rpiHpepa  waib'bTrovXa  's  tt)v  ae\X  afpa.oiaafi.iva,  Fauriel  2,  228.     Wh.  Muller 
2,  8 ;  conf.  Kind  18-49,  p.  14. 

2  JBopp's  Sundflut,  pp.   37.  50.     In  Buhez  santez  Norm  p.  205,  Death  says 
1  j'altire  tout  dans  mes  liens  a  mon  gite.' 

3  Life-stealer,  man-slayer,  names  for  Death. 


846  DEATH. 

open  violence  too,  he  routs  out,  pursues  and  plunders,  Nib.  2161, 
3.  2163,  1;  he  '  blfalta  sie/  felled  them,  0.  iii.  18,  34;  '  mich 
hat  der  Tot  gevangen,'  clutched,  Greg.  50;  he  juget,  hunts,  Roth. 
2750,  bekrellet  (claws?),  Fundgr.  196,  20;  and  the  Bible  has  the 
same  thing  :  in  Ps.  91,  3 — 6  he  comes  out  as  a  hunter  with  snares 
and  arrows.  His  messenger-staff  has  turned  into  a  spear  which 
he  hurls,  an  arrow  which  he  discharges  from  the  bow.  Worth 
noting  are  the  Renn.  24508  :  '  wirtdem  des  Todes  sper  gesandt;' 
and  Freid.  177,  24  :  '  der  Tot  gat  her,  der  widerseit  uns  an  dem 
sper,3  defies  us  at  point  of  lance ;  a  reading  which  I  prefer  to  the 
accepted  one  '  ane  sper,'  without  spear.  OSinn  has  a  spear 
GCmgnir  (p.  147)  whose  thrust  or  throw  was  fatal.  The  Lith. 
Smertis  comes  as  a  warrior  with  sword  and  pike,  riding  in  a 
chariot,  i.e.  in  the  form  of  a  god.  All  this  carries  with  it  the 
idea  of  Death  having  a  regular  fight  and  wrestle  with  man,  whom 
he  overpowers  and  brings  to  the  ground :  '  mit  dem  Tode  vehten,' 
fence  with  D.,  MS.  2,  82b.  '  der  Tot  wil  mit  mir  ring  en  (wrestle)/ 
Stoufenb.  1126.  '  do  ranc  er  mit  dem  Tode/  Nib.  939,  2.  'also 
der  Tot  hie  mit  ime  rank,'  Ecke  184  ;  and  we  still  speak  of  the 
death  agony,  though  without  any  thought  of  a  personality.  In 
a  Mod.  Grk  song  a  daring  youth  wrestles  with  Charos  on  smooth 
marble  from  morn  till  midday  ;  at  the  hour  of  eve  Death  flings 
him  down.  In  another  case  Charos  takes  the  shape  of  a  blade 
swallow,  and  shoots  his  arrow  into  a  maiden's  heart.1  A  doubt- 
ful passage  in  Beow.  3484  we  ought  perhaps  to  refer  to  Death, 
who  is  there  called  a  destroyer  that  shoots  with  arrow-bow  of 
fire:  'bona,  se  ]>e  of  fidnbogan  fyrenum  sceote'S;'  conf.  the  Serv. 
hrvnik,  bloodshedder  p.  21.  Brun  von  Schonebeke  makes  Death 
wield  a  scourge  of  four  strings;  and  our  MHG.  poets  lend  him  an 
arrow  and  battle-axe :  '  des  Todes  strdle  het  si  gar  versniten/ 
cut  them  up,  Tit.  3770.  fwa  snidet  des  Todes  barte,'  Wh.  3, 
220  (Cod.  cass.).  The  '  isernporte '  in  a  Meister-song  of  the 
14th  cent.  (Hagen's  Mus.  2,  188)  means  surely  isernbarte? 
Here  Death  promises  a  thousand  years'  grace,  should  his  adversary 
gain  the  victory  (see  Suppl.).2 

1  Wh.  Miiller  2,  4.   6  ;  conf.  Tommaseo's  Canti  popolari  3,  301  seq. 

-  Our  poets  too  are  no  strangers  to  the  idea  of  Death  prosecuting  at  law  his 
claim  upon  a  man :  '  do  begunde  der  T6t  einen  graven  beclagen  und  mit  gewalte 
twingen  ze  notigen  dingen,'  accuse  a  count  and  drive  him  to  straits,  Iw.  5625  seq. 


HIS   WEAPONS.      HIS   ARMY.  847 

In  such  a  conflict,  however,  Death  must  appear  as  the  leader 
of  a  large  and  ever  increasing  army.  There  is  a  following,  a 
retinue  assigned  him  :  '  der  Tot  suochte  sere  da  sin  gesinde  was/ 
Nib.  2161,  3.  The  Greeks  set  us  the  fashion  of  calling  the  dead 
oi  TrXeoves  the  majority,  and  e<?  irXeovwv  Ueadat,  meant  the  same 
as  e'<?  "Aihov  U.,  to  reach  the  abode  of  the  great  multitude,  join 
the  great  host,  as  we  still  say.  In  the  '  Bohemian  Ploughman/ 
Death  is  styled  captain  of  the  mountain;  because,  as  in  the  Greek 
song  (p.  845),  the  march  of  his  army  covers  the  mountains  ?  '  In 
des  Todes  schar  varn,'  fare  to  D.'s  host,  Wh.  v.  Orl.  2113.  <ist 
an  die  vart,'  gone  his  way  (obiit),  Walth.  108,  6.  Though  taking 
no  part  in  the  fight,  the  dead  seem  to  bear  a  badge  (flag  or 
lance),  which,  so  to  speak,  he  fastens  on  the  dying,  with  which 
he  touches  them,  enrolls  them  in  his  band.1  That  is  how  I 
understand  'des  Todes  zeichen  tragen,'  Nib.  928,  3.  2006,  1, 
though  it  may  include  the  collateral  sense  of  having  received  a 
death-wound,  which  now  serves  as  his  badge  and  cognisance. 
Hence  in  Nib.  939,  3  :  'des  Todes  zeichen  ie  ze  sere  sneit/  D.'s 
token  aye  too  sore  he  cut;  where  one  MS.  reads  wafen  (arms), 
and  elsewhere  we  find  '  eines  wafen  tragen'  carry  some  one's 
arms,  Parz.  130,  4.  Freidank  74,  18.  Wigal.  7797,  and  even 
'  des  todes  wdpen  (coat  of  arms)  tragen/  Wh.  17,  16.  '  Tristandes 
zeichen  vileren,'  Heinr.  Trist.  2972,  is  to  be  wounded  like  him. 
So  far  back  as  Alfred's  Boeth.  p.  16  (Rawl.)  we  have  '  DeaSes 
tacnung';  even  Zio's  or  Tiwes  tacen  p.  200,  and  OSin's  spear 
p.  147  are  worth  considering  (see  Suppl.).3 

With  the  idea  of  messengership  and  that  of  the  great  company 
were  associated  some  others,  which  probably  reach  a  long  way 

the  count  is  called  '  der  verlorne,  wand'  er  muose  im  ze  suone  (satisfaction)  geben 
beide  sin  gesunt  und  sin  leben.'  So  Iw.  7161  speaks  of  having  to  '  gelten  (pay)  vur 
des  T6des  schelten  ' ;  and  the  same  perhaps  is  meant  by  '  der  Tot  hat  id  si  gesworn,' 
Nib.  2017,5.  In  the  '  Ackermann  aus  Bohmen '  on  the  contrary,  Death  is  the 
defendant,  and  a  man  whose  wife  he  has  carried  off  is  prosecutor.  Similar  law- 
suits are  brought  by  the  Devil.  '  Nu  kume  vil  grimmeclicher  Tot,  und  rihte 
Gote  von  uns  beiden  !  '  MS.  1,  17.  Observe  too  '  mit  des  Todes  hantrcste  ilber- 
sigelet;  sealed  with  D.'s  sign  manual,  Wh.  391,  27.  The  Indian  god  of  death, 
lama,  is  a  lord  of  law. 

1  Conf.  '  einem  des  Todes  muoder  (mieder)  sniden,'  Titur.  ;  to  cut  D's.  coat  on 
(or  for)  a  man. 

-  It  is  worthy  of  note,  that  in  the  Meister-song  already  quoted  (Mus.  2,  187) 
Death  says  :  '  be  ready,  when  I  send  thee  my  messengers  (the  infirmities)  to  give 
thee  the  signs,'  to  mark  thee  for  my  own.  Death,  orig.  a  messenger  himself,  sends 
out  under-'messengers.  Conf.  Kinderm.  no.  177.  Even  the  O.  Fr.  Chanson  des 
Saxons  2,  131  has  :  '  la  Morz  le  semont  sovent  et  menu,'  viz.  by  fainting-fits. 


848  DEATH. 

back.  Messengers  in  ancient  times  were  often  fiddlers  and  pipers  : 
it  was  nothing  out  of  the  way,  to  make  Death  and  his  meny 
perform  a  reihen  (rig,  round  dance) ;  with  fife  and  fiddle  he  seeks 
to  win  recruits.  Really  a  pleasant  fancy,  tending  to  mitigate 
the  harshness  of  dying  :  the  souls  of  the  dead  enter  at  once 
upon  dancing  and  revelry.  To  the  ancient  Romans  there  were 
songs  and  dances  in  the  Elysian  fields ; l  and  it  accords  with  the 
resemblance  of  departed  spirits  to  elves,  who  also  love  music  and 
dancing  (p.  470).  Yet  our  poets  of  the  loth  cent,  never  once 
allude  to  the  Dance  of  Death,  which  from  the  15-  16th  became 
such  a  favourite  subject.  The  oft-recurring  phrase  '  er  hat  den 
Tot  an  der  hant,'  by  the  hand  (Nib.  1480,  4.  1920,  4.  1958,  4. 
Wigal.  2453.  4700.  Alph.  280.  345.  359)  seems  to  mean,  not 
catching  hold  for  the  purpose  of  dancing,  but  of  leading  away 
(like  '  d6d  is  at  hendi,'  p.  406). 

Holy  Scripture  having  already  likened  our  fleeting  life  to  grass, 
it  was  not  difficult  to  see  in  Death  a  mower  or  reaper,  who 
cuts  men  down  like  flowers  and  corn-stalks.  Knife,  sickle,  or 
scythe  is  found  him  in  this  connexion  :  '  There's  a  reaper  they  call 
Death,  Power  from  God  most  high  he  hath,  He  whets  his  knife 
to-day,  Keener  it  cuts  the  hay ;  Look  to  thyself,  O  flowret  fair  !  * 
Pop.  Hymn.  The  older  poets  never  give  him  these  implements, 
but  the  figure  of  '  Death  carried  out '  is  sometimes  furnished  with 
a  scythe  (p.  772).  In  later  times  the  harpe  (sickle)  of  the  Greek 
Kronos  (O.  Miiller's  Archaol.  p.  599)  may  have  had  an  influence 
too,  conf.  falcitenens  in  Radevicus  2,  11.  To  '  match  men  with 
flowers,  make  them  bite  the  grass/  Lohengr.  138,  is  said  equally 
of  other  conquerors  beside  Death.  But  he  weeds  out  the  plants  : 
'in  lebens  garten  der  Tot  nu  jat,'  Turl.  Wh.  23b.  Conversely 
Death,  like  the  devil,  is  called  a  sower,  who  disseminates  weeds 
among  men ;  '  do  der  Tot  sinen  somen  under  si  gesaste/  Wh. 
361,  16.  'er  ier  durch  in  cles  Todes  furch/  he  eared  through  him 
D/s  furrow,  Ulr.  Trist.  3270,  simply  means:  he  planted  in  him 
a  mortal  wound  (see  Suppl.). 

Before  explaining  certain  other  conceptions,  I  have  to  enumer- 
ate the  names  and  epithets  of  Death  in  our  old  poetry. 

1  Virg.  Aen.  6,  G44 :  pars  pedibus  plaudunt  choreas  et  carmina  dicunt.    Tibull. 
.  3,  59 :  hie  choreue  cantusque  vigeut. 


HIS   DANCE.      A    SKELETON.  849 

Very  commonly  he  is  called  '  der  grimme'  furious,  Roth.  2750. 
Nib.  1360,  4.  1553,  3.  Mar.  218.  Flore  1931.  Troj.  2317-25. 
10885.  Ls.  3,  124;  l— '  der  ferchgrimme,'  Morolfc  4059,  a  felicit- 
ous compound,  as  Death  has  designs  upon  the  life  or  soul  (ferch)  ; 
—der  grimmige,'  Roth.  517.  Reinh.  360.  1248.  Berthold  303  ; 
— fder  bittere'  {TUKpo?  Odvcnos)  and  '  amara  Mors/2  Rudl.  1, 
110.  Unibos  117,  4.  Diut.  3,  89.  Mar.  206.  Alex.  (Lampr.) 
820.  1097.  3999.  4782.  Gr.  Ruod.  Cb  15.  Wh.  253,  28.  Wigal. 
1113;— der  bitterliche,  Troj.  3521.  22637;— 'der  sure/  sour, 
Parz.  643,  24; — der  scharfe' :  em  scharpher  bote,  Freid.  21,  6; — 
t  der  fcjQ*  Amgb.  29a  in  Wizlau  neighbhd.  therefore  prob.  for 
erre,  ireful; — 'der  gemeine,'  common  (qui  omnes  manet),  En. 
2081.  All,  so  far,  epithets  taken  from  his  unavoidableness, 
cruelty,  bitterness;  not  a  hint  about  his  personal  presence.  No- 
where is  he  the  black,  the  pale,  after  the  Latin  '  mors  atra, 
pallida.'  Otto  II  was  called  'pallida  mors  Saracenorum/ Cod. 
lauresh.  1,  132;  and  in  Renner  23978.  80  I  find  'der  gelwe 
tot/  yellow  d. ;  in  both  cases  the  aspect  of  the  dead,  not  of 
Death,  is  meant.  So  when  Walth.  124,  38  says  of  the  world, 
that  it  is  '  innan  swarzer  varwe,  vinster  sam  der  tot/  inwardly 
black  of  hue,  dark  as  death,  he  means  the  abode  of  the  dead, 
hell,  not  the  figure  of  Death.  In  one  song  he  is  addressed  as 
<  lieber  Tot ! '  dear  D.  (Hagen's  Mus.  2,  187),  and  H.  Sachs  i.  5, 
528d  speaks  of  him  as  '  der  heilig  Tod/  holy  D. ;  '  her  Tot  ! '  Sir 
D.,  again  in  voc.  case  only,  Apollonius  295  and  often  in  the 
Ackermann  aus  Bohmen  (see  Suppl.). 

It  is  more  important  to  our  inquiry,  that  in  the  Reinardus  3, 
2162  a  bone  fiddle  is  said  to  be  '  ossea  ut  dominus  BUcero/  by 
which  nothing  but  Death  can  have  been  meant,  whether  the  word 
signify  the  pale  (bleich),  or  the  grinning  (bleckend),  or  be,  as  1 
rather  think,  the  proper  name  Blidger,  Blicker  with  a  mere  sug- 
gestion of  those  meanings.  A  bony  horse's  head  is  here  handed 
in  mockery  to  the  wolf  as  a  skilful  player  (joculandi  gnarus)  by 
way  of  fiddle,  '  bony  as  a  skeleton.'  And  now  that  unexplained 
caput  cabalUnum  at  p.  661  n.  may  be  interpreted  as  in  fact  a  sym- 

1  Der  grimme  tot,  the  name  of  a  knife  (Wolfd.  1313),  is  remarkable,  as  Hoi's 
knife  was  called  sultr  (p.  313)  from  svelta  esurire,  which  in  the  Goth,  sviltan  takes 
the  meaning  of  mori. 

2  Isidore  even  says,  '  mors  dicta  quod  sit  amara.'1 


850  DEATH. 

bol  of  Death  (p.  844)  and  the  dead-man's  steed  (p.  841).  As 
the  convent  clergy  set  up  human  death's-heads  in  their  cells  for 
a  memento  mori,  may  not  they  also  have  nailed  up  horse's  skulls 
inside  their  walls  ?  did  an  older  heathen  custom,  here  as  in  so 
many  instances,  have  a  christian  thought  breathed  into  it  ?  If 
this  holds  good,  we  can  see  why  the  horse's  head  should  have  set 
the  Flemish  poet  thinking  of  Death ;  it  may  even  be,  that  fanatic 
sculptors  used  to  fashion  Death  as  playing  on  it  instead  of  a 
fiddle  or  fife.1 

In  any  case  dominus  Blicero  proves  that  in  the  middle  of  the 
12th  cent,  it  was  the  practice  to  represent  Death  as  a  skeleton. 
I  do  not  know  of  any  earlier  evidence,  but  think  it  very  possible 
that  such  may  be  hunted  up.  We  know  that  to  the  ancient 
Romans  fleshless  shrivelled-up  masks  or  skeletons  served  to 
indicate  Death.3  On  tombs  of  the  Mid.  Ages,  no  doubt  from  an 
early  time,  corpses  were  sculptured  as  whole  or  half  skeletons  (see 
Suppl.).  Poets  of  the  13th  cent,  paint  the  World  (p.  792n.)  as 
a  beautifully  formed  woman  in  front,  whose  back  is  covered  with 
snakes  and  adders  : 3  the  notion  itself  may  be  of  much  higher 
antiquity ;  it  is  closely  related  to  the  story  of  three  live  and  three 
dead  kings.4 

This  mode  of  representing  Death,  which  soon  became  universal, 
stands  in  sharp  contrast  with  the  ancient  portraitures  and  the 
old  heathen  conceptions  of  him.  The  engaging  form  of  the 
genius,  akin  to  Sleep,  the  childlike  Angel  of  death,  is  now 
supplanted  by  a  ghastly  figure  copied  from  the  grim  reality  of 
corruption  in  the  grave.  Yet  even  here  poetry  steps  in  with  her 
all-embracing,  all-mellowing  influence.  The  older  conceptions 
of  Death  as  leading  away,  as  attacking,  as  dancing,  applied  to  this 
new  and  hideous  figure,  have  called  forth  a  host  of  truly  popular, 
naive  and  humorous  art-productions ;  nay,  their  wealth  is  not 
nearly  exhausted  by  the  artists  yet.     Without  this  hag  of  bones 

1  Todenpfeife  is  a  place  in  Lower  Hesse,  Bommel  5,  375.  Remigius  demonol. 
145  says,  at  witches'  gatherings  they  played  on  a  dead  horse's  head  instead  of  a 
cithern:  a  coincidence  almost  decisive.  Philand.  von  Sittew.  (p.  m.  174)  has  also 
a  Death  with  his  lyre. 

-  0.  Muller's  Archaol.  696-7.     Lessing  8,  251-2. 

3  The  poem  was  printed  before  the  Wigalois. 

4  Staphorst  i.  4,  263.  Bragur  1,  369.  0.  Fr.  '  les  trois  mors  et  les  trois  vis,' 
Roquefort  2,  780.  Catal.  de  la  Valliere  p.  285-6  ;  conf.  Douce  p.  31  seq.  and  Catal. 
of  MSS.  in  Brit.  Mus.  (1834)  1,  22  (Cod.  Arund.  no.  83  sec.  xiv),  also  plate  7. 


SIR   BLICERO.      FRIEND   HEIN.  851 

aping  the  garb  and  gestures  of  the  living,1  and  his  startling 
incongruity  with  the  warm  life  around,  all  the  charm  and  quaint- 
ness  of  those  compositions  would  be  gone.  Less  enjoyable  must 
have  been  the  processions  and  plays  in  which  these  spectacles 
were  exhibited  in  France  during  the  15th  cent,  and  perhaps 
earlier;  there  and  then  originated  that  peculiar  name  for  the 
Dance  of  Death  :  chorea  Machabaeorum,  Fr.  la  danse  Macabre." 

Another  name  of  Death,  much  later  seemingly  than  Blicker, 
but  now  universally  known,  is  Freund  Hein  or  Ilain ;  I  cannot 
even  trace  it  up  to  the  middle  of  last  century.3     In  itself  it  looks 
old   and   fitting    enough,   and   is  susceptible   of   more   than  one 
explanation.       Considering    that    Death    has   so  many  points  of 
contact  with  giants  and  other  spirits,  the  name  Heine  (p.  503) 
might  be  borrowed  from  the  homesprite  for  one,  and  the  addition 
of  Friend  would  answer  to  the  '  fellow,  neighbour,  goodfellow  ' 
of  those  elvish  beings  whom  we  meet  with  under  the  name  of 
Heimchen,  Heinchen  (pp.  275.  459n.),  and  who  border  closely  on 
the  idea  of  departed   spirits.      Add  the  L.   Germ,   term  for   a 
winding-sheet,  heinenkleed  (p.  446).     But  it  is  also  spelt  liilnen- 
Meed,  which  brings  us    to    '  heun,  hiine/   giant   (p.  523);    and 
Hein  itself  might  be  explained  as  Heimo    (p.  387),  or  Hagano 
(p.  371).     A  Voigtland  story  of   the  god  Hain    (Jul.  Schmidt, 
p.  150),  or  the  Thuringian  one  about  an  ancient  haingott,  grove- 
god  (Rosencranz's  Neue  zeitschr.  i.  3,  27),  being  themselves  very 
doubtful,  I  am  not  inclined  to  fasten  on  our  still  doubtful  Friend 
Hein.      Still  less  attention  is   due  to  a  name  for  mortnarium, 
'  hainrecht,' 4  coming  as  it  probably  does  from  heimrecht,  i.e. 
heimfall,  lapse  of  property. 

1  As  the  beasts  in  a  fable  ape  those  of  men. 

2  Latest  writings  on  the  Dance  of  Death:  Peignot,  '  Recherches  sur  les  danses 
des  morts'  (1826).  F.  Douce,  '  The  Dance  of  Death'  (1833).  The  latter  derives 
Macabre  from  St.  Macarius,  to  whom  three  skeletons  appeared  in  a  vision.  I  do 
not  see  how  '  chorea  Machabaeorum,'  as  the  oldest  authorities  have  it,  could  have 
come  from  that ;  conf.  Carpentier  sub  v.  (a.  1424-53).  It  ought  to  appear  by  the 
old  paintings,  that  the  7  heroes  of  the  O.T.  martyred  in  one  day  [2  Maccabees  7] 
were  incorporated  as  leading  characters  in  the  dance.  Perhaps  it  is  more  correct 
to  explain  '  macabre '  from  the  Arabic  magabir,  magabaragh  (dead-yard,  cimeterium). 
On  the  French  performances  conf.  Michelet's  Hist,  de  France  4,  409 — 412  (Paris 
1840). 

5  It  is  used  by  Musiius  (Volksm.  1, 16),  Claudius  and  Gottcr.  J.  R.  Schellen- 
berg  in  Pref.  to  Freund  Heins  erscheinungen  (Winterthur  1785)  thinks  Claudius  in 
his  Asinus  (after  1775)  invented  the  name,  which  I  very  much  doubt ;  he  has  given 
it  currency. 

4  Mittermaier's  Privatrecht  §  77,  no.  27. 


852  DEATH. 

Kaisersberg  calls  Death  holz-meier,  wood-mower.  He  wrote  a 
book,  De  arbore  liumana  (Strasb.  1521  fob),  '  wherein  easily  and 
to  the  glory  of  God  ye  may  learn  to  await  blithely  the  woodcutter 
Death'  Then,  p.  11 8b:  'So  is  death  called  a  village-mower  or 
ivood-moiver,  and  justly  hath  he  the  name,  for  he  hath  in  him  the 
properties  of  a  wood-cutter,  as,  please  God,  ye  shall  hear.  The 
first  property  of  the  village-mower  is  communitas,  he  being  pos- 
sessed in  common  by  all  such  as  be  in  the  village,  and  being  to 
serve  them  all  alike.  So  is  the  wood-cutter  likewise  common  to 
all  the  trees,  he  overlooketh  no  tree,  but  heweth  them  down  all.'1 
Here  Death  is  regarded  as  a  forester,  a  ranger,  who  has  a  right 
to  fell  any  of  the  forest-trees.  It  is  said  that  in  some  places  the 
gravedigger  is  called  holzmeier. 

In  the  Deutsche  Schlemmer,  a  drama  of  the  16th  cent., 
Death  is  called  the  pale  Streckefuss  or  Streckebein  (leg-stretcher), 
as  Gryphius  too  (Kirchhofsged.  36)  names  him  Streckfuss,  because 
he  stretches  out  the  limbs  of  the  dying,  loosens  them  (XvaifxeXyj^) ; 
and  before  that,  the  twice  quoted  Meister-song  of  the  14th 
cent,  has :  '  er  hat  kein  ru,  er  hab  gestrecket  mir  das  fell  (my 
skin)/  Hag.  mus.  2,  188.  In  Chr.  Weise's  Drei  erzn.  314  I  find 
Streckebein  and  Bleckezahn,  bleak  (i.e.  bared)  teeth ;  and  else- 
where Bilrrbein,  Klapperbein,  names  for  a  skeleton.  The  allusion 
in  kupferbickel  (Ackerm.  aus  B.  p.  34)  remains  obscure  (see 
Suppl.). 

It  remains  for  me  to  mention  certain  more  fully  developed 
myths  respecting  Death,  which  have  survived  from  assuredly  a 
remote  antiquity. 

H.  Sachs  (1, 102b),  speaking  of  Death's  arrival,  says  he  twitches 
or  jerks  the  stool  from  under  man,  tips  it  over,  so  that  he  tumbles 
to  the  ground.  He  takes  from  him  his  seat  and  standing  among 
the  living  :  I  suspect  there  was  a  fuller  story  at  the  back  of  this. 
More  commonly  the  same  thing  is  expressed  by  '  Death  has 
blown  the  man's  candle  out '  (as  Berhta  blew  out  the  lights  of  the 
eyes,  p.  277),  for  the  notions  of  light,  life  and  sojourn  among  the 
living,  run  into  one  another.2     The  living  principle  was  linked 

1  The  earlier  editions  in  Latin  (1514,  115bc,  and  1519,  105bc)  have  in  paren- 
theses '  der  dorfmeyger '  and  '  der  holzmeyger.' 

2  Wh.  416,  14  :  '  bi  liehter  sunnen  da  verlasch  (went  out)   inauegem  Sarrazin 
sin  Ueht.''    Lohengr.  133  :  '  er  sluoc  in,  daz  iui  muose  daz  lieht  erlischen.' 


QUENCHES   LIGHT.      A    GODFATHER.  853 

to   a  light,  a  taper,   a    brand  :  when  these   were  wasted,  death 
ensued  (pp.  409.  415).     Here  then  the  idea  of  Death  is  intimately- 
connected  with  that   of  fate.     The   genius   lowers  his  torch,  re- 
verses it,  and  the  light  of  life   is   quenched.     For  the  child  as 
soon  as  born,  the  norn  has  kindled  a  light,  to  which  his  thread  of 
life   is    fastened;    possibly  even  our  lighting  of  tapers  in  con- 
nexion with  birthday  gifts  has  reference  to  this.1     We  have  a 
capitally  contrived  story  of  Gossip  Death  (gevatter  Tod,  Kinderm. 
no.   44),  the    conclusion    of    which    represents    a    subterranean 
cavern,  with  thousands  of  lights  burning  in  endless  rows.    These 
are  the  lives   of  men,  some   still  blazing  as  long  tapers,  others 
burnt  down  to  tiny  candle-ends  ;.  but  even  a  tall  taper  may  topple 
or  be   tipt  over.     The  preceding  part   relates,    how  Death  has 
stood  gossip 2  to  a  poor  man,  and  has  endowed  his  godson  with 
the  gift  of  beholding  him  bodily  when  he  approaches  the  sick, 
and  of  judging  by  his  position  whether  the  patient  will  recover 
or  not.3     The  godson  becomes  a  physician,  and  attains  to  wealth 
and  honours  :  if  Death  stands  at  the  sick  man's  head,  it  is  all 
over  with  him ;  if  at  his  feet,  he  will  escape.     Occasionally  the 
doctor  turns  the  patient  round,  and  circumvents  Death ;  but  in 
the  end  Death  has  his  revenge,  he  catches  his  godson  napping, 
and  knocks  his  candle  over.4     Throughout  this  fable  Death  shews 
himself  friendly,  good-natured  and  indulgent,  only  in  case   of 
absolute  need  does  he  fulfil  his  function  ;  hence  too  his  gossip- 
hood  °  with  man,  which  evidently  corresponds    to   that  ancient 
visit  of  the  norns  to  the  newborn   child,   and  their  bestowing 
gifts  on  him  (pp.  408 — 12),  as  in  some  nursery-tales  the  fays  are 
invited  to  stand  godmothers.6     The  extinguished  light  resembles 
the  taper  and  the  brand,  to  which  are  linked  the  lives  of  Norna- 
gestr  and  Meleager  (pp.  409.  415).     It  is  then  a  primitive  myth 

1  In  the  child's  game  'If  the  fox  dies  I  get  the  skin  '  (Kinderm.  2,  xviii.),  a 
niece  of  burning  ivood  is  passed  round,  and  its  extinction  decides. 

