TEUTONIC MYTHOLOGY. 
 
 JACOB GRUni
 
 TEUTONIC MYTHOLOGY 
 
 BY 
 
 JACOB GRIMM. 
 
 TRANSLATED FKOM THE FOUETH EDITION. 
 
 WITH 
 
 NOTES AND APPENDIX 
 
 BT 
 
 JAMES STEVEN STALLYBRASS. 
 
 7S9f 
 VOL. II. 
 
 LONDON: GEORGE BELL & SONS, YORK STREET, 
 
 COVENT GAEDEN. 
 
 1883. 
 
 6£K 1908
 
 Butter A Taiiver. 
 The Selwood Printimj Works, 
 frotne, and Loudon.
 
 
 CHAPTER XVII. 
 
 7 ■^^9 S' 
 WIGHTS AND ELVES. 
 
 Apart from deified and semi-divine natures there stands a 
 whole order of other beings distinguished mainly by the fact 
 thatj 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 approximates 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 bodil}'' 
 strength. Their figure is much below the stature of man, or else 
 mis-shapen. They almost all have the faculty of making them- 
 selves invisible.^ 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.^ 
 
 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),^ like the Greek Saificov, 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 ivlJit seems remarkable in more than one respect, for 
 its variable gender and for the abstract meanings developed from 
 
 ' B ut so bavf! tlio yoiV i (p ^'^")i fl'^'^'IP'i'if''' (F '^'''") '^'''"^ rrr\<:a.^^Q^u^m^ Ci-i. 410). 
 
 - Celtic tradition, which ruus partieuhirly rich on this subject, I draw from 
 the foUowiup; works : Fairy Legends and Traditions of the South of Ireland, 
 by Croftou Croker, Lond. 1825; 2nd ed., parts 1, 2, 3, Lond. 1828. The Fairy 
 Mythology, by Th. Kcightley, vols. 1, 2, Lond. 1828. Barzas-Breiz, chants popu- 
 laires dc la Bretagne, par Th. de la Villemarque, 2e ed., 2 vol., Paris 18-10. 
 
 =♦ OHG. kcifit, AS. ijdst, OS. gest (see root in Gramm. 2, 4()) ; Goth, ahma, 
 OHG. atu7H for ahadum, conn, with Goth, aha (mens), ahjan (luemiuisse, cogitare), 
 as man (homo), manniska, and manni, miiini belong to muuan, minuen (pp. 59. 
 Ui. 433). 
 
 VOL. II. ^9 B
 
 440 WIGHTS AND ELVES. 
 
 it. The Gothic vaihts, gen. vaihfdis, is feminine, and Ulphilas 
 hardly ever uses it in a concrete sense ; in Luke 1, 1 he translates 
 by it 7rpdy/xa, and much oftener, when combined with a negative, 
 ovBev (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 
 ciTTo Travro'i et'Sou? 'Trovrjpov airkyeaQe is rendered : af allamma 
 vaihte ubilaizu afhabai}? izvis, where the Vulg. has : ab omni 
 specie mala abstinete vos ; the use o£ 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 ; ^ but in all of them it retains its personal meaning 
 too. The OHG. writers waver between the neut. and masc. ; the 
 Gothic fern, is unknown to them. Otfried has a neut. wiht, with 
 the collective pi. ivihtir,~ and likewise a neut. pi. wUiti, which 
 implies a sing, wihti ; thus, armu wihtir, iv. 6, 23 ; armu wihti, 
 ii. IG, 117; krumbu wihti, iii. 9, 5; meaning 'poor, crooked 
 creatures,^ so that wiht (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 
 vjihtir, diu heizent sirenae,^ Hofifm. Fundgr. 19, 17. In MHG. 
 sometimes neut.: unreinez wiJit, Diut. 1, 13; Athis H. 28; 
 trligehaftez iviht, Barl. 367, 11; vil tumbez wiht, 11, 21; some- 
 times masc: bceser wiht, Barl. 220, 15; unrehter hoesewiht, MS. 
 2, 147% Geo. 3508; kleiner wiht, Altd. bl. 1, 254; der wiht, 
 Geo. 3513-36; der tumbe ^viht, Fragm. 42""; and often of in- 
 determinable gender: boese wiht, 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 Romans (Plaut. 
 Casina, ii. 5, 24). In Mod. Germ, we make wicht 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, wichtelmami ; ^ 
 
 ^ Auglit = a-wiht, any wight or -whit ; naught = n'a-wiht, no wight, no whit. — 
 Trans. 
 
 - So : thiu diufilir, iii. 14, 53, by the side of ther diufal, iii. 14, 108. 
 
 ' In Hesse wichtelmanner is the expression in vogue, except on the Diemel in 
 Saxon Hesse, where they say ' gute holden. '
 
 WIGHTS. 441 
 
 MHG. diu wUitel^ MS. 1, 157''' ; boesez ivihtel, Elfentn. cxviii. ; 
 kleinez wiJtteliii, Ls. 1, 378, 380, Wolfdietr. 788, 799; OHG. 
 wihteUn penates ; wihtelen vel helbe {i.e. elbe), lemures, djemones, 
 Gl. Floriau. The dernea wiliti, occulti genii, in Hel. 31, 20. 92, 2 
 are deceitful demonic beings, as ' thie derno ' 164, 19 means 
 the devil himself; Jctha wihti, 76. 15; wreda ivihti 76, 1. In 
 Lower Saxony ivlcht is said, quite in a good sense, of little 
 children : in the Miinster country ' dat luicld ' holds especially 
 of girls, about Osnabriick the sing, luicJd only of girls, the pi. 
 wichter of girls and boys ; ' innocent tuichte ' are spoken of in 
 Sastrow, 1, 351. The Mid. Nethl. has a neut. loicht like the 
 H. German: quade ivlcht, clene wicht (child). Huyd. op St. 3, 6. 
 370; ai-em tviJit, Reinh. 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 fem. gender : wiht, 
 gen. wihte, nom. pi. wihta; later tvuht, wuhte, wuhta; seo iviht, 
 Cod. Exon. 418, 8. 419, 3. 5. 420, 4. 10. The meaning can be 
 either concrete: yfel iviJit (phantasma), leas iviht (diabolus), 
 Cffidm. 310, 16; scBwiht (animal marinum), Beda, 1, 1; or 
 entirely abstract = thing, affair. The Engl, ivlght 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 (Saem. 145'') : allar vcettir, genii quicunque, Sasm. 93^; 
 hollar vcettir, genii benigni, Ssem. 240^ ; ragvcettir or meinvcettir, 
 genii noxii,^ landvcettir, genii tutelares, Fornm. sog. 3, 105. 
 Isl. sog. 1, 198, etc. In the Faroes they say: 'fear tii tear 
 til mainvittis (go to the devil) ! ' Lyugbye, p. 548. The Danish 
 vette is a female spirit^ a wood-nymph, meinvette an evil spirit. 
 
 ^ Swer weiz unci doch nilit wizzen wil, WTioso knows, yet will not know, 
 der sla3t sich mit sin selbes hant ; Smites himself with his own hand ; 
 
 des wisheit aht ich zeime spil. His wisdom lvalue no more than a play 
 
 daz man diu wihtel hat genannt : That they call ' the little wights' : 
 
 er lat uns schouwen wunders vil, He lets us witness much of wonder, 
 
 der ir da waltet. Who governs them. 
 
 The passage shows that in the 13th cent, there was a kind of i^uppet-show in which 
 ghostly beings were set before the eyes of spectators. 'Der ir waltet,' he that 
 wields them, means the showman who puts the figures in motion, A full confir- 
 mation in the Wachtelmiire, line 40 : ' rihtet zu mit den snileren (strings) die 
 tatermanne ! ' Another passage on the xcihtel-npil in Haupt's Zeitschr. 2, 60 : 
 'spilt mit dem wihteUn uf dem tisch umb guoteu win.' 
 
 2 Biiirn supposes a masc. (fem. ?) mcinvcetlr and a neut. meinvcetti ; no doubt 
 viein is noxa, malum ; nevertheless I call attention to the Zendic iiMinyus, da>mou, 
 and agramainyus, dicmon malus.
 
 442 WIGHTS AND ELVES. 
 
 Thiele 3, 98. The Swedish tongue, in addition to vdtt (genius) 
 and a synonymous neut. vattr, has a wikt formed after the German, 
 Ihre, p. 1075. Neither is the abstract sense wanting in any of 
 these dialects. 
 
 This transition of the meaning of luigld 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, 73 l. 736) all help to clinch a denial. 0. French 
 males choses, mali genii, Ren. 30085. Mid. Latin honce ?-es = boni 
 genii. Vine. Bellov. iii. 3, 27 (see Suppl.). 
 
 We at once perceive a more decided colouring in the OHG. 
 and MHG. alp (genius), AS. celf, ON. alfr ; a Goth, cdhs 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. elher ; and from the MHG. dat. fem. elhe (MS. 1, 50'') 
 we must certainly infer a nom. diu elhe, OHG. alpia, elpia, Goth. 
 alhi, gen. albjos, for otherwise such a derivative could not occur. 
 Formed by a still commoner suffix, there was no doubt an OHG. 
 elplnna, MHG. elhlnne, the form selected by Albrecht of Halber- 
 stadt, and still appearing in his poem as remodelled by Wikram;^ 
 AS. el fen, gen. elfenne. Of the nom. pi. masc. I can only feel 
 
 i sure in the ON., where it is dlfar, and would imply a Goth. 
 
 I albus, OHG. alpa, MHG. albe, AS. gelfas; on the other hand an 
 OHG. eljn (Goth, albeis) is suggested by the MHG. pi. elbe 
 (Amgb. 2'', unless this comes from the fem. elbe above) and by 
 
 / the AS. pi. ijlfe, 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. 3*), has a faulty reading : ' auch viel ewinneu und 
 freyen,' rhyming with ' zweyen.' Albrecht surely wrote ' vil elbinnen uud feien.' 
 I can make 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 Eeiuh. clxsii., can 
 have nothing to say here. 
 
 2 Taking AS. y [as a modified n, ce, 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 u (wulf, wylfen), I will not pass over a MHG. idf, pi. i'dve, which seems 
 to mean much the same as alp, and may be akin to an AS. ylf : 'von den i'llven 
 entbunden werden,' MS. 1, 81* ; ' ulfheit ein sulit ob alien siihten,' MS. 2, 135* ; 
 ' der sich iilfet in der jugent,' Helbi. 2, 426 ; and conf. the dip 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), tlie Dan. 
 elv, pi. elve, are quite in rule ; the Dan. compounds ellefulk, elle- 
 honer, ellesluuU, ellevikl 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. elhe or elben.^ H. Sachs uses dip : 
 ' du olp ! du dolp ! ' (i. 5, 525''), and olperisch (iv. 3, OS*") ; conf. 
 olpern and olpetrutsch, alberdriitsch, drelpetriitsch (Schm. 1, 48) ; 
 elpentrotsch and tolpentrotsch, trilpentrisch (Schmidts Swab. diet. 
 162) ; and in Hersfeld, hilpentrisch. The words mean an awkward 
 pilly fellow, one whom the elves have been at, and the same thing 
 is expressed by the simple elbisch, Fundgr. 365. In Gloss. Jun. 
 340 we read elvesce tveJde, 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 dlfar 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^^r third member, the vanir (Seem. 
 83"^), a race distinct from the gesir, but admitted to certain 
 relations with them by marriage and by covenants. The Hrafua- 
 galdr opens with the words : AlfoSr orkar (works), alfar skilja, 
 vanir vita,^^ Seem. SS''' ; 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 cesir, dlfar, vanir, and in addition also 
 go&, menn, ginregin, iotnar, dvergar and denizens of liel (hades) . 
 Here the most remarkable point for us is, that dJfar and dvergar 
 (dwarfs) ai'e two different things. The same distinction is made 
 between dtfar and dvergar, Sa)m. 8'' ; between dvergar and 
 doclcdlfar, Stem. 92**; between three kinds of norns, the as-kungar, 
 alf-kuugar and doetr Dvalins, Sa3m. 188% namely, those descended 
 from ases, from elves and from dwarfs ; and our MHGr. poets, 
 as we see by Wikram's Albrecht, 6, 0, continued to separate clbc 
 
 1 Cesold. sub v. ilbe ; Ettncr's Hebamnie, p. 010, aljH'it or dben.
 
 444 "WIGHTS AND ELVES. 
 
 from cjetwcrc} Some kinship however seems to exist between 
 them, if only because among proper names of dwarfs we find an 
 Alfr and a Vinddlfr, Ssem. 2. 3. Loki, elsewhere called an as, 
 and reckoned among ases, but really of iotun origin, is neverthe- 
 less addressed as dlfr, Saem. 110'' ; nay, Volundr, a godlike hero, 
 is called ' difa lio^i,' alforum socius, and ' visi dlfa,' alforum 
 princeps, Ssem. 135*' ''■ T explain this not historically (by a 
 Finnish descent), but mythically : German legend likewise makes 
 Wielant king Elberich's companion and fellow smith in Mount 
 Gloggensachsen (otherwise Gougelsahs, Caucasus ?). Thus we 
 see the word dlfr shrink and stretch by turns. 
 
 Now what is the true meaning of the word alhs, alp = genius ? 
 One is tempted indeed to compare the Lat. alhus, which according 
 to Festus the Sabines called alpus ; d\(f)6^ (vitiligo, leprosy) 
 agrees still better with the law of consonant-change. Probably 
 then alhs meant first of all a light-coloured, white, good spirit,^ 
 so that, when dlfa7- and dcergar are contrasted, the one signifies 
 the white spirits, the other the black. This exactly agrees with 
 the great beauty and brightness of lilfar. 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.^ 
 
 The above-named ddckdtjar (genii obscuri) require a counter- 
 part, which 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 
 liosdJfar (light elves), down in the earth dwell the dockdlfar 
 (dark elves), the two unlike one another in their look and their 
 powers, liosdJfar brighter than the sun, dockdlfar 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 dverge apart, Faye p. 49. 
 
 " The word appears in the name of the suowclad mountains {alpes, see Suppl.), 
 and that of the clear river [Albis, Elbe), while the ON. elf elfa, Swed. elf, Dan. 
 *Zr = fluvius, is still merely appellative ; the ghostly elvish swan (OHG. alpiz, 
 MHG. elbez, AS. slfet, ON. alpt, p. 429) can be explained both by its colour and its 
 watery abode ; likewise the Slav, labud, lebed, from Labe. 
 
 ^ Vanir also may contain the notion of white, bright ; consider the ON. vcenn 
 (pulcher), the Ir. bail (albus), ben, bean (femina), Lat. Venus, Goth, qiiio, AS. cioen. 
 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, sighe alone, which is said to mean 
 properly the twilight, the hour of spirits (see Suppl.).
 
 ELVES. 445 
 
 elves) ; ^ and these Snorri evidently takes to be the same as 
 dvergar, for his dvergar dwell in Svartalfaheim, (Sn. 34. 130. 
 136). 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 Sasm. 
 92^ 188"'. 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, Sa3m. 92'', 
 though again among the dvergar tliemsMves-eccur 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, ddcJcdJfar, svartdJfar ? No 
 doubt I am thereby pronouncing Snorri's statement fallacious : 
 ' dockulfar eru svartari en bik (pitch)/ D'uchr- seems tome 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 hlacJc elves would hold good, and at the same time the Old 
 Eddie distinction between dwarfs and dai^k 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 wJiife, brown, and 
 hlaeh ; ^ elsewhere popular belief contents itself with picturing 
 dwarfs in gray clothing, in gray or hroivn cap-of-darkness ; 
 Scotch tradition in particular has its brownies, spirits of brown 
 hue, i.e. dockCdfar rather than svartfilfar (see SuppL). But here 
 1 have yet another name to bring in, which, as applied to such 
 spirits, is not in extensive use. I have not met with it outside 
 
 ' Thorlac. spec. 7, p. lOT', gives tlio liosalfar another name hvUdlfar (white 
 elves) ; I have not found the vrord in the old writings. 
 
 - Conf. OHG. tunchal, MUG. tunkel (our dunkol), Nethl. donkcr. 
 
 3 E. M. Arndt's Miirchen und .Jugeuduriunerungen, Berl. 1818, p. l.?,). In Phil, 
 von Steinau's 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 heimchen (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 heimchen, 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).^ 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 7id{r of the Edda; the 2^<^l0 ^^^ i^^J belong to them, 
 y 1^ 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 ivhite, a pa7e, and a hlacJc troop (p. 28''), 
 which is explained to mean ' 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.^ The lioscdfar and svartdJfar 
 are in themselves sufficiently like the christian angels and devils ; 
 the pale troop ' vz der helle ' are the dockcdfar that dwell ' ni&ri 
 i iord'a,' nay, the very same that in the Alvismal are not expressly 
 named, but designated by the words 'i heljo.' Or I can put it in 
 this Avay : liosfilfar live in Jieaven, dockalfar (and nair ?) in hel, 
 the heathen hades, svartalfar in 8vartdlfaheim, 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 tlieir 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, 
 
 ' ' HeinenMeed is not conn, with Friend Hein, but means a hunenkleed 
 (eh. XVIII.) ; couf. also the hiinuerskes, and perhaps the haunken, or aunkeu in 
 the Westph. sgonaunken.' — Extr. from Suppl. 
 
 - The different races of elves contending for a corpse (Ir. Elfenm. C8).
 
 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. tnerc, MHG. tverc, 
 our ziverg,^ answer to the Lat. nanus, Gr. vdvvo<; (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. irvyfjialo^. 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 getiverc, 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 Oeovpyo'; (performing 
 miraculous deeds, what the MHG. would call wunderasre) have 
 anything to do with it ? As to meaning, the dwarfs resemble 
 the Id^ean Dactyls of the ancients, the Cabeiri and Trarat/cot .• all 
 or most of the dvergar in the Edda are cunning smiths (Sn, 34. 
 48. 130. 354). This seems the simplest explanation of their 
 hlach sooty appearance, like that of the cyclopes. Their forges 
 are placed in caves and mountains : Svartdlfaheimr must there- 
 fore lie in a mountainous region, not in the abyss of hell. And 
 our German folk-tales everywhere speak of the djyjirfs-Jis_-/br^LUi(/ 
 in the mountains: 'von golde wirkent si diu spcehen iverc' says 
 the Wartburg War of the getwerc Sinnels in Palakers, whereas 
 elves and elfins have rather the business of iveaving atti-ibuted 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.).- 
 
 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 
 
 ' In Lausitz and E. Tburinpia querx, in Thiiringerwalcl qucrlich. Jac. von 
 Kduigsbofeu, p. 89, has querclt. lu Lower Saxony sometimes twdnii, for twarg.^ 
 
 - In Bretagne the korr, pL korrcd answers to our elf, the korrigan 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 (Ville- 
 marquc 1, 17). The Welsh caicr means a giant.
 
 448 WIGHTS AND ELVES. 
 
 teaze meu ; 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 
 wa3's came into contact with man, a distinct reverence was paid, 
 a species of ivorship, 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 : ' Hull einn er 
 he^an skamt i brott, er dlfar bita % (cave that elves dwell in) ; 
 gra^ung |jann, er Kormakr drap (bull that K. slew), skaltu fa, ok 
 riftSa blo^ gra^iingsins a hulinn utan, en gera alfum veizlu (make 
 the elves a feast) af slatrinu, ok mun ]?er batna.'' An actual 
 dlfahlot. 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 
 jfC^ and kobolds (Deut. sagen, no. 37. 38. 71) j 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 : alpranlte, 
 alpfranke, alfsranke, alpkraut (lonicera periclymen., solanum dul- 
 cam.), otherwise called geissblatt, in Denmark troldbar, in Sweden 
 trullbar; dweorges dwosle, pulegium (Lye), Moneys authorities 
 spell dwostle, 322^^ ; dvergeriis, ace. to Molbech's Dial. Lex. p. 86, 
 the spartium scoparium. A latrina was called dlfrek, 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 ; ^ 
 the Elf-king is commonly described as old and white-bearded. 
 
 1 The Old Pruss. and Lith. parstnk (thumbkin) also has food placed for him, 
 couf. Lasicz 54. The Lett, hehrstuhki is said to mean a child's doll, Bergm. 145. 
 
 " Emp. Ludwig the Bavarian (1347) writes contemptuously to Markgraf Carl of 
 Moravia : ' Eecollige, quia nondum venit hora, ut pigmei de Judea (1. India) statura 
 cubiea evolantes fortitudine guauica (1. gnanica, i.e. nanica) terras gygantivrm 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 hiriher 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 hlach as ugly 
 and misshapen. The former are radiant with exquisite beauty, 
 and wear shining garments: the AS. celfseiene, Cifidm. 109, 23. 
 165, 11, sheen as an elf, bright as angels, the ON. ' fiiS sem 
 dlfJiona/ 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, 7iimis pulchra, 
 sed et auro vesteque compta.' Fornald. sog. 1, 387 has : ' )^at er 
 kunnigt i oUum fornum frasognum um J'at folk, er dJfar hetu, 
 at J>at var miklu friSara enu onuur mankind.'' The Engl, elves 
 are slender and puny: FalstafF (1 Henry IV. i. 4) calls Prince 
 Henry ' you starveling, you elf skin ! ' ^ 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 hlaclc or grey 
 complexion: ' svart i synen,' p. 457; 'a little black mannikin,' 
 Kinderm. no. 92; ' greij manuikiu,' 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 
 smaltei'7 ~fo~be measured by the span or thumb: ' kiinie drier 
 spannen lane, gar eislich getdn/ Elfeum. cxvi. ; two spans high, 
 Deut. sag. no. 42 ; a little wight, ' relit als ein dumelle lane,' a 
 thumb long, Altd. bl. 2, 151; 'ein kleinez weglin (1. wiht/i^) 
 
 ' In Denmark popular belief pictures the ellekone as young and captivating 
 to look at in front, but hollow at the back like a kneading-trough (Thiele 1, 118) ; 
 which reminds one of Dame Werlt in MHG. poems. 
 
 2 Whether the OHG. pusiUn is said of a dwarf as Graff supposes (3, 352 ; conf. 
 Swed. pi/ssliiin), or merely of a child, like the Lat. pusus, pusio, is a question. The 
 Mid. Age gave to its nuficls these small dimensions of elves and dwarfs : ' Ein 
 iegelich eiigcl schinet also gestalter als ein kint in jdren viercn (years -1) in der 
 jugende,' Tit. 5895 (Hahn) ; 'juncliche gemalet als ein kint daz d;l viiiif jar (5 
 year) alt ist,' Berth. 184. Lanrin is taken for the aiic/el Micliael; Elberich (Otnit, 
 Ettm. 24) and Autilois (Ulr. Alex.) are compared to a'child of fom-. 
 
 V
 
 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 
 ddumling (thumbling, petit poucet) indicates a dwarfish figure ; 
 "the^a/cTi/Xo? TSa609 is to be derived from SaKrvXo^ (finger) ; 
 TTvyjiaio'; pigmteus from rrv^yiy] (fist) ; the 0. Pruss. j)arshicl\, 
 perstiich, a dwarf, from Lith. pirsztas, Slav, perst, prst (finger) ; 
 and a Bohem. name for a dwarf, ^yV/tmz^zj'Z: = span-mannikin, from 
 pjd' (span).^ In Sansk. hdJak]i.ilya = gemoYu.xn. genus, pollicis 
 magnitudinem aequans, sixty thousand of them sprang out of 
 Brahma's hair, Bopp's Gloss. Skr. p. 122* (ed. 2, p. 238'^) j 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 ducJcs ; ^ conf. queen Berhta, 
 
 1 When we read in a passage quoted by Jungmann 4, 652 : 'mezi pjdimnzjky 
 kraluge trpasljk ' (among thiimblings a dwarf is king), it is jilain that a trpasJjk is 
 moi-e than a pjdimuzJk. Can this trp- (Slovak. krjDec, 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 MHGr. has also ' der 
 
 kurze man,'' Wigal. 6593. 6685. 6710 ; ' der ivenige man,'' 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 cJiurzibolt, Pertz 2, 104, which otherwise means a short 
 coat, Hoff. Gl. 36, 13. Koth. 4576. Conf. urkinde (nanus), Gramm. 2, 789. 
 
 - Deutsche Sagen, no. 149 ; I here give a more faithful version, for which I am 
 
 indebted to Hr. Hieron. Hagebuch of Aarau. Vo de lidrdmandlena uf der Eams- 
 
 flue. Hinder der Arlisbacher egg, zwiischenem doriie Hard und dem alte Lorenze- 
 kapallele, stoht im ene thjile so gauz eleigge e griisle vertraite flue, se sagere 
 dRamsflue. uf der hiudere site isch se hohl, und dliole het numme e chline igang. 
 Do sind denn emol, me weiss nid axact i wele johrgange, so rarige ladndle 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 warklich gestaltet, und 
 mit elm wort, es isch halt kei monsch usene ch*, wer se denn au seige, wohar se 
 cho seige, und was se tribe, jimel gekochet hand se niit, und wiirzle und beeri 
 ggjisse. unde a der flue lauft es bachle, und i dem bachle hand die mandle im sum- 
 mer badet, xv'ie tiihJe, aber eis vonene het immer wacht gha, und het pfiffe, wenn 
 opper derhar cho isch, \\l dem fuesswag : denn sind se ame gsprunge, was gisch 
 was hesch, der biirg uf, dass ene kei haas noh cho wer, und wie der sehwick in 
 ehre h'dhle gschloffe. dernabe hand se kem monsch niit zleid tho, im gagetheil, 
 gfalligkaite, wenn se hiind chonne. Einisch het der Hardpur es fiiederle riswalle 
 glade, und wil er elei gsi isch, het ers au fast nid mtige. E sones mandle gsehts vo 
 der flue obenabe, und chuut der durab zhopperle iiber driese, und hilft dem pur, 
 was es het mcige. wo se do der bindbaum wiind ufe thue, so isch das mandle ufem 
 wage gsi, und het grichtet, und der pur het viberunde azoge a de bindchneble. do 
 het das mandle sseil nid racht ume gliret,und wo der pur azieht, schnellt der baum 
 los und trift smandle ane finger iind hets wiirst 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, siilben gha.'* mit dene worte springts 
 vom wage nabe, het es chriitle abbroche, hets verschaflet und uf das bluetig fin- 
 
 * Swab. ' sell thaun, sell haun,' Schmid p. 628. More neatly in MHG., ' selbe 
 tffite, selbe habe,' MS. 1, 10^ 89^
 
 ELVES, DWARFS. 451 
 
 p, 280_, and the swan-maidens, p, 429. One is also reminded 
 of the blateviieze, Eother 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.^ Brandan met 
 a man on the sea, who was a tlmmh long, BindL 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.^ 
 
 The fdfar are a people, as the Edda expressly says (Sn. 21), and 
 
 gerle gleit, und das het alles ewag puzt. do springts wider ufe wage, und bet zuiu 
 pur gseit, er soil sseil nume wider ume ge. Mangiscb, weun riichtscbafne Hit durn 
 tag gbeuet oder bunde biind und se sind nit fertig worde bis zobe, und sbet cippe 
 welle cbo rague, so sind die hiirdmriiidle cbo, und hand gescbaffet und gewiirnet 
 di-uf iue, bis alles im scbiirme gsi iscb. oder wenns durt duacbt iscb cbo wiittere, 
 hand se sbeu und scborn, wo dusse gliige iscb, de liite zum tenn zue triiit, und am 
 morge het halt alles gross auge gmacht, und se band nid gwiisst, wers tho het. deu 
 biind erst no die mdnclle kei dank begehrt, numenau dass me se gem biit. Amenim 
 winter, wenn alles stei und bei gfrore gsi iscb, sind die mandlc is oberst bus cbo 
 zArlispach : se band sbalt gar guet ebonnen mit dene liite, wo dert gwohnt biind, 
 und sind ame durt dnacht ufem ofe gliige, und am morge vortag band se se wieder 
 drus gmacht. was aber gar gsjiiissig gsi iscb, si hand ehrc Jiiessle nie viire glo. Mind 
 es charlachroths mdntele trait, vom hals bis ufe bode nabe. jetzt bets im dorf so 
 gwunderige meitle und buebe gha, die sind einisch znacbt vor das bus go gen iische 
 streue, dass se gsiiche, was die Mrdvuindle fiir fiiessle hebe. und was hiindse 
 gfunde ? siscb frile wunderle : ante und peissfiiess sind in der asche abdiiickt gsi. 
 Aber vo siilber stund a iscb keis mandie meh cbo, und se sind au niimme uf der 
 Eamsflue bbebe, i dkracbehand se se verschlnjf'e, tief id geissfiue hindere, und biind 
 keis zeiche me von ene ge, und chomme niimme, so lang dixit eso boshaft sind 
 
 (see Suppl.). [Substance of the above. Earth-mannikins on the Eamsflue P"^ 
 
 lived in a cave with a narrow entrance ; cooked nothing, ate roots and hemes ; / 
 bathed in a br^k like doves, set one to watch, and if he whistled, were up the liills | 
 faster than hares, tind'sTipt 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 oft, the pole 1 
 flew up and hurt him badly. Farmer : ' I wish it had happened to mo. ' Dwarf : 
 ' Not so ; self do, self have.' Got down, picked a herb, and cyreiibe w ound in- 
 stantly. OTtenrwTienTiohest folk cut bay or tied corn, dwarfs helpedthem 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 I 
 they came every night to a bouse at Arlisbacb, slept on the oven, departed before t 
 dawn; wore scarlet cloaks reachin(ito the ground, sotliai~tiuLU^f^^M:ereuevcr-&e£n; 
 but some prying people sprinkled aslies before the Tiouse, on which were seen the j 
 next morning marks of duck's and goose's feet. They never showed themselves I \J 
 again, and never will, wliilc^ hk tt :iic so spiteful.] —————————— J / 
 
 — +-inuiiimaerrs"TTucTvlariiisrl,, j^MliclTteiil, 118". 2, 26». 
 
 - Brahma, sitting on a lotus, floats musing across the abysses of tho sea. " Vishnu, 
 when after ih-abma'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 seaof milk, 
 sucking the toe of his right foot. (Asiat. Ees. 1, 345.)
 
 452 WIGHTS AND ELVES. 
 
 as the Alvismal implies by putting alfar, dyergar, 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-/o//i; ; ' in Lausitz ludki, little folk (Wend. 
 voTksl. 2, 268), from lud, liud (nation), OHG. liut. Boh. lid; and 
 in Welsh y teulu (the family), y tylwyth teg (the fair fam-ily, the 
 pretty little folk, conf. Owen sub v. tylwyth, and DiefenbacVs 
 Celtica ii. 102. Whether we are to understand by this a histo- 
 rical realm situate in a particular region, I leave undecided here. 
 Dvergmdl (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. Herrau'bssaga, cap. 11, p. 50: ' Sigur'Sr stilti sva 
 hatt horpuna, at dvergmdl qva^ i hollunni,^ he played so loud 
 on the harp, that dwarf's voice spoke in the hall. When heroes 
 dealt loud blows, ' dvorgamdl sang uj qvorjun hamri,' echo 
 sang in every rock (Lyngbye, p. 464, 470) ; when hard they 
 hewed, 'dvorgamdl sang uj fiodlun,' echo sang in the mountains 
 (ibid. 468). ON. ' qved'r vid' i klettunum,' reboant rupes. Can 
 grceti dlfa (ploratus nanorum) in the obscure Introduction to 
 the Hamdismal (Stem. 269'') 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 
 gaben 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.^ 
 
 This nation of elves or dwarfs has over it a king. In Norse 
 legend, it is true, I remember no instance of it among alfar 
 or dvergar; yet Huldra is queen of the huldrefolk (p. 272), as 
 
 ' The Irish for echo is similax, though less beautiful : muc alia, swine of the rock.
 
 ELVES, DWAEFS. 453 
 
 Berchta is of the heinchen (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 feerj^e) is his. Our poem of Orendel cites a dwarf 
 Allan by name. In Otnit a leading part is played by hunec 
 Alherich, ETBrich, to whom are subject ''manec berg und tal;^' 
 the Nib. liedlnakes him not a king, but a vassal of the kiugs 
 Schilbiuig and Nibelung ; a nameless Jmig of_dwaifs appears in 
 the poem of Ecke 80 ; and elsewhere Unq Goldemar (Dent, held- 
 ensage p. 174. Haupt's Zeitschr. 6, 522-3), king S innel s and 
 Laurin (MS. 2, lb"") ; ' der getwerge kium. Bilet/ Ev. 2086. 
 The~TTerman folk-tales also give the dwarf nation a king (no. 
 152); king of erdmannchen (Kinderm. 3, 167). Giihich (Gibika, 
 p. 137) is in the Harz legends a dwarf-king. Heiling is lyrince of 
 the dwarfs (no. 151).^ 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 difa (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. 
 Saem. 2^ 3"'). I pick out the rhyming forms Vitr and Lib; Fill 
 and Kili, Fialarr and Galarr, Skirvir and Virvir, Anar and Ojiar, 
 Finnr and Ginnr, as well as the absonant Bivor and Bnvor. 
 iVar and Nfdnn are manifestly synonymous (mortuus), and so 
 are Thrcir and Thrdinn (contumax, or rancidus ?) . With Ndinn 
 agrees Bdinn (mortuus again) ; with Ohm (timidus) Moinn ; 
 Dvalinn, DurinUj Thorinii, Fundinn, shew at least the same 
 
 ' A curious cry of grief keeps recurring in several dwarf-stories : ' the king is 
 dead I Urban is dead ! old motlwr Pmiipe is dead ! ' (Biisching's Wiich. uachr. 1, 
 99. 101); the old schimpe is (Teadl (Tjcgeud of Bonikau), MHG. sclminpfo, Fragm. 
 36'=; conf. Bange's TLiir. cliron. -ly", where again they say ' kiiig Knoblauch 
 (garlic) is dead ! ' Taking into account the saying in Saxony, ' de paitc fni ist uu 
 al dot! ' with evident allusion to the motherly goddess (p. 253), and the similar 
 phrase in Scandinavia, ' nu eru dauSar allar disir!' (p. 402); 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, Gandalfr, and Vinddlfr place the con- 
 nexion of elves and dwarfs Beyoifd'aoubt. Ai occurs twice, 
 and seems to mean avus, as in Saem. 100* ; Finn]' and Billhig^r 
 are like the heroes' names discussed on pp. 373, 380. -ZV^-, and 
 NiiSi, Nyr and NyrdcFr have reference to phases of the moon's 
 light; a few other names will be touched upon later. In Saem. 
 45'' and Sn. 48. 130 all dwarfs are said to be ' Ivalda synir,' 
 sons of Ivaldi, and he seems identical with the elvish Ivaldr, 
 father of I^uiTn, Seem. 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 rai'e name in the older documents : we know the two St. 
 Ewalds (niger et albus) who were martyred in the elder Pipin's 
 time (695) and buried at Cologne, but were of English origin. 
 Beda 5, 10 spells it Hewald, 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 iorff neSan, a ec 7mdr steini sta'S/ I dwell underneath 
 the earth, I have under stone ray stead, Seem. 48*. 'dvergr sat 
 undir steininum,' Yngl. saga, cap. 15. ^dvergar bua i i'drd'u oc 
 i steinum/ Sn. 15. Ulbenstein, Elphinstone, are names of noble 
 families, see Elwenstein, Weisth. 1, 4. In the Netherlands 
 the hills containing sepulchral urns are vulgarly denominated 
 \alfenhercjen (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 lidrdmdndle, sometimes even unter- 
 irdische, Dan. under jordishe} They scamper over moss and fell, 
 and are not exhausted by climbing steep precipices : Men wilden 
 
 ^ I cannot yet make out the name ancefigers, by wliich the earth-men are called 
 up in Kindorm. 2, 163-4. [erd-wihte? v. ar- for erd-, p. 467, 1. 3 ; and we^lin, p. 449] . 
 The ON. drvakr is hardly the same (see SuppL). In Pruss. Samogitia ' de under- 
 hordschkes ' ; the tales about them carefully collected by Eeusch, no. 48-59. The 
 Wends of Liineburf; called subterranean spirits gorzoni (hill-manuikins, fr. gora, 
 hill), and the hills they haunted 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- 
 thonian mythology also has its subterraneans {ma allused, under ground).
 
 ELVES, DWAEFS. 455 
 
 getwergen waere ze stigen da genuoc/ enough climbing for wild 
 dwarfs, says Wli. 57, 25, speaking of a rocky region.^ The popu- 
 lar beliefs in Denmark about the hiergmand, hiergfolli, hiergtroJd, 
 are collected in Molbech's Dial. lex. p. 35-6. The biergmand's 
 wife is a hiergekone. These traditions about earth-men and 
 mountain-sprites all agree together. Slipping " into cracks and 
 crevices of the hills, they seem to vanish suddenly, Hike ther 
 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 dwarf's holes, querlich's holes. So the ludJci in Lausitz make 
 their appearance out of underground passages like mouseholes ; 
 a Breton folk-song speaks of the Jiorred'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- 
 slilffe in locher der steinwende/ whether he have slipped away 
 into holes of the rocks ^ : meaning probably, that, like Taun- 
 hiiuser and faithful Eckart, he has got into the mount wherein 
 Dame Venus dwells. Of this Dame Venus's mount we have no 
 accounts before the 15-16th centuries; one would like to know 
 Avhat 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, 65''^ : 
 
 Und dunket mich, wie si ge zuo mir diir ganze muren, 
 
 ir trust und ir helfe luzent mich niht triiren ; 
 
 swenne si wil, so viieret sie mich himien 
 
 mit ir wizen hant hohe ilber die zinnen. 
 
 icli waene sie ist ein Venus here. 
 
 1 Other instances are collectctl in Ir. Elfenm. Ixxvi. ' den here bfitcn irihliu 
 getwerc,' wild dwarfs inliabitcd the hill, Sigeuot 118. 
 
 2 Sliefeit is said of them as of the fox in lieinh. xxxi. ; our subst. schlucht 
 stands for sluft (beschwichtigen, lucht, kracht.for swiften, luft, kraft), hence a hole 
 to slip into. 
 
 * Conf. Deutsche sagcn, uo. 38J, on Theoderic's soul, how it is conveyed into 
 Vulcan's abyss. 
 
 VOL. ir. c
 
 456 WIGHTS AND ELVES. 
 
 (Methinks slie 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- 
 hiiuser; and Suppl.). Accordingly, when a Hessian nursery- 
 tale (no. 13) makes three haule-mannerclien 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 earih-mannildn' s 
 wife, I won't be afraid of you.' ^ 
 
 There is another point of connexion with Holda : the ex- 
 pressions 'die gotten JioJden' (p. 266), ' giiedeholden' penates 
 (Teutonista), or Jwldichen, holdehen, holderchen seem perfectly 
 synonymous with Hhe good elves ; ' holdo is literally a kind, 
 favourably disposed being, and in Iceland linfitngar (darlings) 
 and huldufolk, huldumenn (p. 272) are used for alfar. The form 
 of the Dan. hyldemdnd 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 
 neigliboxirs, peaceful folic (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 neiu-haked bread or cahes 
 (Mone's Anz. 7, 475). They too in their turn require man's 
 advice and assistance in certain predicaments, among which are i 
 
 A 1 One winter Hadding was eating Ms supper, when suddenly an earth-wife 
 
 u TpusheAhei' head vp throvgh the floor by the flreside, and offered him green vege- 
 
 *' tables. Saxo,p. 16, calls her cicutarvm gerula, and makes her take Hadding into 
 
 the subterranean land, where are meadows covered with grass, as in our nursery- 
 
 tiles which describe Dame Holla's underground realm. This grass- wife resembles 
 
 a little eaiih-wife.
 
 ELVES, DWARFS. 457 
 
 to be reckoned three cases in particular. In tlie first place, tliey 
 fetch goodwives, midwives, to assist she-dwarfs in labour ; ^ next, 
 men of understanding to divide a treasure, to settle a dispute;^ 
 thirdly, they borrow a hall to hold their weddings in ; ^ but they 
 requite eveiy 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.* In Rudlieb xvii. 18, the captured dwarf retorts the 
 taunt of treachery in the following speech : 
 
 ^ Eanzan, Alvensleben, Hahn. (Deut. sag. no. 41, 68-9) ; Miillenb. Schlesw. 
 hoist, sag. no. 443-4. Asbiora Norw. s. 1, 18. Irish legends and fau'y tales 1, 
 245-250. Mone's Auz. 7, 475 ; conf. Thiele 1, 36.— Hiilpher's Samlingen cm 
 
 Jamtland (Westeras 1775, p. 210) has the following Swedish story: 'ar 1660, di 
 
 jag tillika med min hustru var gdngen til faboderne, som ligga J mil ifran Kaguuda 
 prastegird, och der sent om qvallen suttit och talt en stund, kom en liten man 
 ingaende geuom diiren, och bad min hustru, det ville hon hjelpa bans hustrit, som 
 da lag och qvaldes vied barn, karlen var eljest liten til vaxten, svart i synen, och 
 med gamla gra klader forsedd. Jag och min hustru sutto en stund och undrade 
 pa denne manuen, emedan vi understodo, at ban var et troll, och hort beriittas, det 
 sidane, af bondfolk vettar kallade, sig altid i fiibodarne uppehalla, sedan folket om 
 hosten sig derifrdn begifvit. Men som ban 4 a 5 ganger siu begaran payrkade, och 
 man derhos betaukte, hvad skada boudfolket beriitta sig ibland af vettarne lidit, 
 da de antingeu svurit pa dem, eller eljest vist dem med vranga ord til helvetet ; 
 ty fattade jag da til det radet, at jag liistc ofver min hustru nagre boner, viilsignade 
 henne, och bad henne i Gruds namn foljamed honom. Hon tog sa i hastighet nagre 
 gamla linklader med sig, och fdlgde honom at, men jag blef qvar sittaude. Sedan 
 nar hon mig vid aterkomsten berattat, at da hon gatt med mannen utom porteu, 
 tykte hon sig liksom foras udi vadret en stund, och kom sa uti en stuga, hvarest 
 bredevid var en liten miirk kammare, das bans hustru lag och vandades med barn 
 i en siing, min hustru bar si stigit til henne, och efter en liten stund hjelpt henne, 
 da hon fodde barnet, och det med lika atborder, som andra menniskor plaga hafva. 
 Karlen bar sedan tilbudit henne mat, men som hon dertil nekade, ty tackade ban 
 henne och folgde henne dt, hvarefter hon iter likasom farit i vacb'et, och kom efter 
 en stund til porteu igen vid passklockan 10. Emedlertid voro en hoper (jamla 
 silfverskedar lagde pi en hylla i stugan, och fann min hustru dem, da hon andra 
 dagen stcikade i vriarne : kunuandes forsta, at de af vcttret voro dit lagde. At sd 
 i Banning ar skedt, vituar jag med mitt namns undersiittande. Eagunda, d. 12 
 
 april, 1671. Pet. Eahm.' [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. Eefused food, was^carried home in the 
 same way ; found next day a heap of old silver vessels brought by the vettr.\ 
 
 In Finland the vulgar opinion holds, that under the altars of churches there live 
 small mis-shapen beings called kirkonwiiki (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. Kinderm. 2, 43. 3, 172. 225. Nib. 92, 3. 
 Bit. 7819. Conf. Deutsche heldeusagen, p. 78. 
 
 3 Hoia (Deut. sagen, no. 35). Bonikau (Elisabeth von Orleans, Strassb. 1789, 
 p. 133 ; Leipzig 1820, p. 450-1). Biisching's ^Yocbentl. nacbr. 1. 98 ; conf. 101. 
 
 1 The wounded hJirdniaudle, p. 450-1. Here are two Swedish st>)ries given in 
 Odmau's Bahusliin pp. 191, 224: Bioru Marteusson, 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 cujusque fide sunt ejus tempora vitae. 
 Non aliter loquimur nisi sicut corde tenemus, 
 neque cibos varios edimus morbos generantes, 
 longius incolumes hinc nos durahimus ac vos. 
 
 j 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 natui-e, 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 iu the high woods of Ornekulla ; there they found a hergsmed 
 
 , (mouutaiu-sniith) asleep, and the huntsman ordered the archer to seize him, but 
 
 / he dechued : ' 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 
 
 I little ones, and he would forge them anything they liked, they had only to put the 
 
 I iron and steel on the cliff, and they'd presently find the work lying finished in the 
 
 I 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 
 
 I of your posterity will attain the greatness you enjoy, but will go from bad to worse.' 
 
 \ Wliich 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 s^^ied a fine buck with a ring about his neck ; at the same 
 ipstant a cry came out of the hill : ' Look, the man is shooting our ring-buck ! ' 
 f 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 iu 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 icJtite buck will stand by him.' A tre- 
 mendous upioar 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 hand 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 
 iu Torp church, and the skin in Langeland church.
 