"  God-sib  expresses  the  kinship  of  god-parents  to  each  other  or  to  the  parents. 
—Trans. 

3  So  the  bird  charadrius,  by  looking  at  or  away  from  you,  decides  your  life  or 
death,  Freid.  introd.  lxxxvi.,  where  a  couplet  in  Titurel  5154-5  and  the  O.Fr.  Bes- 
tiaire  (Roquef.  sub  v.  caladrio)  are  left  unnoticed. 

4  May  not  that  '  stool '  also,  when  upset,  have  knocked  the  candle  over  ? 

*  Is  Death  likewise  called  the  brother  of  man,  as  he  is  of  Sleep  ?  The 
'  bruoder  tut '  in  Ben.  262  means  fratris  mors. 

6  The  semi-divine  norns  and  fays  protect  and  bestow  gifts  like  christian 
sponsors. 


854  DEATH. 

of  heathen  Germany ;  in  telling  which,  Death  was  pictured,  even 
till  recent  times,  not  as  a  skeleton,  but  in  the  shape  of  a  living 
man  or  god.  We  cannot  wonder  that  the  story  is  found  with  a 
great  many  variations,  which  are  collected,  though  still  incom- 
pletely, in  Kinderm.  3,  72  :  in  some  of  them  Death  presents  his 
godson  with  a  ring,  by  which  he  can  judge  of  diseases.1  Old 
Hugo  von  Trimberg  at  the  close  of  his  work  had  told,  a  tale 
'von  dem  Tode,  wie  er  ein  hint  huop  (took  up)/  but  there  is  not 
much  in  it  (Bamb.  ed.  23665 — 722)  :  Death  promises  to  send  his 
gossip  some  messengers  before  he  comes  to  fetch  him  (as  in  the 
Meister-song  p.  847n.)  ;  these  are,  ringing  in  the  ears,  running 
at  the  eyes,  toothache,  wrinkled  skin,  and  grizzled,  beard.  The 
gossiphood  is  the  only  guarantee  of  any  connexion  with  the  later 

marchen. The   resemblance    of    the    OHG.    toto,    godfather, 

MHG.  tote  (Parz.  461,  10.  Wh.  7,  21)  to  tot,  death,  is  striking, 
though  strictly  the  quantity  of  the  vowel  keeps  the  two  words 
apart,  and  to  harmonize  them  some  derivative  process  must  be 
presupposed.  The  story  never  grew  out  of  a  play  on  the  words 
(see  Suppl.).3 

Equally  celebrated,  but  gayer  in  tone,  is  the  tale  of  Death  and 
Player  Jack  (Spielhansel,  no.  82  ;  conf.  3,  135 — 148),  who  by  a 
spell  binds  Death  to  a  tree,  so  that  nobody  dies  in  the  world 
for  seven  years.  Welcker  (Append,  to  Schwenk  p.  323-4)  has 
pointed  out  a  parallel  story  in  Pherekydes,  how  Death  is  set  on 
by  Zeus  to  attack  Sisyphos,  who  binds  him  in  strong  chains,  and 
then  no  one  can  die;  Hades  himself  comes  and  sets  Death  free, 
and  delivers  Sisyphos  into  his  hands.  Our  German  fable  inter- 
weaves the  Devil  into  the  plot.  Once  the  Devil  was  put  in 
possession  of  hell,  he  had  to  take  his  place  beside  Death,  as 
the  alliteration  '  death  and  devil ! '  couples  them  together.  So 
Welnas,  Wels,  originally  the  death-god  of  the  Lithuanians  and 
Lettons,  got  converted  into  the  Devil.  According  to  the  chris- 
tian view,  angels  received  the  souls  of  the  just,  devils  those  of 
the  wicked  (p.  836) ;  therefore  Death  in  coming  for  souls  was 
divided  into  a  double  power,  according  as  he  resembled  the 
angel  or  the  devil.  As  angelic  messenger,  he  comes  nearest  the 
christian  Michael,  whose   office  it  was  to  receive  souls    (Morolt 

1  Ettner's  Unwiird.  doctor  p.  290. 

2  Conf.  p.  14  on  the  affinity  between  fjud  and  gode. 


A   GOD.  855 

2660.  2715),  ccnf.  p.  836.  Of  very  aged  people,  who  still  live 
on,  we  say  'Death  has  forgotten  to  fetch  them.'  The  Nib. 
Lament  122  has:  '  der  Tot  het  ir  minne,  die  da  sterben  solden/ 
D.  bore  those  in  mind  that  there  should  die,  or,  as  Lachmaun  in- 
terprets it,  desired  them  for  his  band  (conf.  p.  848). 

These  investigations  will  hardly  have  left  it  doubtful,  that  the 
heathen  '  Death '  is  one  of  a  secondary  order  of  gods ;  hence  too 
he  coincides  more  especially  with  the  semi-divine  valkyrs  and 
norns,  he  is  dependent  on  OSinn  and  Hel ;  of  the  Grecian  gods, 
it  is  Hermes  and  Hades,  Persephone  and  the  ferryman  Charon 
that  come  nearest  to  him.  But  his  nature  is  also  not  unrel  ited 
to  that  of  elves,  homesprites  and  genii. 

Chap.  XXIV.  has  explained  how  he  got  mixed  up  with  one  of 
the  time-gods,  Winter;  no  wonder  therefore  that  he  now  and 
then  reminds  us  of  Kronos. 

In  our  Heldenbuch,  Death  figures  as  a  false  god,  whom  the 
heathen  Belligan  serves  above  all  other  gods,  and  whose  image  is 
demolished  by  Wolfdietrich.  I  do  not  know  exactly  how  to 
account  for  this :  it  must  be  a  diabolic  being  that  is  meant. 

In  the  Finnish  lays,  Manala  and  Tuonela  are  often  named 
together,  but  as  separate  beings.  One  is  the  underworld,  from 
1  maa/  earth;  the  other  the  kingdom  of  the  dead,  as  Tuon  {6dv- 
aT09)  is  Death,  Halja.  In  Kalewala,  runes  6 — 9,  Tuonela  seems 
to  be  a  river  of  the  underworld,  with  sacred  swans  swimming  on 
it  (see  Suppl.). 


vol.  :r. 


CHAPTER  XXVIII. 
DESTINY  AND  WELL-BEING. 

This  is  the  place  to  insert  a  more  exact  survey  of  ancient 
opinions  on  fortune  and  destiny,  than  it  was  possible  to  take  in 
cbap.  XVI,  where  the  semi-divine  directresses  of  human  fate 
were  spoken  of.  Fate  in  the  proper  sense  has  so  much  to  do 
with  men's  notions  about  birth,  and  more  especially  those  about 
death,  and  these  have  only  just  been  expounded.  Thus,  a  man 
■over  whom  there  impends  a  speedy  and  inevitable  death  is  said 
to  be  fey.1 

Our  ancestors,  like  other  heathens,  appear  to  have  made  a 
distinction  between  destiny  and  fortune.  Their  gods  bestow 
prosperity  and  bliss :  above  all,  Wuotan  is  the  giver  of  all  good, 
the  maker  and  author  of  life  and  victory  (pp.  133-7).  But 
neither  he  nor  any  other  god  was  at  the  beginning  of  creation, 
he  has  himself  sprung  out  of  it  (p.  559),  and  can  do  nothing 
against  a  higher  constitution  of  the  world,  which  exempts  neither 
him  nor  victory-lending  Zeus  2  from  a  general  destruction  (pp. 
316-8).  Some  things  turn  out  contrary  to  his  will  :  OSinn 
and  all  the  ases  cannot  prevent  the  misfortune  of  Balder ; 
another  instance  of  overruling  destiny  at  p.  425.  Ragnarok,  the 
world's  destruction,  far  overtops  the  power  of  the  gods. 

This  predetermined  and  necessary  character  of  all  that  comes 
into  being  and  exists  and  perishes,  was  expressed  by  a  plural 

1  OHG.  feigi,  MHG.  veige ;  OS.  fegi,  Hel.  72,  4;  AS.  feege,  Beow.  5946;  ON. 
feigr.     The  old  meaning  of  the  word  has  been  preserved  longest  in  Lower  Saxony 

[and  Scotland] :  '  dar  is  en  veege  in'n  huse ' ;  '  en  ree^minsche,  dat  balde  sterven 
werd  (will  die  soon) '  ;  per  contra,  '  he  is  nau  nig  veege  (not  fey  yet)  '  of  a  man 
who  comes  in  when  you  are  talking  of  him.  Also  Nethl.  '  een  veeg  man  (with  one 
foot  in  the  grave),  een  veege  teken  (sign  of  death)',  hence  also  veeg  =  debilis,  peri- 
culis  expositus.  Our  own  feig  has  acquired  the  sense  of  fainthearted,  cowardly, 
pitiable,  as  the  Lat.  fatalis  has,  in  the  Fr.  fatal,  that  of  unlucky,  disagreeable.  So 
the  Lith.  paikas,  bad  (see  Suppl.). 

2  Tpdievffi  povXerai  vLktjv  (II.  7,  21.  16,  121),  as  (3ov\i)  will,  counsel,  is  usually 
attributed  to  Zeus  (t)/juv  /3oi<\ercu  17,  331)  ;  and  sometimes  voos  (17,  176)  or  vori/na, 
purpose  (17,  409).  His  great  power  is  illustrated  by  the  gold  chain  (cretpa,  II.  8, 
19 — 28),  but  passages  presently  to  be  cited  shew  that  he  had  to  leave  destiny  to  be 
decided  by  the  balance. 

856 


DESTINY.  857 

noun,  ON.  scop,  OS.  giscapu,  AS.  gesceapu ;  I  have  not  found 
an  OHG.  scaf,  kiscaf  in  the  same  sense,  though  the  sing,  is  forth- 
coming, and,  like  the  sing,  skap  in  ON.,  signifies  indoles,  con- 
silium, Graff  6,  450.  The  later  Icelandic  uses  a  masc.  skapnaffr, 
and  the  Dan.  skiebne  (ON.  skepna  =  forma,  indoles).  The  OS. 
intensifies  its  giscapu  by  prefixes :  wurdlgiscapu,  Hel.  103,  7. 
reganoglscapu  (supra  p.  26),  decreta  fati,  superorum,  where  the 
old  heathen  notions  of  wurd  and  regin  plainly  assert  themselves. 
In  ON.  the  neut.  pi.  log  (statuta)  is  never  used  of  destiny,  except 
when  joined  to  the  particle  or  (for  or),  orlog,  which  in  all  the 
other  dialects  becomes  a  sing.,  OHG.  urlac  (neut.  ?  Graff's 
quotations  2,  96-7  leave  it  doubtful,  Notker  uses  urlag  as  masc, 
pi.  urlaga),  OS.  orlag,  AS.  orlceg,  all  denoting  a  'fixing  from 
the  first ; '  but  as  the  most  momentous  issue  of  fate  was  to  the 
heathen  that  of  war,  it  early  deviated  into  the  sense  of  bellum, 
and  in  Hel.  132,  3  urlagi  bellum  seems  distinct  from  orlag,  orleg 
fatum,  but  in  reality  both  are  one.  So  the  OHG.  urteil,  urteili, 
AS.  ordcel,  from  being  the  award  of  a  judge,  came  to  mean  that 
of  battle.  The  OS.  compound  aldarlagu  (vitae  decretum),  Hel. 
125,  15  retains  the  old  plural  form.  Now  aldr,  aldar  is  strictly 
aevum  (p.  792),  and  hveila,  OHG.  Inula  tempus,  but  also  vitae 
tempus;  hence  these  words  also  run  into  the  sense  of  fatum, 
conf.  AS.  gesceap-hwil,  orleg-hwil,  Beow.  52.  4849.  5817,  OS. 
oiiag-hutla,  Hel.  103,  8,  and  OHG.  Jadlsdlida.1  Then  there  is 
an  ON.  aucfna,  Swed.  ode,  destiny,  and  '  auftinn  '  fato  concessus  : 
'  au&iia  raeSr  hvors  mauns  lifi/  rules  every  man's  life,  Fornald. 
sog.  1,  95.  Our  modern  words,  not  introduced  till  late,  schicksal 
(fr.  schicken  aptare,  conf.  geschickt  aptus),  verhangnis,  fiigung, 
do  not  come  up  to  the  old  ones  in  simplicity  or  strength. 

To  the  nouns  'scapu,  lagu/  correspond  the  verbs  to  shape,  to 
lay,  which  are  used  in  a  special  sense  of  the  decrees  of  fate  (pp. 
407.  410):  fist  tha  kindee  skepen  (is  it  shaped  for  the  child)'  says 
the  O.  Fris.  Law  49,  10.  But  we  also  meet  with  an  ON.  cetla 
(destinare,  to  intend  for  some  one),  OHG.  ahton  and  perhaps 
ahtilon,  MHG.  ahten,  and  beslahten,  as  ahte  and  slahte  are  akin 
to  one  another  (see  Suppl.). 

1  WiU&lda  (fortuna),  N.  Cap.  20-3-5.  53.  77.  MHG.  wihcelde,  Kaiserchr.  1757. 
Massmaim  3,  6G9.  Geo.  61a.  '  diu  utile  mm  und  ich  miiez  Got  bevollien  siu,'  must 
bs  committed  to  God,  Bit.  3b. 


858  DESTINY  AND   WELL-BEING. 

Destiny  has  principally  to  do  with  the  beginning  and  the  end 
of  human  life.  The  Wurd  visits  the  newborn  and  the  dying, 
and  it  is  for  one  or  the  other  of  these  events  that  the  above- 
mentioned  names  of  destiny  are  mostly  used  by  the  poets ;  thus 
Beow.  51  speaks  of  dying  '  to  gesceaphwile/  at  the  appointed 
time :  Hel.  103,  7 :  '  tho  quamun  wurdegiscapu  themu  odagan 
man,  orlaghuile,  that  he  thit  licht  farlet.'  The  hour  of  birth  too 
settles  much  as  to  the  course  and  outcome  of  one's  life  :  '  qualem 
Nascentia  attulit,  talis  erit,'  and  '  Parcae,  dam  aliquis  nascitur, 
valent  eum  designare  ad  hoc  quod  volunt,'  Superst.  A,  and  C 
198\  The  infant's  whole  course  of  life  shall  be  conformable  to 
what  the  norns  or  fays  in  their  visitation  have  bestowed,  have 
shaped. 1 

It  is  a  deviation  from  this  oldest  way  of  thinking,  to  put  the 
settlement  of  destiny  into  the  hands  of  the  gods ;  yet  it  is  a 
very  old  one.  Undoubtedly  the  faith  of  many  men  began  early 
to  place  the  Highest  God  at  the  very  head  of  the  world's  manage- 
ment, leaving  those  weird-women  merely  to  make  known  his 
mandates.  The  future  lies  on  the  lap  of  the  gods,  Oecou  ev  yovvaac 
/cetTcu,  and  with  this  agrees  that  '  laying  on  the  lap,'  that  '  taking 
to  the  bosom/  which  is  performed  by  the  paternal  or  maternal 
deity  (pp.  642.  839).  If  above  the  gods  themselves  there  could 
be  conceived  a  still  higher  power,  of  the  beginning  and  end  of  all 
things,  yet  their  authority  and  influence  was  regarded  by  men  as 
boundless  and  immeasurable,  all  human  concerns  were  undoubtedly 
under  their  control  (see  Suppl.). 

The  Gautrekssaga  tells  us  (Fornald.  sog.  3,  32),  that  at  mid- 
night Hrosshdrsgrani2  awoke  his  foster-son  Starkaftr,  and  carried 
him  in  his  boat  to  an  island.  There,  in  a  wood,  eleven  men  sat 
in  council ;  the  twelfth  chair  stood  vacant,  but  Hrossharsgrani 
took  it,  and  all  saluted  him  as  OSinn.  And  OSinn  said,  the 
demsters  should  deem  the  doom  of  StarkaSr  (domendr  skyldi 
doema  orlug  St.).  Then  spake  Thorr,  who  was  wroth  with  the 
mother  of  the  lad :  I  shape  for  him,  that  he  have  neither  son  nor 

1  We  still  say:  '  born  in  happy  hourS  OHG.  '  mit  heilu  er  giboran  ward,'  O. 
Sal.  44.  Freq.  in  tbeO.  Span.  Cid  :  '  el  que  en  buen  ora  nascio,  el  que  en  buen  punto 
nascio.'  From  this  notion  of  a  good  hour  of  beginning  (a  la  bonne  heure)  has 
sprung  the  Fr.  word  bonheur  (masc.)  for  good  hap  in  general.  Similarly,  about 
receiving  knighthood,  the  0.  Span,  has  '  el  que  en  buen  ora  ciuxo  espada.' 

-  That  is,  Grani,  Si'Sgrani,  the  bearded,  a  by-name  of  OSinn  (p.  147). 


DESTINY.  859 

daughter,  but  be  the  last  of  his  race.  OSinn  said :  I  shape  him, 
that  he  live  three  men's  lifetimes  (conf.  Saxo  Gram.  p.  103). 
Thorr:  in  each  lifetime  he  shall  do  a  '  niSings-verk/  OSinn: 
I  shape  him,  that  he  have  the  best  of  weapons  and  raiment. 
Thorr  :  he  shall  have  neither  land  nor  soil.  OSinn  :  I  give  him, 
that  he  have  store  of  money  and  chattels.  Thorr :  I  lay  unto 
him,  that  he  take  in  every  battle  grievous  wounds.  OSinn  :  I 
give  him  the  gift  of  poetry.  Thorr:  what  he  composes  he  shall 
not  be  able  to  remember.  OSinn :  this  I  shape  him,  that  he  be 
prized  by  the  best  and  noblest  men.  Thorr :  by  the  people  he 
shall  be  hated.  Then  the  demsters  awarded  to  StarkaSr  all  the 
doom  that  was  deemed,  the  council  broke  up,  and  Hrossharsgrani 
and  his  pupil  went  to  their  boat. 

Thorr  plays  here  exactly  the  part  of  the  ungracious  fay  (pp. 
411-2),  he  tries  to  lessen  each  gift  by  a  noxious  ingredient. 
And  it  is  not  for  an  infant,  but  a  well-grown  boy,  and  in  his 
presence,  that  the  destiny  is  shaped. 

According  to  Greek  legend,  Zeus  did  not  always  decide 
directly,  but  made  use  of  two  scales,  in  which  he  weighed  the 
fates  of  men,  e.g.  of  the  Trojans  and  Achaeans,  of  Achilles  and 
Hector : 

Kal  rore  hrj  -^pvaeia  Trarijp  iirlraive  rdXavra' 

iv  8'  eridei  Svo  Kr/pe  TavrjXeyeos  Qavaroio, 

Tpcocov  #'  i7nro8dfjiOiV  Kal  ^Ayaiwv  yjxKKoyj,TOivodV . 

e\/ce  8e  fieaaa  \a/3(ov  peire  S'  alcrifxov  rjfiap  Ayaiwv. 

II.  8,  69.  22,  209;  conf.  16,  u58.  19,  223.  The  same  of 
Aeneas  and  Turnus,  Aen.  12,  723  : 

Jupiter  ipse,  duas  aequato  examine  lances 

sustinet,  et  fata  imponit  di versa  duorum, 

quem  damnet  labor,  et  quo  vergat  pondere  letum. 

I  am  the  more  particular  in  quoting  these,  as  the  christian  legend 
also  provides  the  archangel  Michael,  the  conductor  of  souls,  with 
scales,  in  which  the  good  and  evil  deeds  of  them  that  die  are 
weighed  against  one  another,  and  the  destinies  of  souls  determined 
by  the  outcome1  (see  Suppl.).  The  application  of  a  balance  to 
actions,  to  sins,  is  very  natural ;  the  (apocryphal)  2  Esdras  3,  31 

i  Conf.  Deut.  S.  no.  479;  a  coll.  of  authorities  in  Zapport's  Vita   Acotanti 
(Vienna  1839),  pp.  7'J,  83. 


860  DESTINY  AND   WELL-BEING. 

has:  'nunc  ergo  pondera  in  statera  nostras  iniquitates/  and  4, 
36  :  '  quoniam  in  statera  ponderavit  seoulum/1  The  Jomsvikinga- 
saga  cap.  42  (Fornm.  sog.  11,  128-9)  describes  the  magical  luck- 
scales  or  wishing-scales  of  Hakon  iarl :  '  SrSan  tekr  iarl  skdlir 
go&ar  beer  er  hann  atti,  ]>sev  voro  gervar  af  brendu  silfri  ok  gylldar 
allar,  en  bar  fylg^o  2  met,  annat  af  gulli  en  annat  af  silfri ;  a 
hvarotveggja  metino  var  gert  sem  vaeri  likneskja,  ok  heto  ]?at 
hlotar,  en  ]?at  voro  reyndar  hlutir,  sem  moimum  var  titt  at  hafa, 
ok  fylgSi  ]>esso  nattura  mikil,  ok  til  bess  alls,  er  iarli  botti  skipta, 
ba  hafSi  hann  ]?essa  hluti.  Iarl  var  bvi  vanr  at  leggja  hluti  bessa 
i  skalirnar,  ok  kva'S  a  hvat  hvar  skyldi  merkja  fyrir  honum,  ok 
avalt  er  vel  gengo  hlutir,  ok  sa  kom  upp,  er  hann  vildi,  ba  var  sa 
okyrr  hlutrinn  i  skalinni,  er  bat  merkfti  at  hann  vildi  at  yrSi,  ok 
breysti  sa  hlutrinn  nokkot  sva  i  skalinni,  at  glam  vaivS  af/ 

I  do  not  find  that  in  our  earlier  heathen  time  the  fates  of  men 
were  calculated  from  the  stars  at  their  birth.  This  kind  of 
soothsaying  (p.  721)  seems  not  to  have  become  known  till  the 
latter  part  of  the  Mid.  Ages.  Radulphus  Ardens  (an  Aquitanian 
priest  of  the  11th  cent.)  says  in  his  Homilies  (Antverp.  1576, 
p.  41b)  :  Cavete,  fratres,  ab  eis  qui  mentiuntur,  quod  quando 
quisque  nascitur,  stella  sua  secum  nascitur,  qua  fatum  ejus  con- 
stituitur,  sumentes  in  erroris  sui  argumentum,  quod  hie  in  scrip- 
tura  sacra  (on  the  star  of  the  Magi)  dicitur  '  stella  ejus.'  One 
instance  we  find  in  Klinsor's  star-gazing  on  the  Wartburg; 
another  in  the  wishing-wife  who  looks  into  the  stars,  Altd.  bl. 
1,  129  (see  Suppl.). 

For  individuals  then,  as  well  as  for  whole  families  and  nations, 
length  of  days  and  happiness  were  ordained  beforehand.3  But 
the  decrees  of  norns  and  gods  lay  shrouded  in  an  obscurity  that 
disclosed  its  secrets  only  to  the  glances  of  wise  men  and  women 
(p.  400). 3  The  people  believed  in  a  predetermining  of  fates,  as 
they  did  in  the  certainty  of  death. 


1  We  need  not  go  to  2  Esdras  to  find  plenty  of  similar  passages  in  the  0.  T., 
e.g.  1  Sam.  2,  3.     Job  31,  6.     Prov.  16,  2.     Isa.  26,  7.     Dan.  5,  27.— Trans. 

2  Not  unfrequeutly  depending  on  their  possession  of  certain  things  :  a  hoard 
drags  the  whole  kindred  of  the  Nibelungs  to  ruin ;  the  gift,  the  jewel,  of  the  dwarfs 
(p.  457)  insures  the  prosperity  of  particular  families. 

3  It  is  worthy  of  remark,  that,  ace.  to  the  ON.  view,  not  all  the  gods,  hut  only 
the  highest  ones  possessed  a  knowledge  of  destiny ;  so  to  the  Greeks,  none  but  Zeus 
and  those  whom  he  made  his  confidants  knew  of  it.  Of  Frigg  it  is  said,  Sasm. 
6ab:  'at  oil  orlog  viti,  bott  hun  sialfgi  segi,'  all  fates  she  knows,  but  tells  not.    And 


FATALISM. 


861 


The  Old  Norse  fatalism  is  proved  by  the  following  passages : 
(lagt  er  alt  for,'  predestined  is  all;  and  ' era  meS  lostom  IdgcS 
ten  her/  Sasin.  1 75b.  '  sia  mun  gipt  lagiff  a  grams  ash/  and 
'munat  skopom  vinna/  179b.  '  eino  dcegri  mer  var  aldr  urn 
shapadr  oc  allt  lif  am  lag  It/  83a.  '  var  her  J>ar  s&apa*/  164b.  ' J>at 
verSr  hverr  at  vinna,  er  cetlat  er ' ;  '  bat  man  verSa  fram  atkoma, 
sem  ce£?a<  er';  'ecki  man  mer  bat  stoSa,  ef  mer  er  dauffinn 
cetla&r ' ;  '  koma  man  til  min  feigcfin,  hvar  sem  ek  em  staddr,  ef 
mer  verSr  bess  aucTit',  Nialss.  pp.  10.  23.  62.  103.  So  in  Swed. 
and  Dan.  folksongs:  '  detta  var  mig  spadt  uti  min  barndom/ 
Arvidss.  2,  271.  '  liver  skal  nyde  skiebnen  sin/  Danske  V.  1, 
193. 

The  same  with  our  MHG.  poets :  '  swaz  sioh  sol  fiiegen,  wer 
mac  daz  understen  (what  is  to  happen,  who  can  hinder)  V  Nib. 
1618,  1.  'swaz  geschehen  sol,  daz  fiieget  sich/  what  shall  be, 
will  be,  Frauend.  'da  sterbent  wan  die  veigen,'  there  die  (none) 
but  the  fey,  Nib.  149,  2.  '  ez  sterbent  niuwan  die  veigen,  die 
lfegen  doch  da  heime  tot/  would  lie  dead  though  at  home, 
Wigal.  10201.  'di  veigen  fielen  dar  nider/  Lampr.  2031.  'hin- 
nerstirbet  niman  wan  di  veigen/  Pf.  Chuonr.  8403.  'then  veigen 
mac  nieman  behuoten,  thin  erthe  ne  mag  in  niht  uf  gehaven 
(hold  up),  scol  er  tha  werthen  geslagen,  er  starve  (would  die) 
thoh  thaheime/  Fr.  belli  42b.  '  swie  ringe  er  ist,  der  veige  man, 
in  mac  ros  noch  enkan  niht  vtirbaz  getragen/  the  fey  man,  how- 
ever light,  no  horse  can  carry  farther,  Karl  72b.  Rol.  207,  24. 
'  die  veigen  muosen  ligen  tot/  Livl.  chron.  59b.  '  der  veigen  mac 
keiner  genesen/  none  recover,  ib.  78a.  'ich  ensterbe  niht  vor 
minem  tac  (day)/  Herb.  53d.  'nieman  sterben  sol  wan  zu  sinem 
gesatten  zil  (goal)/  Ulr.  Trist.  2308.  'daz  aver  (whatever)  scol 
werden,  daz  nemac  nieman  erwenden  (avert)/  Diut.  3,  71.  'ge- 
mach  erwenden  niht  enkan  swaz  dem  man  geschehen  sol/  Troj. 
58°.  'daz  muose  wesen  (what  had  to  be),  daz  geschach/  Orl. 
11167.  'swaz  geschehen  sol,  daz  geschiht.'  Freid.  132b.  MS.  1, 
M\  71b.  'daz  soli  rid  sin,  nu  ist  ez  geschehen/  MS.  74a.  80a. 
'  ez    geschiht    niht  wan    daz    sol  geschehen/    Lanz.    6931.     '  ez 

OSinn  says  (62b),  that  Gefjon  knows  the  world's  destiny  (aldar  orlog)  equally  with 
himself.  Among  men,  particular  heroes  and  priests  spy  out  the  secrets  of  the 
future,  preeminently  Grlpir  (p.  94);  to  women,  to  priestesses,  belonged  the  gift  of 
divination. 