 ELVES, DWAKFS. 459 
 
 Whilst in tliis 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.'- 
 
 ^ More fully treated of in Ir. Elfenm. xciv. xcv. ; coDf. Tliiele 1, 42. 2, 2. Faye 
 p. 17, 18. Heinchen driven away by grazing herds and tinkling sheepbells, Variscia 
 2, 101. Hessian tales of ivichtelmdnnerchen, Kinderm. no. 39, to wliich I add the 
 
 following one: On the Schwalm near Uttershausen stands the Dosenberg; close 
 
 to the river's bank are two apertui'es, once the exit and entrance holes of the 
 wichtelmdnner. The grandfather of farmer Tobi of Siuglis often had a little 
 wichtelmann come to him in a friendly manner in his field. One day, when the 
 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 ivichtelmeH. 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 iu the mountain to content the whole 
 neighbourhood.' He then loaded Tobi's waggou full of money, and went his 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 wiclitel holding their trgsts upon it. Every seven 
 years, generally on a Friday, you may see a liigli blue flame over it, covering a 
 larger space of ground than a big cahh'on. People call it the geldfeuer, tliey have 
 brushed it away with their feet (for it holds no lieat), 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 Allcr country : Tau Offensen bin 
 
 Kloster Wicnhusen was on groton buern, Hiivermann uenne ho sick, die harro ok en 
 schi]) up der AUer. Einsdages komt 2 Hie tau jiim un segget, he schiillc sc over dat 
 water schippen. Tweimal fiiuort hei over dc Aller, jedesmal na deu groton rume, 
 den se AUoru heiteu dauet, dat is ne grote unininschliche wische lang un breit, dat 
 man se kums afkiken kann. Ans de buer taun twcitenmale over efiiuert is, segt 
 ein von don tirarvien to ome : ' Wut du nu ne summo geldes hebben, oder wut du 
 na koptal betalt sin? ' ' Ick will Iciver ne summe geld ncmen ' sfi de buer. Do 
 nimt de eine von don liltjen lilen sinen haut af, un settet den dem schipper up : 
 ' Du herrst dik doch beter estan, wenn du na koptal efodert herrst ' segt de twarni ;
 
 460 WIGHTS AND ELVES. 
 
 Breton legend informs us : A man liad 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. 413) 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 
 ylf ages cot,' these elves being apparently armed with weapons 
 like those of the gods themselves ; ^ the divine thunderbot is even 
 called an albscJioss (pp. 179, 187), and in Scotland the elf-arroiv, 
 eJf-jiint, elf-holt is a hard pointed wedge believed to have been 
 discharged by spirits ; the turf cut out of the ground by light- 
 ning is supposed to be thrown up by them.^ Oa 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 vf ere 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 ; ^ one whom their stroke has fallen on, is lost or in- 
 capable (Danske viser 1, 328) : lamed cattle, bewitched by them, 
 
 un de buer, de vorher niclits nich seien harre, un den et so lichte in schii^p vorko- 
 men was, ans of he nichts inne herre, slit de ganze Allero von luter liitjen minschen 
 krimmeln un whnmeln. Dat sind de twarrne west, dei wier trokken sind. Von der 
 tit heft Hovermanus noch immer vull geld ehat, dat se nich kennen deen, averst nu 
 sind se sau ein nan annern ut estorven, un de hof is verkoft. ' Wann ist deun das 
 gewesen ? ' Vor oleu tien, ans de twarme noch sau in der welt wesen sind, nu 
 gift et er wol keine mehr, vor driittig, virzig jaren. [Substance of the foregoing : 
 
 Hovermann, a large farmer at Ofi'ensen, had also a ship on the E. Aller. Two 
 
 little men asked him to ferry them over. He did so twice, each time to a large 
 open space called Allero. Dwarf : ' WUl 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 vicn, 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.] 
 
 ' Arrows of the Servian vila, p. 436. The Norw. dli-skudt, elf-shotten, is said 
 of sick cattle, Sommerfelt Saltdalens prastegield, p. 119. Scot, elfshot. 
 
 - Irish Elf- stories xlv. xlvi. cii. 
 
 2 Ibid. ciii.
 
 / 
 
 ELVES, DWARFS. 461 
 
 are said in Norway to be dverg-dagen (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 ellevlldelse 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 (Ssem. 
 18P) ; ^ other dwarfs, Austri, Vestri, Nor&ri, Suffri (Sasm. 2'\ Sn. 
 9. 15. 16) betoken the four winds, while Vinddlfr, still a dwarFs 
 name, explains itself.^ Beside the breathing, the mere look of 
 an elf has magic power : this our ancient idiom denominates 
 mtsehan (torve intueri, Gramm. 2,810), MHG. entsehen : ' ich 
 ban in gesegent (blessed), er was entsehen/ Eracl. 3239 ; 'von 
 der elbe wirt entsehen vil maneger man,' MS. 1, 50'' (see Suppl.). 
 The knot-holes in wood are popularly ascribed to elves. In 
 Smiiland a tale is told about the ancestress of a family whose 
 name is given, that she was an elfmaid, that she came into the 
 house through a knot-hole in the wall loith 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 you 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 
 aawisbore, Jutish 'ausbor (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 iegepiuu ! 
 
 (elf- woman, art thou in here, so shalt thou come out through 15 
 
 ' Norweg. alvgust, an illness caused by Laving been breathed upon by elves, 
 Hallager 4''. 
 
 - Old French legend has an elf called Ziphyr ; there is a German home-sprite 
 Blaserle, Moue's Anzeiger 1834, p. 260.
 
 ^02 WIGHTS AND ELVES. 
 
 oak knot-holes, egepind), the elfin is bound to make her appear- 
 anee_, 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 alham vocant. The alp is supposed often 
 to assume the shape of a butterfly, and in the witch-trials the 
 name of elh is given by turns to the caterpillar, to the chrysalis, 
 and to the insect that issues from it. And these shai*e even the 
 names of gufe holden 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^ 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 liat or a cloak, and 
 when that is accidentally dropt or cast aside, they suddenly 
 become visible. The dwarf-tales tell of nebelkappen (Deut. sag. 
 nos. 152-3-5), of gra.y coats and red caps (Thiele 1, 122. 135), 
 of scarlet cloals (supra, p. 451n.).- Earlier centuries used the 
 words lielhappe, helheplein, helhleit (Altd. bl. 1, 256), nehelTcappe 
 (MS. 2, 156\ 258'^; Morolt 2922. 3932) and tarnhappe. By Albe- 
 rich^s and afterwards Sigfrit's tarnlxappe (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 tarnlmt, the protecting skin, and the 
 
 1 ' Hujus tempore principis (Heinrici ducis Karinthiae) in montanis suae 
 ditionis gens gnaua in eavernis montium habitavit, cum liominibus vescebantur, 
 ludebant, bibebant, choreas ducebant, sed invisihiUter. Literas scribebant, rem- 
 publicam inter se gerebant, legem habentes et principem, iidem catholicam pro- 
 Uteutes, domicilia hominum laUnter iutrantes, bominibus consedentes et arridentes. 
 . . . Principe subducto, nihil de eis amplius est auditum. Dicitur quod 
 [lemmas gestant, quae eos reddunt invisibiles, quia deformitatem et parvitatevi cor- 
 porum erubescuut.' Anon. Leobiens. ad ann. 1335 (Pez 1, 940''). 
 
 ^ Oh Wormius's pref. to Clausson's Dan. transl. of Suorre, Copenh. 1633 : ' der- 
 for sigis de (dverger) at hafve hcitte paa, huormid kunde giore sig usynlig.' Other 
 proofs are collected in Ir. Elfenm. Isxiv. Ixxv. A schretel wears a rotez keppel on 
 him (not on his head), ibid. cxvi. KoUenhagen's ' bergmiinnlein ' wear little white 
 shirts and pointed caps, Froschmeuseler xx. v'\ Maugis, the Carolingian sorcerer, 
 is called ' lerres (latro) o le noir chaperon.'
 
 ELVES, DWARFS. 463 
 
 schretePs ^rotez heppel' becomes in H. Saclis 1,280'* a 'mantel 
 scharlach 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 luldehat 
 (pointed hat ?), and a home-sprite at Hildesheim bears the name 
 of Hodelten from the felt hat he wore. Probably the OHG. helot- 
 helm (latibulum), Gl. Hrab. 969% the OS. helith-helm, Hel. 164, 
 29, AS. heoWhelm, Cod. Exon. 362, 31, hmWielm, Caedm. 29, 2, 
 ON. hialmr huliz (an Eddie word for cloud), Ssem. 50%^ and the 
 AS. grimhelm, Ceedm. 188, 27. 198, 20. Beow. 66Q, 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 OSin's hat 
 with turned-up brim (p. 146), Mercury's petasus, Wish's hat, 
 which our fairy-tales still call wishing -hat, ^ and Pluto's or Orcus's 
 helmet i^'Mho^ Kvvir], II. 5, 845. Hesiod, Scut. 227). The dwarfs 
 may have stood in some peculiar, though now obscured, relation 
 to O^iun, 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 triuget 
 (cheats), Fundgr. 327, 18 ; den triuget, weiz Got, nicht der alp, 
 not even the elf can trick him, Diut. 2, 34; Silvester 5199 ; die 
 mag triegen wol der alj), Suchenwirt xxxi. 12 ; ein getroc daz 
 mich in dem slafe triuget, Ben. 429 ; dicli triegen die elhln (1. elbe, 
 rhyme selbe), Altd. bl. 1, 261 ; elhe triegent, Amgb. 2''; diu elber 
 triegent, Herbort 5'^ ; in beduhte daz in triige ein alp, Ir. elfenm. 
 Ivii. ; alfs ghedroch, Elcgast 51, 775. Reinh. 5367, conf. Horao 
 Belg. 6, 218-9; alfsche droch, Reinaert (prose Ixxii.''). In our 
 
 1 Fornm. sog. 2, 141 says of Eyviiulr the sorcerer : ' gior'Si \>cim hnlithhialm,' 
 made for them a mist, darkness, luilinhidhnr, Foruald. sog. 3, 21'j ; kujfshoftr 1, 
 9. 2, 20. See llafn's Index sub v. dvilgerfi. 
 
 2 A weighty addition to the arguments for the identity of Wuotan and Mercury; 
 conf. p. -iiy on the wishing-rod.
 
 464 WIGHTS AND ELVES. 
 
 elder speech gitroc, getroc, dgetroc, ahegetroc, denotes trickery 
 especially diabolic, proceeding from evil spirits (Grainm. 2, 709. 
 740-1). 1 To the same effect are some other disparaging epithets 
 applied to elves : elhischez getwds, elhischez els, elhischez 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 riiert dich satauas (Satan shakes thee to-night),' 
 Fundgr. 1, 170; or else the elf, the nightmare^ : 'dich hat geriten 
 der mar,' ^ein alp zoumet dich (bridles thee).' And as Dame 
 Holle entangles one's spinning or hair (p. 269), as she herself has 
 tangled hair,-'^ and as stubbly hair is called Ho^Zeuzop/;* 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, driden- 
 zQipf, wich.telzopf, weichsehopf (of wbich more hereafter), in Lower 
 Saxony mahrenlocke, elfhlatte (Brem. worth. 1, 302), Dan. mare- 
 lok, Engl, eljiochs (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 aitwaras likewise mats the 
 hair : aitwars yo plaukus suzindo, suwele (has drawn his hair to- 
 gether). Lasicz 51 has : aitivaros, incubus qui post sepes habitat 
 (from twora sepes, and ais pone). Some parts of Lower Saxony 
 give to the wichtelzopf (plica polouica) the name of selkensteert, 
 selkin's tail (Brem. worth. 4, 749), sellentost (Hufeland's Journal 
 11. 43), which I take to mean tuft of the goodfellow, homesprite 
 
 1 Daz analutte des sih pergenten trugetievcles, N. Bth. 44; (/(rfrogr pbantasma, 
 0. iii. 8, 24; gedrog, Bel. 89, 22 ; tievels qctroc, Kail 62"; ' ne clragu ic enic drugi 
 thing,' Hel. 8, 10. The dwarf Elberich (Ortn. 3, 27. 5, 105) is called ' eiu trilge- 
 w'lz ' ; conf. infra, bilwiz. 
 
 ' Our nachtmar I cannot produce either in OHG. or MHG. Lye gives AS. 
 ' vi(e7-e ffficce ' incubus, ephialtes, but I do not understand isecce. 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 caucheviare, cochemar, also 
 chaitcheville, chauchi vieilli (Mem. des Antiq. 4. 399 ; J. J. ChampoUion Figeac 
 patois, p. 125) ; Ital. pe&aruole, 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, i&il), Holle zopp, Schmidt's Westerw. idiot. 341. 
 Adelung has : ' hbllenzopf, plica polonica, Pol. koltun, Boh. koltauu.'
 
 ELVES, DWARFS. 465 
 
 (gesellchen).! In Thuringia saellocke.'PriBtorms's Welfcbesclir. 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 Lamin 
 come riding. Heinrich von Ofterdingen bestows on them a steed 
 *als ein geiz (goat)/ and Ulrich's Alexander gives the dwarf 
 king Antilois a pony the size of a roe,^ while Altd. bl. 2, 151 
 without more ado mounts the wihtel on a ifjhite 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 A/piofr, Sjsm. 2'' ; Alpris, more correctly Alfrikr 
 dvergr, in Vilk. saga cap. 16, 40. is called ' hinn mildi 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~Jields.^ Other thefts of dwarfs 
 
 • 
 
 1 Ogonczyk Zakrzewski, in his Hist, of plica polonica (Vienna, 1830), observes, 
 that its cure also is accomplished with superstitious ceremonies. In Potllachia the 
 elftuft is solemnly cut oii' at Easter time and buried. In the Skawiua district about 
 Cracow, it is partially cropped with redhot sh€ars, a piece of copper money tied 
 \ip in it, and thrown into the 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 Wackernagel's Basel MSS. p. 28. 
 
 •* Deut. sagen, nos 152, 155 ; to which I will here add two communicated by Hr. 
 
 Sehambach. The first is from Jiihnde, near Gottingen : Vor nich lauger tid gaf 
 
 et to Jiine noch twarge. Diise plegten up et feld to gan, un den liien de arften 
 (leuten die erbsen) weg to stelen, wat se iim sau lichter konnen, da se unsichtbar 
 wiiren dor (durch) ene kappe, dei se uppen koppe barren (hatten). Sau woreu nu 
 <il{ de twarge euen manne iininier i;p sin grat arftenstiicke egau, un richtcden one 
 velen schaen damp an. Diit duerde sau lange, bet hei up den infal kam, de twarge 
 to fengeu. Hei tog alsau an helleu middage en eel (sell) rings iim dat feld. As nu 
 de twarge unner den sel dorkrupen wollen, felleu iinen de kapj)cn af, se seiten nu 
 alle in blaten ktippen, un woren sichtbar. De twarge, dei sau efongen woren, 
 geiwen one vele gaue wore, dat he dat sel wegniimen mogde, un versjirokcn ene 
 mette (niicthe) geld davor to gewen, hei solle mant vor suiiniuupiiaiiucvieev (wicder) 
 an diise stee komen. En ander man segde one awer, hei mogde nich gcgcn sun- 
 uenupganp, sundern schon iim twolwe hengan, denu 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 harren, Mettens. [Epitome : — Dwarfs at 
 Jiihnde preyed on the pea-fields ; wore caps which made them invisible. One man 
 at high noon stretched a cord round his field. Dwaifs, 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 ivith 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 hergtagna' (-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.^ The following 
 
 their caps off, became visible and 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 soUe 
 hengan un slaen met weenrauen (weidenruten) drupe riim, sau sleugde gewis einen 
 de kaj^pe af. Da geng he ok hen met sinnen ganzen liieu, un funk ok enen twarg, 
 dei sie (sagte) tau cine, 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 hiile wore. Do ging de buere heun 
 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 drinue un sungen : 
 
 Dat ist gaut, dat de biierken 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) konuen 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 woUet 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, Ssem. 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 Rumpelstilzchen 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 siDecifying the people's names : — ■ — Eeors fciraldrar i 
 Hogen i Lurssockn, some bodde i Fuglekiirr i Svarteborgssockn ; hvars farfar var 
 en skott, ok bodde vid et berg, ther fick han se mitt pa dagen sitjande en vacker 
 piga pa en sten, ther med at fanga henne, kastade han stal emellan berget ok henve, 
 hvarpa hennes far gasmade eller log in i berget, ok opnade bergets dorr, tilfragandes 
 honom, om han vill ha hans dotter? Hvilket han med ja besvarade, ok efter hon 
 var helt naken, tog han sina kliider ok holgde ofver henne, ok lat christna 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 jordhUgen eller 
 berget, ther jag haller til, ok niir brudskankeu skall utdelas, skall jag val ge min ' ;
 
 ELVES, DWARFS. 467 
 
 legend from Dorste near Osterode, it will be seen, transfers to 
 
 Et was enmal en miiken int holt nan arberen egan, da keimen de 
 twarge un neiment mee. Da se na orer liiilen 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 hoclitit bidden, 
 underdes solle dat maken in liuse alles reine maken un taur hoclitit 
 anreien. Awer dat miiken, dat woUe den twarg nich fi'ien, da 
 Avollet 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 kam, was et gans 
 vul feddern, un da leip et weg un steig upn hoagen boam. Da 
 keimen 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 schoane feddervugel ? ' 
 ' Ek kome ut der twarges hide.' 
 ' Wat maket de schoane junge brut ? ' 
 *Dei steit metu bessen un keret dat hus/ 
 ' Juchhei ! sau wil wie ok hen.' 
 
 TJnd da se hen keimen, seen se taur brut ' guen morgen,' un 
 seen noch mehr dertau ; awer da se nich antwure, sleuchten se'r 
 hinder de aren, un da fell se hen^ (see Suppl.). 
 
 hvilket ok skedde. Ty niir de andre gafvo, hjfte han vp tacket ok kastade en sa stor 
 •penning eposse ther ifjeiwm, at biiukeu sd nar gddt af , ok sade tbervid : ' ther iir miu 
 skauk ! ' ok sade ytterligare : • n;ir tu skal ha tiu hemmagifta, skaltu kiiira med 4 
 hastar hit til berget ok fii tiu andeh' Ta han sedermera efter bans begiirau kom 
 tit, fik han kopparkattlar, then ene storre an then andre, tils then yttersta storste 
 kiittelen blef upfyld med andra mindre ; item brandcreatur, som voro hielraeta, af 
 livilkcn I'arg ok creaturslag, som iiro stora ok frodiga, the iin ha qvar pS rik, i 
 Tamims glill beliiget. Thenne mannen lleors far i Foglekiirsten beuJimd, aHado en 
 hop barn nicd thenna sin saledes fran berget afhiimtade hnstru, bland hvilka var 
 nauinemannen Eeor pS Hogen ; so bar Ola Stcnson i stora llijk varit Keors syster- 
 60n, hvilkeu i forledit 3,r med dodeu afgik. [Epitome : — Keor's fathers dwelt, etc. 
 One, an archer, lived near a hill, saw one day at noon ajine girl sitting on a stone ; 
 to get her, he threic .steel Leticeen 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 /(///, 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, thus 
 fetched from the hill, he had many children; one was Eeor, whose nephew 0. S. 
 died only last year.] 
 
 ' 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, camhiones (App., 
 Superst. E.) ; OHG. wlhselinga (N, Ps. 17, 46. Cant. Deuteron. 
 5), our wechselhdlge ; Swed. bijfingar, Dan. bittinger ; also our 
 hielh'opfe, dicl:hdpfe 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.)^ 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 safeguai'd 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 'Pitcher's fowl.' There the 
 tub of honey in the dwarf's house is a cask of Mood, 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. 8.3. 84. 
 
 ' Dresd. saml. no. 15, of the ' miillers 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 sjDrachen : hastu nit vernommen ? ez was ain rehter 
 ■wislonhalk (regular changeling), und tett als ein giioter schalk : da er erst von 
 deinem leib kam (as soon as born), da fuer ez paid hin und entran hin uff zuo dem 
 fiirst emjior. Der miiller sprach : paid hin uff daz spor ! vachent ez (catch him) ! 
 
 pringeut 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 u-ichtel-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 uji till the woman 
 had put the u-iclitelhahj to her breast, and nourished it for once with the generous 
 milk of human kind.
 
 ELVES, DWAEFS. 469 
 
 steel and needles in the cradle (App., Superst. Germ. 484. 744. 
 Swed. 118) .1 
 
 One of the most striking instances of agreement that I know 
 of anywhere occurs in connection with prescriptions for gefthiff 
 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- 
 ivald, 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 : ' IVe 
 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 before [it became] tJte 
 white hen, and the acorn before 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 diffei'ent 
 terra 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, 
 
 ' The Finns call a changeling luoti : monstrnm ncc uon infans matre dormiente 
 a magis snjipositus, quales putant esse iufantcm rachitido laborantem (Renvall). A 
 Breton story of the korrigan changing a child is in Villeuianiue 1, 25.
 
 470 \\^GHTS AND ELVES. 
 
 and at dawn perceive their track in the dew : Dan. dlledands, 
 Swed. dlfdands, 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 beai'gl, da ddnzn 
 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 Meinen 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).^ This performance is called eJffrus leJc, 
 elfvelek. The ordinary fornyrSalag ^ bears among Icelandic poets 
 the name liiifiingslag (carmen genii), Olafsen p. 56 ; in Norway 
 that kind of sweet music is called liuldresldt (supra, p. 271). 
 One unprinted poem in MHG. (Cod. pal. 341. 35 7*^) contains 
 the remarkable passage : ' there sat fiddlers, and all fiddled the 
 alhleicli (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.^ 
 Finn Magnusen derives the name of the dwarf Haugspori (Seem. 
 2'') 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 Pacad. celt. 5, 
 108) ; these fays stand midway between elfins and wise women.'* 
 The Hymn to Aphrodite 260 says of the mountain-nymphs : 
 
 Srjpbv fxev ^ooovcn Kal cipb^poTov eiSap eSovat, 
 Kai re fxer ddavuToiat koKov X'^P^^ ippwaavro. 
 
 ^ 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. — Teans. 
 
 3 Conf. Ir. Elfeum. Ixxxi.-lxxxiii., and the wihtel-show above, p. 441 note ; Ihre 
 sub V. alfdans ; Arndt's Journey to Sweden 3, IG. 
 
 * Like the berviau vily, who hold theii' dance on mountain aud mead, p. 436.
 
 ELVES, DWAEFS. 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 
 (Seem. 18P), and still more Alvis (all- wise) ; dwarf Eugel (L. 
 Germ. Ogel) prophesies to Siegfried (Hiirn. Sifr. 46, 4. 162, 1), 
 so does Gripir in the Edda, whose father's name is Eylimi; in 
 the OFr. Tristran, the nains (nanus) Frocin is a devins (divinator), 
 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 coimsellors 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), 'e chlis mutzigs mandle' (stumpy m.), ap- 
 pears in an 'isige chliiidle' (grey coat), and guides the course 
 of events ; elves forewarn men of impending calamity' or death 
 (Ir. Elfenm. Ixxxvi.). 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-nat 
 a cobweb.^ The ON. saga of Samson hinn fagri mentions in cap. 
 17a marvellous ' skickja, sem alfhonurnar hofSu ofit,' mantle that 
 elfins had woven. On a hill inhabited by spirits you hear at 
 night the elfin (which 'troldkone' here must mean) spinninq, 
 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 /orc/e jewels and 
 
 arms (supra, p.444-7, and in fuller detail in Ir. Elfenm. Ixxxviii.).^ 
 
 ' So the Breton horr is both dwarf and spider. 
 
 - Here is one more legend from CJdmau's Bahusliin, p. 79 : Thessutan liar 
 
 man atskillige beriittelser ok sagor om smedar, sd i htigar som biirg, sasom hiir i 
 Fossumstorp hiigar, hvarest man hordt, at the sraidt //Asom ;' en aniian smidja om 
 aftoneu efter solciics vederijung, ok eljest mitt pfi hoga middagen. For 80 Srsedan 
 gik Olas fadar i Surtung, bcuiimd Ola Simnnssou, hiir i fOrsamlingen friin Slaugcvald 
 hafvandes nied sig en hund, hvilkeu i-X han blef varse mitt pd dagen biirg^mannen, 
 som ta smidde pa en stor sten, skiiilde han pa honom, hvar pa biirdsmcdcn, som hade 
 en liusgrd rdk ok hldvulen halt, begynte at snarka at hunden, soin tillika med hus- 
 bonden funno radeligast, at lemna honom i fred. Thet gifvas ok iinnu ibland 
 gemene man smS crucilixcr af metall, som gemenligen halles fiire vara i fordua 
 
 VOL. II. n
 
 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/c/^ove? 'H^aiaroio (anvils of H.) by a story 
 of the volcanic isles about Sicily taken from Pytheas's Travels : 
 TO oe TrdXatov iXeyero tov /SovXa/jbevov cip/yov ai8r/pov cnro^epeiv 
 Kai eVt rrjv avpiov e\66vra \afi/3dvecv rj ^tcf)0<; r) el tl aWo 7]9e\e 
 KaraaKevdaac, KarajSakovTa jXiaOov (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 ISTorse myths, and yet seems to be 
 of ancient date. He is mentioned in several MHGr. poems : 
 
 Sie wolten daz kein pilwiz 
 
 si da schlizze durch diu knie. Wh. 324, 8. 
 