862  DESTINY  AND   WELL-BEING. 

ergat  doch  niht,  wan  als  ez  sol/  Trist.  6776.  '  tot  avenra  qan- 
que  doit  avenir/  Ogier  7805.  f  bin  icli  genislich,  so  genise  ich/ 
if  I  was  made  to  live  thro'  it,  I  shall,  A.  Heinr.  190.  '  swaz  ich 
getuon  (do),  bin  ich  genislich,  ich  genise  wol ;  bin  ich  dem  valle 
ergeben  (doomed  to  fall),  so  n'  hilfet  mich  min  woltuon  nicht  ein 
har/  MS.  2,  129\  '  ez  muose  sin,  und  ez  was  mir  beschaffen/  it 
was  to  be,  was  shaped  for  me  (134b).  f  diu  maget  was  iu  beschaf- 
fen,' that  girl  was  cut  out  for  you,  Wigal.  1002.  (  ez  was  im 
beslaht  (destined)/  Eracl.  2394.  'swaz  ist  geschaffen  (shapen), 
daz  muoz  geschehen/  MsH.  3,  434b.  'nu  mir  daz  was  in  teile/ 
well,  that  was  in  my  lot  (portion),  En.  11231.  '  ez  was  enteile  uns 
getdn/  Herb.  18418.  'ez  ist  mich  angebom/  I  was  born  to  it, 
Herb.  6C. — The  words  geschajfen,  beschaffen  and  beslaht  are  identi- 
cal with  the  ON.  shajpat  and  aztlat,  and  this  sameness  of  the 
words  testifies  to  their  original  connexion  with  the  heathen  doc- 
trine. Even  at  the  present  day  the  fatalist  view  prevails  largely 
among  the  common  people  (Jul.  Schmidt  pp.  91.  163).  ' ez  miiste 
mir  sein  gemacht  gewesen,'  must  have  been  made  for  me,  Sieben 
ehen  eines  weibes,  p.  211.  'fatum  in  vulgari  dicitur  "'tis  allotted 
unto  me  (bescheert,  my  share)";  ego  autem  addo  "allotting  and 
deserving  run  alway  side  by  side."'  Sermones  disc,  de  tempore, 
sermo  21.  '  was  bescheert  ist,  entlauft  nicht,'  Schweinichen  3, 
249   (see  Suppl.).1 

Now,  in  themselves,  the  gifts  of  destiny  would  include  every 
earthly  blessing.  But  gradually  men  began  ascribing  whatever 
in  human  life  seemed  bane  or  blessing  (excepting  birth  and 
death)  to  a  separate  being  :  thus  the  Greeks  and  Romans,  in 
addition  to  /jioipa  and  fatum,  held  by  an  independent  Tv^v  and 
Fortuna. 

Miulenhoff  in  the  Nordalbingia  p.  11  (conf.  Schlesw.  hoist, 
sagen  xliv)  infers  from  the  name  of  a  place  Welanao,  occurring 
in  Ansgar  (Pertz  2,  687-99),  an  OS.  god  Welo,  AS.  Wela,  the 
very  thing  I  had  had  in  my  mind  (p.  163)  :  an  older  god  of  weal 
in  the  place  of  the  later  goddess  Salida,  Seelde.  But  instead  of 
his  interpretation  Welanaha,  I  should  prefer  Welan-owa,  which 
is  supported  by  the  more  modern  Welnau,  a  place  that  stood  on 

1  The  same  belief  is  held  by  the  Lithuanians  andLettons,  fate  they  call  likkimas 
liktens,  from  lik-t  to  lay  down,  arrange  :  '  tai  buwo  jo  likkims,'  '  tas  jau  bija  wiu- 
iiara  liktz ,'  that  was  destined  for  him. 


\ 


WEAL.       S.ELDE.  863 

the  right  bank  of  the  Elbe  near  Itzehoe,  the  river  Stor  having 
apparently  formed  the  faue,  ea';  Welan-owa  would  then  be 
uniform  with  Wunschesouwa  and  Pholesouwa  (p.  600).  The 
great  thing  is,  first  to  establish  from  other  sources  the  personality 
of  Welo,  which  the  quotations  from  the  Heliand  fail  to  do,  for 
welanowa  taken  simply  as  isle  of  luck  ( Atterbom's  lycksalighetens 
6)  is  quite  compatible  with  the  old  ways  of  thinking  :  Reichenau 
(augia  dives)  has  much  the  same  meaning,  and  in  the  vicinity  of 
Welnau  has  arisen  Gliickstadt.  In  the  AS.  '  welan  bewunden  ' 
(Gramm.  4,  752),  wela  is  used,  though  mythically,  yet  not  of  a 
person  but  a  thing :  God  himself  sits  '  welan  bewunden/  Adam 
and  Eve  stand  'mid  welan  bewunden/  wrapt  in  splendour,  in 
bliss,  Casdm.  42,  2.  27,  19.  But  the  'gold  welan  bewunden' 
forms  a  contrast  to  the  '  gold  galdre  bewunden/  a  holy  divine 
power  is  imagined  confronting  that  of  sorcery ;  and  this  wela 
does  seem  to  lead  up  to  Wela,  as  the  kindred  notion  of  wunsch 
to  Wunsch. 

The  ON.  distinguishes  its  fem.  heill  (felicitas)  from  a  neut.  heil 
(omen),  so  does  the  AS.  its  haelu  f.  (salus)  from  hael  n.  (omen), 
and  the  OHG.  its  heili  f.  (salus)  from  heil  n,  (omen).  Both 
meanings  are  combined  in  MHG.  heil  n.  Personifications  of 
this  I  scarcely  know,  unless  such  be  intended  by  a  passage 
obscure  to  me,  Ottoc.  683b,  which  gives  out  as  a  common  pro- 
verb :  f  chum  hail  hauenstain  !  '  In  MS.  2,  130b  :  '  waz  ob  iuwer 
heil  eime  andern  kumet  an  sin  seil/  what  if  your  hap  prove 
another's  hanging?  And  so  early  as  0.  ii.  18,  7  :  'thaz  heil  ni 
gifahit  iuwih/  luck  comes  not  your  way  (see  Suppl.). 

On  the  other  hand,  it  is  the  commonest  thing  with  our  13th 
cent,  poets  to  treat  scelde  (fortuna)  as  a  female  person,  and  that 
apparently  not  in  imitation  of  the  Romance  writings  :  even  the 
OHG.  sdlida  occurs  with  the  like  import,  and  the  compound 
huUsdlida  (supra  p.  857)  was  a  stronger  expression  of  the  same 
thing.  0.  i.  26,  4  speaking  of  the  baptism  of  Christ  in  the 
water,  uses  a  remarkable  phrase,  to  which  no  church  writer  could 
have  prompted  him:  fsid  wacheta  alien  mannon  thiu  Sdlida  in 
then  undon.'  Waking  presupposes  life.  The  personification 
comes  out  still  more  clearly  in  poets  four  centuries  after  him  : 
'  unser  Scelde  wachet,'  Parz.  550,  10.  '  min  sorgo  slafet,  so  din 
Svlde  wachei;  Tit.  31,  3.     'z'aller  zit  des  S.  wachet/  MS.  1,  16". 


864  DESTINY  AND   WELL-BEING. 

'  unser  8.  diu  wil  wachen,'  Trist.  9430.  '  des  nocli  sin  8.  wachet/ 
Ernst.  5114.  'ir  8.  ivachet,'  Amgb.  35a.  '  daz  mir  S.  wache,' 
ib.  43a.  '  ich  wren  sin  8.  slafe,'  ib.  44a.  '  so  ist  im  al  diu  8. 
ertaget  (dawned)/  Trist.  9792.  '  diu  S.  ist  dir  betaget,'  Wartb. 
kr.  jen.  21.  'diu  S.  was  mit  im  betaget]  Dietr.  5a.  27a.  'iuwer 
8.  wirt  erwecket,'  Lohengr.  19.  Observe  in  these  MHG.  quota- 
tions the  frequent  poss.  pron.1  or  gen.  case  :  the  Saelde  dedicates 
herself  to  certain  men,  protects  and  prospers  them,  wakes  for 
them  while  they  sleep,  as  we  say  '  luck  came  to  me  in  my  sleep/ 
A  mode  of  speech  so  common  need  not  always  be  felt  to  personify  : 
'  daz  im  sin  heil  niht  slief/  Troj.  9473.  '  da  wachet  schande, 
und  slaeft  daz  heil/  Zauberbecher  (magic  bowl)  1113.  'Tristans 
geliicke  da  niht  slief/  Heinr.  Tr.  2396.  It  was  even  extended  to 
other  notions  of  the  same  kind  :  '  wachet  sin  ere  und  ouch  sin 
lop/  honour,  praise,  Amgb.  47a.  '  ir  milte  wachet/  ib.  12b.  '  ir 
genade  (kindness)  mir  muoz  wachen/  MS.  1,  33a.  'ich  weene  an 
ir  ist  genade  entslafen  (asleep),  daz  ich  ir  leider  niht  erwecken 
kan/  MS.  1,  48a.  '  du  (minne)  bist  gegen  mir  hart  entslafen/ 
MS.  1,  60a.  'min  schade  wachet/  Ben.  121.  'din  kraft  mit 
ellen  do  niht  slief/  Parz.  85,  24.  We  still  say,  '  treason  sleeps 
not5;  and  some  phrases  of  this  sort  can  have  a  personal  sense. 
The  heathen  colouring  of  Sselde's  waking  and  being  waked  I  infer 
chiefly  from  the  analogous  '  vekja  Hildi '  noticed  on  p.  422,  who 
not  only  was  awaked,  but  herself  awoke  the  heroes  (Sn.  164). 
And  '  vilbiorg  seal  vaka,'  Seem.  46a,  may  bear  the  same  meaning : 
we  can  translate  it  '  jucunda  salus/  or  suppose  it  a  proper  noun. 
FroSi  makes  Fenja  and  Menja  (p.  531)  grind  gold,  peace  and 
happiness  (gull,  frr§  oc  sselu),  allowing  them  but  scanty  rest  at 
night :  they  wake  to  grind  prosperity  for  him,  and  afterwards 
misfortune  (salt)  for  Mysingr,  Sn.  146-7  (see  Suppl.). 

And  this  is  far  from  being  the  only  way  personification  is 
applied  to  her.  Saslde  is  called  frau,  she  appears,  meets,  bends 
her  face  toward  her  favourites,  hearkens  to  them  (as  a  god  hears 
prayer),  smiles  on  them,  greets  them,  is  kind  and  obliging,  but 
can  be  cross ;  those  whom  she  dislikes,  she  forgets,  shuns,  flees, 
runs  away  from,2  turns  her  back  upon  ;  she   has  a  door  and  a 

1  So  :  '  des  si  min  S.  gein  iu  bote,'  Parz.  416,  4.     '  des  sol  mm  S.  pfant  sin,'  be 
pledge  tbereof,  Frauend.  23.     '  lat  dir'z  din  S.  wol  gezemen,'  MS.  2,  252''. 

2  This  escaping  is  the  same   thing   as  the  ON.  hverfa  (evauescere)  :    heillir 


SCELDE. 


865 


road.  Here  again  old  Otfrid  leads  the  way  (ii.  7,  20):  '  tliiu 
Sdlida  iu  tliar  gaganta'  (eis  occurrit).  Walther  sings  55,35: 
'fro  Scelde  teilet  umbe  sich  (scatters  gifts  around),  and  heret  mir 
den  rugge  zuo  (turns  her  back),  sie  stet  ungerne  gegen  mir,  si  n' 
ruochet  (recks)  mich  niht  an  gesehen' ;  and  43,  5:  '  mm  frou  S., 
wie  si  min  vergaz  ! '  '  vro  S.  bat  iu  an  sich  genomen,  wil  din 
pflegen  (cherish)/  Ecke  10,  160.  '  ob  vrouwe  8.  mines  heiles 
welle  ruochen/  Ben.  425.  '  die  wile  es  min  8.  ruochte,'  Parz. 
689,  20.  '  haste  mir  diu  8.  ir  ore  baz  geneiget,'  inclined  her  ear, 
MS.  2,  220b.  *  do  was  mir  8.  entrunnen,'  Parz.  689,  8.  '  8.  was 
sin  geleite,'  conductress,  Wigal.  8389.  'frou  8.  ir  was  bereit,' 
ready  to  belp,  Er.  3459 ;  and  perhaps  we  ought  to  add  what 
follows:  fdiu  Gotes  hovescheit  ob  miner  frowen  swebtc,'  God's 
kindness  over  my  lady  hovered;  for  so  hover  the  valkyrs  over 
the  heroes  they  befriend.  'Got  wise  mich  der  Scelden  wcge,' 
guide  me  on  Fortune's  way,  Parz.  8,  16.  'den  vuoz  (foot)  setzen 
in  der  8.  pfat,'  Ben.  306.  '  fro  we  S.  muoz  in  uf  ir  strdze  wisen,' 
Tit.  5218.  'der  Scelden  stic/  path,  Karl  19\  'iiber  fro  8.  stec 
gan,'  Fragm.  46a.  '  tuo  mir  lif  (open)  der  8.  tur ! '  MS.  1,  36a. 
'der  8.  porte/  A.  Heinr.  243,  33.  'der  S.  tier  besliezen,'  shut, 
MsH.  3,  336a.  'setzen  zuo  der  8.  tur,3  Zauberb.  1150.  'den 
begiuzet  S.  vluot,'  flood,  MsH.  3,  205a.  '  Scelde  und  ir  gesinde 
(household)  wait  ir,'  MS.  1,  88b.  '  diu  Sdlde  folget  sinen  vanen,' 
follows  his  banners,  Lampr.  2089.  'mir  enwil  diu  S.  ninder 
folgen  einen  fuoz,'  Ben.  367.  '  mir  ist  diu  8.  gram,'  unfriendly, 
Gregor  2390.  'diu  8.  was  ime  gram/  Diut.  1,  10.  Athis  D.  84. 
'  diu  S.  vliuhet  (flees)  von  mir,'  Greg.  1526.  '  diu  8.  hat  mich 
verldn,'  Karl  95a.  '  diu  8.  hat  si  besezzen,'  possessed  her,  Wigal. 
884.  '  diu  S.  het  ir  gesworn'  941.  '  diu  8.  het  zuo  im  gesworn 
zeim  streten  ingesinde,'  to  be  his  steadfast  follower,  Lanz.  1561. 
c  der  Scelden  spil,'  game,  Wigal.  8761.  9271.  9386.  '  diu  gespll 
der  8.;  playmate  10532.  '  swes  diu  S.  ze  gesellen  gert/  desires 
as  companion  945.  '  im  gab  diu  8.  ir  hantgift,'  Silv.  534.  '  diu 
8.  vluz  im  in  den  munt'  1024.  '  ez  rise  (drop)  uf  dich  der  8. 
tuft'  1389.  'so  griienet  diner  S.  ris,'  spray,  MsH.  2,  258\ 
'fro n we  S.  lachet  mir,'  laughs,  Ernst  4334.  '  daz  dir  fro  8.  lache, 
und  al  din  heil  bewache,'  Silv.  2565.     'Fortune  wolt  im  do  niht 

horfnar  (felicitates  evanitae),  Ssem.  93a.     '  swi  ime  di  Salden  volgen,  werdent  si  ime 
verbolgen,  si  ne  keren  zornliche  wider,'  once  offended,  they  come  not  back,  Al.  618'J. 


866  DESTINY  AND  WELL-BEING. 

me  genaedeclichen  (graciously)  lachen'  Troj.  5754.  '  so  decket 
uns  der  S.  huot,'  hood,  hat,  Winsbekin  45,  7  :  a  wishing-cap. 
'  daz  iuch  frouwe  8.  miieze  behullen'  (fovere),  Lohengr.  101: 
behullen  prob.  in  its  literal  sense,  to  wrap,  to  clothe,  as  Walther 
43,  1  and  7  makes  fro  Saelde  hidden  (clothe)  people,  and  schroten 
(cut  out)  for  them  ;  she  cuts  out  sorrow  and  high  courage.  And 
so,  no  doubt,  under  many  more  aspects,  which  we  can  guess  from 
our  present  figures  of  speech :  '  fortune  favours,  visits,  pursues 
him/  etc.  etc.  And  here  again  we  find,  even  in  old  poets,  the 
more  vague  neuter  :  '  geliicke  hat  den  nuwen  gegen  mir  gekert,' 
turned  its  back  toward  me,  LS.  1,238;  'hat  den  nuwen  noch 
gegen  mir  endecket ;  enblecket  gen  mir  sinen  zan  (bared  its 
teeth,  gnashed) ;  het  zer  rechten  hende  griff  en '  3,  539.  '  do 
kerte  von  im  unde  vloch  geliicke,'  Troj.  5750.  We  say  'my 
fortune  blooms,  grows/  as  though  it  were  attached  to  a  tree 
or  herb:  'mein  gliicke  das  bliihete  mir/  Schweinichen  1,  170. 
'geliicke  wahset  mit  genuht/  Troj.  5686.  'uns  ist  niht  wol 
erschozen  geliicke'  12438.  'Got  wil  uns  saslde  lazen  wahsen/ 
Lohengr.  QQ.  The  proverb  '  das  gliick  kommt  von  ungefahr  wol 
iiber  neunzig  stauden  her/  Simplic.  2,  158,  well  expresses  the 
suddenness  and  surpi'ise,  the  windfall  nature  of  luck,  to  which 
are  owing  the  very  names  of  tv^v  (from  rv^elv,  Tv<y%dveiv)  and 
fortuna  (from  fors).  Very  likely  some  of  the  phrases  quoted 
above  have  come  to  us  from  the  ancients,  or  they  had  them  in 
common  with  us  (see  Suppl.). 

The  tale  of  the  Wunderer  (wonder-worker,  Etzels  hofh.  20S), 
makes  frau  Scelde  a  king's  daughter  with  three  miraculous  gifts, 
(1)  that  of  knowing  a  man's  thoughts,  (2)  of  blessing  warriors 
against  wounds  in  battle,  (3)  of  transporting  herself  whither  she 
will  (24 — 26).  Who  can  fail  to  detect  in  this  the  echo  of  an  old 
heathen  valkyr  ? 

The  now  universally  familiar  image  of  Fortune  riding  on  a 
rolling  wheel  (revXivSpos),1  which  was  attributed  to  Fors,  Tyche 
and  Nemesis  (0.  Miiller's  Archiiol.  607),  is,  I  consider,  an  im- 
portation. '  Versatur  celeri  Fors  levis  orbe  rotae,'  Tibull.  i.  5,  70. 
'  stems  in  orbe  dea,'  Ov.  ep.  ex  Ponto  ii.  3,  56.  '  Fortunae  rotam 
pertimescebat/  Cic.  in  Pison.  10.     'rota  Fortunae,'  Tac.  de  orat. 

1  A  different  thing  therefore  from  the  wheel  that  Krodo  and  Vishnu  carry  in 
the  hand  (p.  2-18-9). 


fortune's  wheel.  867 

23.  '  assumptus  in  amplissimum  Fortunae  fastigium,  versabiles 
ejus  rnotus  expertus  est,  qui  ludunt  niortalitatem,  uuuc  evehentes 
quosdam  in  sidera,  nunc  ad  Cocyti  profunda  mergentes/  Amui. 
Marc.  14,  11  :  'Fortunae  volucris  rota  adversa  prosperis  semper 
alternans '  31,  1.  'Fortunae  te  regendum  dedisti,  dominae 
nioribus  oportet  obtemperes,  tu  vero  vol  vent  is  rotae  itnpetuin 
retinere  conaris  ?  Si  manere  incipit,  Fors  esse  desistit/  Boeth.  de 
consol.  ii.  pr.  1.  Notker  cap.  25.  '  rotam  volubili  orbe  versamus 
(says  Fortuna  of  herself),  infima  summis,  sumina  infinais  mutare 
gaudenius.  ascende  si  placet,  sed  ea  lege  uti  ne,  cum  ludicri  mei 
ratio  poscet,  descendere  injuriam  putes/  ib.  ii.  pr.  2. — There 
seem  to  be  two  separate  images  here  :  one,  that  of  the  goddess 
herself  standing  or  sitting *  on  the  revolving  wheel,2  and  so 
whirling  by  in  breathless  haste ;  the  other,  that  she  makes  the 
favoured  ones  ascend  the  wheel,  and  the  unlucky  ones  descend, 
those  soar  aloft,  these  hang  below.  Our  poems  of  the  Mid.  Ages 
often  speak  in  general  terms  of  the  rat  (wheel)  or  schibe  (disc, 
orb)  of  Fortune,  of  luck,  of  Saslde :  '  orbita  Fortunae  ducit 
utroque  rotam  (a  better  reading:  utramque  viam)/  Reinh.  1, 
1494.  '  volubilis  Fortunae  rota/  Rodulfus  chron.  Trudonis,  p. 
381.  ' rota  Fortunae/  Kadevicus  1,40.  f  swaz  ie  geschiht,  daz 
stat  an  gluckes  rode/  whatever  happens  rests  on  fortune's  wheel, 
Freid.  110,  17.  e  daz  im  der  scelekeit  rat  mit  willen  umbe  lief/ 
Troj.  9471  ;  'ja  walzet  ir  geliickes  rat  vil  stseteclich  uf  und  nider, 
her  und  hin,  dan  und  wider  loufet  ez/  her  (i.e.  Saslde's)  wheel  of 
luck  rolls  right  steadfastly,3  etc.  2349.  'im  dienet  daz  geliickes 
rat,  daz  im  nach  eren  umbe  lief  7229.  'geliickes  rat  louft  uns 
die  sumer  und  die  winder/  Lohengr.  119.  '  min  schibe  gat  ze 
wunsche/  Ben.  353  ;  '  dem  get  sin  schibe  enzelt/  360.  '  wol  gie 
(or,  gie  fiir  sich)  ir  schibe/  Lohengr.  146.  189.  '  si  vuoren  (they 
rode)  tif  geliickes  rade/  Flore  844.     '  Scelde  diu  ist  sinewel  (sphe- 

1  Pentam.  5,  9  has  also  a  '  vecchia  seduta  ncoppa  na  rota  '  as  Fortuna. 

2  The  mere  turning  of  a  wheel  (daz  sueibonta  rad,  N.  Boeth.  47)  may,  quite 
apart  from  the  goddess,  suggest  the  mutability  of  fate.  When  Cyrus  saw  a  captive 
king  attentively  watch  the  rising  and  falling  spokes  of  wheels,  and  inquired  the 
reason,  the  latter  replied,  that  they  put  him  in  mind  of  the  instability  of  life,  7rws 
tci  KO.TU3  &vi»  yivovrai,  ko.1  to.  otvoj  kcitw  (Cedrenus,  ed.  Paris,  142). 

3  This  is  contrary  to  James  I.  of  Scotl.'s  idea  :  '  the  sudden  sweltering  of  that 
ilk  wheel  ....so  tolter  whilom  did  she  it  to-wry  (twist  about).'  But  it  seems  the 
prevailing  one  here,  unless  'sin  schibe  get  en-zelt'  (3  lines  lower)  mean  'goes 
tolter,'  tolutans,  ambling,  as  zelter  is  an  ambler.  Further  on,  '  mioh  hin  verdriicke,' 
push  me  off,  need  not  imply  a  waddling  movement. — Tkans. 


868  DESTINY   AND   WELL-BEING. 

rical),  und  walzet  umb  als  ein  rat,'  Uebel  wip  241.  '  der  Scelden 
schiben  triben/  Amis  2053.  '  entschiben,'  Ulr.  Trist.  708.  Yet 
that  ascending  and  descending  is  often  mentioned  too  :  (  so  stige 
ich  uf,  und  ninder  abe/  never  down,  Parz.  9,  22.  '  geliicke  ist 
rente  als  ein  bal,  swer  stiget  der  sol  viirhten  val/  who  climbs 
must  fear  a  fall,  Freid.  115,  27.  '  so  hangen  ich  an  dem  rades 
teile  (limb),  da  maneger  hauget  ane  trust  (without  hope)/  Ben. 
88  ;  '  e  daz  der  Scelden  schibe  mich  hin  verdriicke  gar  zuo  der 
verzalten  schar'91.  '  si  waren  hohe  gar  gestigen  (mounted 
high)  uf  des  .  .  .  geliickes  rat,  nil  miiezens  leider  von  der  stat  aber 
nider  rucken  (move  down  again)/  Flore  6148.  '  swer  hiute  sitzet 
uf  dem  rade,  der  siget  morgen  drunder  (sinks  under  it  to-morrow)/ 
Troj.  18395.  '  er  ist  komeri  uf  geliickes  rat,  daz  muoz  im  immer 
stille  stan/  Geo.  193.  e  geliickes  rat,  wenne  sol  ich  mine  stat  uf 
dirvinden?'  Ben.  306.  'swebe  oben  an  der  Sceliclikeit  rade,' 
Zauberb.  1860.  f  Got  werfe  in  von  (hurl  him  from)  geliickes  rat  /' 
Kolocz.  74.  '  geliickes  rait  geit  up  ind  neder,  ein  velt  (one  falls), 
der  ander  stiget  weder/  Hagen's  Coin.  chr.  1770.  '  geliickes  rat 
nu  ride  in  uf  die  hcehe/  turn  (writhe)  him  up  aloft,  Tit.  5218; 
1  geliicke,  din  rat  nu  ride  ! '  5275.  '  Fortuna  diu  ist  so  getan,  ir 
schibe  lazet  si  umbe  gan,  umbe  loufet  ir  rat,  dicke  vellet  der  da 
vaste  saz/  oft  falleth  he  that  sat  there  fast,  Lampr.  Alex.  3066. 1 
This  notion  carried  into  detail  shews  us  four  (or  twelve)  men  at 
once  standing  on  fortune's  wheel  in  ceaseless  revolution  :  '  ge- 
liickes rat  treit  vier  man,  der  eine  stiget  uf,  der  ander  stiget  abe, 
der  dritte  ist  obe,  der  vierde  der  ist  under/  MS.  2,  221a;  and 
Wigal.  p.  41  tells  us  of  one  who  had  in  his  house  such  a  ivheel 
cast  of  gold,  and  who  was  always  happy  (like  Frode  with  his  mill 
of  luck,  which  also  went  round)  :  '  ein  rat  enmitten  uf  dem  sal, 
daz  gie  uf  und  ze  tal  (down)  ;  da  waren  bilde  gegozzen  an  (molten 
images  thereon),  iegelichez  geschaffen  als  ein  man.  hie  sigen  diu 
(sank  these)  mit  dem  rade  nider,  so  stigen  (mounted)  diu  ander 
uf  wider,  daz  was  des  geliickes  rat.' 2  In  Renart  le  nouvel  7941 
— 8011,  Fortune  lifts  the  fox  on  to  her  wheel,  and  promises  not 
to  turn  it.     Hence  too  the  story  of  the  twelve  landsknechts  or 

1  Conf.  the  passage  on  la  roe  de  la  Fortune  in  the  Jeu  d'Adan  (Thuatre  fran- 
(,-ais  au  naoyen  age  p.  82). 

2  From  this  wheel,  which  Wigalois  wore  on  his  helmet  (1862—6),  came  the 
name  of  Ritter  mit  dem  rad  (already  in  Gildas  of  Banchor  '  miles  quadrigae  '),  not 
from  the  adventure  he  had  to  brook  with  a  brazen  wheel  (pp.  252—4  of  the  poem). 


CHILD   OF   LUCK.  8G9 

Johanneses  on  fortune's  wheel,  Deut.  sag.  nos.  209.  337.  Our 
Stelde  is  never  painted  blind  or  blindfolded  1   (see  Suppl.). 

What  seems  to  me  to  be  far  more  significant  than  this  wheel, 
which  probably  the  Salida  of  our  heathen  forefathers  never  had 
(a  whole  carriage  to  herself  would  be  more  in  their  way),  is  the 
circumstance  of  her  adopting  children,  owning  her  favourites  for 
her  sons  :  '  ich  bin  ouch  in  fro  Seel  den  schoz  geleit,'  laid  in  her 
lap.  Fragm.  45b.  To  be  a  darling  of  fortune,  a  child  of  luclc,  to 
sit  in  fortune's  lap,  implies  previous  adoption  (Goth,  frasti-sibja, 
Rom.  9,  4),  conf.  RA.  160.  463-4.  A  select  being  like  this  is 
called  <der  Salden  barn,'  Barl.  37,  36.  191,  38.  Engelh.  5070. 
<  Artus  der  8.  hint/  Zauberb.  1433.  *  S.  hint  hat  S.  stiff  1038. 
(  Maria  der  S.  hint,'  Wartb.  kr.  jen.  56.  '  ir  sit  gezelt  geliicke  ze 
ingesinde  (as  inmate),  dem  heile  ze  liebem  hinde,'  Warnung  2596. 
'  Si  ist  S.  sunder triut el  (fondling),  in  der  wiirzegarten  kan  si 
brechen  ir  rosen/  MS.  1,  88a.  Now,  as  Wuotan  can  take  the  place 
of  the  gifting  norn(p.  858),  so  he  can  that  of  Sfelde;  he  is  himself 
the  bestower  of  all  bliss,  he  takes  up  children  to  his  bosom. 
Altogether  identical  therefore  with  Saslden  barn  must  be  '  des 
Wunsches  barn,  an  dem  der  Wunsch  was  voile  vara/  on  whom 
"Wish  had  perfectly  succeeded,  Orl.  3767.  A  child  of  luck  has 
'  des  Wunsches  segen,'  Lanz.  5504.  For  more  references,  see  pp. 
138 — 144.2  Accordingly  Salida  can  be  regarded  as  a  mere 
emanation  of  Wuotan  (see  Suppl.). 

Such  a  child  of  luck  was  Fortunatus,  to  whom  Fortuna  (conf. 
Felicia,  MsH.  2,  10b  and  infra  ch.  XXXII.)  appears  in  a  forest  of 
Bretagne,  and  gives  a  fairy  purse  :  and  who  also  wins  the  wish  ing- 
cap  (souhaitant  chapeau),  the  tarn-cap,  which  one  has  only  to 
put  on,  to  be  in  a  twinkling  at  some  distant  place.  Evidently 
a  hat  of  Wish  or  Wuotan  (p.  463),  a  7reTacro9  or  winged  cap  of 
Hermes  the  giver  of  all  good,  of  all  saude.  And  f  Saelde's  hat' 
is  expressly  mentioned  :  '  so  declcet  uns  der  Scelden  Jnwt,  daz  uns 
dehein  weter  selwen  mac/  no  weather  can  befoul  us,  MsH.  3, 
466a.  The  never  empty  purse  I  connect  with  the  goddess's  horn 
of   plenty  :    '  mundanam  cornucopiam   Fortuna   gestans/    Amm. 


1  Nor  is  she  called  gles'm,  like  the  Lat.  Fortuna  vitrea ;  Gotfrid  of  Strassbnrg 
alone  (MS.  2,  45b  )  has  '  daz  glesin  gliicke,'  and  we  have  now  the  proverb  '  luck  and 
crock  are  easy  broke.' 

-  I  find  also  a  proper  name  Seldeubot  =  Sadde's  messenger,  Weisth.  3,  277-8. 


870  DESTINY  AND  WELL-BEING. 

Marc.  22,  9.  'formatum  Fortunae  habitutn  cum  dlvite  cornu,' 
Prudent,  lib.  1  contra  Symrn. ;  also  with  Amalthea's  horn  or 
Svantovit's  (p.  591),  nay  with  the  fcipas  awTvpias,  Luke  1,  69. 
Of  the  wishing-rod  we  are  reminded  by  the  synonymous  expres- 
sions :  '  alles  heiles  ein  ivunschel-ris,'  -twig,  -wand,  Troj.  2216, 
and  '  des  Wunsches  bluome/  Barl.  274,  25. 

The  belief  in  fairy  tilings  [wunscheldinge,  lit.  wishing-gear]  is 
deeply  rooted  in  our  mythology  :  let  us  examine  it  minutely. 
There  are  things,  belonging  to  gods,  but  also  lent  to  men,  which 
can  bestow  a  plenitude  of  bliss,  the  best  that  heart  can  wish  ; 
so  that  our  old  vernacular  word  seems  quite  appropriate.  The 
Sanskrit  for  wish  is  significant :  mano-ratha,  wheel  of  the  mind  ; 
does  this  open  to  us  a  new  aspect  of  the  divine  wish  ?  Wish 
turns  the  wheel  of  our  thoughts.  In  the  Edda  the  wishing-gear 
is  the  cunning  workmanship  of  dwarfs,  and  is  distributed  among 
the  gods.  OSinn  possessed  the  spear  Gungnir,  the  hurling  of 
which  brings  victory,  Thorr  the  hammer  Miolnir,  which  comes 
crashing  down  as  thunderbolt,  which  also  consecrates,  and  of 
itself  comes  back  into  his  hand.  Freyr  had  a  sword  of  similar 
nature,  that  swung  itself  (er  sialft  vegiz),  Seem.  82a.  Sn.  40;  its 
name  is  unrecorded.  The  '  cudgel  jump  out  o'  your  sack  ! '  in 
our  fairy-tale  is  the  same  story  vulgarized;  in  (Egi's  hall  the 
pitchers  or  beakers  of  ale  brought  themselves  (sialft  barsc  ]>ar  61), 
Ssem.  48  ;  Wolfdieterich  (Cod.  dresd.  296-7)  fell  in  with  god- 
desses, to  whose  table  the  wheaten  loaf  came  walking,  and  the 
wine  poured  itself  out :  such  gear  the  Greeks  called  aurofxarov 
(self-taught),  II.  18,  376.  (Egis-hialmr  must  originally  have 
been  CEgi's  own  (and  OEgir  is  at  times  undistinguishable  from 
OSinn),  as  Aegis  is  wielded  by  the  two  highest  deities  Zeus  and 
Athena:  afterwards  the  helmet  came  into  the  hand  of  heroes. 
Out  of  the  magic  helm  sprang  helot-helm,  grim-helm,  tam-kappe, 
wunsch-mantel  (Kinderm.  no.  122),  ivunsch-hut,  which  bestow 
on  dwarfs,  heroes  and  fortune's  favourites  the  power  to  walk 
unseen,  to  sail  swiftly  through  the  sky.  To  the  goddesses 
Freyja  and  Frigg  belonged  Brisinga  men,  which,  like  the  Ijias 
of  Venus  and  Juno,  awakened  longing  (ifiepos),  and  matches  the 
sword,  spear  and  hammer  of  the  gods  (p.  885).  On  the  veil  or 
hood  of  the  goddess  Sif  grew  golden  hair,  as  corn  does  on  the 
earth:  its   proper  name  is  not  given.     Ski&bladnir  is  described, 


WISHING-GEAR.  871 

now  as  a  ship,  now  as  a  hat,  both  of  which  could  either  be  folded 
up  or  expanded,  for  sailing  in  or  for  raising  a  storm ;  wishing- 
ships  occur  in  Norske  eventyr  1,  18.  142  and  Sv.  folkv.  1,  142-3. 
Not  unlike  this  are  our  winged  sandals  and  league  boots.  Gullin- 
bursti,  too,  Frey's  boar,  carries  him  through  air  and  water. 
From  OSin's  ring  Draupnir  dropped  other  rings  as  heavy ;  the 
miraculous  power  of  Fulla's  ring  (Fullo  fingrgull,  Sn.  68)  is  not 
specified,  perhaps  it  made  one  invisible,  like  that  of  Aventiure 
(p.  911).  Draupnir  suggests  the  broodpenny  (Deut.  sag.  no.  86) 
or  hatching  dollar  of  later  times  :  whoever  ate  the  bird's  heart, 
would  find  a  gold-piece  under  his  pillow  every  morning.  With 
this  are  connected  the  ivishing-purse,  and  the  wishing-rod,  which 
unlocks  the  hoard,  but  apparently  feeds  it  as  well  (ch.  XXXI) ; 
also  the  wunderblume  and  the  springwurzel  [root  which  springs 
open  the  door  of  a  treasure]  ;  a  bird's  nest  makes  invisible  (Deut. 
s.  no.  85.  Haupt's  Zeitschr.  3,  361.  Mone's  Anz.  8,  539). 
FroSi's  luishing-mill  Grotti  would  grind  anything  the  grinder 
wished  for  aloud  (Sn.  146),  gold,  salt,  etc. ;  this  we  can  match 
with  the  wheel  of  fortune,  an  image  that  may  be  an  importation 
to  us  (p.  866),  yet  not  have  been  strange  to  our  remote  ancestry ; 
of  manoratha  I  have  spoken  before.  British  legend  too  had 
its  own  version  of  fortune's  wheel  (p.  869).  Such  a  mill,  such 
a  wheel  ought  above  all  to  grind  food  for  gods.  The  gods 
possess  the  drink  of  immortality,  which  inspires  man  with  song, 
and  keeps  a  god  young.  ISun's  apples  restore  youth,  as  apples 
in  Volsungasaga  make  pregnant,  in  Sneewitchen  send  sleep,  and 
in  Fortunatus  give  horns  and  take  them  away.  But  the  wishing- 
cloak  becomes  a  wishing -cloth,  which  when  spread  brings  up  any 
dish  one  may  desire  :  in  Danish  and  Swedish  songs  such  a  cloth 
is  woven  of  field  wool  [ageruld,  D.  vis.  1,  265.  300.  akerull,  Sv. 
vis.  2,  199),  a  sort  of  grass  with  a  woolly  flower  (eriophorum 
polystachium) ;  the  same  wishing-cloth  occurs  in  Norske  ev.  1, 
44.  274,  it  is  pulled  out  of  a  mare's  ear,  p.  112.  Other  ivishing- 
cloths  have  to  be  spun  in  silence,  or  the  hemp  for  them  must  be 
picked,  baked,  braked,  hatchelled,  spun  and  woven  all  in  one 
day.  The  Servians  tell  of  a  miraculous  cow,  out  of  whose  ear 
yarn  is  spun,  she  is  then  killed  and  buried,  and  miracles  are 
wrought  on  her  grave.  A  wishing-cow  Kdmaduh  or  Kdmadhenu 
is  mentioned  in  Indian  myth  (Pott  2,  421.     Somadeva  1,  198)  ; 

VOL.    II.  F    F 


872  DESTINE   AND   WELL-BEING. 

a  winking  -goat,  who  procures  money,  in  the  Norw.  tales  1,45; 
an  ass  in  Pentam.  1,  1.  The  machandelbom  (juniper)  in  our 
fairy-tale  is  a  wishing-tree,  so  is  that  from  which  Cinderella 
shakes  down  all  her  splendid  dresses ;  the  Indians  call  it  Jcalpa 
vrihska  (tree  of  wishes)  or  Manor  atka- day  aka  (wish-giving), 
Somadeva  2,  84.  Beside  the  dresses  of  sun  and  moon,  the 
gold-hen  and  seven  chickens  (p.  728)  are  contained  in  the  nut. 
Fortuna  carries  a  horn  of  plenty  (p.  870).  The  goat  Auialtheia's 
liorn  supplied  the  nymphs  who  had  nursed  Zeus  with  all  they 
wished  for ;  another  legend  makes  the  nymph  Amaltheia  possess 
a  bull's  horn,  which  gave  in  abundance  all  manner  of  meat  and 
drink  that  one  could  wish.  A  Scottish  tradition  has  it,  that 
if  any  one  can  approach  a  banquet  of  the  fairies,  take  away  their 
drinking -howl  or  horn,  and  carry  it  across  a  running  stream 
without  spilling,  it  will  be  to  him  a  cornucopia  of  good  fortune ; 
if  he  break  it,  his  good  days  are  done  (R.  Chambers  pp.  32-3). 
We  know  that  wise-women  and  elfins  offer  drinking-horns  to  men 
(p.  420)  ;  that  jewels  of  the  elves  (like  those  of  the  smith  dwarfs) 
ensure  luck  to  human  families,  viz.  their  sword,  ring  and  goblet 
(p.  457)  ;  that  the  swan  left  in  Loherangrin's  family  a  sword, 
horn  and  fingerling  (ring,  Parz.  826.  19).  Oberon's  horn,  and 
he  is  of  elf  kind,  was  a  wishing -horn,  and  excited  magic  dancing. 
Other  wonders  are  wrought  by  the  harps  of  gods  and  heroes 
(p.  907).  The  elves,  beside  the  horn,  have  in  their  gift  a  bread 
of  grace  that  blesses.  By  the  side  of  this  may  stand  the  beau- 
tiful myths  of  the  cruse  of  oil  that  never  runs  dry,  the  savoury 
pottage  that  brims  over,  the  yam  that  has  never  done  winding. 
Jemshid's  goblet  too  was  a  miraculous  one,  so  was  the  far-famed 
Grail  (greal,  Ducange  sub  v.  gradalus,  graletus,  grasala,  grassale, 
grassellus),  that  nourished  and  healed,  which  Romance  legend  took 
up  and  interwined  with  christian,  as  indeed  the  spear  of  Longinus 
and  the  bleeding  lance  are  very  like  a  heathen  wishing-spear ; 
nails  of  the  true  cross  are  worked  up  into  bridles  that  bring 
victory  (El.  xxii),  wood  of  the  cross  and  a  thousand  relics  are 
applied  to  thaumaturgic  uses  (ch.  XXXVI),  rings  and  precious 
stones  were  held  against  a  relic,  that  its  virtue  might  pass  into 
them  ;  precious  stones  themselves  are  in  a  sense  wishing -stones, 
such  to  the  Indians  was  JDivyaratna  (Pott  2,  421),  which  fulfilled 
all   the  wishes  of  its    owner.     And  the   Grail  cannot   be    more 


WISHING-GEAR.  873 

celebrated  in  the  poems  of  the  Round  Table  than  Sampo  is  in 
the  epic  of  the  Finns.  It  was  fashioned  by  the  god  Ilmarinen 
in  Pohjola,  and  a  joy  it  was  to  live  in  the  land  that  possessed  it, 
the  fields  were  covered  with  standing  corn  and  hanging  fruits. 
But  the  gods  tried  to  win  it  back  (just  like  OShrcerir,  p.  902), 
and  Wainamoinen  and  Ilmarinen  succeeded  in  the  theft;  yet 
Louhi  the  princess  of  Pohjola  pursued  them  in  eagle's  shape  (as 
Suttung  did  OSinn),  and  overtook  the  fugitives  on  the  open  sea. 
A\  hile  Louhi  makes  a  clutch  at  Sampo,  and  Wainamoinen  strikes 
at  her  fingers  with  the  rudder,  Sampo  falls  into  the  sea  and 
breaks  ;  the  lid  alone  (Kirjokannen  23,  393,  conf.  11,  361)  is  left 
in  Louhi' s  hand,  and  with  it  she  flies  back  to  Pohjola  :  wretched- 
ness and  famine  have  reigned  there  ever  since.  Wainamoinen 
finds  pieces  of  Sampo  on  the  shore,  and  has  them  sown,  out  of 
which  grow  up  trees,  one  of  them  a  lofty  oak  that  darkens  the 
sun.  The  points  of  likeness  between  this  Sampo  and  the  Norse 
drink  of  immortality  are  startling,  and  the  pieces  picked  up  on 
the  strand  by  the  highest  god,  and  giving  birth  to  trees,  may 
be  compared  to  Askr  and  Embla,  whom  the  three  ases  found  on 
the  sea-shore  (p.  560.  Saeru.  8b).  The  name  Sampo,  doubtless 
one  of  high  antiquity  and  sacredness,  calls  to  mind  a  Mongolian 
legend  of  a  tree  Asambu-bararkha,  whose  fruit  dropping  in  the 
water  uttered  the  sound  s ambit  (Majer's  Myth.  wtb.  1,  565) ; 
sangpa  in  Tibetian  means  purified,  holy.  We  gather  from  all 
these  examples,  still  far  from  complete,  how  under  the  veil  of 
sensuous  images — spear,  hammer,  hat,  helmet,  cloak,  horn, 
goblet,  necklace,  ring,  ship,  wheel,  tree,  rod,  flower,  cloth,  meat 
and  drink — lay  hidden  the  spiritual  ones  of  victory,  happiness, 
peace,  healing,  fertility,  riches,  virtue  and  poetic  art.  But  when 
several  single  attributes  met  in  one  object,  as  in  Sampo  and 
the  Grail,  they  still  further  enhanced  its  meaning  and  sacredness 
(see  Suppl.). 

From  the  prologue  to  the  Grimnismal,  Sa3m.  39,  we  learn  that 
OSinn  and  Frigg,  beside  being  the  chief  paternal  and  maternal 
deities  of  antiquity,  bestow  their  protection  on  special  favourites : 
under  the  form  of  an  old  man  and  woman,  they  bring  up  the 
boys  GeirroSr  and  Agnar  respectively,  the  act  being  expressed 
by  the  verb  fostra.     Frigg  had  even,  according  to  Sn.  38,  a 


874  DESTINY  AND  WELL-BEING. 

special  handmaid,  herself  a  divine  being,  whom  she  appointed 
for  the  defence  (til  ggetslu)  of  such  foster-sons  against  all  dan- 
gers ;  this  personified  Tutela  was  named  Hlin  (p.  884),  as  if  the 
couch,  Kkivn,  OHG.  hlina  (recubitus,  Gl.  Ker.  273)  on  which  one 
leans  (root  hleina  hlain,  Gr.  kXIvo,  Lat.  clino) .  We  find  '  harmr 
Mlinar,'  Seem.  9a,  and  there  went  a  proverb  '  sa  er  forSaz  hlei- 
nir/  he  that  is  struggling  leans  for  help.  Hlin  (Goth.  Hleins?) 
shelters  and  shields,  the  Goth,  hlains  is  a  hill  [Germ,  berg,  a  hill, 
is  from  bergen,  to  hide],  the  OHG.  hlinaperga,  linaperga  = 
fulcrum,  reclinatorium. 

Those  who  are  born  with  a  caul  about  their  head  are  popularly 
believed  to  be  lucky  children.  Such  a  membrane  is  called  gliicks- 
haube,  wehmutter-haublein,  and  is  carefully  treasured  up,  or  sewed 
into  a  band  and  put  round  the  babe.1  Fischart  in  Garg.  229b  calls 
it  kinderpelglin  (balg,  bag),  while  the  Icelanders  give  it  the  name 
of  fylgja  f.,  and  imagine  that  in  it  resides  the  child's  guardian- 
spirit  or  a  part  of  its  soul :  midwives  are  careful  not  to  injure  it, 
but  bury  it  under  the  threshold  over  which  the  mother  has  to 
pass.  Whoever  carelessly  throws  it  away  or  burns  it,  deprives 
the  child  of  its  guardian,  Edd.  Sa3tn.  Hafniens.  2,  653.  This 
guardian-spirit  is  variously  named  fylgja-  (who  follows  man), 
sometimes  forijnja  (who  goes  before  him,  F.  Magn.  lex.  379), 
oftener  hamingja  (felicitas)  from  hamr  induviae,  nay,  this  hamr 
of  itself  seems  to  stand  for  the  same  thing  :  '  hamr  Atla/  genius 

i  Kinderm.  no.  29,  conf.  3,  39.  Ettner's  Hebamme  p.  531.  Journal  v.  u.  f.  D. 
1788.  1,  574.  Ital.  '  nascer  vestito  '=  avventurato  ;  Fr.  ne  coiffe;  Pol.  to  czepku 
urodzil,  Haupt's  Zeitschr.  1,  137.  The  Servians  name  the  caul  koshulitsa,  little 
shirt,  and  a  child  born  with  it  vidovit :  he  will  go  to  the  Vilas  and  know  more  than 
other  men.  In  Holland  they  say  '  met  den  helm  geboren  zin  '  (conf.  p.  389) :  such 
children  have  the  power  of  seeing  spectres ;  a  ham  (ovum)  in  which  a  foal  came 
into  the  world  is  hung  up  on  a  high  tree,  Westendorp  p.  518.  Of  the  gliicks-helm 
we  are  told :  '  ab  eo  tegmine  obstetrices  et  delirae  aniculae  infantibus  bona  ex  colore 
rubicundo,  vel  mala  ex  nigricante  praesagire  solent.  magno  vendunt  hujusmodi 
pileos  infantiles  credulis  advocatis,  qui  se  hinc  adjuvari  putant.'  This  in  Anton. 
Diadum.  cap.  4  is  borrowed  from  an  older  passage  in  Aelius  Lampridius :  '  solent 
pueri  pileo  insignari  naturali,  quod  obstetrices  rapiunt  et  advocatis  credulis  ven- 
dunt, siquidem  causidici  hoc  juvari  dicuntur.'  [AS.  heafela,  hafela.  MHG.  hiiete- 
lin,  batwdt,  kindbcilgel,  ivesterhufe,  westerhuot ;  conf.  the  westerw&t  preserved  in 
churches,  and  the  names  Gliickshelm,  Barnhelm.  '  Membranulae  ad  modum  retis 
dispositae,  in  quibus  quandoque  nascuntur  pueri  et  vocantur  in  vulgari  (Bohemico) 
wodienic.  de  his  membranis  famant  vetulae :  si  recipiantur  IX  vel  ad  minus  V  et 
habeantur  cumfilo  aureo  etsericeo  in  ecclesia  per  novem  dies  illo  tempore  quo  horae 
canonicae  dicuntur  per  nonam,  et  ferantur  per  aliqueni  ad  judicem  vel  ad  judicium, 
ille  obtinet  causam  suam.'     Jungmann  sub  v.  odenj.     Lith.  namai  kudikio,  child's 

house.     ON.  Hlo-Sr  born  with  lielmet  and  sword. Extr.  from  Suppl.,  vol.   iii. 

Mot  a  word  about  it  as  a  charm  against  drowning.1. 


child's  caul,     guardian  angel.  875 

Atlii,  Saem.  253b.     According  to  Ihre  (de  Superst.  p.  24-5),  the 
Swed.  hamn  denotes  a  genius  that  follows  each  man. 

What  is  essential  to  the  notion  of  a  guardian-angel  is  his  being 
native  to  us:  this  distinguishes  him  from  the  home-sprite  (genius 
familiaris),  who  devotes  himself  to  an  individual  man,  but  not 
from  birth.  Eegula  Benedicti  cap.  7  :  'ab  angelis  nobis  deputatis 
cotidie  die  noctuque  Domino  Factori  nostro  opera  nostra  nun- 
tiantur.'  Berthold  preaches  (p.  209)  :  '  als  daz  kint  lebende 
wirt  an  siner  muoter  libe,  so  giuzet  im  der  engel  die  sele  in,  der 
almehtige  Got  giuzet  dem  kinde  die  sele  mit  dem  engel  in;'  and 
St.  Bernard  (sermo  12  in  ps.  Qui  habitat)  :  '  quoties  gravissima 
cernitur  uro-ere  tentatio  et  tribulatio  vehemens  imminere,  invoca 
custodem  tuum,  doctorem  tuum,  adjutorem  tuum.  in  opportuni- 
tatibus,  in  tribulatioue,  in  quovis  diversoi'io,  in  quovis  angulo, 
angelo  tuo  reverentiam  habe.  tu  ne  audeas  illo  jpraesente,  quod 
vidente  me  non  auderes.'  One  more  passage  I  will  transcribe, 
from  Notker's  Capella  137  :  '  alien  menniskon  wirdet  sunderig 
unde  gemeine  huotdre  gesezzet.  ten  heizent  si  ouh  flihtdre 
(pfiichter,  care-taker),  wanda er  alles  werches  fliget.  ten  gemeinen 
betont  (adore)  tie  liute  sament,  unde  ane  daz  iogelih  ten  sinen 
(beside  that,  each  his  own),  fone  diu  heizet  er  genius,  wanda  er 
genitis  sar  gegeben  wirt  ze  flihte.  tiser  huotare  unde  diser  getriwo 
bruoder  behuotet  iro  sela  unde  iro  sinna  allero.  wanda  er  ouch 
tougene  gedancha  Gote  chundet,  pediu  mag  er  ioh  angelus 
heizen.' l  This  doctrine,  partially  retained  as  we  see  by  the 
church,  seems  to  have  got  mixed  up  with  that  grosser  native 
superstition  of  guardian  and  attendant  spirits.  Caesar  heisterb. 
8,  44  supposes  every  man  to  have  a  good  and  a  bad  angel,  who 
seeks  to  bring  him  weal  or  woe.  The  valkyrs  too  were  to  a 
certain  extent  guardian-spirits  of  the  heroes  (pp.  400.  419),  and 
remained  bound  to  them  for  a  time.  It  is  said  of  slain  heroes 
(Lament  922)  :  '  ir  engel  vil  wol  wisten,  war  ir  sele  solten  komen/ 
full  well  their  angels  wist  whither  their  souls  should  go.     Other 

i  The  Lat.  text  runs:  'et  generalis  omnium  praesul,  et  specialis  singulis 
mortalibus  genius  admovetur,  queru  etiam  praestitem,  quod  praesit  gerundis 
omnibus,  vocaverunt.  nam  et  populi  genio,  quum  generalis  poscitur,  supplicant,  et 
unusquisque  gubernatori  proprio  dependit  obsequium.  ideoque  genius  dicitur, 
quoniam  quum  quis  hominum  genitus  fuerit,  max  eidem  copulatur.  hie  tutelator 
lidissimusque  germanus  animos  omnium  mentesque  custodit.  et  quoniam  cogi- 
tationum  arcaua  Superae  annuntiat  Potestati,  etiam  angelus  poterit  nuncupari.' 
Conf.  Porphyry's  Vita  Plotini  p.  14.     Plutarch's  Vita  Antonini  p.  430. 


876  DESTINY  AND   WELL-BEING. 

passages  speak  of  these  angels  :  '  sie  redeten,  daz  ir  engel  muose 
lachen/  they  said  her  angel  must  laugh  for  joy,  Wartb.  kr.  jen. 
38 ;  '  ein  wiser  (wizer,  white  ?)  engel  bi  dir  gat,  der  dinen  tiuvel 
so  von  dir  gescheiden  hat '  47 :  '  teile  din  pater  noster  mite 
dinem  engel'  23  ;  '  ein  engel,  der  din  hat  gepjlegen  (tended)  '  62. 
'  ich  wil  gelouben,  daz  den  list  din  engel  finde,'  will  find  out  a 
way,  Lohengr.  p.  3.  'in  was  ir  engel  bi/  Geo.  343.  'daz  der 
engel  din  diner  eren  hiiete  ! '  guard  thy  honour,  MsH.  3,  230'. 
'  zuo  im  was  geweten  ein  engel,  daz  im  niht  geschach/  Geo.  3205. 
'  als  im  sin  engel  gab  die  lere/  Kolocz.  148 ;  '  daz  iuch  min  engel 
griieze  !  '  greet  you  102;  and  elsewhere  'daz  iuwer  min  engel 
walte ! '  Graceful  equivalents  for  '  I  from  my  iumost  soul/ l 
(see  Suppl.). 

In  Nialssaga  cap.  101  a  heathen  submits  to  baptism,  but  only 
on  the  assurance  that  St.  Michael  (receiver  of  souls,  p.  854-5) 
shall  thereby  become  his  fylgju  engill.  And  cap.  23  speaks  of 
the  fylgja  Gunnars. 

One  who  is  near  death  sees  his  angel  first :  '  )n\  mant  vera 
feigr  ma'Sr,  oc  munt  ]?u.  seS  hafa  fylgju  Jrina,'  sure  thou  art  fey, 
and  hast  seen  thy  f.,  Nialss.  cap.  41.  Quite  logically,  as  the 
man's  death  severs  the  bond  between  him  and  his  fylgja.  Then 
the  fylgja  presents  herself  to  another  person,  and  offers  him  her 
services  :  Helgi  forecast  his  own  death,  because  a  witch  riding 
her  wolf  appeared  to  his  brother  at  night,  and  offered  her 
attendance,  '  bauS  fylgS  sina;  fylgjo  beiddi/  Seoul.  14a.  147a. 
When  a  man  sees  his  fylgja,  she  is  giving  him  up,  quitting  him. 
In  Norway  the  vulgar  opinion  is,  that  the  fdlgie  likes  to  shew 
herself  in  the  shape  of  some  animal  that  typifies  the  character 
of  the  man  she  belongs  to  (Faye  p.  77).  Can  this  have  indi- 
cated a  future  transmigration  ?  conf.  p.  823.  There  were  fylgjor 
that,  like  the  dwarfs,  stuck  to  certain  families  :  hynfylgjor, 
cettarfylgjor ;  and  this  is  important,  as   teaching  the  affinity  of 

1  Conf.  H.  Sachs's  poem  '  die  engels  hut,'  and  '  der  lockige  knabe,'  in  Hebel's 
Karfnnkel.  [Not  only  men,  but  even  some  animals,  have  an  angel  of  their  own, 
Keisersp.  brosaml.  19c.  The  Pass.  337,  46  agrees  with  Caes.  heist. :  '  zwene  engel, 
einen  guoten,  einen  leiden';  yet  'sin  engel ' -41  means  only  the  good  one,  and  so 
it  is  generally.  Conf.  Menander's  protest  (abridged) :  '  a  good  daemon  is  given  at 
birth ;  never  dream  that  there  are  evil  daemons,  for  God  is  good.'  Angels  are 
always  imagined  as  male  ;  thus,  when  two  ladies  appear :  '  ob  ez  von  himele  wasren 
zwene  engele  (masc),  des  enweiz  ich  niht,'  Frib.  Trist.  The  guardian-angels  of  two 
friends  are  also  friends,  Renn.  18902. — Extr.  from  Suppl.] 