 Er soldo sin ein guoter 
 
 und ein jpileiois geheizen, 
 
 davon ist daz in reizen 
 
 die iibeln ungehiure. Riiediger von zwein gesellen (Cod. 
 
 regiment.) \b^. 
 Da kom icli an hulwechsperg gangen, 
 da schoz mich der hulwechs, 
 da schuz mich die hulwechsin, 
 
 da schoz mich als ir insresind. Cod. vindob. 2817. 7P. 
 Von schvahaz jnlwiJiten. Titur. 27, 299 (Hahn 4116). 
 Seiu part het manchen pt76/szoten. Casp. von der Ron. 
 
 heldenb. 156^ 
 
 Out of all these it is hard to pick out the true name. Wolfram 
 
 tider smidde i bcirg, hvilka the oforstdndkre bruka at hanga p5. boskap, som hastigt 
 fadt ondt ute pa marken, eller som sages blifvit tliderslagne, hvarigenom tro them 
 bli helbregda. Af sadaiia bargsmiden bar jag ok nyligen kommit ofver ett, som 
 annu iir i forvar, ok pa ofvanniimde satt gik i Ian at bota siukdommar. [Epitome : 
 
 Many stones of smiths in the mountains, who worked as at avy 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-wro^ight 
 things I have lately mtt with one, that used to be lent out to cure sicknesses.]
 
 PILWIZ, BILWIT. 473 
 
 makes pilwiz (var. pilbiz, bilwiz, bilwitz) rhyme with biz (morsus), 
 
 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).^ A confession-book 
 
 of the first half of the 15th century (HofFmann^s Monatschr. 753) 
 
 has pelewijsen synonymous with witches, and Colerus's Hausbuch 
 
 (Mainz 1656), p. 403, uses hihlweisen in the same sense; several 
 
 authorities for the form pilbis are given in Schm. 4, 188. We 
 
 welcome the present Westph. Nethl. helewitten in the Teutonista, 
 
 where Schuiren considers it equivalent to guede holden and witte 
 
 vrouiven (penates). Kilian has belewitte (lamia) ; and here comes 
 
 in fitly a passage from Gisb. Voetius de miraculis (Disput., tom. 
 
 2, 1018): 'De illis quos nostrates appellant beeldwlt et hlhuh 
 
 belien, a quibus nocturna visa videri atque ex iis arcana revelari 
 
 putant.' Belwit then is penas, a kindly disposed home-sprite, 
 
 a guote Iwlde (supra, p. 266), what Riiediger calls ' ein guoter 
 
 und ein pilewiz.' Peculiar to AS. is an adj. bilwit, bilewit, 
 
 Caedm. 53, 4. 279, 23, which is rendered mansuetus, simplex, but 
 
 might more exactly mean aequus, Justus. God is called ' bilewit 
 
 isedev' (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. 
 
 jpilawiz, pilwiz ? to mean aequum - sciens, aequus, bonus, although 
 
 ' Fundgi-. 1, 343, where palwasse rhymes with vahse, as MHG. often has ' wahs 
 for acutus, when it should bo ' was,' OHGr. huas, AS. hw^s, ON. hvass ; thus the 
 OHG. pal()huas = badly sharp, i.e. blunt, ON. bolhvass? just as palotat = baleful 
 deed^ A later form biilwiichs in Selim. 4, 15. 
 
 - The simple Ml seems of itself to be aequitas, jus, and mythic enough (p. .^70). 
 MHG. i*j7/t(;/i (aequus), Diut. 3, 38. Fundgr. ii. 5G, 27. 61, '"23. ()6, 19. Eeinh. 
 354. Iw. 1630. 5-244. 5730. 6842. Ls. 2, 329. hillichen (jure). Nib. 450, 2. dtr 
 hillich (aequitas), Trist. 6429. 9374. 10062. 13772. 18027. An OHG. hillih I only 
 know from W. Ixv. 27, where the Leyden MS. has hilithUch. 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 hil also means 
 good, mild ; and Leo (Malb. Gl. 38) tries to explain bilwiz from bilbheith, bilbhith.
 
 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, bilwiz is a good genius, but of elvish nature ; he haunts 
 mountains, his sJiot 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, 1 88, deserves particular notice : ' so 
 man ain kind oder ain gewand opfert zu aim pi'Zfcispaivm,' 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. Borner's Legends of the Orlagau, p. 59. 62, name a 
 witch Bilhze. The change of bilwiz, hilwis into hilwiht was a step 
 easily taken, as in other words also s and li, or 6* and ht inter- 
 change (lies, lioht, Gramm. 1, 138), also st and lit (forest, foreht, 
 Gramm. 4, 416) ; and the more, as the compound hilwiht gave 
 a not unsuitable meaning, 'good wight.' The Gl. bias. 87* offer 
 a wihsil stein (penas), nay, the varying form of our present names 
 for the plica (p. 464), weichselzopf, wichselzopf, wichtelzopf [hicli- 
 telzopf) makes the similar shading off of bilweichs, hilwechs, hil- 
 wicht probable : I have no doubt there is even a hilweichszopf, 
 hilwizzopf to be found.^ 
 
 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 pilhis by devil, as Kilian does helewitte by 
 lamia, strix. The tradition lingers chiefly in Eastern Germany, 
 
 1 Another Polish name for plica, beside koltun, is wieszczyce (Liude 6, 227), and 
 vulgar opinion ascribes it to the magic of a ivieszczka wise woman, witch. This 
 wieszczyce agrees with our tceichael-zoTpi, and also with the -iviz, -iveis in bilwiz. 
 If we could 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 bilwiz ; for the present its German character seems to 
 me assured both by the absence of such Slavic compound, and by the AS. bilwit 
 and Nethl. belwitte : besi.ies, our wiz comes from wizan, and the Pol. loieszcz from 
 wiedzie6 [O.Sl. vedeti, to wit] , and the kinshii? 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 Euss. 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 ivieszczka may not be 
 " little wiht."— Tbans.J
 
 PILWIZ, BILWIT. 475 
 
 in Bavaria, Franconia, Vogtland and Silesia. H. Sachs uses 
 hllhitzen of matting tlie liair ia knots, pihnitz of tangled locks : 
 'ir har verbilbitzt, zapfet und stroblet, als ob sie hab der rab 
 gezoblet,' i. 5, SOO*". ii. 2, 100'^ ; ' pilmitzen, zoten und fasen,' iii. 
 3, 12*. In the Ackermann von Bohmen, cap. 6, pilwis means 
 the same as witch; ' pielweiser, magician, soothsayer,' Bcihme's 
 Beitr. zum schles. recht 6, 69. 'an. 1529 (at Schweidnitz), a 
 pielweiss buried alive,' Hoffmann's Monatschr. p. 247. ' 1582 
 (at Sagan), two women of honest carriage rated for pilweissen 
 
 and ,' ibid. 702. ' dn pilewelssin ! ' A. Gryphius, p. 828. 
 
 ' Las de deine hilbezzodn auskampln ' says the angry mother to 
 her child, ' i den hilmezschedl get nix nei,' get your b. clots 
 combed out, you don't come in in that shaggy scalp, Schm. 1, 
 168. pilineskmcl, a curse like devil's child, Delling's Bair. idiot. 
 1, 78. On, the Saale in Thuringia, bulmuz is said of unwashed 
 or uncombed children ; while bilbezschnitt, bilwezschnitt, 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 aranscarti^ 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, bUberschnitt, 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.^ 
 
 ' Goth, asam (messis), OPIG. aran, am. 
 
 " Cau this magic bo alluded to so early as in the Kaiserchronik (2130-37) ? 
 
 din muoter heizit Rachel, 
 diu hat in geleret : 
 sweune sie in hiez sniden gan, 
 sin hunt incom nie ddr an, 
 
 sin sichil sneit schiere 
 
 mC'T dan andere viere ; 
 
 wil er durch einin berc varu, 
 
 der stet imnier mer iugegen im flf getftn. 
 
 (His mother R. taught him : when she bade him go cut, he never put his luind to 
 it, his sickle soon cut more than any other four ; if he will drive tlu'ough a hill, it 
 opens before him.)
 
 476 WIGHTS AND ELVES. 
 
 Julius Schmidt too (Reichenfels, p. 119) reports from tlae Vogt- 
 land : The belief in hilsen- or hilver-schnitter (-reapers) ^ is toler- 
 ably extensive, nay, there seem to be certain persons who believe 
 themselves to he 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-hutchen) ; if during their 
 walk they are saluted by any one, they must die that year. 
 These hilsenschnitter 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 hilsenschnitter will gra- 
 dually waste away (see Suppl.). 
 
 According to a communication from Thuringia, there are two 
 ■ways of bafiling the hilms- or hinsen-schneider (-cutter)/ which- 
 ever he is called. One is, on 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 hinsenschneider, 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 hinsenschneider 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 hilgenscJineider, as pilver- or hUperts-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 hockschnitt, because the 
 
 ' BiJse is henbane, and hinse a rush, which plants have no business here. They 
 are merely an adaptation of bilwiz, when this had become unintelligible. — Trans.
 
 EOGGEN-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 hornwif : 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 roggenmohme (aunt in the rye), 
 and hush crying children with the words : ' hold your tongue, 
 or roggenmohme with the long black teats will come and drag 
 you away ! ' ^ Others say ' with her long iron teats,' which 
 recals iron Berhta : others again name her rockenvior , 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 preinscheulie 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, 25G-7) ; and hreinscheuhe (-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 hilwisses 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 Rohigo, who could hinder blight in corn, and per- 
 haps, if displeased, bring it on. The walking of the hilwiss, of 
 the Roggenrnulnne in the grain had at first a benevolent motive : 
 as the names mutter, nmlime, mdr teach us, she is a motherly 
 
 1 Conf. Dent, sngen, no. 89. Kulan, p. 373. Temme's Sagen, p. 80. 82, of the 
 Altmark. The Batleu legend makes of it a rockerl-treilh'le aud au enchanted 
 countess of Ebersteiu, who walks about in a wood named llockert (Moue's Anzeiger, 
 3, 145).
 
 478 WIGHTS AND ELVES. 
 
 guardian goddess of spindle and seedfield. Fro upon his hoar 
 must have ridden thi-ough the plains, 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.).^ 
 
 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. raons. 333 have scratun 
 (pilosi) ; the Gl. herrad. 200^ waits chr ate (satyrus) ; the Sumerlat. 
 10, Qid srate (lares mali) ; so in MHG. scrdz ; Reinh. 597 (of the 
 old fragment), ^ein wilder waltschrat ;' Barl. 251, 11. Aw. 3, 
 226. Ulr. Lanz. 437 has *von dem sc/iraze ' = dwarf ; 'sie ist 
 villihte ein sclirat, 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. 20 (one of the most striking examples 
 
 1 The Slavs too have a_field-spint who paces through the corn. Boxhorn's Eesp. 
 Moscov., pars 1, p. ... : " Daemonem quoque meridianum Moscovitae metuunt et 
 colunt. lUe enim, dum jam maturae resecantur fruges, habitu viduae lugentis ruri 
 obamlmlat, operariisque uui vel pluribus, nisi protinus viso sjjectro in terram proni 
 concidant, brachia frangit et crura. Neque tamen contra hanc plagam remedio 
 destituuntur. Habent enim in vicina silva arbores religione patrum cultas : harum 
 cortice vulneri superimposito, iUum nou tantum sanant, sed et dolorem loripedi 
 eximunt." Among the Wends tbis corn-wife is named pshipolnitza [prop, prepoln., 
 from polno, full, i.e. full noon] , at the hour of noon she creeps about as a veiled 
 tcovian. If a Wend, conversing with her by the hour on flax and ilax-dressing, can 
 manage to contradict everything she says, or keep saying the Lord's prayer back- 
 wards without stumbling, he is safe (Lausitz. monatsschr. 1797, p. 744). The Bohe- 
 mians call her haha (old woman), or polednice, poludnice (meridiana), the Poles 
 dzieicanna, dzieicice (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.
 
 SCEAT. 479 
 
 of tlie tough persistence of such materials in popular tradition) ; 
 both the schretel and the word wazzerbern answer perfectly to 
 the trolcl and the hvidbiorn. Vintler thinks of the sclvrattlln as a 
 spirit light as wind, and of the size of a child. The Vocab. of 
 1482 has schretUn (penates) ; Dasypodius nacldscltrettele (ephi- 
 altes) ; later ones spell it schrilttele, schrdttel, sclirettele, scltrdtle, 
 conf. Staid. 2, 350. Schmidts Schwab, worth. 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 Schratweg, Wochenbl. 
 1833, 952. 984. 1023. And other Teutonic dialects seem to 
 know the word : AS. scritta, Eng. scrat (hermaphroditus)/ ON. 
 shratti (mains genius, gigas) ; a rock on the sea is called 
 shrattaskev (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 mali), 
 Gl. lindenbr. 996*^; ' srezze vel strate ^ (not: screzzol scraito), 
 Sumerlat. 10, 6G ; 'unreiner schrdz,' Altd. w. 3, 170 (rhymes 
 vraz).^ And Upper Germ, dictionaries of the 16th 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 (Moneys Anz. 4, 450-1), every house has its schrez- 
 leiii ; if fostered, he brings you goods and honour, he rides or 
 drives the cattle, prepares his table on Brecht-night, etc.^ 
 
 The agreement of Slavic words is of weight. 0. Boh. scret 
 (daemon), Hanka's Zbirka 6^; screti, scretti (penates intimi et 
 secretales), ibid. 16*^; Boh. shfet, shfjteh (penas, idolumj ; Pol. 
 shrzot, skrzitelc ; Sloven. zlihr(U,zkln-dfAz,zhhniteJj i^\\\-va^vimkm). 
 To the Serv. and Russ. dialects the word seems unknown. 
 
 I can find no satisfactory root for the German form."^ In Slavic 
 
 1 Already in Sachsensp. 1, 4 altvilc and dverge side by side ; conf. EA. 410. 
 
 2 A contraction of schraicaz ? Gudr. 448, schrawaz und merwunder ; Albr. Titur. 
 27, 299 has schrahaz together with pilwiht; xchrawatzeii uud merwunder, Casp. von 
 der Eon's Wolfdieterich 195. Wolfd. uud Sabeu 496. [' Probably of diUerent 
 origin,' says Suppl.] 
 
 3 Muchar, Eomisches Noricum 2, 37, and Gastein 147, mentions a capricious 
 mountain-spirit, schranel. 
 
 * The ON. skratti is said to mean terror also. The Swed. ski-atta, Dan. skratte, 
 is to laugh loud. Does the AS. form scritta allow us to compare the Gr. (XKipros, 
 a hopping, leaping gobhn or satyr (from ffKiprdu, 1 bound) ? Lobcck's Aglauph., 
 1311.
 
 480 .WIGHTS AND ELVES. 
 
 skryti (celare, occulere) is wortli considering. [A compound of 
 krj'ti, to cover, root kry, krov^ KpinrTO). If Slav, skr^, why not 
 AS. scrud, 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 
 E-oman silvanus (Livy 2, 7) ; its dimin. schrdtlein, 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 {vv[x<^ai opeaKmoi) and 
 dryads {8pvd8e<;, Englished 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 Gilhich of the Harz, in the 
 Hiibezal of Riesengebirge. This last, however, seems to be of 
 Slav origin, Boh. Ryhecal, Byhrcol} In Moravia runs the story 
 of the seeJdrt, sea-herd, a mischief-loving sprite, who, in the shape 
 of a herdsman, whip in hand, entices travellers into a bog (see 
 Suppl.)." 
 
 The gloss in Hanka 7^^. 11'^ h&s ' vilcodlac faunus, vilcodlaci 
 faunificarii, incubi, dusii ' ; in New Boh. it would be wlkodlak, 
 wolf-haired; the Serv. vuJcodlac 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 skrzot, and is called by his name, as the shrjteJc is 
 in Bohemia ; ^ in some parts of Germany schrotleinzopf . 
 
 1 In Slav, ryba is fish, Lut cal, or col (I think) has no meaning. The oldest 
 Germ. docs, have Eube-zagil, -zagel, -zagl (-tail) ; Kobe may be short for the 
 ghostly 'knecht Kuprecht,' or Robert. Is Eubezagel o , bobtail, of which I have 
 seen no decent etymology? — Trans. 
 
 2 Sagen aus der vorzeit Mahrens (Briinn, 1817), pp. 136-171. 
 
 ^ The plica is also called koltun, and again koltki are Polish and Eussian home- 
 sprites.
 
 SCRAT (PILOSUS). 481 
 
 People in 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 Satfiovta iicel op;!^r/o-o»'Tat, conf. 
 34, 14.^ Isidore^s Etym. 8, cap. ult. (and from it Gl. Jun. 
 399) : 'j^nVosi qui graece panitae, latine incuhi nominantur, — 
 hos daemones Galli dusios nuncupant.^ Quem autem vulgo 
 incuhonem vocant, hunc Romaui 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,^ and these genii again are called 
 * safyri vel pilosi.' The monk of St. Gall, in the Life of Charles 
 the Great (Pertz 2,741), tells of a pilosits 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 getfin,^ 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 schrat, or wood-schrat, then afterwards the 
 merrier, smaller one to the schrettel. This seems to follow from 
 the ON. meaning of shratti gigas, giant. These woodsprites must 
 have been, as late as the 6-7th 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, 
 ' agrefitiu7n fana., quos vulgus faimos vocat.^ 
 
 Some remarkable statements are found in Eckehart's Walt- 
 harius. Eckevrid of Saxony accosts him with the bitter taunt 
 (701): 
 
 1 Luther translates feldtetifel ; the Heb. sagnir denotes a shar^gy, goat-like 
 being. Kadcvicus frising. 2, 13, imitates the whole passage in the proi)het : ' ululae, 
 upupae, bubones toto anno in ectis fuuebria porsouantes lugubri voce aures om- 
 nium repleverunt. Pilosi quos satyros vocant in doinibus pleruuquo auditi.' Again 
 2, 24: 'in a ililiuF lis lugubri voce respondeant ululae, salti'iit piln^i.' 
 
 2 ' Daemones quos duscios Galli nuncupant.' Augustine, Civ. Dei, c. 23. The 
 name duz still lives in Bretagne, dimiu. diizik (Villemarque 1, 42). 
 
 3 In the same way the jiidel (I suppose [liietfl, the same as guote holde) has 
 toys placed for him, Superst. I, no. 02 ; conf. infra, the homesprites.
 
 482 WIGHTS AND ELVES. 
 
 Die, ait, an corpus vegetet tractabile temet, 
 sive per aerias fallas, maledlde, figuras ? 
 saltibus assuetus faunus 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 faiini fantasma videre. 
 
 If you come within reach of my arm, I give you leave then 
 to tell your Saxon countrymen of the ' schrat ' you now see in 
 the Wasgau (Vosges). When Eckevrid has hurled his spear at 
 him in vaia, Walthari cries : 
 
 Haec tibi silvanus transponit munera faunus. 
 
 Herewith the ' wood-schrat ' returns you the favour.^ 
 
 Here the faun is called faiitasma, phantom ; OHG. gisctn, T. 
 81 (Matt. xiv. 26), otherwise scinleih (monstrum), Gl. hrab. 969^. 
 Jun. 214; AS. scinldc (portentum) ; or gitroc, p. 464. Phan- 
 tasma vagabundiim (Vita Lebuini, Pertz 2, 361) ; 'fantasma vult 
 nos pessundare ' (Hroswitha in Dulcicius) ; 'fantasia quod in 
 libris gentiiinm fa^onus solet appellari,' Mabillon, Analect. 3, 352. 
 A ' municipium,^ or ' oppidum 7)ions 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, loood-minne (pp. 432-4), and the wilde man 
 
 1 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. Wigal. 6286 h&s wildez wip, and 
 6602 it is said of the dwarf Karrioz : 
 
 Sin muoter was ein wildez wip His mother was a wild woman, 
 
 da von was sin kurzer lip therefrom was his short body 
 
 aller ruch unde starh, 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 lualtlunder, and 
 in Laurin 173. 183 ivaltmann. The ON. mythology knows of 
 wild wood- wives by the names ivi&jur, Sgem. 88^. 119^ o^ndiiarri- 
 vi&jur, Sn. 13. About the ivicfja we find at the beginning of the 
 Hrafnagaldr the obscure statement ' elr iviSja,' alit, auget, pai-it, 
 gignit dryas ; iviSja is derived from a wood or grove iviSr, of 
 which the Voluspa 1* makes mention : ' nio man ek heima, nio 
 ivid"i' ; so iarnvidja from iarnvicFr, iron wood (see Suppl.).^ 
 
 I cannot properly explain these ON. ivi^jur and iarnviSjur. 
 The popular belief of to-day in South-eastern Germany presents 
 in a more intelligible shape the legend of the ivild-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 oren als eime walttoren vermieset,' 
 his ears like a forest-fool's bemossed (?), Iw. 440. Often hoh- 
 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, 407'* brings up hohmdnner and hohfrauen, and gives 
 1, 348*= the lament of the wild woodfolk over the faithless world. 
 Schmidt's Reichenfels, 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. lofjerskor, leaf-maids, forest-maids, and 
 compares them with Laufey (p. 2i<j), but the people have Utile 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 husJi-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 binng 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 thi'oad 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 oS" 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 : 
 
 Schal keinen baum. No tree ever shell, 
 
 erziihl keinen traum, no dream ever tell, 
 
 back keinen klimmel 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 haben mir gebacken kiimmelbrot, 
 das bringt diesem liause grosse noth ! 
 
 (They've baked me carawny-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-mauni- 
 
 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. U6 (see Suppl.).^ It is as though, by accepting 
 
 1 This agrees -wonderfully witli what Eeusch, pp. 53-5, reports from Trussian 
 
 Samlaud : 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 lind 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 
 Httle 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 over 
 
 coming back. Another story of the Seeweu-weiher (-i^ond), near Ilippoldsau, in 
 
 the Black Forest (Mone's Auz. 6, 175) : — A lake-mauuikin liked coming to the 
 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 taslis 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. Rank's 
 
 Bijhmerwald, p. 217, tells a pretty story of a ivaachweiberl (wee washerwife). for wliom 
 the people of the house wanted to have shoes made, but she would not liold 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 again, 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, liad turned up the sleeves 
 of her smock, and looped up her frock, that she mi^ht the more easily do any kind 
 of work. Similar tales are told of the brownie, R. Chambers, p. 33. And the same 
 idea lies at the bottom of the first story about \Yichtelmannercheu in Kiuderm. 39.
 