GUARDIAN   ANGEL. 


877 


such  spirits  to  elves  and  dwarfs,  who  (like  the  white  lady,  the 
ancestress  Berhta,  p.  280)  shew  themselves  when  a  death  in  the 
family  is  imminent. 

Eamtngjor,  occurring  as  early  as  Saem.  37b.  93b,  are  very  like 
our  personified  scelde  :  hamingja  too  at  first  denoted  fortuna, 
felicitas;  and  afterwards  a  being  that  bestowed  these  blessings, 
holding  a  middle  place  between  a  fate,  a  guardian-spirit  and  a 
goodnatured  homesprite  ;  conf.  Laxd.  saga  p.  441.  '  Hamingjor 
horfnar,  heillir  horfnar'  in  Stem.  93  are  those  that  have  aban- 
doned their  man. 

The  ON.  landvcett  (p.  441)  is,  like  the  fylgja  and  hamingja,  a 
female  being,  not  however  the  guardian-spirit  of  an  individual 
or  a  family,  but  of  the  whole  country.  In  the  code  of  Ulfliot 
it  is  ordered  that  every  ship  shall  have  its  figure-head  taken 
down  before  it  come  in  sight  of  land  (i  landssyn),  lest  the  gaping 
jaws  affright  the  landucettir  :  '  sigla  eigi  at  landi  me$  gapandi 
hofSnm  ne  ginandi  trionu,  sva  at  landvcettir  faeldist  viS ' 1  (see 
Suppl.). 

With  the  Slavs  the  notions  of  luck,  chance  and  destiny  touch 
one  another,  yet  their  mythology  is  destitute  of  beings  equivalent 
to  the  norns  and  parcae  (p.  436).  For  luck  the  Servians  have 
sretla  [from  s-retiti  to  meet],  the  Slovens  srezha,  and  they 
personify  them  too  :  dobra  Sretia  (bona  Fortuna,  Vuk  3,  444) 
is  their  ayaOrj  Tvxn,  their  fro  Sselde.3  The  Lettish  Laima  (p. 
416)  comes  nearer  the  parca  or  moira  :  she  is  called  mahmina,  i.e. 
mother,  goddess.  Then  again  the  fostermother  Vehhla  (ibid.)  by 
the  boon  of  her  milk  bestows  luck  and  aptitude  :  i  ka  Dehkla 
noleek,  ta  noteek/  as  D.  disposes,  so  it  happens. 3  In  Lith.  also 
Laima  =  Aai/JLco,  Lat.  Lamia  (see  Suppl.). 

1  Fornm.  scig.  3,  105.  Isl.  s5g.  1,  198-9.  This  gaping  yawning  ship  reminds 
me  of  the  Gepanta  (navis  tardius  vecta)  in  Jornandes  cap.  17.  [Biarki's  fylgja 
appears  as  a  bear,  and  fights  while  B.  slumbers  ;  Gunnar's  fylgja  too  is  a  biarndyr. 
Glumr,  having  dreamt  of  a  woman  higher  than  the  hills  coming  towards  him, 
concludes  that  Vigfus  is  dead,  and  this  is  his  hamingja  coming  to  look  for  a  new 
place.  It  follows,  that  fylgja  and  hamingja  are  one.  Similar  is  the  Engl,  fetch 
(Scot. /ye)  or  double,  N.  Riding  waff ,  wiff,  Scot,  wraith,  Cumbl.  swarth  (all  in  Hone's 
Daybk).     Ir.  taise,  etc. — Extr.  from  Suppl.] 

2  The  name  has  given  rise  to  a  sad  blunder.  Anton  in  Versuch  1,  50  having 
paraded  a  Dalmatian  goddess  Dobra  Frichia,  he  was  followed  by  Karamzin  1,  85, 
by  Jungmann  1,  342,  and  who  knows  how  many  more.  It  all  rests  on  a  clerical 
error  in  translating  Porti'a  Viaggio  in  Dalmazia  (Venice.  1774) ;  the  Ital.  text,  1,  74 
has  quite  correctly  Dobra-srichia.  I  would  have  any  one  beware  of  likening  this 
false  Frichia  to  our  fru  Frecke  (p.  304). 

3  Magaz.  der  lett.  gesellsch.,  Mitau  1838.  0,  141. 


878  DESTINY  AND   WELL-BEING. 

As  the  goddess  of  destiny  has  both  good  and  evil  in  her 
hand,  there  needs  no  separate  representation  of  misfortune.  Our 
elder  poets  however  do  treat  her  more  or  less  as  a  person,  and 
apply  to  her  much  the  same  phrases  as  to  Saelde.  '  Unscelde  hat 
uf  tnich  gesworn/  Gregor  2394  (so  of  Tot,  p.  847n.).  '  Unscelde 
hat  mich  bedaht/  Troj.  17105.  <der  Unscelden  knit/  Iw.  4449. 
1  din  heil  sin  ungeliiche  begonde  erwecken  harte/  Gold.  schm. 
1306.  'iiber  in  het  gesworn  sines  libes  unheil,'  Klage  1240. 
'  Unscelde  si  mir  uf  getan  ! '  Rab.  896.  '  wie  in  diu  Unscelde 
verriete/  Dietr.  38b.  '  der  Unscelden  vart  vara/  go  the  way  of, 
Doc.  misc.  2,  163.  'so  wirt  unheil  von  mir  gejaget/  chased 
away,  Herm.  Dam.  42.  'ungelucke,  waz  ir  mir  leides  tuot!'  what 
hurt  you  do  me,  Lampr.  Alex.  3065.  Other  images  are  peculiar 
to  misfortune :  she  is  a  dog  bestriding  one's  path,  and  barking 
at  one  :  '  unheil  mir  iiber  den  wee  schreit  gelich  einem  hunde/ 
Hartm.  erstes  biichl.  1671.  'wen  nach  geliicke  groz  unheil  an 
bellet  (barks,  billet  ?  or  vellet,  velt  ?  )'  Ls.  1,  239.  A  M.  Nethl. 
poet  ascribes  to  her  a  net :     '  al   heft  dat  ongheval  nu  mi  aldus 

onder   tnet    ghevaen  ?  '     Rein,    6180. Two    sepai-ate    stories 

deserve  quoting  at  greater  length  :  A  poor  knight  sits  in 
the  forest,  consuming  a  scanty  meal;  he  looks  up  and  spies 
in  the  tree  overhead  a  monstrous  being,  who  cries  to  him  '  I  am 
thy  ungelucke.'  He  invites  '  his  ill-luck '  to  share  his  meal,  but 
no  sooner  is  it  down,  than  he  seizes  it  firmly  and  shuts  it  up  in 
an  '  eicher '  (hollow  oak  ? ) .  From  that  moment  all  goes  well 
with  him,  and  he  makes  no  secret  of  what  has  happened.  One 
who  envies  him,  wishing  to  plunge  him  into  misery  again,  goes 
to  the  wood  and  releases  ill-luck;  but,  instead  of  burdening  the 
knight  any  longer,  it  jumps  on  the  traitor's  back,  just  as  a  kobold 
would  (Ls.  2,  575).  This  fable  was  known  to  H.  Sachs  iii.  2,  72c: 
Misfortune  shall  be  made  fast  with  chains  and  ropes  to  an  oaken 
stake,  so  it  may  visit  no  houses  more,   unless  some  man  be  so 

fond  to  let  it  loose  again. The  other  story  may  as  well  be  given 

in  Reinmar's  own  words,  MS.  2,  134b : 

Ez  was  ein  gar  unsaslic  man  (a  most  unlucky  man) 

in  einer  stat  gesezzen,  dar  inne  er  nie  dehein  heil  gewan, 

der  dahte,  ich  wil  versuochen,  wie  min  geliike  in  fremden 

landen  si. 
do  im  der  reise  ze  muote  wart  (resolved  to  travel), 


UNS.ELDE.  879 

Vnscelde  wart  sin  geverte,  diu  huob  sich  mit  im  uf  die  vart ; 
er  lief  gegen  einem  walde,  er  wande  er  waBre  Unsaslden  wor- 

den  vri  (he  weened  he  was  free  of  U.). 
er  sprach  :  '  Unscelde,  nu  bin  ich  dir  entrunnen  (escaped).' 
'  nein  '  sprach  Unscelde,  '  ich  han  den  sig  (victoi'y)  gewunnen  ; 
swaz  du  geliefe,  daz  selbe  ich  rande  (I  ran  as  fast  as  thou), 
uf  dinem  liaise  (neck)  was  min  gemach  (I  took  my  ease.)'1 
der  man  da  zuo  im  selbe  sprach  (to  himself  spake)  : 
's6  'st  niht  s6  gaot,  ich  enhere  wider  ze  lands  ! '  (best  to  turn 

back). 

Exactly  the  story  of  the  homesprite,  who  flits  with  you,  and 
you  cannot  shake  him  off  (p.  518)  :  Misfortune  personified  is 
here  substituted  for  the  more  living  kobold.  Unsaslde  occurs 
in  the  plural  too  :  f  ganc  z' 'alien  onselden  hin  ! '  in  a  Lower  Rhine 
poem  by  Wilhelm  (F.  A.  Reuss  p.  13).  It  reminds  me  of  '  zuo 
zallen  marsen  vara'  (p.  362;  see  Suppl.). 

1  Post  equitem  sedet  atra  Cura,     Hor.  Od.  3, 1 


CHAPTER  XXIX. 
PERSONIFICATIONS. 

This  is  a  convenient  place  to  treat  more  fully  of  Mythical 
Personification. 

All  objects  are  either  perceptible  to  our  senses,  or  merely  exist 
in  our  thoughts.  Of  sensible  objects  a  very  general  characteristic 
is,  that  they  strike  upon  the  eye  (et<?  wira,  7rpo?  oiTra),  for  which 
we  once  possessed  the  pretty  word  augen,  OHG.  ougan,  Goth, 
augjan,  to  come  in  sight,  appear   (hence  sich  er-eignen,  Grarnm. 

1,  226).  The  form  and  shape  of  this  appearance  was  called 
in  Goth,  slims,  ON.  syn,  OHG.  gisiuni,  which  come  from 
saihva  (I  see),  as  species  from  specio,  visus  from  video,  elSo? 
from  the  lost  elSco,  and  signify  the  seen,  the  present ; 1  while 
vaihts,  which  Ulphilas  uses  also  for  el8o<i  (p.  440),  is  derived 
from  veiha  (facio,  p.  68).  More  commonly  still  we  find  combina- 
tions :  Goth,  anddugi,  andvairfii,  OHG.  antwerti,  Goth,  andavleizn, 
AS.  andwlite,  OEG.  a/nasiuni,  anasiht,  gisiht ;  all  of  which, 
formed  like  the  Gr.  irpoaanzov,  have  alike  the  sense  of  aspectus, 
obtutus,  and  the  narrower  one  of  facies,  vultus,  frons  (Goth,  vlits 
fr.  vleita),  because  vision  is  directed  mainly  to  the  visage.  The 
Lat.  persona,  obscure  as  its  origin2  may  seem,  agrees  with  the 
above  in  its  use,  except  that  siuns  and  irpoawirov  may  refer  to 
any  sight,  vlits  and  persona  more  especially  to  the  human  form. 

The  freest  personality  is  proper  to  gods  and  spirits,  who  can 
suddenly  reveal  or  conceal  their  shape,  appear  and  disappear 
(chap.  XXX).    To  man  this  faculty  is  wanting,  he  can  but  slowly 

1  MHG.  schin  used  in  the  same  way  :  disen  ritter  oder  sinen  schin,  Parz.  18, 13. 
sante  Martins  gewer  oder  sin  schin,  Fragm.  28b.     wip,  man  oder  tieres  schin,  Diut. 

2,  94.     sin  wesen  und  sin  schin  (schein),  Er.  10047-9.     der  menschlich  schin,  Ls. 

3,  263. 

s  Hardly  from  Trp6<rwiroi>,  like  Proserpina  from  Hepae<p6vT),  where  the  change  of 
sound  is  exactly  the  other  way.  What  if  the  old  etymology  from  personare 
should  prove  defensible,  and  sonus  be  conn,  with  siuns  ?  There  are  plenty  of 
analogies  between  sound  and  sight  (e.g.  that  Eomance  '  par  son',  p.  745),  and  also 
changes  of  short  vowels  into  long  (persona) ;  vpoffwirov  itself  happens  to  be  an 
example  of  both  (8\j/  voice  and  eye,  8^/is  visio,  w\p  eye,  face,  ihw-rj  look) ;  the  forma- 
tion of  persona  would  be  as  in  Perenna,  Pertunda,  Pervinca. 

680 


PERSONIFICATION.  881 

come  and  go,  and  in  his  body  he  must  bide,  unless  magic  inter- 
vene ;  hence  he  is  [not]  in  the  strictest  sense  a  person,  his  veriest 
self  being  emphasized  in  our  older  speech  by  the  term  lip  (life), 
body  (Gramm.  4,  29G).  Bat  language  and  an  open  brow  distin- 
guish him  from  beasts,  who  have  only  voice  and  irporopbrf,  not  a 
real  irpoawrrov  or  countenance.  Still  less  of  personality  have 
plants,  silent  as  they  are,  and  rooted  to  the  soil.  Never- 
theless both  animals  and  plants  have  in  common  with  man  a 
difference  of  sex  and  the  power  of  propagation  ;  to  both  of  them 
language  assigns  natural  gender  and,  only  where  that  is  non- 
apparent,  a  purely  grammatical.  It  goes  yet  further,  and  con- 
cedes it  to  lifeless  tools  and  to  things  beyond  the  reach  of  sigtt 
or  sense. 

Then  poetry  and  fables  set  themselves  to  personify,  i.e.  to  extend 
personality,  the  prerogative  of  gods,  spirits  and  men,  to  animals, 
plants,  things  or  states  to  which  language  has  lent  gender.  All 
these  appear  in  ^sop  endowed  with  human  speech,  and  acting 
by  the  side  of  gods  and  men ;  and  this  not  only  in  the  case  of 
trees  and  shrubs  (like  the  bean  or  corn  stalk  in  the  fairy-tale), 
but  of  utensils  like  pot  and  file  {x^TPV>  pwrj),  of  days  and  seasons 
(eopT7),  varepv,  yei^oiv,  lap),  even  of  mere  emotions,  as  love, 
shame  (epws,  aicr^yvTJ).  Our  own  simple-hearted  eld  loves  to 
emphasize  this  livingness  by  the  formalities  of  address  and  rela- 
tionship :  horse,  ship  and  sword  are  gravely  apostrophized  by  the 
hero  (Gramm.  3,  331.  434.  441) ;  such  entities  receive  the  title  of 
f  herr '  or  (  frau '  (3,  346)  ;  as  animals  are  invested  with  gossip- 
hood  and  brotherhood  (Reinh.  p.  xxvii),  the  Edda  makes  air  (the 
awl)  brother  to  kni'fr,  Sn.  133.  Under  this  head  too  I  bring 
the  practice  of  coupling  '  father }  and  '  mother '  with  lifeless 
things  (Gramm.  4,  723). 

Things  deeply  intergrown  with  speech  and  story  can  at  no 
time  have  remained  foreign  to  mythology,  nay,  they  must  have 
sucked  up  peculiar  nourishment  from  her  soil,  and  that  universal 
life  conceded  in  grammar  and  poetry  may  even  have  its  source  in 
a  mythical  prosopopoeia.  As  all  the  individual  gods  and  godlike 
attributes  really  rest  on  the  idea  of  an  element,  a  luminary,  a 
phenomenon  of  nature,  a  force  and  virtue,  an  art  and  skill,  a 
blessing  or  calamity,  which  have  obtained  currency  as  objects  of 
worship ;  so  do  notions   related  to  these,   though  in  themselves 


882  PERSONIFICATIONS. 

impersonal  and  abstract,  acquire  a  claim  to  deification.  A  distinct 
personality  will  attach  to  animals,  plants,  stars,  which  stand  con- 
nected with  particular  gods,  or  have  sprung  out  of  metamor- 
phosis. One  might  say,  the  heathen  gods  as  a  whole  have  arisen 
out  of  the  various  personifications  that  were  most  natural  to  each 
nation's  way  of  thinking  and  state  of  culture ;  but  that  individual 
figures  among  them,  by  combining  several  attributes  and  by 
long  continued  tradition,  were  sure  to  attain  a  higher  rank  and 
reputation. 

In  this  process  however  we  notice  an  important  distinction 
with  regard  to  sex  :  strong,  vehement  forces  and  operations  are 
by  preference  made  into  gods,  mild  and  gracious  ones  into  god- 
desses, which  of  itself  determines  the  superior  power,  as  a  rule,  of 
the  male  divinities.  Yet  this  inferiority  of  the  goddesses,  added 
to  their  grace,  tended,  as  I  have  more  than  once  remarked,  to 
secure  their  status  longer,  while  the  stern  sway  of  the  gods  was 
being  rooted  out. 

Everywhere  the  two  sexes  appear  hand  in  hand,  so  that  out  of 
their  union,  according  to  human  notions,  may  issue  new  births 
and  new  relationships.  Wherever  personification  is  not  directly 
intended,  it  is  the  habit  of  our  language  to  use  the  crude  unde- 
veloped neuter. 

Amongst  elements,  we  find  air  and  fire  handed  over  more  to 
gods,  earth  and  water  more  to  goddesses.  Wuotan  appears  as 
an  all-pervading  atmosphere,  as  a  murmur  that  sweeps  through 
heaven  and  earth  ;  this  we  made  out  under  the  words  ivuot  (p. 
131)  and  woma  (p.  144;  conf.  p.  745),  and  perhaps  we  have  a 
right  to  connect  even  wehen  (to  blow)  with  waten  (to  wade), 
beben  (to  quake)  with  Bifllndi  (p.  149).  The  hurricane  of  the 
'furious  host'  will  then  have  real  point  and  significance.  Favour- 
able wind  (p.  636-7)  was  in  the  hands  of  Wuotan  and  Zeus,  OSinn 
'weathered,'  stormed  or  thundered,  and  was  called  VicFrir  (ibid.). 
The  shaking  of  the  air  by  thunder  is  everywhere  traced  to  the 
highest  god,  whom  our  antiquity  represents  separately  as  Donar, 
Thunar,  the  son  of  Wuotan,  but  in  Zeus  and  Jupiter  it  is  the 
father  again;  Thrymr  seems  identical  with  Thorr  (p.  181).  Loptr 
(pp.  246.  632)  is  another  emanation  of  OSinn.  Zio,  and  perhaps 
Pliol,  as  whirlwinds    (turbines),  must  be  regarded  in  the  same 


AIR.      FIRE.      WATER.      EARTH.  883 

light  (p.  632) . Of  goddesses,  we  have  to  reckon  whoever  may 

stand  for  the  '  wind's  bride '  aud  whirlwind,  Holda  who  accom- 
panies the  '  furious  host/  and  Herodias  (p.  632);  and  bear  in 
mind  that  to  the  same  Holda  and  to  Mary  is  given  power  over 
snow  and  rain  (pp.  267.  641.  174-5).  It  is  in  Wikram  251a  that 
a  f  frau  luft '  first  occurs,  as  H.  Sachs  makes  aer,  ignis,  aqua  all 
'  fraulein.'  Whenever  dwarfs,  giants  and  giantesses  raise  wind, 
weather  and  storm  (pp.  631-6-7),  they  act  as  servants  of  the 
highest  god.     Kdri  also  represented  air. 

Lohi  and  Logi  (p.  241)  are  gods  of  fire,  and  so  was  probably 
auhns,  ovan,  which  to  us  denotes  the  mere  element  itself  (p. 
629).  The  'dea  Hludana'  (p.  257)  might  stand  beside  him. 
Donar,  like  the  Slavic  Perun,  hurls  the  lightning  flash,  yet  the 
Slavs  make  Grom,  thunder,  a  youth,  and  Hunya,  lightning,  a 
maiden  (p.  178  n.).  Fire,  the  godlike,  is  spoken  to,  and  called 
'  bani  vrSar/  wood-killer.  Balder,  Phol,  is  perhaps  to  be  under- 
stood as  a  divinity  of  light  (pp.  227.  612-4),  and  from  another 
point  of  view  Ostara  (p.  291).  Mist  was  taken  for  a  valkyr  (p. 
421). 

Hler  (p.  240)  and  Oegir  (pp.  137.  311)  are  gods  of  the  wave, 
and  Ban  a  goddess  (p.  311);  Geban,  Gefjon  (pp.  239.  311)  is 
divided  between  both  sexes.  The  fern,  ahva  (p.  583  n.)  and  the 
female  names  of  our  rivers  (p.  600)  lead  us  to  expect  water- 
goddesses,  with  which  agrees  the  preponderance  of  nixies  and 
mermaids  (p.  487),  also  the  softness  of  the  element,  though 
Obinn  too  is  found  under  the  name  of  Hnikar  (ibid.)  Snow  and 
Hoarfrost  are  thought  of  as  male  (p.  761),  but  the  Norse  Drifa 
(loose  drifting  snow)  is  a  daughter  of  Snior  (Yngl.  saga  16). 

The  Earth,  like  Terra  and  Tellus,  could  not  be  imagined  other 
than  female,  so  that  the  masc.  Heaven  might  embrace  her  as 
bride;  Binda  is  a  goddess  too,  and  Nerthus  (p.  251),  though  she 
and  the  masc.  NiorSr  play  into  one  another.  Out  of  the  Goth, 
fairguni's  neutrality  unfolded  themselves  both  a  male  Fiorgynn 
(p.  172)  and  a  female  Fiorgyn  (p.  256)  ;  the  former  answers  to 
Perkunas  (Fairguueis)  and  to  other  cases  of  gods  being  named 
after  mountains,  conf.  ans,  as  (p.  25)  and  Etzel  (p.  169).  And 
Hamar  the  rock-stone  (p.  181)  is  another  instance  of  the  same 
thing.  The  forest- worship  dwelt  upon  in  ch.  IV  could  not  fail 
to  introduce  directly  a  deification  of  sacred  trees,  and  most  trees 


884  PERSONIFICATIONS. 

are  regarded  as  female;  we  saw  (pp.  651-2-3)  how  the  popu- 
lar mind  even  in  recent  times  treated  '  frau  Hasel,  frau  Elhorn, 
frau  Wacholder,  frau  Fichte  '  as  living  creatures.  Hlin  and  Gnd, 
handmaids  of  Frigg,  are  named  in  Sn.  38  among  asynjor,  and 
'Block  in  Sn.  39  among  valkyrjor :  all  three,  according  to  Biorn, 
are  likewise  names  of  trees,  Hlin  apparently  of  our  leinbaum, 
leinahorn,  lenne  (acer,  maple),  in  the  teeth  of  our  derivation 
(p.  874) ;  conf.  AS.  hlin.  Again  Sn.  128  tells  us  more  generally, 
why  all  fern,  names  of  trees  are  applicable  to  women,  e.g.  selja 
is  both  salix  and  procuratrix. 

Zio,  like  Zeus,  appears  to  mean,  in  the  first  instance,  sky  and 
day  (pp.  193.  736);  yet  our  mythology  takes  no  notice  of  his 
relation  to  the  earth  (p.  700).  But  still  it  personifies  Bay  m. 
(p.  735),  and  makes  him  the  son  of  Night  f.  At  the  same 
time  evening  and  morning,  Apantrod  and  Tagarod  (p.  748)  are 
masculine.1  It  is  therefore  the  more  surprising  that  the  sun, 
the  great  light  of  day  (p.  701),  should  be  pictured  as  female  and 
the  moon  as  male,  especially  as  the  sun  shines  fiercely  and  the 
moon  softly.  Though  this  view  is  of  high  antiquity  (p.  704),  yet 
the  identity  of  the  Goth,  sduil,  AS.  segil,  with  sol  and  i]\tos, 
makes  it  appear  likely  that  with  us  too  the  relation  between  sun 
and  moon  was  once  the  same  as  in  the  classical  languages  (p.  701), 
and  was  only  departed  from  by  slow  degrees.  Even  in  MHG. 
the  gender  of  '  sunne  '  continued  to  vacillate,  as  the  Latin  con- 
versely shews  a  Lunus  by  the  side  of  Luna.  In  the  same  way 
the  Goth,  stairno,  ON.  stiarna,  is  fern,  like  stella,  but  the  OHG. 
sterno,  OS.  sterro,  AS.  steorra,  masc.  like  aarr/p ;  and  each  has 
its  justification  in  the  particular  stars  personified. 

Our  Summer  and  Winter  are  masculine  (p.  758),  the  Lat. 
aestas  and  hiems  feminine,  to  which  add  the  Gr.  -^ecficov  m.,  and 
the  Slav,  zima  f.  Excepting  Brede  and  Edstre,  all  our  names 
of  months  were  masc,  and  Mai  in  particular  often  stands  for 
summer.  On  the  contrary,  the  vagueness  of  the  neuter  'year' 
•  shews  the  absence  of  mythical  prosopopoeia,  (see  Suppl.). 

On  mere  tools  and  utensils  its  operation  seems  more  stinted  : 
an  exception  must  at  once  be  made  in  favour  of  the  sword. 
As  this  weapon  received  proper  names  and  a  living  accusative 

1  Lith.  '  Berlea  dea  vespertina,  Breksta  dea  tenebrarum,'  Lasicz  47.    In  our 
Tristan,  Isot  is  beautifully  compared  to  the  Sun,  and  her  mother  to  the  Dawn,  f. 


HEATA. 


885 


(Gramm.  3,  441),  as  it  was  often  apostrophized  (Klage  847. 
Wigal.  6514),  and  like  Norse  heroes,  or  like  fire,  was  called  bani 
(occisor,  e.g.  Ilialmars  bani,  Fornald.  sog.  1,  522),  as  its  hilt  and 
point  were  the  haunt  of  snake  and  adder  (p.  687-8) ;  agreeable  to 
all  this  is  a  deification  of  the  sword  of  war  (p.  203-4),  and  for  this 
would  be  found  available  not  the  lifeless  neuter  '  swert/  but  the 
masc.  '  hairus,  heru,  cheru,'  p.  203,  to  which  correspond  the  divine 
names  Eor,  "Ap^  and  Sahsnot :  from  this  divine  progenitor's  name 
proceeded  the  national  names  of  Cheruscans,  Saxons,  conf.  Suar- 

dones,  with  Sweordweras,  in   Cod.  exon.  322,  13. In  contrast 

with  the  sword,  which  ennobles  men,  stands  female  decoration, 
from  which  our  language  drew  similar  designations ;  and  it  is  a 
significant  thing  that,  as  one  of  the  highest  gods  borrowed  lustre 
from  the  sword,  so  did  the  fairest  of  goddesses  from  her  necklace, 
she  after  whom  all  ladies  are  called  freyja  (pp.  299.  306).  In 
our  oldest  laws  the  sword1  was  an  essential  part  of  the  'her- 
gewate,'  war-equipment,  and  the  necklace  of  the  '  frauen-gerade/ 
woman's  outfit  (RA.  567  seq.)  ;  now,  as  we  find  in  the  Lex  Angl. 
et  Werin.  7,  3  the  expression  '  ornamenta  muliebria  quod  rhedo 
dicunt/  it  becomes  a  question,  whether  a  totally  different  ex- 
planation of  the  AS.  goddess  Rheda  from  that  attempted  on 
p.  289  be  not  the  right  one.  Ostara,  Eastre,  was  goddess  of  the 
growing  light  of  spring,  and  Hrede  might  be  goddess  of  female 
beauty,  another  name  for  Frouwa,  Freyja,  or  a  personification  of 
the  necklace ;  2  the  root  might  be  the  same  as  in  the  OHG.  hrat, 
A.S.  hraed,  ON.  hra^r  (velox,  celer),  as  the  notions  of  swiftness 
and  sweetness  often  meet.  We  must  not  overlook  another  word 
used  for  the  above  '  gerade  : '  radeleve   (RA.  567),  OHG.  rado- 


1  And  with  it  a  horse  and  ship,  the  most  precious  of  movable  goods  in  antiquity. 
'  Mearas  and .  ma/Smas '  are  coupled  together  in  AS.  poems  ;  out  of  niacin  was 
developed  the  notion  of  the  Goth,  iuaijnns,  a  costly  gift,  while  the  MHG.  meiden 
retained  the  literal  meaning  of  horse  ;  the  formula  '  schiff  und  geschirr,'  ship  and 
harness,  which  afterwards  meant  the  land-ship  (waggon)  and  its  rigging,  may 
originally  have  signified  the  sea-ship,  which  ON.  and  AS.  poets  in  varying  phrase 
denominate  '  sea-horse,'  Andr.  and  El.  xxxiv.-v. ;  even  in  the  French  Simplic. 
3,  46  I  find  '  to  put  the  wooden  water-horse  to  his  paces'  =  to  sail.  This  borders 
closely  on  the  notion  of  demonic  sea-horses  (p.  490). 

-  The  personifications  Hamar  and  Heru  as  weapons  of  the  highest  gods,  and 
their  counterpart  the  feminine  spindle  and  necklace,  support  each  other  (conf. 
p.  204).  The  hammer  was  left  to  grow  diabolic  (ch.  XXXIII)  and  superstitious 
(XXXVII),  but  the  men  would  not  allow  their  sword  to  be  dishonoured.  The  In- 
dians personified  and  apostrophized  the  sacrijicial  knife  (Gutting,  anz.  1331,  p. 
1762). 


886  PERSONIFICATIONS. 

leiba  (Graff  3,  855),  more  exactly  hrataleipa,  on  comparing  which 
with  the  AS.  sweorda  lafe,  homera  lafe  (Beow.  5868.  5654),  i.e. 
lafe  preceded  by  a  genitive,  we  see  that  Hredan  or  Hredean  lafe 
would  originally  mean  jewellery  the  legacy  (leavings)  of  the  god- 
dess, which  afterwards  all  women  divided  among  them.  And  this 
explanation  is  supported  by  several  other  things.  Not  only  do 
the  Norse  skalds  designate  woman  in  general  by  the  name  of  any 
ornament  that  she  wears;  but  Freyja  herself,  whose  bosom  is 
adorned  with  that  costly  Brisinga  men  (Goth.  Breisigge  mani  ? 
p.  306),  as  mother  earth  too  wears  her  f  iarSar  men5  the  green- 
sward (p.  643),  gave  birth  to  a  divine  daughter  identical  with 
herself,  whose  name  also  gets  to  mean  ornament  and  jewelry. 
Sn.  37  says,  she  was  called  Hnoss,  and  was  so  beautiful  that 
everything  elegant  and  precious  was  named  lmossir ;  '  hnossir 
velja/  Ssem.  233b,  means  to  select  jewelry  for  a  present.  Hnoss 
may  either  be  derived  from  hnoSa,  glomus,  nodus  (as  hlass  from 
hla^a,  sess  from  sitja),  or  be  connected  with  an  OHG.  form  hnust, 
nust,  nusc  (Graff  2,  1006-7)  ;  either  way  it  so  obviously  agrees 
withbris  (compages,  nodus),  or  with  nusta  (ansula),  nuskil  (fibula), 
that  it  is  wonderfully  like  the  Brisinga  (or  Brisinga)  men  of  the 
mother.  But  elsewhere  we  find  Freyja  provided  with  another 
daughter  Gersimi  (Sn.  212.  Yngl.  saga  c.  13),  whose  name  ex- 
hibits the  same  notion  over  again,  nay  it  has  found  its  way,  like 
rhedo,  into  ancient  legal  phraseology.  Gersemi  (fern.)  means  costly 
ornament,  cimelium  (Gloss,  to  Gragas  p.  26),  also  arrha,  and  mulcta 
pactitia;  the  Ostgota-lag  giptab.  18  has  garsimi,  the  Vestgota-lag 
p.  140  gorsimar,  the  Dan.  laws  giorsum,  giorsum ;  even  A.S. 
records  repeatedly  use  the  phrase  '  gaersuman,  gersuman  niman/ 
gersumam  capere  in  the  sense  of  thesaurum,  cimelium  (Spelm.  p. 
263a.  Ducange  3, 513),  but  I  have  not  come  across  it  in  the  poets. 
As  the  AS.  -sum  answers  to  OHG.  -sam  (Gramm.  2,  574),  I  con- 
jecture an  OHG.  karosemi  (from  karo,  gar,  yare,  paratus)  mean- 
ing the  same  as  wip-garawi,  mundus  muliebris  (Graff  4,  241) ; 
we  should  then  have  learnt  three  new  equivalents  for  the  gerade 
of  our  German  law  :  rhedo,  hnoss,  gersemi,  all  of  them  personified 
and  deified  as  livedo, ,  Hnoss,  Gersemi.  Again,  it  occurs  to  me 
that  in  the  story  of  Oswald,  one  that  teems  with  mythical  allusions 
(think  of  Tragemund,  and  the  raven  all  but  Odinic) ,  there  appears 
a  maiden  Spange  (Z.  f.  d.  a.  2,  96-7.     105,  ver   Spauge  103,  vor 


HNOSS.      GERSIMI.      SPANGE.      HASHART.  887 

Spange  115,  like  ver  Hilde,  ver  Gaue),1  plainly  a  personified 
spange  (armilla),  a  meaning  highly  appropriate  to  the  beautiful 
princess.  Such  goddesses  of  female  adornment  and  of  household 
implements  may  also  be  supposed  among  the  Lithuanian  deities 
named  in  Lasicz  p.  48-9.  Nddala  the  snuggling,  insinuating 
(p.  240)  occurs  at  least  as  an  OHG.  proper  name  in  Irmino  187a; 
compare  the  personal  relation  attributed  to  air  and  knifr  (p.  881). 
IIlocJc  we  have  explained  (p.  401,  conf.  421-2)  as  hlancha,  catena 
(see  Suppl.). 

Latin,  Eomance  and  German  poems  of  the  Mid.  Ages,  as  early 
as  the  12th  cent,  it  seems  to  me,  introduce  the  player's  die  as  a 
personal  demonic  being;  the  Cod.  Monac.  ol.  benedictobur.  160a 
fol.  94  contains  the  following  passage  :  '  cum  sero  esset  una  gens 
lusorum,  venit  Deems  in  medio  eorum,  et  dixit,  Fraus  vobis  ! 
nolite  cessare  ludere,  pro  dolore  enim  vestro  missus  sum  ad  vos ;' 
and  fol.  97b  speaks  of  the  '  secta  Decii,'  i.e.  of  dicers.  Other 
auths.  are  given  by  Ducange  sub  v.  Decius  =  talus,  taxillus,  with 
a  correct  explanation  of  the  word  by  the  Fr.  de,  0.  Fr.  dez,  Prov. 
dat,  datz,  It.  Sp.  dado  =  Lat.  datus,3  because  in  playing  '  dare ' 
was  used  for  edere,  jacere.  The  same  Munich  codex  fol.  95b 
furnishes  another  remarkable  phrase  :  '  nil  hie  expavescimus  preter 
Eashardi  minas/  the  threatenings  of  the  die ;  yet  '  hasehart/ 
which  is  known  to  MHG.  poets  also,3  can  only  be  traced  to  the  Fr. 
hasart,  hasard,  whose  own  origin  is  obscure,  whose  wider  meaning 
brings  it  sooner  to  the  verge  of  personification.  Add  to  all  this, 
that  the  Indian  myth  makes  Dvapara,  a  demon,  squeeze  himself 
into  the  dice,  and  that  these  come  in  the  shape  of  birds,  Bopp's 
Nalus  pp.  38-9.  50  (see  Suppl.). 

Scarcely  will  a  deification  grow  out  of  notions  of  place ;  on  the 
other  hand,  the  idea  and  name  of  a  deity  can  be  transferred  to 
space.  Thus  from  the  heathen  Hali,  Hel,  arose  the  christian  hell ; 
the  ON.  Laufey  (p.  246)  is  perhaps  another  instance,  and  the  idea 
of  a  god  often  mingles  with'that  of  wood  and  grove. 

1  Ettmiiller's  text  has  an  erroneous  unmeaning  Pange. 

2  Conf.  16,  lez.  It.  lato,  Sp.  lado,  Lat.  latus  ;  ne,  nez,  It.  nato,  Sp.  naclo,  Lat. 
natus  ;  pre,  prez,  Prov.  pratz,  It.  prato,  Sp.  prado,  Lat.  pratum. 

i  Examples  coll.  in  Z.  f.  d.  a.  1,  577;  to  which  may  be  added  :  '  spil  geteilet 
fif  bret  aid  an  hasehart,'  Gute  frau  1093.  '  den  hasehart  werfen,'  Tauler's  Sermons 
in  Cod.  Argent.  A,  89. 

VOL.    II.  0    G 


888  PERSONIFICATIONS. 

Abstract  immaterial  objects  open  a  far  wider  field  for  personifi- 
cations ;  and  here  we  see  female  ones  decidedly  predominate  over 
male. 

Of  the  latter  the  most  striking  instances  are,  I  think,  the 
following.  Donar  is  pictured  at  once  as  father  and  grandfather 
(p.  167) ;  Aija  to  the  Lapps,  Ukko  to  the  Finns,  are  grandfather 
as  well  as  thunder.  Wunsch,  Oski,  a  name  of  Wuotan  (p.  143) 
signifies  much  the  same  as  the  female  figures  Salida,  Fruma,  Xapt<? ; 
and  the  Gr.  7ro#o?  (wish,  longing)  occasionally  occurs  as  I7o0o?. 
If  I  am  right  in  my  interpretations  of  Gibika  (p.  137),  Gduts  (pp. 
23.  367—72),  Sigi  (pp.  27.  371),  we  can  easily  find  female  beings 
to  match  them  also.  All  these  names  belonged  to  the  highest 
god,  whose  creative  bounty  blesses  ;  others  to  his  near  kinsman 
the  majestic  god  of  war  :  Wig  (pugna,  p.  203,  conf.  Graff  1,  740) 
and  Hadu  (pp.  207.  223),  to  which  many  female  names  corre- 
spond, Hilta,  etc.1  With  Yggr  (p.  208)  I  have  identified  the 
Pallor  and  Pavor  of  the  Eomans ;  Omi,  Woma  is  better  explained 
as  elemental.  What  comes  nearer  to  Wig  and  Hadu  is  Death, 
Daujfus  (p.  842),  which  likewise  from  a  male  becomes  a  female 
person ;  that  death  is  immediately  related  to  hunger  is  shewn 
in  our  language,  Goth,  svults  being  mors,  and  ON.  sultr  fames 
[Germ,  sterben,  Bng.  starve],  like  Xi/ios  hunger,  Xoi/jlos  pesti- 
lence ;  and  personifications  start  up  on  every  side  :  hungr  is 
Hel's  dish,  sultr  her  knife  (Sn.  33),  Herbout  (Renart  23362. 
Roman  de  la  rose  18097)  is  a  visitation  of  famine,  a  name  I  derive 
from  the  OHG.  Heribalt,  for  Hunger  stalks  like  a  mighty  warrior 
through  the  world  :  '  ferid  unmet  grot  Hungar  hetigrim  obar 
helido  barn/  Hel.  132,  8.  '  der  Hunger  gie  liberal,  breite  sich 
in  die  werlt  wite,'  Diut.  3,  101.  The  Roman  Fames  is  fern.,  her 
personality  comes  out  in  Ov.  Met.  8,  800.  Doubt  still  hangs  over 
the  comparison  attempted  on  p.  374  between  a  MHG.  Billich  and 
the  Eddie  Bil  or  Bil,  whose  own  being  is  as  yet  unexplained ; 
but  that  the  sexes  do  interchange  is  most  satisfactorily  proved 
by  the  frequent  appearance,  side  by  side,  of  an  identical  god  and 
goddess,  who  are  parent  and  child,  or  brother  and  sister,  as 
NiorSr  and  Nerthus,  Freyr  and  Freyja,  Liber  and  Libera.  So 
Berhta  became  Berchtolt,  p.  279  (see  Suppl.). 

1  Bruoder  Zornli,  Ergerli  (p.  274).    H.  Sachs  i.  5,  538d  exhibits  Hederlein  iu  a 
bear's  hide  as  brother  of  Zenklein. 


SNOTRA.      WARA.       SUNIA.      FRUMA.  889 

Of  goddesses  and  godlike  women  that  have  sprung  out  of 
moral  ideas,  the  number  is  far  greater  (p.  397).  Under  various 
forms  a  divine  mother  stands  beside  the  father  or  grandfather  : 
fnw.  Vote,  ancestress  of  all  the  heroic  families  (Zeitschr.  f.  d.  a.  1, 
21),  Eolda  the  gracious,  Berhta  the  bright,  Frouwa,  Freyja  the 
fair  or  happy,  Sippia,  Sif  the  kindly  (p.  309).  Folia,  Fulla, 
Abiindia  means  fulness  of  blessing  rather  than  full-moon;  the 
Eomans  hallowed  Copia  with  her  horn  of  plenty;  'aureafruges 
Italiae  pleno  defundit  Copia  cornu/  Hor.  Ep.  i.  12,  28.  ( divesque 
meo  boua  Copia  cornu  est/  Ov\  Met.  9,  85.  Snotra  the  wise, 
well-behaved,  Sn.  38  ;  the  word  lived  on  as  an  adj.,  Goth,  snutrs, 
AS.  snotor,  ON.  snotr,  prudens,  callidus,  liter,  emunctae  naris, 
OHG.  snozar  by  rights,  but  snotar  appears  to  be  used  also  (Graff 
6,  845)  ;  any  discreet  sensible  woman  can  be  called  snotra. 
Three  asynjor,  who  are  protectresses  in  the  sense  of  the  Roman 
Tut'la,  are  cited,  by  Sn.  38  :  Vor,  OHG.  prob.  Wara,  she  who  is 
aware  and  wary,  from  whom  nothing  can  be  hidden ;  Syn,  who 
guards  the  doorway,  with  which  I  connect  the  Goth,  sunja  Veritas, 
sunjons  defensio  (sunjo  p.  310  was  an  error),  and  the  sunuis 
excusatio  found  in  our  oldest  laws,  so  that  the  meaning  seems  to 
be  defence ;  Elin,  whom  Frigg  has  set  for  the  protection  of  all 
men  that  are  in  peril,  from  hlina  tueri,  f overe.1  Even  Hali,  HaJja 
is  a  sheltering  goddess,  who  hides  us  in  the  bosom  of  the  under- 
world, and  originally  a  kind  one. 

From  the  oft-recurring  phrases  :  '  was  im  thiu  fruma  gibidig,' 
Hel.  110,  2.  130,  13  ;  « thiu  fruma  ist  hiar  irougit/  0.  i.  15,  32  ; 
'thaz  in  thiu  fruma  queman  was'  16,  17  ;  '  so  quimit  thir  fruma 
in  henti'  18,  42;  <nu  uns  thiu  fruma  irreimti/  O.  ii.  14,  120; 
one  would  think  this  fruma  (lucrum,  utilitas)  had  once  had  a 
personal  Fruma  underlying  it,  especially  as  the  OS.  gibidig 
gibidi,  AS.  gifebe  (datus,  concessus)  is  habitually  used  of  superior 
gifts  of  fortune:  tir  gifeSe    (gloria  concessa),  Jud.  136,  5;  ead 

1  Snorri,  in  proof  of  the  three  goddesses,  quotes  as  many  proverbs :  '  kona 
vcro'r  v'&r  l>ess  er  lion  verSr  vis,'  a  woman  is  wary  of  what  she  is  aware  of ;  u  syn  er 
fyrir  sett,'  a  defence  is  set  up  (when  one  denies  his  guilt,  conf.  Fornni.  sog.  9,  5  : 
hanu  setti  fc>ar  syn  fyri,  ok  bau'5  skirslur)  ;  'sa  er  forSaz  Meinirjhe  that  is  straggling 
leans  (on  the  tutelary  goddess).  From  hlina  to  slant,  icXLveiv,  iucliuare,  Goth, 
hleinan,  comes  the  causative  hleina  to  lean,  Goth,  hlainjan.  Hlains  in  Gothic  is 
collis,  [slanting  or]  sheltering  hill  ?  I  do  not  see  how  to  reconcile  with  this  the  sense 
attributed  to  hlin  of  a  (sheltering?)  tree  (p.  884). 


890  PERSONIFICATIONS. 

gife$e  (opes  concessae) }  Like  the  above  '  thiu  fruma  uns  ir- 
reimta '  we  have  'then  thiu  salida  gireim/  0.  i.  3,  17;  giriman 
again  is  a  higher  '  falling  to  one's  lot/  and  in  0.  iii.  9,  11.  12  is 
the  combination  :  '  fruma  thana  fuarta,  salida  inti  heihV  And 
salida,  like  fruma,  comes  '  in  henti/  to  hand.  The  unquestionable 
personifications  of  Salida  have  been  treated  p.  864,  etc. 

The  OHG.  name  Sigukepa  would  suit  a  victory-giving  valkyr, 
as  the  Norse  Victoria  or  NUr)  is  in  like  manner  named  Sigrdrifa 
(p.  435) ;  drifa  is  one  that  drives,  and  the  name  Drifa  was  also 
fitly  given  to  a  goddess  of  the  snowstorm,  for  in  the  heat  of  battle 
darts  and  arrows  fly  like  snowflakes,2  Holda  sends  out  the  flakes, 
Wuotan  the  arrows.  Our  Bellona  was  both  Hiltia  and  Kundia 
(p.  422). 

Beside  these  divine  or  at  least  superhuman  beings,  from  whom 
proceeded  splendour,  light,  shelter,  deliverance  and  a  heap  of 
blessings,  especially  victory,  there  were  also  others  who  were 
imagined  as  personifications  of  single  virtues :  as  deity  branched 
out  bodily  into  separate  powers,  its  spiritual  attributes  appeared 
likewise  as  though  distributed  into  rays,  so  as  to  shine  before 
mankind.  But  here  again,  honour,  love,  truth,  gentleness,  shame, 
self-control  and  pity  all  assume  the  guise  of  goddesses,  because 
the  people  were  accustomed  from  of  old  to  hand  over  all  that  was 
fair  and  gracious  to  the  female  sex  (see  Suppl.). 

It  was  the  accepted  belief  that,  like  the  wise-women  of 
heathenism  (pp.  400.  424),  the  virtues  selected  favourites  with 
whom  to  lodge  and  consort.  Offended  or  wronged  by  evil-doing, 
they  took  their  leave,  and  returned  to  the  heavenly  dwelling,  the 
place  of  their  birth.  In  this  too  they  are  like  the  swan-wives, 
who  after  long  sojourn  among  men  suddenly  take  wing  and  seek 
their  better  home  (p.  427). 

Such  notions  must  reach  a  long  way  back,  and  be  widely  spread. 
Hesiod  in^Epya  198 — 200  tells  how  AlSdx;  and  Ne/j,eari<;,  Shame 
and  Eemorse,  having  wrapt  them  in  white  raiment  (put  the  swan- 

i  Eadgifu,  OHG.  Otikepa,  a  woman's  name  =  opes  largiens,  might  translate  the 
Lat.  goddess  Ops. 

2  Ac  veluti  Boreae  sub  tempore  nix  glomerata 

spargitur,  baud  aliter  saevas  jecere  sagittas.     Waltb.  188. 

Von  beidentbalben  floucb  daz  seoz  (flew  tbe  sbots) 

also  dicke  so  der  sne  (as  thick  as  snow).     Alex.  2886  (3235). 

Daz  geschoz  als  diu  snie  gie  (went), 

und  die  wurfe  under  daz  her  (and  the  darts  among  them).     Wigal.  10978. 


ERE.      FEOMUOT.  891 

shift  on),  depart  from  men  to  the  immortal  gods.     We  still  say, 
Truth  and  Honour  are  gone  out  of  the  land ;  a  chronicler  of  the 
14th  cent.   (Bohmer's   Fontes   1,  2)   writes  :  '  tunc  enim  pax  in 
exilium  migravit.'     Kl.  1575:  fja  enwil  min  vrowe  Ere  beliben  in 
dem  riche,  sid  also  jasmerliche   die  ere  tragende    sint   gelegen. 
wer  solt  si  denne  widerwegen,  swenn  ir  geswichet  diu  kraft  ?    des 
het  gar  die  meisterschaf  t  min  lieber  vater  Riiedeger.     vrowe  Ere 
diu  wirt  nimmer  mer  mit  solchem  wunsche  getragen,   als  er  sie 
truoc  bi  sinen  tagen.'      (Honour  will  not  stay,  now  her  bearers 
are  in  such  pitiful  case.     Who  is  to  steady  her,  when  strength 
fails  her  ?     R.  had  the  secret ;  she'll  never  again  be  borne  as  he 
bore  her.)     The  hero  to  whom  dame  Honour  had  attached  herself, 
knew  how   to  maintain  her   equilibrium,   to  carry  her  upright. 
Nithart   135  speaks  of  a  female  being  Vromuot  (merry-mind)  in 
a  way  that  excludes  a  human  person ;  something  mythical  must 
lie  at  the  back   of  it.     Hiltrat  and  some   other  maidens  are  to 
meet  for  dancing,  and  with  them  shall  fare  Fromuot,  'diu  ist  ir 
aller  wisel/  queen-bee  of  them  all.     They  brought  their  atten- 
dants, she  at  springtime  had  entered  the  land,  but  afterwards  she 
is  missing,  she  has  fled  out  of  Austria,  probably  because  she  was 
not  held  in  honour  there.     The  poet  closes  this  (first)  song  with 
the  exclamation  :  '  could  we  but  win  her  back,  we  should  bear 
her  on  our  hands/  as  the  hero  of  the  hour  (a  king,  a  bride)  is 
raised  on  high  and  carried  about ;  the  passage  on  Riidiger  sug- 
gests the  same  kind  of  '  chairing.'     In  the  second  song  we  are 
told  that  Fromuot  fareth  sorrowful  from  land  to  land  in  search  of 
cheerful  men ;  now   who   so   certain  of  his  happiness  and   luck, 
that  he  dare  send  an  embassy  to  her  ?     Why,  none  but  prince 
Friderich,  his  court  by  all  means  let  her  visit.     It  is  mirth  and 
gaiety  that  have  left  the  kingdom  :  fromuete,  OHG.  frawamuati, 
OS.    fromod   (Hel.  35,   1)    means  jovial,    but   Fromuot   likewise 
occurs  as  a  woman's  name  (Graff  2,  699),  it  is  that  of  Sigeminne's 
handmaid   in  Wolfd.   673-5-6-7.     719,   and   the   personification 
may  have  its  reason  in  ancient  ways  of  thinking.1     In  a  poem  of 
the  early  part  of  the  15th  cent.  (Z.  f.  d.  a.  1,  424),  frau  Gerechtig- 
heit  (righteousness)   and  her  companions  say  :  '  now  am  I  clean 

1  The  emendation  proposed  in  Altd.  bl.  1,  371,  '  vron  Muot,'  is  actually  found 
in  MsH.  3,  218°,  in  case  the  var.  lectt.  768b  have  had  full  justice  done  them.  But 
I  have  never  met  with  the  simple  Muot  as  a  woman's  name. 


892  PERSONIFICATIONS. 

rejected  and  driven  to  another  land  ...  we  all  have  taken 
flight  and  are  chased  out  of  the  land.'  So  Helbl.  7,  61  makes 
Wdrheit  (veritas)  and  Triuwe  (fides)  quit  the  country,  but  what 
he  further  tells  of  Warheit  is  peculiar,  how  she  slipt  into  a 
parson,  and  nestled  in  his  cheek,  but  left  him  at  last  when  he 
opened  his  lips,  7,  65 — 102.  In  7,  751  vices  are. summoned  to 
creep  (sliefen)  into  a  judge.  So  that  both  virtues  and  vices,  like 
the  daemon,  take  up  their  abode  in  men,  and  retire  from  them 
again.  But  such  fancies  were  not  far  to  seek,  and  even  the  elder 
poets  make  Minne  especially  visit  the  heart  of  man,  possess  it, 
e.g.  MS.  1,  26b  :  '  ach  siieze  Minne,  fiiege  dich  in  ihr  herze,  und 
gib  ir  minnen  muot ! '  Notice  too  the  naive  question  the  daughter 
puts  to  her  mother,  MS.  2,  260a :  c  nu  sage  mil*  ob  diu  Minne  lebe 
und  hie  bi  uns  uf  erde  si,  aid  ob  uns  in  den  liiften  swebe  (or 
hovers  in  the  air  above  us)  ?  '  She  has  heard  of  higher  beings, 
whom  she  imagines  living  in  the  air,  as  the  heathen  valkyrs 
glided  through  it.  The  mother  answers,  speaking  of  Venus  :  '  si 
vert  unsihtic  (travels  viewless)  als  ein  geist,  si  en  hat  niht  ruowe 
(no  rest)  naht  noch  tac  ;'  conf.  p.  456. 

In  the  Gute  frau  576  :  '  do  kam  vrou  Swlde  und  Ere,  die  wurden 
sine  geverten  (companions),  die  in  sit  dicke  ernerten  von  aller 
slahte  sweere  (oft  saved  him  from  harm)  ; '  61 1  :  'im  enschatte 
ouch  niht  sere,  daz  vrou  Scelde  und  vrou  Ere  sich  sin  unterwunden 
(took  charge),  do  si'n  uf  der  straze  vunden  (found  him  on  march). 
vrou  S.  loste  im  diu  pfant  (difficulties),  dar  nach  versatzte  si  ze 
hant  vrou  E.  aber  viirbaz.'  Dietr.  49  :  '  des  hete  diu  Ere  zuo  im 
fluht  (resorted),  durch  daz  (because)  er  ir  so  schone  pflac  (treated) ;' 
105  :  '  daz  er  die  Ere  het  ze  hus.'  MS.  2,  174a :  'vro  Ere  kumt 
unit  im  gerant.'  Wartb.  kr.  cod.  jen.  112:  '  ver  Triuwe  nam 
(took)  an  sich  die  Scham,  sam  tete  diu  Zulit,  diu  Kiusche  (so 
did  courtesy,  chastity),  Milte  und  Ere  alsara,  si  jahen  daz  ir  aller 
vriedel  wasre  (they  all  declared  their  darling  was)  der  viirste  da 
liz  Diiringe  lant; '  the  preceding  stanzas  make  it  clear  that  dame 
Faith  commands  and  leads  the  other  five  (see  Suppl.). 

It  was  clumsy  of  Otfried,  after  making  Karitas  (iv.  29)  spin 
and  weave  the  Saviour's  tunic x  in  the  manner  of  a  heathen  norn, 

1  The  tunica  inconsxitilis  (giscafota  sia  mit  filu  kleinen  fadumon  job  unginaten 
red'non  kleinero  garno),  and  ace.  to  the  Orendellied  spun  by  Mary  and  wrought 
by  Helena.     Whence  arose  this  myth?     Greg.  Tru.  mirac.  1,  8  has  already  '  tunica 


MILDE.      MINNE.      MAZE.  893 

to  give  her  for  sisters  two  unfeminine  ideas,  *  fridu  '  and  '  reht ' 
(v.  23,  125);  the  Latin  Garitas,  Pax,  Justitla  would  more  fitly 
have  discharged  the  office  of  fates,  and  a  German  Sippa  and  Rehti 
would  have  answered  to  them:  Notker  in  Cap.  133  manages 
better,  when  he  translates  Concordia,  Fides,  Pudicitia  by  Gewin- 
maoti,  Triwa,  Chiuski.  I  bring  these  examples  to  shew  how 
familiar  such  personifications  were  even  in  the  9-10th  cent. ;  they 
need  not  have  been  invented  or  introduced  first  by  the  MHG. 
poets. 

Minna,  even  in  OHG.  (p.  59),  could  signify  not  only  caritas, 
but  amor  and  cupido  ;  and  there  is  nothing  offensive  in  Veldek's 
Lavinia  and  Eneas  addressing  Venus  as  Minne  (En.  10083. 
10948) ;  in  Hartmann,  Wolfram  and  W al th er,  frou  Minne  appears 
bodily  (Iw.  1537.  1638.  Parz.  288,  4.  30.  291—5.  Walth.  14, 
10.  40,  26.  55,  16),  and  Hartmann,  who  is  fond  of  interweaving 
dialogue,  has  a  talk  with  her,  Iw.  2971  seq.,  a  thing  imitated  in 
Gute  frau  328-46-80.  Kfrowe  Maze  (modus,  meetness)  occurs  in 
Walth.  46,  33;  a  frou  Witze  in  Parz.  288,  14.  295,  8;  examples 
of  frou  Ere  were  given  a  page  or  two  back,  and  of  frou  Scelde 
p.  865-6.  These  personifications  are  brought  in  more  sparingly 
by  Gotfried  and  Conrad,  yet  in  the  Trist.  10929  diu  Maze  cuts 
out  a  garment,  and  just  before  that  comes  the  fine  passage  (10900) 
on  Isot's  figure  :  f  als  si  diu  Minne  draete  ir  selber  z'eime  veder- 
spil,  dem  Wunsche  z'einem  endezil,  da  fur  er  niemer  komen  kan/ 
as  if  Venus  had  made  her  for  a  toy  to  herself,  and  for  utmost 
bound  to  Wish,  that  he  can  never  get  beyond.  Tristan  4807  has 
'  diu  gotinne  Minne/  and  Parz.  291,  17  once/>w  Liebe  as  well  as 
frou  Minne.  Frou  Ere  is  freq.  in  Frauenlob  :  '  da  hat  vrou  Ere 
ir  wi'mschelruot '  41,  18;  'vroun  Eren  diener '  134,  18;  '  vroun 
Even  bote  '194,  8  ;  she  excludes  '  unwip  '  from  her  castle  (vesten) 
274,  18;  '  vroun  Eren  straze '  384-5  (see  Suppl.). 