 486 WIGHTS AND ELVES. 
 
 clothes_, the spirits were afraid of suddenly breaking oflF tlie 
 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 Eiibezahl (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 ' der wilde Tnan.' 
 
 In the Romance fairy-tales an old Roman god has assumed 
 altogether the nature of a wood-sprite ; out of Orcus ^ has been 
 made an Ital, orco, Neapol. huorco, Fr. ogre (supra, p. 314) : he 
 is pictured black, hairy, hristly, 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.- 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 deemonic 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 menschenfleisch,* Mch wittere, wittere 
 menschenfleisch,' ' i schmoke ne Crist,^ ' I smell the blood,^ 
 'jeg lugter det paa min hoire haand (right hand),' ^her lugter 
 saa kristen mands been,' ^ exactly as the meerminne already in 
 
 It is a common characteristic, that holds good of wichtels, of subterraneans, 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 hardmiindle, especially in the case of water-sprites ?] 
 
 * See App., Superst. A, ' Or cum 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; Musjbus 1, 
 21 ; Danske viser 1, 220 ; Norske folkeeventyr, p. 35.
 
 SCUOHISAL. 487 
 
 Morolt 3924 says : ' icli smacke diutsclie 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 Bai/xovtov, 
 Matth. 8, 31. Lu. 8, 27 (only in margin; text reads unhul]>o). 
 1 Cor. 10, 20. 21, I am disposed to explain by supposing a sMJts, 
 gen. skohis, or rather shogs (the h being merely the g softened 
 before si). It would answer to the ON. shogr (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 sJwgsnerte, slxogsnufva^ are still 
 used ; snerte appears to contain snert gracilis, and snuf va to 
 mean anhelans." Now if shohsl is wood-sprite,^ there may have 
 been associated with it, as with Sac/jiovtov, 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 
 Superst. Swed. no. 110, Dan. no. 162), and the forest- worship 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 menninnes (p. 434). Even Nerthus 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 holde (genius, bonus 
 genius) is added a wazzerholde (p. 266), a hrunnenholde (p. 268) ; 
 to the more general minni a meriniinni and marmennill (p. 433). 
 Other names, which explain themselves, are : MHG. wildiu 
 
 > Linnnpus's Gothlandske resa, p. 312. Faye, p. 42. 
 
 2 In 12'JS Torkel Knutson founded on the Neva a stronghold against the Russians, 
 called Landskroua. An old folk-tale says, there was heard in the forest near the 
 river 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 Schwc- 
 den, p. 1. 
 
 3 To make up an OHG. skuoh and skuohisal is doubtless yet more of a venture. 
 Our srlunisdl (nionstrum), if it comes from schcuen (sciuhanf, 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
 
 488 WIGHTS AND ELVES. 
 
 merkint, wildiu merwunder, Gudrua 109, 4. 112, 3. wildez merwip, 
 Ossv. .-653^ 673; Mod. HG. meerwunder, wassermann (Slav. 
 vodnik), seejungfer, meerweib ; ON. haf-fru, ces-kona, hafgygr, mar- 
 gygr.;Dazi..havviand, brondmand (man of the burn or spring), 
 Molb. DiaL p. 58; Swed. hafsman, hafsfru, and more particularly 
 stromkarl (river sprite or man). Wendish vodny muz, water man. 
 The notion of a water-king shews itself in waterconink, Melis 
 Stoke 2, 96. Certain elves or dwarfs are represented as water- 
 sprites : Andvari, son of Oln, in the shape of a pike inhabited 
 a fors. Seem. 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. mens. 332, 412. Jun. 270. Wirceb. 978^; the Physio- 
 logus makes it neuter : daz nikhus, 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. 
 '^eihA. nicker, pi. nickers, (Horae Belg. p. 119); Reinaert prose 
 MIIIIP has ' mcWs ende wichteren ^; necker (Neptunus), Diut. 
 2, 224*". 'heft mi die ?iecZ;er bracht hier ? •" (has the devil brought 
 me here ?), Mone's Ndrl. volkslit. p. 140. The Mod. Nethl. 
 711 fc/cer means evil spirit, devil, ' 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 niece, i.e., 
 niks and nikse, though we also hear of a 7iickel and nickehnann. 
 In MHG. Conrad uses wassernixe in the sense of siren : ' heiz uns 
 leiten uz dem bade der vertanen (accursed) wassernixen, daz uns 
 ir gedoene (din) iht schade ' (MS. 2, 200'').^ 
 
 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 Gryphius (milii 743) has a rhyme: 'die icasserUiss auf erden mag richt 
 so schone werdeu,' apparently meaning a water-wife or nixe. In Ziska's Ostr. 
 volksm. 54 a kind wassernix, like dame Holla, bestows wishing-gifts ou the 
 children.
 
 NICHUS, NIX. 489 
 
 nalcH, Esth. nek (watersprite) seem borrowed from the Swedish. 
 Some have brought into this connexion the much older nelia 
 nelialennia (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 j 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 Ne-p- 
 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. O^inn, occording to Sn. 3, is 
 cskWe^ Nikarr or Hnilcarr, and Nikiiz or Rniku&r. In S^m. 46^> ^ 
 we read Hnikarr, Hnikud'r, and in 91*^ 184**' ^ Hnikarr again. 
 Nikarr would correspond to AS. Nicor, 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 " nijkrat e"5a finugalkat,'^ Sn. 317 (see 
 SuppL). 
 
 Plants and stones are named after the nix, as well as after 
 gods. The nymphgea [vv^^aia from vviJb<^rf) we still call niV- 
 llume as well as seeblume, seelilie, Swed. nackhlad, Dan. nuk- 
 Icehlomster, nokkerose ; the conferva rupestris, Dan. nokkeskdg 
 (nix-beard) ; the haliotis, a shellfish, Swed. ndckora (nix-ear) ; 
 the crumby tufa-stone, tophus, Swed. ndckehrod, 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 ' vodneho vivzha porsty, 
 potaczky [piorsty, perczatky ?] , lohszy,' watex'-man's fingers or 
 gloves. We ourselves call the water-lily xvassermdnnlein, but 
 also viuTiimel, mmumelckeii = miiemel, aunty, water-aunt, as the 
 merminne in the old lay is expressly addressed as Morolt's 
 Miebo muome,' and in Westphalia to this day luatermome is a
 
 490 WIGHTS AND ELVES. 
 
 ghostly being; in Nib. 1479, 3 Siglint the one merwoman says 
 of Hadburc the other : 
 
 Dui'ch der waete 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 ^ein ander merwip ' is 
 coupled with the first. Several lakes inhabited by nixes are 
 called mumynelsee (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 Mmnling 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,^ 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 
 Suppl.). 
 
 Biorn gives nennir as another ON. name for hippopotamus, 
 it seems related to the name of the goddess Nanna (p. 310).^ 
 This nennir or nikur presents himself on the sea-shore as a hand- 
 some dajp]3le-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.^ A clever man 
 at Morland in Bahus 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.* In 
 the same way German legends tell of a great hulking black Jiorse, 
 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.^ Out of a marsh called the ' taufe,' near 
 
 ^ 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. 14,5, mentions an Alpine 
 sprite Donanadel ; does nadel here stand for nandel ? A misprint for madel (girl) 
 is scarcely conceivable. 
 
 ^ Landnamabok, 2, 10 (Islend. sog. 1, 74). Olafsen's Eeise igiennem Island, 
 1, 55. Sv. vis. 3, 128. 
 
 * P. Kalm's Westgota och Bahuslandska resa, 1742, p. 200. 
 
 6 Letzner's Dasselsche chronik 5, 13.
 
 NICHUS, NIX. 491 
 
 Sclieuen in Lower Saxony, a ivlld hull 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-lieaded (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 ivild hoy with shaggy hair, or else with yellow curls 
 and a red cap on his liead.^ The nilkki of the Finns is said to 
 have iron teeth.^ 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, and most likely not truly 
 Teutonic, for we never hear of a tailed nix,^ 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 
 
 ' The small size is implied ia the popular rhyme : ' Nix in der grube (pit), da 
 bist eiu baser bube (bad boy) ; wasch dir deine beinchen (little legs) mit rotheu 
 ziegelsteiiicheu (red brick).' 
 
 2 On the glass by the shore a girl is seized by a pretty boy wearing a handsome 
 peasant's belt, and is forced to scratch his head for him. While she is doing so, he 
 slips a girdle round her unperceived, and cliains 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 : ' wby, that's a 
 neck, look at his fish's teeth ! ' In a moment the neck was gone (Etwas iiber die 
 Ehsten, p. 51). 
 
 ^ But we do of nixes shaped like men above and like horses belo .v ; one water- 
 sprite takes his name from his >lit ears, Deut. sag. no. 63.
 
 402 WIGHTS AND ELVES. 
 
 her dress, the ivet tips of her apron.^ 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 rusdiki : 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. nisadla, and even in Wallachian 
 rusalie? 
 
 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 da^n- 
 sels from the lake, to take part in the human dance, and to visit 
 their lovers.^ In Sweden they tell of the stromharV s alluring 
 enchanting strain : the stromkarls-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) amargygr 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 Eeichenfels, 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. 'stable 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 neater 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 rasy, 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 throxigh 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 tliat, and tables and benclies, cup and can, gray-beards' ~ 
 and grandmothers, blind and lame, even babes in the cradle' 
 would begin to dance. ^ This melodious stromkarl loves to linger 
 by mills and waterfalls (conf. Andvari, p. 488). Hence bis- 
 Norwegian name fossegrim (fos, Swed. and ON. fors, waterfall). 
 On p. 52 it was cited as a remnant of heathen sacrifices, that to 
 this daemonic being people offered a black lamh, 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 w/ii^e lie-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.).^ 
 
 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 redemj)tion.'^ 
 
 Two boys were playing by the riverside, the neck sat there 
 
 touching his harp, and the children cried to him : ' 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 Reise 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 Hrkegrim. 
 
 ' Odman's Babusliin, p. 80 : Om spelcmiiu i hogar ok forsar bar man ok 
 Mskilliga sagor ; for 15 &r tilbacka liar man luir uti hogen under Giireu i Tanums 
 gall beliigit bort spela som the biiste musicanter. Then som bar viol ok vill liira 
 spela, blir i ugnableket liird, alleuast ban loj'var tipstdndehe \ en som oj lofte tbet, 
 iick bora burn the i hogen slogo sondcr sina violer ok greto hitterliga. (He that has 
 a fiddle and will learn to play, becomes in a moment learned, only be promises 
 resurrection ; one who promised not that, did bear how they in the bill beat 
 asunder their fiddles and wept bitterly.)
 
 494 WIGHTS AND ELVES. 
 
 what had happened. The father, who was a priest, said 'you 
 have sinned against the neck, go back, comfort him and tell him 
 lie may he 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 Eedeemer liveth too.^ 
 Then the neck joyfully took his harp, and played charmingly till 
 long after sunset.^ 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.^ 
 
 But beside the freeivill 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.' ^ 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 hloodthirstiness, which is not easily found among 
 daemons 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 hafsfru 
 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 Ii-ish, Scotch, and Danish tra- 
 ditions, pp. 200-2. Conf. Thiele 4, 14. Holberg's Julestue so. 12 : ' Nisser og 
 . unJerjorske folk, di'ive store fester bort med klagen og hylen, eftersom de ingen del 
 * har derudi' (because they have no part therein). 
 
 " ' Vertdne wassernixe,' fordone, done for (p. 488) ; ' den fula stygga necken,' 
 Sv. vis. 3, 147 ; ' den usle havfrue, usle maremind,' ' den urme mareviv,' ' du fule 
 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 huu en havfrue.' 
 
 ^ 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 knackt dig diu tiufvebals ! 
 
 (had 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.^ 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 smett 
 
 uppii Darmssen. Dicbte bei Braumske liggt en liitken see, de Darmssen ; do stond 
 viirr aulen tiiin (olden tide) en klauster ane. de niionke aber in den klauster liabedeu 
 nig na Goddes wiLlen ; drumme gonk et unuer. Nig lange nS liiar borden de buren 
 in der nauberskup, in Epe, olle nacbte en kloppen un liarmeu bi den Darmssen, osse 
 wenn me upn ambold slot, uud wecke liie seigen wott (some folk saw somewhat) 
 midden up den Darmssen. Se sgeppeden drup to ; da was et ?i sviett, de bet ant Uj 
 (bis an's leib) i7in ivater seit, mitu hamer in de fust, dSmit 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 niuminske hadde so goe plogisen (good ploughshares) osse de Eper. Ens wol 
 Koatman to Epe ret (reed) ut den Darmssen haleu, do feind he n iiltk kind annen 
 ower, d&t -was riiiu ^ipn ganssen liioe* Do sgreggede de smett : ' nimm mi mcinen 
 siiennen nig loeg ! ' aber Koatman neim dat kind inn back full, un lop dermit uSl 
 huse. Sit der tit was de smett nig mehr to sehn or to boreu. Koatman fSrde 
 (futterte) den rtmncen up, un de word sin beste un flitigste kuecht. Osse he aber 
 twintig jar ault wor, sia he to sinen buren : ' biir, ik mot von jii gauu, min var het 
 mi rcpen.' ' Dat spit mi je,' sia de bur, ' gift et denu gar uiu middel, dat du bi mi 
 bliwen kanust ? ' 'Ik vvill es (mal) sehn,' sia dat u-utcrk'nul, ' gat erst es (mal) no 
 Braumske un halt mi en niggen djangen (degn) ; mer ji mjot do lorr giebn wot de 
 kaupmaun hebben will, un jau niks afhanneln.' De bur gonk no Braumske uu 
 kofde en djangn, hannelde aber doch wot af. Nu gongen se to haupe no'n Darmssen, 
 do sia de ruicive : ' Nu passt upp, wenn ik int water slae un et kiiiuiiU blut, dauu 
 mot ik weg, kiimmt vijalkc, dann darf ik bi ju bliwwen.' He sliig int water, da 
 kwamni kene mjalke un auk ken blod. gaus iargerlik sprak de ruwicc : ' ji hebt mi 
 wot wis maket, un wot afhannelt, doriimme kommt ken blod un kene mjalke. spot 
 ju, un kaupet in Braumske en annern djangn.' De bCir g5ng weg un kweim wir ; 
 aber erst dat driidde mal brachte he en djangen, wa he niks an awwehauuelt hadde. 
 Osse de ruicwe da mit int water slog, do xvas et so raut osse btud, de rituwe stortedo 
 
 sik in den Darmssen, un ninmiuske hef en wier sehn. [Epitome : — The smith in 
 
 Varinssen lalce. 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 his waist in ivater ; 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 hairg. Smith cried, ' don't take viy 
 son ' ; but K. did, and reared him. Smith never seen again. The Shaggy one, when 
 aged 20, said, 'I must go, father has called ;)U'.'—' Can't you slay anyhow?'— 
 * Well, I'll see ; go buy me a new sword, give the price asked, dun't beat down.' K. 
 bought one, but cheapened. They go to the Darmssen ; says Shag, ' Watch, when 
 I strike the water ; //' blood comes, I must go, if milk, I may stay.' But neither came : 
 ' You've cheajiened ! go buy another sword.' K. cheapened again, but the tliird time 
 he did not. Shag struck the water, it was red as blood, and he plunged iuto the 
 Darmssen.] The same sign, of vdlk or blood coming up, occurs in another folk- 
 tale, which makes the water-nymphs into white-veiled nuns, Blone's Auz. 3, 93. 
 
 * So in Casp. von der Ron, pp. 224-5 the meerwuuder is called ' der rauhe, der 
 rauchc.' Couf. supra, pp. 481. 491.
 
 496 WIGHTS AND ELVES. 
 
 agreed upon (a jet of milk, a plate with an apple) , but withlield 
 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 
 apart 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 
 mcrewif (3037), hrimwyJf (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 tvater-house, which is described (3027 seq.) almost exactly as 
 we should imagine the Norse Oegir's dwelling, whei'e the gods 
 were feasted : indoors the water is excluded by walls, and there 
 burns a pale light (3033),^ 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.^ The word ran seems to 
 have had a liiore comprehensive meaning at first : * m^la mu ok 
 o'egin ' was to invoke all that is bad, all evil spirits, upon one. It 
 has occurred to me, whether the unexplained Swed. ra in the 
 compounds ^jora (nix), skogsrd (schrat), tomtra (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 Wachilt too (p. 434) is a 
 succouring harbouring water-wife. The water man, like Hel and 
 Ran, kee-ps 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 
 
 ^ Conf. the dolphin's house in Musans's marchen of the Three Sisters. 
 
 " Probably there were stories also of helpful succouring river-gods, such as the 
 Greeks and Romans tol<i of Thetis, «-f Ino-Leucothea (Od. 5^ 333-353^, Albuuea, 
 Matuta.
 
 NIX. WATEE-SPEITE. 497 
 
 drowned tliey say Hhe nix has drawn them to him/ or 'has sucked 
 them/ because bodies found in the water have the nose red.^ 
 ' Juxta pontem Mosellae quidam puerulus naviculam excidens 
 submersus est. quod videns quidam juvenis vestibus abjectis aquae 
 insilivit, et iuventum extrahere volens, maligno spiritii retrahente, 
 quem Neptumim vocant, semel et secundo perdidit; tertio cum 
 nomen apostoli invocasset, raortuum recepit.' Miracula S. Mat- 
 thiae, cap. 43. Fez, Thes. anecd. 2, 3, pag. 26. Eollenhagen in 
 the Froschmeuseler (Nn 11^) : 
 
 ' das er 
 elend im wasser wer gestorben, 
 da die seel mit dem leib verdorben, 
 oder beim geist bheb, der immer frech 
 den ersofnen die hels 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 droiuned men whose bodies are not found have 
 been drawn into the dwelling of the Jiafsfru (Sv. vis. 3, 148). 
 In some German fairy-tales (no. 79) children who fall into the 
 well come under the power of the waier-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 ; 
 
 nyh, nyk, naal i vatn ! 
 
 jomfru Maria kastet sfcaal i vatn ; 
 
 du sak, ilk flyt.^ 
 
 (nick, nick, needle in water ! Virgin casteth steel in water. 
 Thou sink, and I flee). A similar one iov 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 
 
 229^ 
 
 1 Dan. ' nokken har taget ham,' ' nukken har suet dem,' Tullin's Skrifter 2, 13. 
 So Brynhildr calls out at last to the giantess : 'scykstu, gygjar kyn ! ' Sffim.
 
 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 amnera adhuc ante- 
 lucanum venisset, imposito plaustro cum bobus in ponte qui 
 super navem locatus erat, alterum transmeare coepit in littus. 
 Verum ubi in viedium 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 oriental! parte civitatis 
 nostrae (Hildenes-hem) palus horrifica et circummanentibus 
 omnino plurali formidine invisa, eo quod ibi, ut opinabantur, tarn 
 meridiano quam et nocturno tempore illusiones quasdam horri- 
 hiles vel audirent 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 honoi'em S. 
 Bartholomaei apostoli fundavit, quo sequenti anno consummato et 
 dedicato, omne daemonnm pliantasma (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 Gallus retia lymphae laxabat in silentio 
 noctis, sed inter ea audivit demonem de cuhnine moniis pari sue 
 clamantem, qui erat in abditis maris. Quo respondente ' adsum,' 
 monta7ius econtra : ' Surge ' inquit ' in adjutorium mihi. Ecce 
 peregrini venerunt, qui me de templo ejecerunt (nam deos con- 
 terebant quos incolae isti colebant, insuper et eos ad se conver- 
 tebant) ; veni, veni, adjuva nos expellere eos de terris.'' Marinus 
 demon respondit :
 
 WATEE-SPRITE. HOME-SPRITE. 499 
 
 ' En unus eorum est in pel a go, 
 cui nunquam nocere potero, 
 volui enim retia sua ledere, 
 sed me victum proba lugere : 
 signo orationis est semper clausus, 
 nee umquam somno oppressus.' 
 
 Elecfcus vero Gallus haec audiens muuivit se undiqne signaculo 
 Christi, dixitque ad eos : 
 
 ' In nomine Jesu Cbristi praecipio vobis, 
 ut de locis istis recedatis, 
 nee aliquem hie ledere presumatis ! ' 
 
 et cum festinatione ad littus rediit, atque abbati suo quae audierat 
 recitavit.^ Quod vir Dei Columbanus audiens, convocavit fratres 
 in ecclesiam, soUtum signum tangens. O mira dementia diaboli ! 
 voces servorum Dei praeripuit vox fantasmatica, cum hejulatns 
 atque ululatus dirce vocis audiebatur pe?' culmina. — 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 monntaln 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 Hotne-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 pwreli/ 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, Fornm. 
 sog. 1, 185-188.
 
 500 WIGHTS AND ELVES. 
 
 goblin kind, it is former goddesses who have come down in the 
 world. ^ 
 
 What the Eomans called lar,^ lar familiaris (see the prologue 
 to Plautus's Aulularia) and jptnas, is named in our older speech 
 Jiusing or stetigot (genius loci) ; conf. ' husinga (penates) ' in Not- 
 ker^s Capella 51. In Cap. 142 JST. renders lares by ' ingoumeu 
 (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 
 in MHG. : daz liebeheilige ingeside, Rol. 115, 1. 226, 18. Simi- 
 larly the Span, duende, duendecillo (goblin) seems derivable from 
 domus, dueno 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, tomteguhhe (old fellow on the premises), tomtrd, tomte- 
 hiss, som styr i kiillrars rike (Hallman, p. 73) : Norw. tomtevdtte, 
 toftvdtte. Another ON. name is skurgod', 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, nachhar, lieher 
 jiacJihar, in the Netherlands goede hind (Horae Belg. 119), in 
 England goodfellow, in Denmark god dreng, good boy, Mare 
 granne, dear neighbour, (conf. hona socia, p. 288-8, and guote 
 holde, p. 266). The Eng. 'puck we may indeed connect with the 
 Ir. pJiuka, Wei. pwcca,'^ but with more justice perhaps with the 
 Dan. peg (lad), which is simply the Swed. pojke, ON. puki (puer), 
 and comes from Finn, poica (filius) ; in Lower Germany too they 
 say p)ook for a puny stunted man (Brem. wb. 3, 349). Heim- 
 reich's Nordfries. chron. 2, 348 has h.\xs,puke (see Suppl.). 
 
 From the 13th century (and possibly earlier, if only we had 
 authorities) ^ down to the present time the name kohold has been 
 
 1 Holla, Berhta, Werra, Stempe. Female are the Gr. Mopixdj and Aa/j-ia, the 
 Eom. 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. dgenygun lamiae,iGrafl: 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. 
 
 ■* ' Ace. to Falke, a Koholtcsdorp (aun. 94G), Trad. corv. ; Adalpertus chobolt, 
 kobolt (ann. 1185), MB. 27, 30, 42.' Extr. from Suppl.
 
 HOME-SPEITE. KOBOLD. 501 
 
 in use. A doc. of 1250 in Bobmer's Cod. francof. 1, 83 has a 
 ' Heinricus dictus Goholdus.' Even before tliat date coboldus 
 occurs (Zeitschr. des Hess, vereins 3, 64). Conrad of Wiirzbnrg-, 
 MS. 2, 206% has: * mir ist ein loser hoveschalk als ein kobolt 
 von buhse/ no better than a k. of boxwood ; and the Misnaere 
 (Amgb. 48'"') : ' we den hoholden, die alsus erstummen (are so 
 struck dumb) ! mir ist ein holzin (wooden) bischof vil lieber 
 dan ein stummer herre.^ The notions of hohold^ dwarf, thumb- 
 hin, -puppet, 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.^ 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 bishop^ mentioned 
 immediately after by the Misnaere.^ In the oft-quoted poem of 
 Riiediger we find (1 7'^ of the Kouigsb.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, ' 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 tatervian' ; 11527, 'Got mohte wol 
 lachen, solte ez sin, wan sine tatennennelin (same in Roth's 
 Fragment, p. 65) so wunderlich uf erden leben,' God might 
 laugh to see his little mannikins behave so strangely. Jugglers 
 
 * 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 pasti-y, we may arrive at some conclusions about the 
 heathen custom of carving or ' doughiiig ' idols (conf. p}). 15. 1U5. 11:2. 114) : teig 
 (dough) including any soft substance, clay, wax or Hour-paste. 
 
 '^ On ' papa salignus ' conf. lleiuh. p. xciv.
 
 502 WIGHTS AND ELVES. 
 
 bring kobolds out from under their cloak, kobolds are painted 
 on the wall, the heathen gods were 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 v/riters of the 1 7th century I find the remarkable phrase ' to 
 laugh lihe a Icohold/ Ettner's Unwiird. doct. p. 340, and App. p. 
 53 j 'you laugh as though you'd empty yourself, lihe a kohoU,' 
 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.^ Again, ' to laugh like a 
 hampelmann,' Deutschfranzos p. 274; 'ho, ho, ho! the loud 
 laugh of Robin Goodfellow,' Anecd. and Trad., ed. by W. J. 
 Thoms, Lond. 1839, p. 115. In the poem of Zeno 867. 1027 
 this demonic laughter is expressed by sJcrahen (Breni. 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 
 houhout (pi. coubouten, Horae Belg. 1, 119) ; now Jcabout, and in 
 Belgium kahot, kahotermanneken.^ The Scandinavian languages 
 have not the word. 
 
 It is a foreign word, sprung no doubt from the Gr. K6^a\o<; 
 (rogue), Lat. cohalus,^ with a t added, as our language is partial 
 to forms in -olt for monstrous and ghostly beings. From cobalus, 
 in Mid. Lat. already gohelinus, the Fr. has formed its gohelin, 
 whence the Engl, gohlin, strengthened into hohgohlin. Hanka's 
 0. Boh. glosses render 79*^ gitulius (getulius, gaetulius) by koholt, 
 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. 341, 126° speaks of 'einen 
 taterman malen,' painting a t., and the Wahtelmsere 140 of 
 guiding him with strings, ' rihtet zuo mit den sniieren die tater- 
 
 1 ♦ Hlabtar kisciititaz,' laughed till he shook, K. 24\ Notk. Cap. .SB has : ' taz 
 lahter scutta sia ; Petronms, cap. 21, ' risu dissolvebat ilia sua ' ; Eeinardus 3, 
 1929, ' cacbinnus viscera tissurus'; or, as we say, to s^jlit 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, MHGr. 
 ' man swindet under lachen,' Ben. 330. A Breton song in Villemarque 1, 39 speaks 
 of the loud laugh of the korred (see SupiDl.). 
 
 ^ Schaves sur les usages et traditions des Beiges. Louvain 1834, p. 230. 
 
 s Lobe'ck's Aglaoph. 1308-1328.
 
 GOBLIN. TATERMAN. 503 
 
 manne' (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. taettera, panniculus). The glossist above may have 
 meant by gaetulius an African savage, by alpinus a Tartar (MHG. 
 tater, tateler), or still better, a fool;^ the word taterman occurs 
 in other 0. Boh. documents besides, and signifies doll and idol 
 (Jungmann 3, 554'') ; foreign to all other Slavic dialects, it seems 
 borrowed from German.- Its proper meaning 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.'^ 
 
 Several MSS. however and the first printed edition of the 
 Renner have not taterman at all, but katerman (Cod. francof. 
 164'^ reads verse 10843 kobiilde unde katirrnan), 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,* with Hinze the cat in Reineke, and the wood- 
 sprite Katzenveit (p. 480) . The puss-in-hoots 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 
 scliulie (fairy shoes) of older legend, with which one could travel 
 faster on the ground, and perhaps through the air ; such are the 
 league-hoots of fairy-tales and the luinged shoes of Hermes. The 
 name of Heinze 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 
 
 ' There is in the kobolcl's character an unmistakable similarity to the witty 
 court-fool ; hence I feel it significant, that one described in Schweiuichen 1, 260-2 
 expressly carries a baivble. The Engl, hobgoblin means the same as clowngoblin 
 (Nares sub v. hob). 
 
 ' Hauusch (Slav. myth. 299) takes the taterman (he says, hasterman also occurs) 
 for a water-si)rite. 
 
 3 ' In Tyrol (utterman==eca,recToyf, coward, kobold, from tattern, zittern, to quake, 
 skedaddle; Frommann 2, 327. Leoprechting p. 177 says, tattern to frighten; at 
 Gratz in Stj-ria, the night before solstice, tattcrmann, a bugbear, is carried round 
 and set on tire in memory of extirpated heathenism.' — Extr. from SorvL. 
 
 •* Deut. sag. no. 75 ; the story is 100 years later than the comi)i')sition of the 
 Eeineke. Hinzelmanu leaves a dint in the bed, as if a cat had lain in it. Lutlier's 
 Table-talk (cd. 1571, p. 411*) had previously related the like concerning a spirit 
 Ueinzlin, 
 
 VOL. II. P
 
 504 WIGHTS AND ELVES. 
 
 (of about 1327) is to be found in Kantzow's Pomerania 1, 333. 
 The similar and equally Low-German name WoUerhen 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 WoUerhen unde 
 CJiimken an etliken orden nomet.' These Wolterkens are also 
 mentioned by Arnkiel (Cimbr. heidenth. 1, 49) ; in the Nether- 
 lands they are called Wonders, Wouterhen, and Tuinman 2, 201 
 has a proverb ' 't is een wilde Woufer,' 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 Nissen in 
 the wonted names for the English and Danish goblins Robin 
 goodfeUorv 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 hnecht Ruprecht, and 
 exhibit to children at Christmas, but who in the comedies of the 
 16-1 7th centuries becomes a mere Rilpel or Rilppel, i.e. a merry 
 fool in general.^ 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, 
 
 ^ Ayrer's Fastnaclitspiele 7d^ confirms the fact of Rvpel being a dimin. of 
 Euprecht. Some dialects use Rilpel, Rieptl as a name for tlie tom-cat again ; in 
 ■witch-trials a little young devil is named Ruhel. Ace. to the Leipzig Avanturier 1, 
 
 22-3, knecht Ruprecht appears in shaggy clothes, sack on back and rod in hand. 
 
 [If Hoh in hobgoblin stands for Robert, 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 Hoh-g6h\m 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. — Teans.]
 
 HOME-SPEITE. 505 
 
 i.e. Nicolaus, Niclas/ not from our HG. 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 Globes 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, 2'' : ' Ruprelit 
 mill knecht muoz iuwer har gelich den toren schern,^ R. my man 
 must shear your hair like that of fools. A home-sprite Riidy (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 I'acad. celt. 4, 91; ekerhen (eichhorn- 
 chen, squirrel), Deut. sag. no. 78 ; poltergeist, rumpelgeist, riim- 
 pelstih in the Kindermiirchen no. 55, rumpelstilt in Fischart ; - 
 one particular goblin is called klopfer, knocker (Deut. sag. no. 
 76), and it may be in this connexion that hammerlein, hemerlehi 
 (supra, p. 182) has come to be applied to home-sprites of diabolic 
 nature. Nethl. hullman, hullerman, hullerkater, from bullen, 
 bullern, to be boisterous. Flem. holdergeest, 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 ; ^ a house-goblin in Swabia was called the poppele ; in 
 other Y>Sivts 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 
 
 * 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 ratlier Nigellus, 
 Nigel, which breaks down the connexion with Nicolas or Claus ; still the two can 
 stand independently. — Trans.] 
 
 - Is stilt, stilz the old .stalt in compounds? Gramm. 2, 527. What the fairy- 
 tale says of Rumpeiitilt, and how his name has to be guessed, other stories tell of 
 Eisenhiitel or IlopfcnldUel (who wear an iron hat or one wreathed with hop-leaves), 
 Kletke's Alman. v. volksm. 67 ; or of the dwarf Holzriihrlehi, lionnefiUuiein, Harrys 
 1, 18 [of Knirfiker, Gehhart, Tepcntircn, Miillenh. 30(j-8, of Titteli Ture, Sv. folkv. 
 1, 171. — SuppL.j ; and we shall meet with the like in giant-stories. 
 
 3 Staid. 1, iOi. Schm. 1, 293. 323.
 
 5C6 WIGHTS AND ELVES. 
 
 of mask and tarnkappe (p. 333). lu connexion with Holda, a 
 Hollepupel, Hollepeter is spoken of. 
 
 The same shifting of form appears in the words tnumhart 
 (already in Ceesarius heisterb. 1, 46 : 'mummart momordit me^), 
 mv.mmel, mummelmann, mummanz,^ which express the very same 
 notion, ' 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, vermummen 
 (to disguise), mummerei (mumming, larva) would seem to mean 
 actiug like the spectre, instead of the spectre having taken his 
 name from mumming (see Suppl.). 
 
 The word hiitze as far back as the 12th-13th century had the 
 same meaning as mum mart and poppart : a place called Piizi- 
 prunmin, Pucijintnnen, 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 ungehiarer (uncanny) 
 hutze,' Martina 116'^ 224^*; ' si sehent mich nicht mer an in hutzen 
 wis,' they look at me no more in butze wise, Walth. 28, 37 ; 'in 
 butzenwise gehn,' Oberlin sub v. ; ' den hutzen 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, 45P; 'geloub ich daz, so biz mich 
 hutze,' b. bite me if I believe it, Hiitzlerin 287% which agrees with 
 'mummart momordit me' above; 'ein Mnderhutze,' Ls. 1, 617; 
 ' forht ich solchen hiltzel/ Ls. 1, 380, where a wihtel is spoken 
 of. So, to frighten with the hutze, to tear off the hutze (mask) ; 
 hutzen antliit (face) and hutzen kleider (clothes) =larva in 
 Kaisersperg (Oberlin 209) ; ivinterhutz in Brant's Narrenschiff 
 129 (winterbutte in the Plattdeutsch translation 140''). I do 
 not understand the hutzenhiinsel in Weisth. 1, 691. All over 
 Germany almost, we hear to this day : 'der hutz kommt,' ^ or 'der 
 hutzemann, hutzelmann,' and in Elsass hutzmummel, the same as 
 butz or mummel alone, huz, Jager's Ulm, p. 522. hutzenmann, 
 Fischart's Bieukorb 194^. hutz, Garg. 231*. hutzemann, Simpl. 
 2, 248. In Bavaria, fasnachthutz, Shrovetide b., huzmann, huzi- 
 hercht, 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 
 tbere were likewise blindbans, grobhans, karstbans, scharrbans, etc. 
 - In Normandy : ' busb, the gobelin will eat you up.'
 
 HOME-SPEITE. 507 
 
 'hutzwinkel, lurking-place, hutzJjiiister, pitch-dark, v^^ien the ap- 
 parition is most to be dreaded ; ' the ^Hi^2 would take us over 
 hill and dale/ Schm. 1, 229. 230; the biitz who leads travellers 
 astray (Muchar's Gastein, p. 14.5). In Swabia hutzemnaiikler 
 (from maucheln, to be sly), hutzenhrecJit , hiitzenraule, hutzenrolle, 
 rollpidz, butzenhell (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 biitzel 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 batte, 
 butke, budde, bitddeke : ^dat 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 butfje in the Kindermtirchen no. 19, 
 the name having merely been transferred to a blunt-headed fish, 
 the rhombus or passer marinus.^ There is also probably a bntte- 
 mann, buttmann, but more commonly in the contracted form 
 bu-man (Br. wb. 1, 153). Nethl. bijtebauw, for buttebauw, which 
 I identify with Low Germ, bu-ba (Br. wb. 1, 152). The Dan. 
 bussemand, biissegroll, 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, OIIG. piuzu, poz, puzum, whence 
 OHG. anapoz, our amboss, anvil, MHG. bozen (pulsare), and 
 gebiuze, thumping, clatter [Eugl. to butt?], conf. Lachmann 
 on Nib. 1823, 2. Fragm. 40, 18G; butze would be a thumping 
 rapping sprite, perfectly agreeing with mumhart and pophart,^ 
 and we may yet hear of a bozhart or buzhart. ]3ut, like 
 
 1 Homeaprite and water-siirite meet iu 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 fultilling the growing desires of the charcoal burner, till 
 they pass all bounds, then plunges him back into his original poverty (Muou, nouv. 
 reo. 2, 242-252. Jubiual 1, 128-135. 
 
 2 As the monstrous includes the repulsive and unclean, it is not surprising that 
 both butze and popel signify mucus, filth (Oberlin 210. Schm. 1, 291). The same 
 with Swiss boo(j, St. 1, 203.
 
 508 WIGHTS AND ELVES. 
 
 butzenhanse], there is also a hanselmann used for spiritus 
 familiaris (Phil. v. Sittew. 5, 328, ed. Lugd.), and the similar 
 hampelmann for goblin, puppet and mannequin ( = maaneke, 
 mannikin). Bavar. himipel, haimpel, both devil and simpleton 
 (Schm. 2, 197), Austr. henparl (Hofer 2, 46). 
 
 The Y\\ Juliet, It. foletto, is a diminuitive of /oZ, fou; which, 
 like follis (bellows), seems to be derived from an obsolete foUere 
 (to move hither and thither), and brings us to a fresh contact 
 of the home- sprite with the fool.^ Then lutin, also luton, perhaps 
 from the Lat. luctus : a sprite who wails and forebodes sorrow ? 
 Lithuan. hildukkas, bildunas, hildzmJcs (noisy sprite), from 
 bildenti (to racket, rattle) ; grozdunas from grddzia (there is a 
 racket made). Sloven, ztrazhnih, Serv. strashilo, Boh. strasidlo, 
 Pol. straszijdlo, from strasiti (terrere) ; Boh. hubdk (noisy sprite). 
 Somewhat stronger is the Pol. dzieciojad, child-eater, like the 
 Lat. manducus. Irish home-sprites are called Oluricauns (Elfenm. 
 p. 85-114), LejjrecJiaun, 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 Hopfenhuteh 
 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. ^ So they can make 
 themselves visible or invisible to men, as they please. Their /air?/ 
 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 sclirativeg (p. 479) means much the 
 
 ' Eatherius, ed. Ballerini, p. 314 : 'merito ergo follis latiali rusticitate vocaris, 
 qnoniam veiitate vacuus.' Wilhelm. metens. ep. 3: '■ fuUefii me rustico verbo 
 appellasti.' 
 
 - J. N. Wilse's Beskrivelse over Spydeberg, Christiana 1779, p. 418. Conf. the 
 blue light of the black niaunikiu, Kinderm. uo. 116.
 
 HOME-SPRITE. 509 
 
 same.-^ With this walking apparatus and this swiftness there is 
 associated now and then some animal's form and name : Heinze, 
 Heinzelmann, polterkater, katermann, boot-cat, squirrel; their 
 shuffling and bustling about the house is paralleled by the nightly- 
 turbulence of obstreperous cats.^ They like to live in the stable, 
 barn or cellar of the person whose society they have chosen, 
 sometimes even in a tree that stands near the house (Swed. bo-trd, 
 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. 
 110).^ In household occupations they shew themselves friendly 
 and furthersome, particularly in the kitchen and stable. The 
 dwarf-king Goldeynar (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 7iever 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 Vollmar' s kammer 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 VoUmar's chamber, and one could hear them 
 being consumed with cries of joy. After this, no more was heard 
 
 1 So a chcmin de fees is spoken of in Mem. celt. 4, 210, and a trollaskeid 
 (curriculum gigantum) in Laxd, saga 60. 
 
 - Witches and fays often assume the shai)e of a cat, and the cat is a creature 
 peculiarly open to suspicions of witchcraft. 
 
 ^ Wilse, ubi supra, entirely agrees : ' tomtogubbcu skal have sin til hold unde 
 gnmle triier ved stuehuset (boetriier), og derfor bar man ej tordet fiilde disse gand- 
 ske.' To this connexion of home-sprites with tree-worship we shall have to return 
 further on.
 
 510 WIGHTS AND ELVES. 
 
 of king Yollmar ; but over liis 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.^ 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- 
 hens : ' 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 
 viir (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,^ 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 horses, combs out their 
 manes,^ lays fodder before the cattle,'* 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. 
 
 - When the cat trims her whiskers, they say it is a sign of guests. 
 
 ^ Like the white lady (Berhta), whose nightly visits are indicated the next 
 morning by the wax that hasdropt from her taper orf 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). 
 
 ■• Hence the name futtermdnnchen, (confounded at times with Petermdnnchen) ; 
 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 ; his good-nature turns into worrying 
 and love of mischief, he becomes a * tormenting spirit.' Agemund 
 in the Eeinardus 4, 859-920 seems to me no other than a house- 
 daemon, distorted and exaggerated by the poet, disturbing the 
 maid in her sleep, her milking and churning (see Suppl.).^ 
 
 Servants, to keep on good terms with him, save a little potful 
 of their food on purpose for him, which is surely a vestige «f little 
 sacrifices that were offered him of old (p. 448). That is probably 
 why one Swiss goblin bears the name Na^Jhans, 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 : ' hidre 
 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 /or a grey sheep 
 he teaches people to play the fiddle.^ 
 
 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 incuhoni pileam rapuisset, ot thesaurum invenit.' Home- 
 
 ' The description of his figure (a horse's mane, hawk's hill, cat's tail, goat's 
 beard, ox's horns and cock's feet) can hardly have been all invented there and then. 
 
 - Unless Wilse (Beskriv. over Spyd. 419) has confounded Nissen with uiicken ; 
 yet the German goblin Goldemar was likewise musical (Ir. Elfenm. Ixxxiii.)- Wilse, 
 and Faye, pp. 43-45, give the best account of the Norwegian Nissen, and Thiele 1. 
 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 tarnkappe 
 from him. In Calderon^s Dama duende the little goblin wears a 
 large hat : 'era unfrayle tamanito, j 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. 451>) ; 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 oifering 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 piick served the monks of a Mecklenburg 
 monastery for thirty years, in kitchen, stall and elsewhere ; he 
 was thoroughly good-natured, and only bargained for ' tunicam 
 de diversis coloribus, et tintinnahulis 'plenam.'^ In Scotland there 
 lived a goblin Shellycoat, and we saw (p. 465) that the dwarfs 
 of the Mid. Ages also loved hells [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 chucMing. 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.^ 
 
 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 Ern. Joach. Westplial's Speci- 
 men documentorum ineditorum, Kostock 1726, pp. 156-166. 
 
 2 Scott's Minstrelsy I. civ. mentions a Nortli English Brag or Barguest : ' he 
 usually ended his mischievous frohcs with a horselaugh.' Conf . Hone's Tablebook 
 2, 656.
 
 HOME-SPRITE. 513 
 
 to his barHj 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 hitn 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 hutt in the nursery-tale 
 
 1 Very similar stories in Kuhn, no. 103, Thiele 1, 136, and the Irish tale of the 
 cluricaun (pp. 92. 213 of the trausl.). Also a capital Polish story about Iskrzycki, 
 in Woycicki's Klechdy 1, 198 : An unknown person, who called liimself Iskrzycki 
 [flinty, from iskra = spark, says Grimm ; there is also a Slav. iskri = near, iskreuny 
 = neighbour, friendly] came and offered his services to a man of noble family. 
 The agreement was drawn u]), 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 i^ressed 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§, paui ; Iskrzycki z wami). 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 alruun or (jallows-man- 
 
 nikin in Deutsche sagen uos. «3. 84 is not properly a kobold, but a semi-diabolic 
 being carved oulfof 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 ho be sold [orig. 'bought'] for less than 
 he cost. The last purchaser has to keep him. Simpliciss. 2, 184. 203. Conf. 
 Schm. 3, 90-7. [Home-sprites can be bought and sold, but the third buyer must 
 keep him, Miillenhoff p. 322. With ref. to the ' idol (gotze) ' : As the figure of the 
 child Jesus has its shirt washed (Sommcr, pp. 38. 173), so the hickmilniulwu must 
 be dressed up anew at a certain time every year, 10 Ehcu, p. 235. — Extr. from 
 
 SUPPL.] 
 
 - To escape the futtermiinncheu, 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 tine new house.' Burner's Orlagau, 
 p. 246. Whoever has the kobold must not %cutih or comb himself (Summer p. 171. 
 Miillenh. 209) ; so in the case of the devil, ch. XXXIII. — Extr. from Suppl.
 
 r 
 
 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, racketimj 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,' ^ 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. ^ In Gervase of Tilbury, cap. 18, 
 the folleti also i:>elt with stones, and this of stone-throwing is 
 what we shall meet with in qaite 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 
 pddesses and gods of old. As with Holle and Berhte, so people 
 are threatened with the Lamia, the Omacmica, the manducus and 
 goblin (pp. 500. 507) : ' le gobelin vous mangei'a, le gobelin 
 vous attrapera ! ' Little biitzel 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, hnecld Buprecht, knecht 
 Nicolas, appear at Christmas-time not by themselves, but in 
 
 ^ Comedies facecieuses de Pierre de I'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 pulsa/ido et manifeste loquendo et discordias seminando adeo hom- 
 inis infestabat, ut quocumque intrasset, statim ilia domus exurereter. Presbyteris 
 autem letanias agentibus et aquam benedictam spargentibus inimicus lapides jact- 
 abat et multos cruentabat. Taudem aliquando conquiescens confessus est se, quando 
 aqua spargebatur, sub capa talis sacerdotis quasi familiaris sui latuisse, accusans 
 evun quod cum filia i^rocuratoris in peccatum lapsus fuerit. [This incident, said to 
 have occurred at Capmunti (Kembden) near Bingen, is derived from Kudolfi Ful- 
 densis Annal. ann. 858, in Pertz 1, 372, where further details are given. — Estr. 
 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.^ Strongly in favour of this view are the 
 North Franconian names Hullepupel (Popowitsch 522), HoUepeter 
 (Schm. 2, 174), the Bavarian Seinper, 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)"; 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 Globes ' or Rupert ; as a rule, it is true, 
 there is still a Nidas, a saintly bishop and benevolent being, 
 distinct from the ' man ' who scares children ; but the characters 
 get mixed, and Globes by himself acts the 'man' (Tobler 105'', 
 106*); the Austrian Grampus (Hofer 1, 313. Schm. 2, 110), 
 Krdmpus, Kramhas, is possibly for Hieronymus, but how to ex- 
 plain the Swiss Schmutzli (Staid. 2, 337) I do not riglitly know, 
 perhaps simply from his smutty sooty aspect ? Instead of Grampus 
 there is also in Styria a Bdrthel (pointing to Berhta, or Bartho- 
 lomew ?) Schmutzbartel ^ and Klaubauf, who rattles, rackets, and 
 
 * Heinrich and Ruprecht were once common names for serving-men, as Hans 
 and Claus are now. 
 