In  the  14-1 5th  cent,  these  fancies  are  carried  to  excess,  and 
degenerate  into  mere  allegories :  my  ladies,  the  Virtues,  instead 
of  coming  in,  one  at  a  time,  where  they  are  wanted  to  deepen  the 
impressiveness  of  the  story,  intrude  themselves  into  the  plot  of 
the  whole  story,  or  at  least  of  long  formal  introductions  and 
proems.     And  yet  there  is  no  denying,  that  in  these  preludes, 

Chriati  non  consuta.'  [Tho  author  forgets  the  '  coat  without  seam,'  xiT&v  dppacpos, 
John  19,  23.] 


894  PERSONIFICATIONS. 

nearly  all  of  one  traditional  pattern,  which  even  Hans  Sachs  is 
excessively  fond  of,  there  occur  now  and  then  shrewd  and  happy 
thoughts,  which  must  be  allowed  to  possess  a  mythical  signifi- 
cance. By  degrees  all  the  devices  of  poetry  were  so  used  up, 
the  art  was  so  denuded  of  her  native  resources,  that  no  other 
expedient  was  left  her;  our  Mythology  will  have  to  remember 
this,  and  in  stray  features  here  and  there  recognise  [mangled  but] 
still  palpitating  figures  even  of  the  heathen  time.  When  the 
poet  has  missed  his  way  in  a  wooded  wild,  and  beside  the  mur- 
muring spring  comes  upon  a  wailing  wife,  who  imparts  advice 
and  information,  what  is  this  but  the  apparition  of  a  wish-wife 
or  valkyr,  who  meets  the  hero  at  the  forest  fount,  and  makes 
a  covenant  with  him  ?  And  that  dwarfs  or  giants  often  come 
between,  as  servants  of  these  wild  women,  and  conduct  to  their 
dwelling  by  a  narrow  path,  this  also  seems  no  invention,  but 
founded  on  old  tradition. 

Out  of  many  examples  I  will  select  a  few.  MS.  2,  136b :  Ich 
kam  geriten  uf  ein  velt  viir  einen  griienen  wait,  da  vant  ich  ein 
vil  schcen  gezelt  (tent),  dar  under  saz  diu  Triuwe,  si  wand  ir 
hende,  si  bot  ir  leit,  si  schre  vil  lute../  min  schar  ist  worden  al  ze 
kleine  (my  followers  are  grown  far  too  few)/  Cod.  Berol.  284 
fol.  57-8  :  By  a  steep  cliff  in  the  greenwood  lives  Virtue,  and  on 
a  high  rock  beside  it  her  sister  dame  Honour,  with  whom  are 
Loyalty,  Bounty,  Meekness,  Manhood,  Truth  and  Constancy,  be- 
wailing the  death  of  a  count  of  Holland.  Ls.  1,  375  (a  charming 
tale)  :  On  a  May  morning  the  poet  is  roused  from  sleep  by  a 
passionate  cry,  he  starts  up,  goes  into  the  forest,  and  climbs  over 
steep  rocks,  till  high  up  he  reaches  a  delectable  flowery  vale,  and 
in  the  dense  thicket  spies  a  little  wight,  who  rates  him  soundly 
and  wishes  (like  Laurin)  to  impound  him  for  trampling  his  lady's 
roses.  When  pacified  at  last,  he  tells  him  that  here  in  a  strong- 
hold not  to  be  scaled  lives  dame  Honour  with  five  maidens  of 
her  household,  named  Adeltrut,  Schamigunt,  Zuhtliehe,  Tugenthilt 
and  Mdzeburc  (the  ancient  Hiltia,  Gundia,  Drut,  p.  422).  Ls.  3 
83  :  A  woman  on  a  pilgrimage,  having  lost  her  way  in  the  wooded 
mountains,  comes  to  a  little  blue  house,  in  which  there  sits  an 
ancient  dame  clothed  in  blue,  who  receives  her  kindly.  This 
good  dame  calls  herself  the  Old  Minne,  she  still  wears  the  colour 
of  truth,  but  now  she  is  banished  from  the  world.     The  pilgrim 


PERSONIFICATION.  895 

journeys  on  to  the  tent  of  Young  Minne,  who  like  her  playmate 
Wankelmut  (fickle-mind,  a  fern,  formed  like  Fromuot)  wears 
checkered  garments,  and  is  busy  entering  men  and  women's 
names  in  a  book  (like  the  parca  and  wurd,  p.  406  n.),  and  pro- 
claims the  new  ways  of  the  world.  In  the  end  Old  Minne  de- 
clares that  she  hopes  some  day  to  appear  again  among  men,  and 
drag  the  false  Minne  openly  to  justice.  A  song  in  MsH.  3,  43  7a 
describes  how  dame  Honour  sits  in  judgment,  with  Loyalty, 
Charity  and  Manhood  on  her  right,  Shame,  Chastity  and  Modera- 
tion on  her  left.  P.  Suchenwirt  xxiv. :  The  poet  follows  a  narrow 
path  into  a  great  forest,  where  a  high  mountain  rises  to  the 
clouds :  a  dwarf  meets  him  at  the  mouth  of  a  cave,  and  informs 
him  of  a  court  to  be  held  in  that  neighbourhood  by  dame  Con- 
stancy and  Justice.  He  goes  on  his  way,  till  he  comes  to  the 
judgment-seat,  before  which  he  sees  Minne  appear  as  plaintiff, 
followed  by  Moderation,  Chastity,  Shame,  and  Modesty,  he  hears 
her  cause  pleaded  and  decided,  but  frau  Minne  spies  him  in  his 
lurking-place.  H.  Sachs  i.  273b:  In  May  time,  in  the  depth  of 
the  forest,  on  a  lofty  moss-grown  rock,  the  poet  is  met  by  a  hairy 
wood- wife,  who  guides  him  to  the  tower  of  dame  Charity,  shows 
him  through  her  chambers,  and  at  last  brings  him  before  the 
high  dame  herself,  who  sends  him  away  not  empty-handed.  The 
rock-dwelling  in  the  wooded  mountain  seems  an  essential  part  of 
nearly  all  these  narratives :  it  is  the  ruined  castle  in  which  the 
1  white  lady '  appears,  it  is  the  tower  of  Veleda,  Mengk/3,  Brunhild 
(p.  96  n.).  Are  the  companions,  'playmates/  by  whom  dame- 
Honour  is  attended,  as  the  highest  virtue  by  the  lower  ones,  to 
be  traced  back  to  a  retinue  of  priestesses  and  ministering  virgins 
of  the  heathen  time  ?  to  valkyrs  and  messengers  of  a  goddess  ? 
Dame  Era,  Aiza  (p.  414  n.)  may  go  a  long  way  back  by  that  very 
name  :  in  the  story  from  P.  Suchenw.  xxiv.  68  is  uttered  the 
notable  precept  '  ere  all  frouwen  fin ! '  honour  all  gentle  dames 
(p.  398 ;  and  see  Suppl.) 

As  a  counterpart,  there  are  personifications  of  Vices  too,  but 
far  fewer  and  feebler,  as  our  antiquity  in  general  does  not  go 
upon  dualism,  and  in  higher  beings  the  idea  of  the  good  prepon- 
derates. Besides,  when  malignant  daemons  do  appear,  they  are 
by  preference  made  masculine:  zorn  (anger),  hass  (hate),  neid 
(envy)  ;  though   the   Lat.   ira  and  invidia  are   fern.,  and   odium 


896  PERSONIFICATIONS. 

remains  neuter,  like  our  general  word  for  vice  (laster)  against 
the  fern,  virtue  (tugend).  It  surprises  me  that  no  personification 
of '  siinde '  f.,  sin  in  the  christian  sense,  is  to  be  found  in  MHG. 
poets,  for  the  word  itself  may  lie  very  near  the  old  heathen  Sunja 
(p.  310),  inasmuch  as  defence  and  denial  includes  fault  and  sin; 
the  notion  of  f  crying  sins,  deadly  sins  '  is  Biblical.  Neither  does 
'  schuld  '  f.  (causa,  debitum,  crimen)  put  in  a  personal  appearance, 
the  part  she  played  of  old  (p.  407)  seems  totally  forgotten  ;  what 
lends  itself  more  readily  to  personification  is  Schande  f.  (dedecus) . 
It  would  be  hard  to  find  the  negatives  '  unere,  unmilde,  unstsete ' 
treated  as  persons,  and  we  only  meet  with  Untriuwe  in  Frauen- 
lob  253,  5.  14  ;frou  Unfuoge  (unfitness)  was  quoted  p.  311  n.,  but 
if,  as  is  likely,  the  positive  Gefuoge  contains  fundamentally  a 
physical  sense,  it  hardly  falls  under  the  category  of  vices,  but  like 
Unsaslde  (p.  878)  marks  the  negation  of  a  state.  In  the  Bible 
Guiot  (Meon  2,  344)  the  three  fair  maids  Charite,  Verlte,  Droiture, 
are  confronted  by  three  old  and  ugly  ones,  Traison,  Ypocrisie, 
Simonie;  virtue  is  always  painted  fair  and  godlike,  vice  foul  and 
fiendish  (see  Suppl.). 

The  personification  of  Rumour  is  of  high  antiquity.  It  was 
very  natural  to  think  of  it  as  a  divine  messenger  sent  out  through 
the  air,  to  listen  to  all  that  goeson,  and  bring  tidings  of  it  to 
the  highest  gods,  who  have  to  know  everything.  To  the  Greeks 
vOaaa  (voice,  sound)  was  A  to?  cvyyeXos,  II.  2,  93  j  6a aa  e'/c  Alos, 
Od.  1.  282: 

"Ocrcra  S"  ap   ayyekos  a)/ca  Kara  tttoKlv  a>XeT0  7r(^VTV> 

Od.  24,  413. 

Another  name  is  ^n^,  Dor.  Qa^a,  to  whom,  says  Pausanias  i. 
17,  1,  as  well  as  to  vE\eo<;,  Alow  and  'Opfiij,  there  was  an  altar 
erected  at  Athens ;  the  word  is  conn,  with  (prjfil,  <f>r}/u<;,  as  the 
Lat.  Fama  is  with  fari  and  famen  (in  effamen)  ;  I  incline  to  refer 
the  AS.  beme,  tuba,  to  the  same,  preferring  that  spelling  to  the 
commoner  byme.  As  there  would  otherwise  be  nothing  in  the 
Edda  parallel  to  this  Fama,  it  is  perhaps  allowable  to  find  her  in 
the  goddess  Gnd,  Sn.  38,  whom  Frigg  sends  out  on  her  errands 
(at  eirindum  sinum)  to  all  parts  of  the  world  ;  through  air  and 
sea  she  rides  on  a  steed  named  Hofvarpnir  (who  flings  out  the 
hoof),  she  will  neither  fly  nor  drive,  but  ride  through  the  air,  and 


M.EKE   (fama).  897 

all  higliflovvn  things  are  said  to  'guasfa:'  our  Gotfried  in  a  song 
puts  '  gnaben  '  by  the  side  of  '  flying,  flowing,  trotting,  creeping/ 
Hofvarpnir  may  have  been  a  winged  horse,1  but  to  the  Greeks 
and  Romans  Fama  herself  was  winged,  and  this  appears  to  me  to 
have  arisen  out  of  the  notion  of  a  bird  that  bore  tidings  as  a 
divine  messenger  :  '  ex  ipsa  caede  volucrem  nuntium  mittere  '  in 
Cic.  pro  Roscio  36  simply  means  the  speediest  intimation,  conf. 
Pertz  2,  578  :  '  subito  venit  nuntius  pennigero  volatu/  In  our 
folksongs  birds  do  errands  (p.  672),  and  OSinn  has  two  ravens 
for  his  chosen  messengers,  but  their  office  could  also  be  handed 
over  to  divine  beings  of  secondary  rank,  as  Zeus  employs  Iris  and 
Ossa,  and  the  notion  of  angel  has  arisen  directly  out  of  that  of 
messenger.  Virgil's  famous  description  of  Fama,  small  at  first, 
but  quickly  growing  to  enormous  size  (Aen.  4,  173)  with  innu- 
merable feathers,  eyes,  ears,  and  mouths,  seems  almost  borrowed 
from  the  image  of  a  bird  getting  fledged;  at  all  events  the 
St.  Gall  monk  (Pertz  2,  742)  delivers  himself  thus :  '  cum  fama 
de  minima  meisa  (sup.  p.  683)  super  aquilarum  magnitudinem 
excresceret.'  Other  writers  :  '  daz  mcere  (news)  do  vedere  gewau, 
witen  fuor  ez  ze  gazzen/  Mar.  144.  '  alsus  flouk  Morganes  tot, 
als  ob  er  fliicke  wsere/  so  flew  M/s  death  as  if  it  were  fledged, 
Trist.  5483.  '  ein  bcese  mcere  wirt  gar  schiere  vliicke,'  ill  news  is 
soon  fledged,  Renn.  18210.  Yet  Veldeck,  just  where  we  might 
have  expected  an  imitation  of  Virgil,  has  merely:  '  do  daz  moire 
itf  brack — ilz  quam — uz  spranc,'  En.  1903-16-97,  not  giving  it 
wings,  though  he  does  make  it  grow  :  '  daz  mcere  walisen  began/ 
9185.12575;  conf.  Geo.  521  :  'diu  mcere  in  der  stunde  (illico) 
wuohsen.'  Most  of  the  other  poets  confine  themselves  to  the 
image  of  flight :  '  leidiu  niumare  (ill  news)  diu  nu  jiiegent  in  diu 
lant/  Pf.  Chuonr.  7544.  '  daz  mcere  fluoc  do  witen/  Mar.  45 ; 
'  do  daz  mcere  chom  geflogen  '  214.  '  do  Jiugen  disiu  mcere  von 
lande  ze  lande/  Nib.  1362,  2 ;  '  do  jiugen  diu  mcere  von  scharo 
baz  ze  schare'  1530,  1.  'ob  diz  mcere  iht  verre  (far)  fluge?3 
Wh.  170,  20.  '  diu  mcere  Jiugen  iiber  daz  velt/  Wigal.  2930.  '  so 
daz  mcere  ie  verrer  vliuget,  so  man  ie  int-r  geliuget/  the  farther  it 
flies,  they  tell  more  lies,  Freid.   136,3.     '  mcere  vliegent  in  diu 


1  Like  Pegasus;  conf.  the  0.  Boh.  gloss  of  Mater  verb.  215  :  kridlatec  (alatus) 
Pegasus  equus  Neptuni,  qui  '  lama '  interpretatur. 


898  PERSONIFICATIONS. 

lant/  Karl  116a.1  M.  Neth.  poets  also  make  their  fem.  niemare 
fly:  'niemare  ghevloghen,'  Moris  358;  but  often,  like  Veldeck 
above,  they  make  her  run  or  leap  like  started  game  :  '  die  niemare 
liep'  173;  '  die  niemare  sal  lopen'  1295  ;  and  with  this  agree  the 
Dan.  'det  springer  nu  saa  vide/  DV.  1,  63,  and  perhaps  the 
AS.  '  Meed  wide  sprang,'  Beow.  36,  if  blsed  (flatus,  OHG.  plat) 
may  here  be  taken  for  fama.  In  a  passage  quoted  above,  p.  78, 
fama  is  imagined  walking,  and  '  gressus  suos  retorquens.'  Now, 
vivid  as  these  representations  are,  it  is  not  personification  that 
lies  at  the  bottom  of  them,  as  we  may  see  by  the  vague  neuter 
moere,  OHG.  mdri ;  the  OHG.  marida,  Goth,  mertya  (us-iddja 
rnerij?a  is,  i^rfkOev  rj  a/coi]  avrov,  Mark  1,  28)  would  have  lent 
itself  more  readily  to  that,  but  MHG.  had  no  mserde  in  use, 
though  Latin  writers  undoubtedly  retained  fama,  e.g.  in  Helmold 
1 ,  65 :  '  interim  volat  haec  fama  per  universam  Saxoniam/ 
Hartmann  in  Er.  2515  personifies  frowe  Melde,  while  Tybo,  a 
Dan.  poet  of  the  17th  cent.,  more  floridly  names  her  Fyg-om-by 
(aestuans  per  terram,  from  fyge,  ON.  fiuka),  and  gives  her  a 
fiedreham,  Nyerup's  Digtek.  2,  185.  Ovid  in  Met.  12,  30  seq. 
attributes  to  Fama  a  house  with  innumerable  approaches,  and 
this  is  elaborately  imitated  by  Conrad  in  Troj.  179c.  180%  only 
for  fame  he  puts  a  masc.  Liumet,  OHG.  hliumunt,  our  leumund 
(Gramm.  2,  343.  Graff  4,  1100),  who  together  with  his  followers 
is  winged,  and  flies  forth,  but  signifies  more  the  listening  fama ; 
conf.  Goth.  hliuma=auris,  and  Liumending  =  Favor  in  N.  Cap. 
51.  To  such  male  beings  would  correspond  the  Lat.  rumor,  of 
which  we  read  in  Isengr.  13  :  'Rumor  per  saltus  et  arva  tonans'; 
or  the  ON.  qvittr  :  '  sa  Tevittr  flo  i  bygftum/  Fornm.  sog.  9,  237 
(see  Suppl.). 

1  '  Die  aechtesal  vlouc  uber  al ; '  '  ir  echte  vlouc  in  die  lant,'  Kaiserchr.  6406-79. 


Butler  &  Tanner,  Prome,  and  London. 


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Foliorum  Silvula.     Part  I.     Passages  for  Translation  into  Latin 

Elegiac  and  Heroic  Verse.     9th  Edition.     Post  8vo.    7s.  6d. 

Part  II.     Select  Passages  for  Translation  into  Latin  Lyric 

and  Comic  Iambic  Verse.    3rd  Edition.     Post  Svo.    5s. 

Part  III.    Select  Passages  for  Translation  into  Greek  Verse. 


3rd  Edition.     Post  8vo.    8s. 


Educational  Works. 


Folia  Silvula,  sive  Eclogaa  Poetarum  Anglicoram  in  Latinum  et 
Cxraecum  conversse.    8vo.     Vol.  I.  10s.  6d.     Vol.  II.  12s. 

Foliorum  Centuriae.  Select  Passages  for  Translation  into  Latin 
and  Greek  Prose.    7th  Edition.     Post  8vo.    8s. 


TRANSLATIONS,  SELECTIONS,  &c. 

%*  Many  of  the  following  books  are  well  adapted  for  School  Prizes. 

iEschylus.     Translated  into  English  Prose  by  F.  A.  Palev  M  A 
2nd  Edition.    8vo.     7s.  6d.  J' 

Translated  into  English  Verse  by  Anna  Swanwick.     Post 

8vo.    5s. 

Anthologia  Graeca.  A  Selection  of  Choice  Greek  Poetry,  with  Notes. 

By  P.  St.  John  Thackeray.    4th  and  Cheaper  Edition.    16mo.    4s.  6d. 
Anthologia  Latina.     A  Selection  of  Choice  Latin  Poetry    from 

Namus  to  Boeth  ins,  with  Notes.    By  Rev.  F.  St.  John  Thackeray."  Revised 

and  Cheaper  Edition.     16ino.     4s.  6d. 

Horace.  The  Odes  and  Carmen  Sreculare.  In  English  Verse  by 
J.  Conington,  M.A.    8th  edition.     Poap.  8vo.     5s.  6d. 

The  Satires  and  Epistles.  In  English  Verse  by  J.  Coning- 
ton, M.A.    5th  edition.    6s.  6d. 

Illustrated  from  Antique  Gems  by  C.  W.  King,  M.A.     The 

text  revised  with  Introduction  by  H.  A.  J.  Munro,  M.A.  Large  8vo.    II.  Is. 

Horace's  Odes.  Englished  and  Imitated  by  various  hands.  Edited 
by  C.  W.  F.  Cooper.     Crown  8vo.     6s.  6d. 

MV383  Etonenses,  sive  Carminvm  Etonae  Couditorvm  Delectvs. 
By  Richard  Okes.    2  vols.  8vo.     15s. 

Propertius.     Verse  translations  from  Book  V.,  with  revised  Latin 

Text.     By  F.  A.  Paley,  M.A.     Fcap.  8vo.     3s. 
Plato.     Gorgias.     Translated  by  E.  M.  Cope,  M.A.     8vo.     7s. 

Philebus.    Translated  by  F.  A.  Paley,  M.A.    Small  8vo.    4*. 

Theastetus.  Translated  by  F.  A.  Paley,  M.A.    Small  8vo,    4s. 

Analysis  and  Index  of  the  Dialogues.     By  Dr.  Day.     Post 

8vo.    5s. 

Reddenda  Reddita  :  Passages  from  English  Poetry,  with  a  Latin 
Verso  Translation.     By  F.  E.  Gretton.     Crown  8vo.    6s. 

Sabrinae  Corolla  in  hortulis  Begins  Scholar  Salopiensis  contexuerunt 
tres  vin  flonbus  legendis.     Editio  tertia.    8vo.    8s.  6d. 

Sertum  Carthusianum  Floribus  trium  Seculorum  Contextum.  By 
W.  H.  Brown.    8vo.     14s.  J 

Theocritus.  In  English  Verse,  by  C.  S.  Calverley,  M.A.  Crown 
8v0*  [New  Edition  preparing. 

Translations  into  English  and  Latin.  By  C.  S.  Calverley  M  A 
PostSvo.    7s.  6d.  ■" 

By  B.  C.  Jebb,  M.A. ;  H.  Jackson,  M.A.,  and  W.  E.  Currey. 


M.A.     Crown  8vo.  8s. 


into  Greek  and  Latin  Verse.     By  E.  C.  Jebb.     4to.  cloth 

gilt.     10s.  6d. 

Between  Whiles.    Translations  by  B.  H.  Kennedy.    2nd  Edition 

revised.     Crown  8vo.     6s. 


George  Bell  and  Sons' 


REFERENCE    VOLUMES. 

A  Latin  Grammar.    By  Albert  Harkness.     Post  8vo.     6s. 

By  T.  H.  Key,  M.A.   6th  Thousand.   Post  8vo.     8s. 

A  Short  Latin  Grammar  for  Schools.      By  T.  H.  Key,  M.A., 

F.R.S.     14th  Edition.    Post  8vo.    3s.  6d. 

A  Guide  to  the  Choice  of  Classical  Books.  By  J.  B.  Mayor,  M.A. 

Revised  Edition.    Crown  8vo.    3s. 
The  Theatre  of  the  Greeks.    By  J.  W.  Donaldson,  D.D.     8th 

Edition.    Post  8vo.    5s. 
Keightley's  Mythology  of  Greece  and  Italy.    4th  Edition.     5s. 
A  Dictionary  of  Latin  and  Greek  Quotations.    By  H.  T.  Eiley. 

Post  8vo.    5s.    With  Index  Verborum,  6s. 
A  History  of  Roman  Literature.    By  W.  S.  Teuffel,  Professor  at 

the  University  of  Tubing-en.  By  W.  Wagner,  Ph.D.   2  vols.  Demy  8vo.  21s. 
Student's  Guide  to  the  University  of  Cambridge.    4th  Edition 

revised.    Fcap.  8vo.     Part  1,  2s.  6d. ;  Parts  2  to  6,  Is.  each. 


CLASSICAL   TABLES. 

Latin  Accidence.    By  the  Eev.  P.  Frost,  M.A.     Is. 

Latin  Versification.    Is. 

Notabilia  Quaedam ;  or  the  Principal  Tenses  of  most  of  the 
Irregular  Greek  Verbs  and  Elementary  Greek,  Latin,  and  French  Con- 
struction.    New  Edition.    Is. 

Richmond  Rules   for  the   Ovidian  Distich,  &c.     By  J.  Tate, 

M.A.    is.  \, 

The  Principles  of  Latin  Syntax.    Is. 
Greek  Verbs.    A  Catalogue  of  "Verbs,  Irregular  and  Defective ;  their 

leading  formations,  tenses,  and  inflexions,  with  Paradigms  for  conjugation, 

Rules  for  formation  of  tenses,  &c.  &c.     By  J.  S.  Baird,  T.C.D.    2s.  6<i. 
Greek  Accents  (Notes  on).    By  A.  Barry,  D.D.    New  Edition.   Is. 
Homeric  Dialect.    Its  Leading  Forms  and  Peculiarities.    By  J.  S. 

Baird,  T.C.D.    New  Edition,  by  W.  G.  Rutherford.     Is. 
Greek  Accidence.    By  the  Bev.  P.  Frost,  M.A.    New  Edition.    Is. 


CAMBRIDGE    MATHEMATICAL    SERIES. 

Whitworth's  Choice  and  Chance.   3rd  Edition.  Crown  8vo.  6s. 
McDowell's  Exercises  on  Euclid  and  in  Modern   Geometry. 

3rd  Edition.     6s. 
Vyvyan's  Trigonometry.     3s.  Qd.  [Just  published. 

Taylor's  Geometry  of  Conies.  Elementary.   3rd  Edition.  4s.  %d. 
Aldis's  Solid  Geometry.     3rd  Edition.     6s. 
Garnett's  Elementary  Dynamics.    2nd  Edition.     6s. 

Heat,  an  Elementary  Treatise.     2nd  Edition.     3s.  6d. 

Walton's  Elementary  Mechanics  (Problems  in).  2nd  Edition.  6s. 


Educational  Works. 


CAMBRIDGE    SCHOOL   AND    COLLEGE 
TEXT-BOOKS. 

A  Series  of  Elementary  Treatises  for  the  me  of  Students  in  tlie 
Universities,  Schools,  and  Candidates  for  the  Public 
Examinations.     Ecap.  8vo. 
Arithmetic.     By  Rev.  C.  Elsee,  M.A.   Fcap.  8vo.   10th  Edit.   3s.  6d. 
Algebra.    By  the  Bev.  C.  Elsee,  M.A.     6th  Edit.    4s. 
Arithmetic.    By  A.  Wrigley,  M.A.     3s.  6d. 

A  Progressive  Course  of  Examples.     With  Answers.    By 


J.  Watson,  M.A.     5th  Edition.    2s.  6d. 
Algebra.     Progressive    Course    of    Examples.       By  Kev.  W.  F. 
M'Michael,  M.A.,  and  R.  Prowde  Smith,  M.A.    2nd  Edition.     3s.6d.   With 
Answers.  4s.  6d. 

Plane  Astronomy,  An  Introduction  to.  By  P.  T.  Main,  M.A. 
4th  Edition.    4s. 

Conic  Sections  treated  Geometrically.  By  "W.  H.  Besant,  M.A. 
4th  Edition.    4s.  6d.     Solution  to  the  Examples.    4s. 

Elementary  Conic  Sections  treated  Geometrically.  By  W.  H. 
Besant,  M.A.  rjn  the  Press. 

Statics,  Elementary.    By  Rev.  H.  Goedwin,  D.D.     2nd  Edit.     3s. 

Hydrostatics,  Elementary.  By  W.  H.  Besant,  M.A.  10th  Edit.   4s. 

Mensuration,  An  Elementary  Treatise  on.  By  B.  T.  Moore,  M.A.  6s. 

Newton's  Principia,  The  First  Three  Sections  of,  with  an  Appen- 
dix ;  and  tho  Ninth  and  Eleventh  Sections.  By  J.  H.  Evans,  M.A.  5th 
Edition,  by  P.  T.  Main,  M.A.     4s. 

Trigonometry,  Elementary.     By  T.  P.  Hudson,  M.A.     3s.  Qd. 

Optics,  Geometrical.  "With  Answers.   By  W.  S.  Aldis,  M.A.   3s.  6d. 

Analytical  Geometry  for  Schools.  ByT.G.Vyvyan.  3rd  Edit.  4s.6cZ. 

Greek  Testament,  Companion  to  the.     By  A.  C.  Barrett,  A.M. 

4th  Edition,  revised.     Fcap.  8vo.     5s. 
Book  of  Common  Prayer,  An  Historical  and  Explanatory  Treatise 

on  the.     By  W.  G.  Humphry,  B.D.    6th  Edition.     Fcap.  8vo.    4s.  6d. 
Music,  Text-book  of.     By  H.  C.  Banister.     9th  Edit,  revised.     5s. 
Concise  History  of.     By  Bev.  H.  G.  Bonavia  Hunt,  B.  Mus. 

Oxon.     5th  Edition  revised.    3s.  6d. 


ARITHMETIC    AND    ALGEBRA. 

See  foregoing  Series. 


GEOMETRY   AND    EUCLID. 

Text-Book  of  Geometry.     By  T.   S.   Aldis,   M.A.      Small  8vo. 

4s.  6d.     Part  I.  2s.  6d.     Part  II.  2s. 
The  Elements  of  Euclid.    By  H.  J.  Hose.    Fcap.  8vo.     4s.  6d. 

Exercises  separately,  Is. 

The  Fust  Six  Books,  with  Commentary  by  Dr.  Lardner. 

10th  Edition.    8vo.     6s. 

The  First  Two  Books  explained  to  Beginners.    By  C.  P. 


Mason,  B.A.    2nd  Edition.     Fcap  8vo.    2s.  6d. 


George  Bell  and  Sons' 


The  Enunciations  and  Figures  to  Euclid's  Elements.    By  Rev. 

J.  Brasse,  D.D.     New  Edition.     Fcap.8vo.     Is.    On  Cards,  in  case,  5s.  6d. 

Without  the  Figures,  6d. 
Exercises  on  Euclid  and  in  Modern  Geometry.   By  J.  McDowell, 

B.A.     Crown  8vo.     3rd  Edition  revised.    6s. 
Geometrical  Conic  Sections.    By  W.  H.  Besant,  M.A.   4th  Edit. 

4s.  6d.     Solution  to  the  Examples.     4s. 
Elementary  Geometrical  Conic  Sections.     By  W.  H.  Besant, 

M.A.  [In  the  press. 

Elementary  Geometry  of  Conies.    By  C.  Taylor,  D.D.     3rd  Edit. 

8vo.     'Is.  6d. 
An  Introduction  to  Ancient  and  Modern  Geometry  of  Conies. 

By  C.  Taylor,  M.A.     8vo.     15s. 
Solutions    of    Geometrical    Problems,   proposed  at  St.   John's 

College  from  1830  to  1840.    By  T.  Gaskin,  M.A.    8vo.     12s. 

TRIGONOMETRY. 

Trigonometry,     Introduction  to  Plane.     By  Piev.  T.  G.  Vyvyan, 

Charterhouse.     Cr.  8vo.    3s.  Gd. 
Elementary  Trigonometry.    By  T.  P.  Hudson,  M.A.     3s.  M. 
An  Elementary  Treatise   on   Mensuration.    By  B.  T.  Moore, 

M.A.    5s. 


ANALYTICAL    GEOMETRY 
AND    DIFFERENTIAL    CALCULUS. 

An   Introduction   to   Analytical   Plane   Geometry.    By  W.  P. 
Turnbull,  M.A.     8vo.    12s. 

Problems  on  the  Principles  of  Plane  Co-ordinate  Geometry. 

By  W.  Walton,  M.A.    8vo.    16s. 
Trilinear   Co-ordinates,  and  Modern  Analytical  Geometry  of 

Two  Dimensions.     By  W.  A.  Whitworth,  M.A.    8vo.    16s. 
An  Elementary  Treatise  on  Solid  Geometry.    By  W.  S.  Aldis, 

M.A.    2nd  Edition  revised.    8vo.    8s. 

Elementary  Treatise  on  the    Differential    Calculus.     By  M. 

O'Brien,  M.A.    8vo.    10s.  6d. 

Elliptic  Functions,  Elementary  Treatise  on.  By  A.  Cayley,  M.A. 

Demy  Svo.    15s. 


MECHANICS    &    NATURAL    PHILOSOPHY. 

Statics,   Elementary.     By  H.   Goodwin,  D.D.     Fcap.  8vo.     2nd 

Edition.     3s. 
Dynamics,   A   Treatise   on   Elementary.    By   W.  Garnett,  M.A. 

2nd  Edition.     Crown  8vo.     6s. 
Elementary  Mechanics,  Problems  in.    By  \V.  Walton,  M.A.  New 

Edition.     Crown  8vo.     0s. 
Theoretical  Mechanics,  Problems  in.    By  W.  Walton.    2nd  Edit. 

revised  and  enlarged.     Demy  8vo.    16s. 


Educational  Works.  9 

Hydrostatics.  By  W.H.Besant,  M.A.   Fcap.  8vo.  10th  Edition.  4s. 

Hydromechanics,  A  Treatise  on.  By  W.  H.  Besant,  M.A.  8vo. 
New  Edition  revised.     10s.  6d. 

Dynamics  of  a  Particle,  A  Treatise  on  the.   By  W.  H.  Besant,  M.A. 

[Preparing. 

Optics,  Geometrical.    By  W.  S.  Aldis,  M.A.     Fcap.  8vo.     3s.  &d. 

Double  Refraction,  A  Chapter  on  Fresnel's  Theory  of.  By  W.  S. 
Aldis,  M.A.     8vo.    2s. 

Heat,  An  Elementary  Treatise  on.  By  W.  Garnett,  M.A.  Crown 
8vo.    2nd  Edition  revised.     3s.  6d. 

Newton's  Principia,  The  First  Three  Sections  of,  with  an  Appen- 
dix ;  and  the  Ninth  and  Eleventh  Sections.  By  J.  H.  Evans,  M.A.  5th 
Edition.     Edited  by  P.  T.  Main,  M.A.    is. 

Astronomy,  An  Introduction  to  Plane.     By  P.  T.   Main,   M.A. 

Fcap.  8vo.  cloth.    •Is. 
Astronomy,  Practical  and  Spherical.    By  B.  Main,  M.A.     8vo.    14s. 

Astronomy,     Elementary    Chapters    on,   from    the   '  Astronomic 

Physique'  of  Biot.     By  H.  Goodwin,  D.D.    8vo.     3s.  6d. 
Pure  Mathematics  and  Natural  Philosophy,  A  Compendium  of 

Facts  and  Formulas   in.     By  G.    R.   Smalley.     2nd  Edition,  revised  by 

J.  McDowell,  M.A.     Fcap.  8vo.     3s.  6d. 
Elementary   Course    of  Mathematics.     By  H.  Goodwin,  D.D. 

Cth  Edition.    8vo.     16s. 
Problems  and  Examples,  adapted  to  the  '  Elementary  Course  of 

Mathematics.'     3rd  Edition.     8vo.    5s. 
Solutions  of  Goodwin's  Collection  of  Problems  and  Examples. 

By  W.  W.  Hutt,  M.A.     3rd  Edition,  revised  and  enlarged.     8vo.    9s. 
Pure  Mathematics,  Elementary  Examples  in.   By  J.  Taylor.    8vo. 

7s.  6d. 
Mechanics  of  Construction.     With   numerous  Examples.     By 

S.  Fenwick,  F.R.A.S.     8vo.     12s. 
Pure  and  Applied  Calculation,  Notes  on  the  Principles  of.    By 

Rev.  J.  Challis,  M.A.     Demy  8vo.     15s. 
Physics,  The  Mathematical  Principle  of.     By  Bev.  J.  Challis,  M.A. 

Demy  8vo.     5s. 


TECHNOLOGICAL    HANDBOOKS. 

Edited  by  H.  Trueman  Wood,  Secretary  of  the 
Society  of  Arts. 

1.  Dyeing  and  Tissue    Printing.      By  W.  Crookes,  F.E.S. 

[Ih  the  press. 

2.  Iron  and  Steel.     By  Prof.  A.  K.Huntington,  of  King's  College. 

[Preparing. 

3.  Cotton  Manufacture.     By  Richard  Marsdcn,   Esq.,  of   Man- 

chester. [Preparing. 

4.  Telegraphs  and  Telephones.    By  W.  H.  Preece,  F.B.S. 

[Preparing. 

5.  Glass  Manufacture.    By  Henry  Chance,  M.A. ;  H.  Powell,  B.A. ; 

and  John  Hopkinson,  M.A.,  LL.D.,  F.R.S.  Tn  the 


10  George  Bell  and  Sons' 


HISTORY,  TOPOGRAPHY,  &c. 

Rome  and  the  Campagna.  By  E.  Burn,  M.A.  With  85  En- 
gravings and  26  Maps  and  Plans.    With  Appendix.    4to.    31.  3s. 

Old  Rome.  A  Handbook  for  Travellers.  By  K.  Burn,  M.A. 
With  Maps  and  Plans.     Demy  8vo.  10s.  6d. 

Modern  Europe.  By  Dr.  T.  H.  Dyer.  2nd  Edition,  revised  and 
continued.     5  vols.     Demy  8vo.     21.  12s.  6d. 

The  History  of  the  Kings  of  Rome.    By  Dr.  T.  H.  Dyer.    8vo.  16s. 

The  History  of  Pompeii :  its  Buildings  and  Antiquities.  By 
T.  H.  Dyer.    3rd  Edition,  brought  down  to  1874.     Post  8vo.     7s.  6d. 

Ancient  Athens :  its  History,  Topography,  and  Bemains.  By 
T.  H.  Dyer.    Super-royal  8vo.    Cloth.    11.  5s. 

The  Decline  of  the  Roman  Republic.  By  G.  Long.  5  vols. 
8vo.     14s.  each. 

A  History  of  England  during  the  Early  and  Middle  Ages.    By 

C.  H.  Pearson,  M.A.    2nd  Edition  revised  and  enlarged.    8vo.    Vol.  I. 
16s.     Vol.  II.  14s. 

Historical  Maps  of  England.  By  C.  H.  Pearson.  Folio.  2nd 
Edition  revised.    31s.  6d. 

History  of  England,  1800-15.  By  Harriet  Martineau,  with  new 
and  copious  Index.     1  vol.     3s.  6d. 

History  of  the  Thirty  Years'  Peace,  1815-46.  By  Harriet  Mar- 
tineau.   4  vols.    3s.  6d.  each. 

A  Practical  Synopsis  of  English  History.  By  A.  Bowes.  4th 
Edition.    8vo.     2s. 

Student's   Text-Book   of  English  and   General  History.    By 

D.  Beale.     Crown  8vo.    2s.  6d. 

Lives  of  the  Queens  of  England.  By  A.  Strickland.  Library 
Edition,  8  vols.  7s.  6d.  each.  Cheaper  Edition,  6  vols.  Ss.  each.  Abridged 
Edition,  1  vol.  6s.  6d. 

Eginhard's  Life  of  Karl  the  Great  (Charlemagne).  Translated 
with  Notes,  by  W.  Glaister,  M.A.,  B.C.L.     Crown  8vo.    4s.  6d. 

Outlines  of  Indian  History.  By  A.  W.  Hughes.  Small  post 
8vo.     3s.  6d. 

The  Elements  of  General  History.  By  Prof.  Tytler.  New 
Edition,  brought  down  to  1874.     Small  post  8vo.    3s.  6d. 

ATLASES. 
An  Atlas  of  Classical  Geography.    24  Maps.    By  W.  Hughes 

and  G-.  Long,  M.A.     New  Edition.     Imperial  8vo.     12s.  6d. 

A  Grammar- School  Atlas  of  Classical  Geography.  Ten  Maps 
selected  from  the  above.     New  Edition.    Imperial  8vo.     5s. 

First  Classical  Maps.  By  the  Bev.  J.  Tate,  M.A.  3rd  Edition. 
Imperial  Svo.     7s.  6d. 

Standard  Library  Atlas  of  Classical  Geography.  Imp.  8vo.  7s.  6d. 


Educational  Works.  11 


PHILOLOGY. 

WEBSTER'S    DICTIONARY    OP    THE    ENGLISH  LAN- 
GUAGE.   With  Dr.  Malm's  Etymology.      1  vol.,  1C28  Pages,  ;>0Q0  Illus- 
trations.    21s.     With  Appendices    and  70  additional  pa^es  of    Illustra- 
tions, 1919  Pages,  31s.  6d. 
•The  best  practical  English  Dictionary  extant.' — Quarterly  Review,  1873. 
Prospectuses,  with  specimen  pages,  post  free  on  application. 
New  Dictionary  of  the  English  Language.    Combining  Explan- 
ation with  Etymology,  and  copiously  illustrated  by  Quotations  from  the- 
best  Authorities.     By  Dr.  Richardson.     New  Edition,  with  a  Supplement. 
2  vols.  4to.  41.  14s.  6d.;  half  russia,  51.  15s.  6d.;  russia,  6Z.  12s.     Supplement 
separately.    4to.    12s. 

An8vo.  Edit,  without  the  Quotations,  15s.;  half  russia,  20s.;  russia,  24s. 

Supplementary  English  Glossary.    Containing  12,000  Words  and 

Meanings    occurring    in    English  Literature,   not    found  in  any  other 

Dictionary.     By  T.  L.  O.  Davies.     Demy  8vo.     16s. 
Dictionary  of  Corrupted  "Words.  By  Rev.  A.  S.  Palmer,  [in  the  press. 
Brief  History  of  the  English  Language.    By  Prof.  James  Hadley, 

LL.D.,  Yale  College.    Fcap.  8ro.    Is. 
The  Elements  of  the  English  Language.    By  E.  Adams,  Ph.D. 

15th  Edition.     Post  8vo.    4s.  6d. 
Philological  Essays.    By  T.  H.  Key,  M.A.,  F.R.S.     8vo.    10s.  &d. 

Language,  its  Origin  and  Development.  By  T.  H.  Key,  M.A., 
F.R.S.    8vo.     14s. 

Synonyms  and  Antonyms  of  the  English  Language.    By  Arch- 
deacon Smith.    2nd  Edition.    Post  8vo.    5s. 
Synonyms  Discriminated.  By  Archdeacon  Smith.  Demy8vo.  16s. 
Bible  English.     By  T.  L.  O.  Davies.    5s. 

The  Queen's  English.  A  Manual  of  Idiom  and  Usage.  By  the 
late  Dean  Alford.     5th  Edition.     Fcap.  8vo.     5s. 

Etymological  Glossary  of  nearly  2500  English  "Words  de- 
rived from  the  Greek.    By  the  Rev.  E.  J.  Boyce.     Fcap.  8vo.  3s.  6d. 

A  Syriac  Grammar.  By  G.  Phillips,  D.D.  3rd  Edition,  enlarged. 
8vo.    7s.  6d. 

6.  Grammar  of  the  Arabic  Language.  By  Bev.  W.  J.  Beau- 
mont, M.A.    12mo.    7s. 


DIVINITY,   MORAL   PHILOSOPHY,  &c. 

Novum  Testamentum  Grsecum,  Textus  Stephanici,  1550.  By 
F.  H.  Scrivener,  A.M.,  LL.D.  New  Edition.  16mo.  4s.  6d.  Also  on 
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By  the  same  Author. 
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of  the  New  Testament,  with  Critical  Introduction.    2nd  Edition,  revised. 

Fcap.  8vo.    5s. 

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With  Forty  Facsimiles  from  Ancient  Manuscripts.    2nd  Edition.    8vo.  16s. 

Six  Lectures  on  the  Text  of  the  New  Testament.  For  English 
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12  George  Bell  and  Sons' 

The  New  Testament  for  English  Readers.  By  the  late  H.  Alford, 
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The  Greek  Testament.    By  the  late  H.  Alford,  D.D.     Vol.  I.  6th 

Edit.  11.  8s.    Vol.  II.  6th  Edit.  11.  4s.     Vol.  III.  5th  Edit.  18s.     Vol.  IV. 
Part  I.  4th  Edit.  18s.    Vol.  IV.  Part  II.  4th  Edit.  14s.    Vol.  IV.  11.  12s. 

Companion  to  the  Greek  Testament.  By  A.  C.  Barrett,  M.A. 
4th  Edition,  revised.    Fcap.  Svo.    5s. 

The  Book  of  Psalms.  A  New  Translation,  with  Introductions,  &c. 
By  the  Very  Rev.  J.  J.  Stewart  Perowne,  D.D.  8vo.  Vol.  I.  4th  Edition, 
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Abridged  for  Schools.     3rd  Edition.     Crown  8vo.     10s.  Qd. 


History  of  the  Articles  of  Religion.    By  C.  H.  Hardwick.     3rd 

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An  Historical  and  Explanatory  Treatise  on  the  Book  of 
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Small  post  8vo.    4s.  6d. 

The  New  Table  of  Lessons  Explained.  By  Eev.  W.  G.  Humphry, 

B.D.     Fcap.     Is.  6d. 
A  Commentary  on  the  Gospels  for  the  Sundays  and  other  Holy 

Days  of  the  Christian  Year.     By  Rev.  W.  Denton,  A.M.     New  Edition. 

3  vols.  8vo.     51s.     Sold  separately. 

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Butler's  Analogy  of  Religion;  with  Introduction  and  Index  by 
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Educational  Works.  13 


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Kent's  Commentary  on  International  Law.    By  J.   T.   Abdy, 

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Schiller's  Wallenstein.    By  Dr.  A.  Buchheim.   3rd  Edit.     6s.  6d. 
Or  the  Lager  and  Piccolomini,  3s.  6d.     Wallenstein' s  Tod,  3s.  6d. 

Maid  of  Orleans.    By  Dr.  W.  Wagner.     3s.  6d. 

Maria  Stuart.    By  V.  Kastner.     3s. 


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Charles  XII.,  par  Voltaire.     By  L.  Direy.     4th  Edition.     3s.  $d. 
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Edition.     4s.  6d. 

Select  Fables  of  La  Fontaine.  By  F.  E.  A.  Gasc.  14th  Edition.  3s. 
Picciola,  by  X.B.  Saintine.  By  Dr.  Dubuc.  11th  Thousand.  3s.  6d. 


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Twenty  Lessons  in  French.  With  Vocabulary,  giving  the  Pro- 
nunciation.   By  W.  Brebner.    Post  8vo.    4s. 

French  Grammar  for  Public  Schools.  By  Bev.  A.  C.  Clapin,  M.A. 
Fcap.  8vo.     9th  Edition,  revised.    2s.  6d. 

French  Primer.  By  Bev.  A.  C.  Clapin,  M.A.  Fcap.  8vo.  4th  Edit, 
is. 

Primer  of  French  Philology.  By  Bev.  A.  C.  Clapin.  Fcap.  8vo.  Is. 

Le  Nouveau  Tresor;  or,  French  Student's  Companion.  By 
M.  E.  S.     16th  Edition.     Fcap.  8vo.     3s.  6d. 

F.  E.  A.  GASC'S  FBENCH  COUESE. 

First  French  Book.    Fcap  8vo.     76th  Thousand.     Is.  &d. 

Second  French  Book.     37th  Thousand.     Fcap.  8vo.     2s.  Gd. 

Key  to  First  and  Second  French  Books.     Fcap.  8vo.     3s.  &d. 

French  Fables  for  Beginners,  in  Prose,  with  Index.  14th  Thousand. 
12mo.    2s. 

Select  Fables  of  La  Fontaine.     New  Edition.     Fcap.  8vo.     3s. 

Histoires  Amusantes  et  Instructives.  With  Notes.  14th  Thou- 
sand.   Fcap.  8vo.    2s.  6d. 


14  George  Bell  and  Sons' 

Practical  Guide  to  Modern  French  Conversation.    12th  Thou- 
sand.   Fcap.  8vo.    2s.  6d. 
French  Poetry  for  the  Young.    With  Notes.    4th  Edition.    Fcap. 

8vo.    2s. 
Materials  for  French  Prose  Composition ;  or,  Selections  from 

the  best  English  Prose   Writers.      15th  Thousand.     Fcap.   8vo.    4s.  6d. 

Key,  6s. 
Prosateurs  Contemporains.     With  Notes.     8vo.      6th  Edition, 

revised.    5s. 
Le  Petit  Compagnon;   a  French  Talk-Book  for  Little  Children. 

10th  Thousand.     16mo.    2s.  6d. 
An  Improved  Modern  Pocket  Dictionary  of  the  French  and 

English  Languages.    30th  Thousand,  with  Additions.     16mo.   Cloth.    4s. 

Also  in  2  vols.,  in  neat  leatherette,  5s. 

Modern  French-English  and  English-French  Dictionary.    2nd 

Edition,  revised.     In  1  vol.  12s.  6d.  (formerly  2  vols.  25s.) 
GOMBEET'S  FEENCH  DEAMA. 

Being  a  Selection  of  the  hest  Tragedies  and  Comedies  of  Moliere, 

Eacine,    Corneille,    and    Voltaire.     With  Arguments  and  Notes  by  A. 

Gombert.     New  Edition,  revised  by  P.  E.  A.  Case.     Fcap.  8vo.     Is.  each ; 

sewed,  6d.  Contents. 

Moliere  : — Le  Misanthrope.    L'Avare.     Le  Bourgeois  Gentilhoimne.     Le 

Tartuffe.     Le  Malade  Imaginaire.     Les  Femmes  Savantes.     Les  Fourberies 

d,e  Scapin.     Les  Precieuses   Ridicules.     L'Ecole  des  Femmes.     L'Ecole  des 

Maris.     Le  Me'deein  rnalgre"  Lui. 

Racine  :— Ph^dre.      Esther.     Athalie.      Iphigenie.      Les  Plaideurs.     La 
The'ba'ide ;  or,  Les  Freres  Ennemis.     Andromaque.     Britannicus. 
P.  Corneille  :—Le  Cid.    Horace.    Cinna.    Polyeucte. 
Voltaire  : — Zaire. 


GERMAN    CLASS-BOOKS. 

Materials  for  German  Prose  Composition.    By  Dr  Buchheim. 

7th  Edition    Fcap.    4s.  Gd.     Key,  3s. 
A  German  Grammar  for  Public  Schools.     By  the  Eev.  A.  C. 

Clapin  and  F.  Holl  Muller.    2nd  Edition.     Fcap.     2s.  6d. 
Kotzebue's  Der  Gefangene.  With  Notes  by  Dr.  W.  Stromberg.  1*. 


ENGLISH    CLASS-BOOKS. 

A  Brief  History  of  the  English  Language.   By  Prof.  Jas.  Hadley, 

LL.D.,  of  Yale  College.     Fcap.  8vo.     Is. 
The  Elements  of  the  English  Language.    By  E.  Adams,  Ph.D. 

18th  Edition.     Post  8vo.    4s.  6d. 
The    Rudiments    of   English  Grammar    and    Analysis.     By 

E.  Adams,  Ph.D.     8th  Edition.     Fcap.  8vo.  -2s. 

By  C.  P.  Mason,  Fellow  of  Univ.  Coll.  London. 
First  Notions   of  Grammar  for  Young  Learners.     Fcap.  8vo. 

10th  Thousand.     Cloth.    8d. 
First  Steps  in  English  Grammar  for  Junior   Classes.     Demy 

18mo.     New  Edition.    Is. 


Educational  Works.  15 

Outlines   of  English  Grammar  for  the  use  of  Junior   Classes. 
26tli  Thousand.    Crown  8vo.    2s. 

English    Grammar,   including    the    Principles  of    Grammatical 
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A  Shorter  English  Grammar,  with  copious  Exercises.     8th  Thou- 
sand.   Crown  8vo.    3s.  6d. 

English  Grammar  Practice,  being  the  Exercises  separately.     Is. 

Edited  for  Middle- Class  Examinations. 

With  Notes  on  the  Analysis  and  Parsing,  and  Explanatory  Remarks. 

Milton's  Paradise  Lost,  Book  I.    With  Life.    3rd  Edit.    Post  8vo. 

2s. 
Book   n.     With  Life.     2nd  Edit.    Post  8vo.     2s. 

Book  in.    With  Life.    Post  8vo.     2s. 

Goldsmith's  Deserted  Village.    With  Life.    Post  8vo.     Is.  Gd. 

Cowper's  Task,  Book  II.     With  Life.    Post  8vo.    2s. 

Thomson's  Spring.    With  Life.     Post  8vo.     2s. 

Winter.     With  Life.     Post  8vo.     2s. 


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Test  Lessons  in  Dictation.     2nd  Edition.     Paper  cover,  Is.  Qd. 

Questions  for  Examinations  in  English  Literature.    By  Bev. 
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also  in  parts  at  Is.  each. 
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Geographical  Text-Book ;  a  Practical  Geography.     By  M.  E.  S. 
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The  Blank  Maps  done  up  separately,  4to.    2s.  coloured. 

Loudon's  (Mrs.)  Entertaining  Naturalist.  New  Edition.  Eevised 

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Handbook  of  Botany.     New  Edition,  greatly  enlarged  by 

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Experimental  Chemistry,  founded  on  the  Work  of  Dr.  Stockhardt. 

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16       George  Bell  and  Sons'  Educational  Works. 

Picture   School-Books.      In  Simple   Language,   with  numerous 
Illustrations.     Royal  16mo. 

School  Primer.  6d.— School  Reader.  By  J.  Tilleard.  Is.— Poetry  Book 
for  Schools.  Is.— The  Life  of  Joseph.  Is.— The  Scripture  Parables.  By  the 
Rev.  J.  E.  Clarke.  Is.— The  Scripture  Miracles.  By  the  Rev.  J.  E.  Clarke. 
Is.— The  New  Testament  History.  By  the  Rev.  J.  G.  Wood,  M.A.  Is.— The 
Old  Testament  History.  By  the  Rev.  J.  G.  Wood,  M.A.  Is.— The  Story  of 
Bunyan's  Pilgrim's  Progress.  Is.— The  Life  of  Christopher  Columbus.  By 
Sarah  Crompton.    Is.— The  Life  of  Martin  Luther.     By  Sarah  Crompton.    Is. 


BOOKS   FOR  YOUNG    READERS. 

In  8  vols.     Limp  cloth,  (jd.  each. 
The  Cat  and  the  Hen  ;  Sam  and  his  Dog  Red-leg ;  Bob  and  Tom  Lee ;  A 

■Wreck The  New-born  Lamb ;  Rosewood  Bos ;  Poor  Fan  ;  Wise  Dog The 

Three  Monkeys Story  of  a  Cat,  told  by  Herself The  Blind  Boy ;  The  Mute 

Girl ;   A  New  Tale  of  Babes  in  a  Wood The  Dey  and  the  Knight ;  The  New 

Bank-note  ;  The  Royal  Visit ;  A  King's  Walk  on  a  Winter's  Day Queen  Bee 

and  Busy  Bee Gull's  Crag,  a  Story  of  the  Sea. 

First  Book  of  Geography.    By  C.  A.  Johns.     Is. 


BELL'S    READING-BOOKS. 

FOR   SCHOOLS   AND    PAROCHIAL   LIBRARIES. 

The  popularity  which  the  '  Books  for  Young  Readers '  have  attained  is 
a  sufficient  proof  that  teachers  and  pupils  alike  approve  of  the  use  of  inter- 
esting stories,  with  a  simple  plot  in  place  of  the  dry  combination  of  letters  and 
syllables,  making  no  impression  on  the  mind,  of  which  elementary  reading- 
books  generally  consist.  ..j. 

The  Publishers  have  therefore  thought  it  advisable  to  extend  the  application 
of  this  principle  to  books  adapted  for  more  advanced  readers. 

Now  Ready.     Post  8vo.     Strongly  bound. 
Masterman  Ready.    By  Captain  Marryat,  B.N.     Is.  &d. 
The  Settlers  in  Canada.    By  Captain  Marryat,  B.N.     Is.  &d. 
Parables  from  Nature.     (Selected.)    By  Mrs.  Gatty.     Is. 
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Robinson  Crusoe.     Is.  &d. 

Andersen's  Danish  Tales.     (Selected.)    By  E.  Bell,  M.A.     Is. 
Southey's  Life  of  Nelson.     (Abridged.)     Is. 
Grimm's  German  Tales.     (Selected.)    By  E.  Bell,  M.A.     Is. 
Life  of  the  Duke  of  Wellington,  with  Maps  and  Plans.     Is. 
Marie ;  or,  Glimpses  of  Life  in  France.    By  A.  B.  Ellis.     Is. 
Poetry  for  Boys.     By  D.  Munro.     Is. 
Edgeworth's  Tales  ;  a  Selection.     Is. 
Great  Englishmen ;  Short  Lives  for  Young  Children.     Is, 
Others  in  Preparation. 


LONDON: 

Printed  by  Stf.angeways  &  Sows,  Tower  Street,  Upper  St.  Martin's  Lane. 


DATE  DUE 

mi     n*-M£i1i 

JUL  flSWtf, 

DEMCO  38-297