 " Zember about Eger in German Bohemia (Popowitsch 523) ; at the same time 
 the Lausitz idol Sompar (supra, p. 71 note) is wortla considering. 
 
 2 The phrase ' lie knows where Barthel gets his must,' notwithstanding other 
 explanations, may refer to a home-sprite well-known in the cellar.
 
 516 WIGHTS AND ELVES. 
 
 throws nuts (Denis, Lesefr. 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 
 Euprecht by a julhock, julehuk, i.e. a manservant disguised as 
 a goat.i 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.^ 
 
 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 
 
 ' Eead Holberg's Julestue, and look up julvdtten in Finn Magn. lexicon, p. 326 
 note. 
 
 - They frightened children with sooty Cyclops, and ace. to Callimachus (Hymn 
 to Diana 66-71), Hermes, like our Euprecht blackened with soot, struck terror 
 into disobedient daughters even of gods : 
 
 aXX' ore Kovpduv rts aireiOea fnjTepi revxoi, 
 IJii)TT}p pL-ljv KVKXiOTras efj eiri 7rai5i KoXiarpel 
 "Apyrjv ?) '^TepoTTTjv • 6 5^ odi/xaros e/c /.nixdroio 
 ^pXeraL 'Epfieiris, ffwoOiy k€xPV/^^''os aldy, 
 avTiKa TrjV Kovprjv fxapfivcraeTai ' ij 5^ reKovarjs 
 dvvei 'ia<j} koXttovs dep-kv-q iwl (paeat x^^P'^^-
 
 SPEITES. 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. ^ Some put on a more savage look that 
 savours of the giant, especially the woodsprites. GrendePs 
 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'X 
 runs a low under-current of the unsatisfied, disconsolate : they ( 
 do not rightly know how to turn their glorious gifts to account, J 
 the y always require to le an upon men. Not only do they seekr^ 
 to re^o vat ejheixjagejbjjn ter marriag e with mankind, they also 
 need the^eounsel and assistance of men in their affairs. ThougBx 
 acquainted in a higher degree than men with the hidden virtues \ 
 of stones and herbs, they yet invoke human aid for their sick] 
 ^d their women in^daboar (f>p^57. 492), they borrow men's/ 
 vessels forTiaking 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, an( 
 their unconcealed grief when a negative answer is given. 
 
 \ Brttder Bam^c.h (friar Ensh) a veritable goblin, is without hesitation [described 
 as being] despatched from hell among the monks ; his name is to be derived from 
 rus8 = fuligo (as kohkausch was formerly spelt kolruss).
 
 CHAPTER XVIII. 
 GIANTS. 
 
 The relation in wliich 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 ; ^ 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) .- 
 
 1 Not a trace of the finer features of gods is to be seen in the Titans. 0. Miiller'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 viichel knahe, Iw. 5056. 
 
 518
 
 EZAN, EOTEN. 519 
 
 The oldest and most comprehensive term in Norse is iotunn, 
 pi. iotnar (not jotnnu, 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, ettijn, 
 eyttijn, Jamieson sub v. ; an OS. etan, eten can be inferred with 
 certainty from the name of a place in old docs., Ebanasfeld, 
 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 fem. eteninne 
 (giantess) preserved at least in nursery-tales. Laurenberg (ed. 
 Lappenberg, p. 26) ^ has ' de olde eteninne,' and another Rostock 
 book of the beginning of the 18th century ^ ' 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, 7ro'\.v<pdyo<;, devourer. An AS. poem in Cod. 
 exon. 425, 26 says : 'ic mesan mseg meahtelicor and efn etan 
 ealdum J?yrre,^ 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 lotar, the Jutes ? One thing 
 that makes for it is the same omission of -n in the ^wed. jatte 
 (gigas), Dan. jette, pi. jetter; then, taking iotnar as = iotar 
 (Goth. itan6s = it6s), we should be justified in explaining the 
 names Jotar, Jotland by an earlier (gigantic ?) race whom the 
 advancing Teutons crowded out of the peninsula.''^ In that 
 case we might expect an OS. et, etes, an OHG. ez, ezes, with the 
 
 1 Johann Laiircnberg, a Eostock man, b. 1590, d. 1G58. The first ed. of his poem 
 appeared 1652. 
 
 * Em. Joach. Westphal, De consuetiulinc ex saceo et libro, Eost. 172G. 8. pp. 
 224-5 ; the catalof;ue there pivcn of old stories of women is copied in Joh. Pet. 
 Schmidt's Fastelabendssamhinfjen, Eostock (1712) -i. resp. 1752, p. 22, but here 
 incorrectly ' von der Ardcn Inn ' instead of Wcstphal's 'von der alten Eten Line.' 
 
 ' For iotr, as miolk for miolk, see Gramm. 1, 451. 482. 
 
 "• Bcda 1, 15 has Juti, which the AS. version mistakenly renders Gedtas fthe ON. 
 Gautar), though at 4, 16 it more correctly gives Eotaland for .Jutorum terra, ana 
 the Sax. Chron. (Ingr. p. 14) hais lotum for lutis, lutnacynn for lutorum gens. 
 
 VOL. 11. O
 
 520 GIANTS. 
 
 meaning of giant. ^ Possibly there was beside iotunn, also an 
 ON. iotull, OHG. ezal (edax) ; - that would explain the present 
 Norwegian term for giant: jotid, jutul, Hallager 52. Faye 7 
 (see Suppl.).^ 
 
 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 hrim]?urses^ in 
 Seem. US'* 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 |?ursar^ and there is no 
 Thursaheimr in use for lotunheimr^ lotnaheimr; but Thrymr, 
 though dwelling in lotnaheimr, is nevertheless called J>ursa 
 drottinn (Seem. 70. 71) and not iotna drottinn, but he summons 
 the iotnar (73^), and is a iotunn himself (74''). In Ssem. 85^ 
 both iotnar and hrimjjursar 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 hrim|?ursar, no 
 hrimiotnai', are ever met with ; of this hrim]?urs an explanation 
 will be attempted further on. Instead of ]?urs there often occurs, 
 especially at a later stage of the language, the assimilated form 
 puss, particularly in the pi. jmssar, hrimj^ussar ; a dgemonic being 
 in the later sagas is called Thus»elln (Mtiller's Sagab. 1, 8G7-8), 
 nay, the Danish tongue has retained the assimilation in its tosse, 
 clumsy giant, dolt (a folk-song has tossegrefve) * and a Norwegian 
 daemon bears the name tusscl. The ON. ]?urs, like several names 
 of gods, is likewise the title of a rune-letter, the same that the 
 Anglo-Saxons called ]?oru (conf. ']?urs rista,^ Stem. 86'''): a 
 notable deviation, as the AS. tongue by no means lacks the 
 word; in Beow. 846 we find pyrs, and also in the menology in 
 
 ^ Can the witch Jettha of the Palatinate (p. 96 note) be a corruption of Eta, Eza ? 
 Anyhow the Jettenbiiliel (Jetthas colUs) reminds us of the Bavarian >letteiiherg 
 (Mon. Loica 2, 219, ann. 1317), and Mount Jettcn in Eeinbote's Georg 1717, where 
 it is misprinted Setten. Near Willingshauseu in Hesse is another Jettenherg, see 
 W. Grimm On the runes, p. 271. 
 
 ' The ruined Weissenstein, by Werda near Marburg, was ace. to popular legend 
 the abode of a giant named Esse! (ezzal?), and the meadow where at the fall of his 
 castle he sank its golden door in the R. Lahn, is still called F.sscJswerd. 
 
 3 Isidore's glosses render the Gallic name of a people amhro by devorator, which 
 agrees with the OHG. transl. vianezo, man-eater (Graff 1, 528), the well-known 
 MHG. vianezze. 
 
 * So the Dan. fos, fossen, for the ON. fors.
 
 DUES, THURS. 521 
 
 Hickes (Gramm. AS. p. 207) : ' J^ijrs sceal on fenne gewunian/ 
 and elsewhere pijrs, pi. ]>yrsas, renders the Lat. cy clops, orcus. 
 The passage already given from the Cod. exon. 425, 28 has J^yrre 
 with the s assimilated, as in irre for irse. And we find an 
 Engl, thurst surviving in lioldkiirst (woodsprite), conf. hobgoblin 
 p. 502 [hob o^ t' hm-st?] The OHG. form ought to be durs, pi. 
 dursa, or durls, gen. durises, which last does occur in a gloss for 
 the Lat. Dis, Ditis (Schm. 1, 458), and another gloss more Low 
 Germ, gives tUuris 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 tursen rhymes kiirsen), and even tiirste, gen. tlirsten (MS. 2, 
 205*) ; on the other hand, Albr. Tit. 24, 47 has ' spil von einem 
 diirseii' (Halin 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, 5G4 says, alluding to a well-known 
 fable, 'des kunt der dilrsch, 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 
 Thyrsls, 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.^ 
 
 The name of a place Tarsinriut, Tursenriut (Doc. of 1218-9 in 
 Lang's Reg. 2, 88. 94) ^ contains our word unmistakably, and so 
 to my thinking does the earlier Tuzzinwanc near Neugart, stand- 
 ing for Tussinwanc, Tursinwanc (campus gigantis), the present 
 Dussnang. Nor does it seem much more hazardous to explain 
 Strabo's QovaveXOa (7, 1. Tzsch. 2, 328) by Thurshilda, Thuss- 
 hilda, Thursinhilda,^ though I cannot produce an ON. Thurshildr. 
 In Switzerland to this day dilrst is the Wild Hunter (St. 1, 329), 
 on the Salzburg Alp dasel is a night-spirit (Mtichar's Gastein, 
 p. 145), and in Lower Germany drus or drost is devil, dolt, giant.'^ 
 
 ' Mone's UntersuchunR, pp. 288-9. 
 
 - Now Tirschenreit, Tirschent^ereith. Sclmieller's birthpLace in the Up. Pala- 
 tinate, Schm. 1, 4r)8. So Tiirscheuwuld, Thyrseutritt, Tiiratwhikel, et. .— Suppl. 
 "* Conf. rharailchs, Verelde, p. '28-1-5 ; Griniilil for Grinihiltl. 
 * Breiu. wb. 1, 2J7. lUchty sub v. th-uus, Suhiitze sub v. drost, Strodtmann sub
 
 522 GIANTS, 
 
 "VVhefher TItorsholt, ThosJioU, the name of a place in Oldenburg-, 
 is connected with ]7urs, I cannot tell. — In Gothic the word 
 would have to be paurs, pi. ]7aurs6s (or j^aursis, pi. ]?ailrsj6s ? 
 J^aiirsus, J^aursjus ? ]>aiirsja, ]>aiirsjans ?) ; and of these forms the 
 derivation is not far to seek. The Goth. J^aiirsus means dry, 
 ]?aiirsjan to thirst, J:'aiirstei thirst ; j^aiirsus, ]?aursis becomes in 
 OHG. durri for dursi (as airzis becomes irri for irsi), while the 
 noun durst (thirst) retains the s, and so does our dxu:s-_ (gio^^iiX 
 and the ON. |?urs by the side of the adjective ]?urr (dry). So that 
 Jjaurs, purs, durs signify either fond of wine, thirsty, or drunken, 
 a meaning which makes a perfect pair with that we fished out of 
 i'tanSj Jotunn. 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 
 (Stem. 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,^ these latter being 
 the real lotnar or Itanos ; so may the ]?ursar, 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 J'aursos with the Tvpaijvoi, 
 TvppTjvoi, 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 6vpao<; 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 hiine 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 R. 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. 
 
 ' A case that often occurs ; thus the Bavarians, a Teutonic people, take their 
 name from the Celtic Boii. [And the present Bulgarians, a Slav race, etc.]
 
 HUN. 523 
 
 tombs are called liilnehedde, liunehedden, bed being commonly 
 used for grave, the resting-place of the dead. ' Grot as en liiine ' 
 expresses gigantic stature. Schiiren's Teutonista couples ' rese ' 
 with hiiijne. Even H. Germ, writers of the 16th-l 7th centuries, 
 though seldomer, use heune; Mathesius : 'Goliath der grosse 
 Ueune;' the Vocab. of 1482 spells hewne. Hans Sachs 1,453* 
 uses heunisch (like entisch) for fierce, malignant. But the word 
 goes back to MHG. too; Herbert 1381 : 'groz alsam ein Mine,' 
 rhym. ' mit starkem geliine ; ' Trist. 4034 : ' an geliden und an 
 geliune gewahsen als ein hiune.'^ In OHG. writings I do not find 
 the word in this sense at all. But MHG. has also a Einne (gen. 
 Hiunen) signifying, without any reference to bodily size, a Hun- 
 garian, in the Nibelunge a subject of Etzel 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 Himmis, more exactly 
 Hanus, Ckmiiis. To this Hiune would correspond an OHG. 
 Hunio; I have only met with the strong form Hun, pi. HCmi, 
 gen. Hunio, Huneo,^ with which many names of places are com- 
 pounded, e.g. Himiofeld, a little town in Fulda bishopric, now 
 Hiinfeldj also names of men, Himolt, Himperht (Humprecht), Hiin- 
 rat, Althun, Folchun, etc. The AS. Uuna cyning (Beda 1, 13) 
 requires a sing, Hun; but to the ON, nom. pi. Hunar there is said 
 to belong a weak sing. Hiini (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 
 fi-equent contact with Germany by proximity and wars. The 
 Hianenlant of the 13th century (Nib. HOG, 3. 1122, 3) cannot 
 possibly be the Hilnaland which the Eddie lays regard as SigurS^s 
 home (Deutsche heldens. 6. 9). At the time when proper names 
 like Huurat, Hiinperht first arose, there could hardly as yet be 
 any thought of an actual neighbouring nation like Pannonians 
 or Wends ; 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 as lotnar and Thursar. I incline 
 
 1 Wolfdietr. G61 has, for giaut, ha'ue rhym. schoene, but ouly in the place of the 
 ancient coisura, so that the older reading was most likely hiune. 
 
 - In Hildeb. lied ' Hiiueo trubtin (lord of Huns), and ' altCr Hfiu ; ' Diut. 2, 182 
 Huni (Pauuonii) ; 2, 353'' Huni for Huu (Hunus) ; 2, 370 Huni (Vandali).
 
 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 ^ alter Him!' 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 Huni 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. hunar is never convertible with iotnar and J^ursar. 
 I will not touch upon the root here (conf. p. 529 note), but only 
 remark that one Eddie name for the bear is hunn, Sn. 179. 222% 
 and ace. to Biorn Jmn and hunhiorn = catulns ursinus (see Suppl.). 
 One AS. terra for giant is ent, pi. entas : yElfred in his Orosius 
 p. 48 renders Hercules gigas by 'Ercol se ent.' The poets like 
 to use the word, where ancient buildings and works are spoken 
 of: ' enfa geweorc, enta sergeweorc (early work of giants), eald 
 enta geweorc,' Beow. 3356. 5431. 5554. Cod. exon. 291, 24. 
 476, 2. So the adj. : 'e??h',sc helm,' Beow. 5955; Lipsius's glosses 
 also give eintisc avitus, what dates from the giants' days of yore. 
 Our OHG. eniisc antiquus does not agree with this in consonant- 
 gradation \t should be z] ; 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' (grandgevus gigas), Sgem, 
 23=^ 46^ 84'' 1 89''. 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) j 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 Enzenherc, 
 MS. 2, 10'' a giant's hill ? ^ and is the same root contained in 
 the proper names Anzo, Enzo, Enzinchmt (Fez, thes. iii. 3, 689*^), 
 Enzaicip (Meichelb. 1233. 1305), Evzeman (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 
 
 1 The present Imelherg near Schmalkaklen ; old docs., however, spell it Emise- 
 here, named apparently from the brook Emise, Emse, which rises on it. Later 
 forms are Enzelberg, Einzelberg, Einselberg.
 
 ENT. GIGANT. RISO. 525 
 
 (Ai3z. 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, 385-6 ; and see Suppl. 
 
 The AS. poets use also the Greek, Latin,^ and Romance appel- 
 lative gigant, pi. gigantas, Beow. 225. glganta cyn 3379. glgant- 
 msecg, Cfedm. 76, 36 ; conf. Ital. Span, gigante, Prov. jayan 
 (Ferab. 4232), O.Fr. gaiant (Ogier 8092. 8101), Fr. geant, Eng. 
 giant; also OHG. gigant (0. iv. 12, 61), MHG. gigante die 
 mdren (Diut. 3, 60),^ M. Nethl. gigant. The ON. word which is 
 usuaHy compared with this^ but which wants the nt, and is only 
 used of giantesses, seems to me unconnected : fem. gygr, gen. 
 gygjar, Ssem. 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 gingi or giiigja; 
 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 (0. 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 ivriso which 
 I confidently infer from the adj. wrisilic giganteus, Hel. 42, 5. 
 The Anglo-Saxons seem to have had no analogous ^orisa, as they 
 confine themselves to ]^yrs, gigant [and cut] . The root of vrisa 
 is unknown to me ; it cannot belong to reisan surgere, therefore 
 the OHG. riso does not mean elatus, superbus, excelsus.^ 
 
 Again, luhhe, h'ihle seems in parts of Lower Saxony to mean 
 
 1 Strange that the Latin language has no word of its own for giant, but must 
 horrow the Greek gigas, titan, cyclops ; yet Italy has indigenous folk-tales of Gam- 
 panian giants. 
 
 - The Biblical view adopted in the Mid. Ages traced the giants to Cain, or at least 
 to mixture with his family : ' gigantes, quales propter iracundiam Dei per tilios Scth 
 defliahus Cain narrat sci'iptura procreatos,' Pertz 2, 755. For in Genesis 6, 4 it 
 is said : ' gigantes autem erant super terram in diebus illis ; postquam enim ingi-essi 
 sunt filii Dei ad filias hominum, iUaque genuerunt, isti sunt potentes a seculo viri 
 famosi.' The same view appears in Cffidm. 76. 77 ; in Beow. 213 Grendel's descent 
 is derived from Caines cyniie, on whom God avenged the murder of Abel : theuco 
 sprang all the vntijdras (neg. of tudor proles, therefore misbii'ths, evil brood), catenas, 
 ylfe, orcncds and gigantnst that war against God. This partly fits in with, some 
 heathen notions of cosmogony. 
 
 2 Mone in Anz. 8, 133, takes wriae for /rise, and makes Frisians and Persians out 
 of it. [^\^aat of ' writhe, wris-t, wrest, ^\Testle,' (as wit, wis-t becomes wise) ? Or 
 Slav, vred-iti, to hurt, AS. wrc'Se ? A Euss. word for giant is verzllo, supposed to 
 be from verg-ati, to throw.]
 
 526 GIANTS. 
 
 unwieldy giant, liihhen-stones are shown on the Corneliusberg 
 near Helmstadt, and luhbe ace. to the Brem. wb. 3, 92 means a 
 slow clumsy fellow; it is the Engl, lubber, lobber, and Michel 
 Beham's /m^^Z (Mone's Anz. 1835, 450"), conf. ON. lubhi (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 Lvpberg there (conf. the Augsburg perleich, p. 294), but in 
 the church of the neighbouring JMiillersdorf an idol image let into 
 the wall, which tradition says was brought there from the Lup- 
 berg (see Suppl.).^ 
 
 The ON. has several words for giantess, beside the gygt' men- 
 tioned above: shass, neut., Ssem. 144'^ 154'^, and skessa, fern. ; 
 gricfi' f., 7nella f . ; gift f., Saem. 143", Norweg. jyvri (Hallag. 53) 
 or gijvrl, gurri, djarre (Faye 7. 9. 10. 12). This gifr seems to 
 mean saucy, defiant, greedy. 
 
 Troll neut., gen. trolls (Saem. 6^), 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 trcdlu ; does our getralle in Eenner 
 1365, 'der gebiire ein getralle,' rhym. ' alle,^ mean the same 
 thing ? (see Suppl.). 
 
 Giant is in Lith. mUzinas, milzlnis, Lett. milsis,milsenls ; but 
 it would be overbold to connect with it German names of places, 
 Milize (Trad. fuld. 2, 40), Milsenburg, Melsungen. The Slovak 
 ohor, Boh. obr, 0. Pol. obrzym," 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 ' Greecus 
 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 
 v\oh. Yet I remark, that a giant's tomb on Mt. Blanc is called ' la tombe du bon 
 homme, de la bonne femme,' an exi^iession associated with the idea of a sacred vene- 
 rated man (supra, p. 8'J). Conf. also ijocUjuhbe used of Thorr, p. 167, and (judmur, 
 p. 430. 
 
 2 Psalter of queen Margareta, Vienna 1834, p. 17^ : ohrzim, the -im as in oyczim, 
 
 pie'grzym.
 
 GIANTS. 527 
 
 as the Avari in the Mid. Asres are = Chuni, the words huii and 
 obor alike spring out of the national names Hun and Avar.^ To 
 the SlavSj 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 
 rakshasas can have nothing to do with our riese, uor 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 ruuge 
 (Brem. wb. 3, 558) ; Herbert 1385 : 'groz alsam ein runge.'' Our 
 MHG. poems like giant's names to end in -ult, as Witolt, Fasolf, 
 Memerolf, 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 ^ and the ancient gods, Ji^^-^ 
 (p. 322), they are often provided with nuiny hamls^BXi*^ heads. A}-^oJi 
 When this attribute is given to heroes, gigantic ones are meant, 
 as Heimo, Starka'Sr, Asperiau (p. 387). But Seem. 85'^ expressly 
 calls a l^urs jji'ihijj'&u&r, exactly as the MHG. Wahtelmasre names 
 a driJiowptigen turseu (Massm. denkm. 109) : a remarkable in- 
 stance of agreement. In Seem. 35^ appears a giant's sou with 
 six heads, in 56^ the many -headed band of giants is spoken of, 
 and in 53 a giantess with 900 heads. Braua's father has three 
 (invisible) heads, Fornald. sog. 3, 574, where also it is said: ' ]'a 
 
 1 Schafarik explains ohor by the Celtic ambro above (p. 520n.) ; but in that case 
 the Polish would have been f^br. 
 
 2 Briareus or iEgteou has a hundred amis (eKaro-yxeVo^ H- 1. 402) and fifty 
 heads, Geryon tliree heads and six hands ; in Hesiod's Theog. 150, Kottus, Gyges 
 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 and foot : vir fuit 
 excelsus, qui senos in manibus pedibusque habebat digitos, i.e. vigiuti quatuor 
 (instead of the human twenty), 2 Bam. 21, 20. Btrtheau's Israel, p. Ii3. 0. i'r. 
 poems give the Saracen giaut>«;- arms, tico noses, two chins, Ogier 1)817.
 
 528 GIANTS. 
 
 fell margr (many a) tvihof^ad'r iotunn.' Trolds witli 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 heydls ' 
 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/ 
 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, 
 tliough the half-black Hel (p. 312) was of giant kin. Hriingnir, 
 a giant in the Edda, has a liead of stone (Seem. 76% 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. GerSr, whose 
 gleaming arms, as she shuts the house-door, make air and water 
 shine again, S^m. 82% Sn. 39 (see Suppl.). 
 
 In the giants as a whole, an untamed natural 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 skrautgiarn (fastosus), Seem. 117^'; sa inn amdtthi 
 (preepotens) 4P 82*^; storuffgi (magnanimus) 76^; Jyrungmo&gi 
 (superbus) 77^; liardrdd'r (sEevus) 54*; our derivation of the 
 words iotunn and ]7urs finds itself confirmed in poetic epithet and 
 graphic touch : hostmo&r \bt\xun (cibo gravatus), Ssem. 56'^; ' olr 
 (ebrius) ertu Geirro^r, hefir ]m ofdruccit (overdrunk)' 47^* (see 
 
 Suppl-)- 
 
 f From this it is an easy step, to impute to the giants a stupidity 
 
 ^-ontrasting with man's common sense and the shrewdness of the 
 
 (dwarf. The ON. has ' ginna alia sem J?ussa ' (decipere omnes 
 
 sicut thursos), Nialssaga p. 263. JDiimm in our old speech was 
 
 niutus as well as hebes, and dumbr in ON. actually stands for 
 
 gigas; to which dtimhi (dat.) the adj. Jjumhi (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, tuvib hiez daz kint, der hellego tumbo versegene tisa 
 
 wunda ! ' i.e. dummy sat on hill with d. child in arm, d. was 
 
 1 Popular rhymes, fireside stories, and amusements of Scotland, Edinb. 1842.
 
 GIANTS. 529 
 
 called the hill and d. the child, the holy d. bless this wound away 
 [the posture is that of Humpty Durapty] . This seems pointed 
 at a sluggish mountain-giant, and we shall see how folk-tales of 
 a l_ater_peiaod_name_lh^_giaiits_(?wwiOTe f^^ the term luhhe, 
 
 luhhe likewise indicates their clumsy lubberly nature, and when 
 we nowadays call the devil durum (stupid), a quondam giant is 
 really meant (see Suppl.).^ 
 
 Yet the Norse lays contain one feature favourable to the giants. 
 They stand as specimens of a fallen or falling race, which 
 with the streno-th combines also the innocence and wisdom of 
 
 O 
 
 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 HymisqviSa. Hymir ~ is called forn iotunn (the old) 54% as 
 no\v(f)afjLo<i in Theocr. 11,9 is apxalog, and another giant, from 
 whom gods are descended, has actually the proper name Forniotr, 
 Forneot (p. 240), agreeing with the ' aldinn iotunn ' quoted on 
 p. 524; then we have the epithet hundviss (multiscius) applied 
 52% as elsewhere to LoSinn (Stem. 145''), to GeirroSr (Sn. 113), 
 and to Starka^r (Fornald. sog. 3, 15. 32).^ Oegir is called 
 fiolhunnigr (much-knowing), Ssem. 79, and harnteitr (happy as a 
 child) 52^; while Tbrymr sits fastening golden collars on his 
 hounds, and stroking his horses' manes. Stem. 70''. And also the 
 faithfulness of giants is renowned, like that of the men of old .: 
 trdlHrijggr (fidus instar gigantis), Egilss. p. 610, and in the Faroe 
 dialect ' trur sum trddllr/ true as giants (Lyngbye, p. 496).'*^ 
 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 stofum) : Vaf])ruSnir again is called ' inn 
 alsvinni iotunn,' 30^35''; Orgelmir and Bergelmir 'sa inn fruS'i 
 
 1 The familiar falile of the devil heing 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. hCim is crepusculum, huma vesperascere, liA'ma dormiturire ; is Htinir the 
 sluggish, sleepy? OHG. Hiumi? How if the MHCt. hiiine came from an OHG. 
 hiumi? An m is often attenuated into ??, 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. 
 
 2 Hund (centum) intensifies the meaning : hundmargr (permultus), hundgamall 
 (old as the hills). 
 
 ■* We find the same faithfulness in the giant of Christian legend, St. Christopher, 
 and in that of Carolingian legend, Ferabras,
 
 530 GIANTS. 
 
 iotunn/ Sa6m. 35"'''''; Fenja and Menja are framvisar (Grottas. 1, 
 13). When the verb Jn-eya, usually meaning exspectare^ desi- 
 derare, is employed as characteristic of giants (Saem. SS'*), 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,^ 
 bat when pi'ovoked, gets wild, spiteful and violent. Norse legend 
 names this rage of giants iotunmod'r, which pits itself in defiance 
 against asmoSr, the rage of the gods : ' vera i iotunmoSi,' Sn. 
 150'\ 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. 
 166), and stamp on the ground till their leg is buried up to the 
 knee (Roth. 913. Vilk. 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 Bell (the bellower) ; hiui 
 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. 
 lotunlieimr 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 : NiorSr to SkaSi the 
 daughter of Thiassi, Thorr to larnsaxa, Freyr to the beautiful 
 GerSr, daughter of Gymir. Gunnlo-S a giantess is OSin's be- 
 loved. The asin Gefiun bears sons to a giant; Borr weds the 
 giant BolJ^orn's daughter Bestla. Loki, who lives among the 
 ases, is son to a giant Farbauti, and a giantess Angrbo^a is his 
 
 ' Unformed, inconcinuus ; MHG. ungevilege, applied to giants, Nib. 45(5, 1. 
 Iw. 441. £051. 6717. der ungevliege knabe, Er. 5552 ; ' kuabe,' as in ' der michei 
 knabe,' p. 518n.
 
 GIANTS. 531 
 
 ■wife. The gods associate with Oegir the iotunn^ and by hira 
 are bidden to a banquet. Giants again sue for asins, as Thrymr 
 for Freyja, while Thiassi carries off TSunn. Hrungnir asks for 
 Freyja or Sif, Sn. 107. StarkaSr 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 TJiorr, who 
 like Jupiter inflicts on them his thunder-wounds ; ^ his hammer 
 has crushed the heads of many : were it not for Thorr, says a 
 Scandinavian proverb, the giants would get the upper hand;- he 
 vanquished Hiningnir, Hymir, Thrymr, Geirro'Sr, 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 "yviih all heroes giant-fighting alternates 
 with draofon-fio-htinof.^ 
 
 o c o 
 
 King FroSi had two captive giant-maidens Fenja and Meiija, 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. 28'', pp. 90-1) 
 
 1 The skeleton of a giantess struck by lightning, hung up in a sacristy, see WiJe- 
 gren's Ostergotland 4, 527. 
 
 2 Swed. 'vore ej thordon (Thor-din, thunder) till, lade troll verldcn ode.' 
 
 * In British legend too (seldomor in Caroliugiun) 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 Thur's; he is equip]icd 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. 
 
 furnislies both names Manegolt and Fenegolt ouc of the same 
 iieighbourhood. We may conclude that once the Bavarians well 
 knew how it stood with the fanigold and manig-old ground out by 
 Fania and Almiia (see Suppl.). 
 
 Ymir,. or in gianf^s language Oi'gelmir^ 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 
 hnmjfmsar, rime-giants, Su. 6. Stem. 85^'^; hriinhxldr, rime- 
 cold, is an epithet of ]>urs and iotunn. Seem. 33'' 90'*, they still 
 drip with thawing rime, their beards (kinnskogr, chin-forest) are 
 frozen, Seem. 53*^; Hrininir, Hmngrimr, Hrimger&r are proper 
 names of giants, Seem. SS^'SG^'IM. 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.). 
 
 Hei'bs and heavenly bodies are named after giants as well 
 as after gods : pitrsaslcegg , i.e. giant's beard (fucus filiformis) ; 
 Norw. tussegras (paris quadrifolia) ; BroUugras (satyrium, the 
 same as Friggjargras, p. 302), because a giantess Brana gave it 
 as a charm to her client Halfdan (Fornald. sog. 3, 576) ; Forneotes 
 fulme, p. 240 ; OSinn threw Thiassi's eyes, and Thorr Orvandil's 
 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. Bask's Afhand. 1, 88. Thrymr is called 
 Jjursa drottinn, Seem. 70-74, a, pursa Jyiod' [wdiiiovi) is spoken of, 
 107*, but iotunJieimr is described as their usual residence. Even 
 our poem of Bother 767 speaks of a riesenlant. Ou the borders 
 of the giant province were situate the grluttuna gard'ar, Sn. 108-9. 
 We have already noticed how most of the words for giaut 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 
 
 Hi'ilngnir had a three-cornered stone heart, his head and shield 
 were of stone, Su. 109. Another giant was named Vagnlwfd'l 
 (waggon-head), Sn. 211% in Saxo Gram. 9. 10. Dame HiiU is a 
 petrified queen of giants, Deut. sag. no. 233. 
 
 Out of this connexion with mountains arises another set of 
 names: hergrisi, Sn. 18. 26: 30. 45-7. m. Grottas. 10. 24. 
 Egilss. 22 ; 1 berr/hui, Fornald. sog. 1, 412'; hraamhui (saxicola), 
 S^em. 57^ 145''' ; hraunhvalr (-whale) 57'^; piissin af biargi, Fornald. 
 sog. 2, 29 ; bergdanir (gigantes), Sasm. 54*^; bergrisa bru&r (bride), 
 moey bergrisa, Grottas. 10. 24, conf. the Gr. 6pecd<; : on this side 
 the notion of giantess can easily pass into that of elfin. Thrym- 
 heimr lies up in the mountains, Su. 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 VKiHgeburen 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 larnsaxa 
 (ironstony), larnhaus (ironskull) ; possibly our still surviving 
 compound steinalt, old as stoue (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 iveapons of the giant race ; they use only 
 stone clubs and stone shields, no swords. Hrungni^s weapon is 
 called hei)i (hone) ; when it was flung in mid air and came in 
 collision with Thorns 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 stalkelstangeii (steel 
 bars) 24 yards long, Roth. 687. 1602. Hurn. Sifr. 62, 2. QS, 2. 
 Sigenot (Lassb.) 14, (Hag.) 69. 75. Iwein 5022 {-mote, rod 
 5058. -fcoZ6e, 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 tserne holven. En. 7089 ; 
 king Gorhand's giant host carry holben stdhelin, Wh. 35, 21. 
 395, 24. 396, 13; and giant Langben a staahtang (Danske 
 viser 1, 29). We are expressly told in Er. 5384, 'wufens waren 
 
 1 In the case of mixed descent : hcilfhenjvisi, hdlfrui, /<nZ/(ro/i, Egilss. p. 22. 
 Nialss. p. IGi ; see Gramm. 2, C33.
 
 534 GIANT?. 
 
 si bloz/ i.e. bare of knisrlitly weapon, for they carried ' holhen 
 swaere, groze unde lange.^ ^ Yet tlie ' eald siveord eotonisc ' pro- 
 bably meant one of stone, tbougli the same expression is used 
 in Beow. 5953 of a metal sword mounted with gold ; even the 
 ' 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 sivord 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 holmklibu, wrisiHc 
 giwerc' is said in Hel. 42, 5 of a castle on a rock (risonburg, 
 N. Bth. 173) ; a Wrisherg, from which a Low Saxon family takes 
 its name, stood near the village of Petze. These are the euta 
 geweorc of AS. poetry (p. 524): 'efne sw^ wide swa wegas to 
 lagon enta cergeweorc innan burgum, strcete stdnfdge,' Andr. 2466. 
 ' stapidas storme bedrifene, eald enta geweorc,' 2986. Our Anno- 
 lied 151 of Semiramis : 'die alten Babilonie stiphti si van cigelin 
 den alten, die die gigandi branten/ of bricks that giants burnt. 
 And Karlmeinet 35 : 'we dise hurg 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/ors tors, ke sont dantiquitey, 
 ke p)aian firent par lor grant poestey. 
 
 Conf. Mone's Unters. 242-4-7. 250. Whatever was put together 
 of enormous blocks the Hellenes named cyclopean ivalls, while the 
 modern Greeks regard the Hellenes themselves as giants of the 
 old world, and give them the credit of those massive structures.^ 
 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 : idt?ia vegar (viae gigantum). Stem. 
 23^; 'usque ad giganteam viam : entisken ivec,' 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. 
 
 1 Goliath too, 1 Sam. 17, 7, and 2 Sam. 21, 19 is credited with a hastile (spear- 
 staff) quasi liciatorium texentium (like a weaver's beam). 
 
 ' Conf. Niebulir's Kom. Hist. i. 192-3. An ancient wall is in Mod. Greek to 
 fWrjuiKo, Ulrich's Eeise 1, 182.
 
 GIANTS. 535 
 
 4, 44) ; the trdllasTieid was mentioned p. 508-9, and trollahlad^ is 
 septum gigantum. Some passages in Fergiit are worthy of 
 notice ; at 1576 : 
 
 Die roke was swert ende eiselike, 
 
 want wilen er en gig ant, 
 
 hie hieu hare ane en en cant 
 
 en padelkin tote in den top, 
 
 daer en mach ghen paert op^ 
 :. en man mochter opgaen te voet. 
 
 And at 1628 seq. is described the brazen statue of a dorper,^ 
 standing outside the porch of a door : 
 
 het dede maken en gigant, 
 
 die daer wilen woende int lant (see SuppL). 
 
 Giant' s-mountalns , giant's-hills, liilnen-heds 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 liein-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, 06). Pomeranian traditions present dif- 
 ferences in detail : a giant in the Isle of Riigen 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 with 
 
 ' This dorper grot 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. H
 
 536 GIANTS. 
 
 his load, his apron springs a leak, and the earth that drops out 
 becomes the nine hills near Rambin. 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 
 Riigen 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 
 )ut 'tother 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.^ Near Yi 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 
 Skiiggenas (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 goguhhen 
 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 (Ahlqvist's Oland, 2, 98-9). These giants' dread 
 of Thor is so great, that when they hear it thunder, they hide 
 iu clefts of rocks and under trees : a hoghergsguhhe in Gothland, 
 
 1 Lothar's VoLkssagen, Leipz. 1825, p. 65. Temme's Pomm. sagen, nos. 190-1 ; 
 see Barthold's Pommern 1, 580, who spells Dobberwort, aud explams it by the Pol. 
 wor (sack).
 
 GIANTS. 637 
 
 whom a peasant, to keep him friendly, had invited to a christen- 
 ing, refused, much as he would have liked to share in the feast, 
 because he learnt from the messenger that not only Christ, Peter 
 and Mary, but Thor also would be there ; he would not face him 
 (Nyerup's Morskabslasning, 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 o£ 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 fai^mhouse and yard were 
 completely covered ; what had run through tJie five 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 eeii schortekleed (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 
 Pajiinde 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. 413) 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 eartli in her apron and carried it to a neighbouring 
 height, pursued by Judas : then, to elude the enemy, she took 
 a part of the eartli up again, which she deposited at another place 
 not far off: oratoines were reared on both sites (Mem. de I'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 let one 
 pjillar fall into Saintfront marsh (Mem. des antiquaires 7, 31). 
 According to a Greek legend, Atheua was fetching a mountain 
 from Pallene to fortify the Acropolis, but, startled at the ill news
 
 538 GIANTS. 
 
 brouglit bj a crow, slie clro'pt it on the way, and there it remains 
 as Mount Lykabettos.^ 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 clort am wasserfall In forest-castle by waterfall 
 
 sinn d'ritter rise gsinn (gewesen) ; the barons there were giants ; 
 
 ii mol (einmal) kummt'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 schier 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 luegt dem ding a wil so zu ; She looks at the thing a while, 
 
 der fflxii, die ros, die lUtt the plough, the horses, the vien 
 
 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 : tt; 5<^ 'M-qva, (pepovcry 
 T) 6/DOS, 6 vvv KoKeiTai. AvKajSrjTTbs, KOpiivyji' ipTjcrlv dTravrfjaaL Kal elwe'tv, otl 'EpLxdifios 
 ev (pavepu) ' Trjv 5^ aKoiJcraaav pi\paL to opos, ottov vvf eari,' t^ 5^ KopuvQ Std ttiv KUKay- 
 7eXfa;' elire'iv, ws els aKpoiroKiv ov 6^/j.ts avry earai dcpiKiadai.
 
 GIANTS. 
 
 539 
 
 unn denkt ' die nimm i rnit.' 
 
 D'rno huurt sie an de bode bin 
 
 unn spreit ihr furti u$$, 
 
 fangt alles mit der hand, thut's 'niin, 
 
 unn lauft gar froh nocli bus. 
 
 sie springt de felswei 'nuf ganz frisch, 
 
 dort wo der berg jetzt isch so gab 
 
 unn me (man) so krattle mus in d'bob, 
 
 macbt sie nur eine schritt. 
 
 Der ritter sitzt just noch am tisch : 
 
 ' min kind, was bringste mit ? 
 
 d' freud liiegt der zu de auge 'nuss ; 
 
 se krom nur gescbwind din fiirti uss ; 
 
 was best so zawelichs drin ? ' 
 
 ' o vatter, spieldings gar ze nett, 
 
 i ha noch nie ebs schons so g'hett,' 
 
 unn stelltem (ihm) alles bin. 
 
 TJmi uf de tisch stellt sie den pjiui, 
 
 d' bare unn ibri ros, 
 
 lauft drum berum unn lacht derzu, 
 
 ihr freud isch gar ze gross. 
 
 ' Ja, kind, diss isch ken spieldings nitt, 
 
 do best ebs schons gemacbt ' 
 
 saht der herr ritter glich und lacht, 
 
 ' geh nimm's nur widder mit ! 
 
 die bure sorje uns fiir brot, 
 
 sunscb sterbe mir de bungertod ; 
 
 trah alles widder f urt ! ' 
 
 's fraule krint, der vatter schilt : 
 
 ' a bur mir nitt als spieldings gilt, 
 
 i liid (ich leide) net dass me murrt. 
 
 pack alles sachte widder iin 
 
 unn trah's ans namli j^liitzel bin, 
 
 wo des (du's) genumme best. 
 
 baut nit der bur sin ackerfeld, 
 
 se fehlt's bi uns an brot unn geld 
 
 in unserm felsennest.' 
 
 and thinks ' I'll take them with me.' 
 
 Then plumps down on the ground 
 
 and spreads her apron out, 
 
 grasps all in her hand, pops it in, 
 
 and runs right joyful home ; 
 
 leaps up the rock-path brisk, 
 
 where the hill is now so steep 
 
 and men must scramble up, 
 
 she makes but one stride. 
 
 The baron sits just then at table : 
 
 ' my child, what bringst with thee ? 
 
 joy looks out at tliine eyes ; 
 
 undo thine apron, quick, 
 
 what hast so wonderfuf therein ? ' 
 
 ' father, playthings quite too neat, 
 
 I ne'er had aught so pretty,' 
 
 and sets it all before him. 
 
 On the table she sets the plough, 
 
 the farmers and their horses, 
 
 runs round them and laughs, 
 
 her joy is all too great. 
 
 ' Ah child, this is no plaything, 
 
 a pretty thing thou hast done ! ' 
 
 saith the baron quick, and laughs, 
 
 ' go take it back ! 
 
 the farmers provide us with bread, 
 
 else we die the hunger-death ; 
 
 carry it all away again.' 
 
 The maiden cries, the father scolds : 
 
 ' a farmer shall be no toy to me. 
 
 I will have no grumbling ; 
 
 pack it all up softly again 
 
 and carry it to the same place 
 
 where thou tookst it from. 
 
 Tills not the farmer his field, 
 
 we are short of bread and money 
 
 in our nest on the 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 Hippersberg (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 Blankeuburg (betw. Rudolstadt and Saalfeld). 
 Again, a hiinin with her daughter dwelt on Hiinenkoppe at the 
 entrance of the Black Forest. The daughter found a ijeasant 
 ploughing on the common, and put him in her apron, oxen, 'plough 
 and all, then went and showed her mother 'the little fellow
 
 540 GIANTS. 
 
 and his pussy-cats.* The mother angrily bade lier carry luan, 
 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 .^ 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 groiindworms 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 Kemisocken, and twenty 
 years ago^ there lived at E.ouwwanjerai 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, 
 ' 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 B. J. C. 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 
 
 ' L. A. "Walther's Einl. in die thiir. schwarzb. gescb., Rudolst. 1788, p. 52. 
 2 In Ganander's time (Finn. myth. p. 30).
 
 GIANTS. 541 
 
 felt something gall his foot ; he 'pulled off the shoe and turned it 
 down, when the stone fell where it now lies. Such stones are 
 also called crumh-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 shooh out of his 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 fiine 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 Skr;^mir/ in the 
 thumb of whose glove the god Thorr found a night's lodging. 
 Skr;^mir 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 fall 
 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 
 
 ^ In the Faroe dialect Sknijmsli (Lyngbye, p. 480). ON. skraumr blatero, 
 babbler.
 
 542 GIANTS. 
 
 boughs; I fancied, when I woke, they droj^t 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 ; 
 he 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, 
 snoring 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).^ 
 
 A giantess (g;^gr) named JlyrroJcin (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 riding 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. 
 
 Eabelais ~ 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.^ 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 stoojmig down drinhs 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, jM-inted already in the 
 15th century, and published more than once in the 16th : Les chroniques admirables 
 du puissant roi Gargantua s. 1. et a. (gothique) 8 ; Lyon 1532. 4 ; La plaisante et 
 joyeuse histoire du grand Gargantua. Valence 1547. 8 ; at last as a chap-book : 
 La \ie du fameux Gargantua, le plus terrible geant qui ait amais paru sur la terre. 
 Conf. Notice sur les chroniques de Garg., par I'auteur des nouv. rech. bibl. Paris 
 1834. 
 
 ^ A beginning has been made in Traditions de I'ancien duchS de Betz, sur Garg. 
 (Mem. de I'acad. celt. 5, 892-5), and in Volkssagen aus dem Greyersland (Alpen- 
 rosen 1824, pp. 57-8). From the latter I borrow what stands in the text.
 
 GIANTS. 543 
 
 (see SuppL). A Westplialian legend of the Weser has much the 
 same tale to tell : On the B. Soilings near Mt. Eberstein, stands 
 the Hunenbrink, 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 hrook thai 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-hiirad, 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. ]7umbi (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 hijne 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 Hnnenkeller and the Porta throwing 
 their one hatchet.^ The hiines of the Brunsberg and Wiltberg, 
 between Godelheim and Amelunxen, played at howls together 
 across the Weser (Deut. sag. no. 16). Good neighbours too were 
 the giants on Weissenstein and Romberg in Upper Hesse ; they 
 had a baking -ove a in common, that stood midway in the field, and 
 when one was kneadinof his dono^h 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 
 
 ^ Eedeker's Westfalische sagen, no. 36.
 
 544 GIANTS. 
 
 same time, tlie stones met in the air^ and fell where they 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 his body, which was done 
 so loud that the other heard it distinctly. The three very ancient 
 chapels by Sachsenheim, Oberwittighausen and Griinfeldhausen 
 were built by giants, who fetched the great heavy stones in their 
 ajprons. 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 
 Nettelstiidt-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 halie 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 
 scratching his leg. At Altehliffen 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 ' Altehlifi'en 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 duties of Altehiifi'en also made up their minds 
 to emigrate; but what they wanted was to go and find the 
 
 ^ Like Hriingni's heiu and Thur's hammer, p. 533.
 
 GIANTS. 545 
 
 entrance into heaven. 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.^ From so 
 remarkable a consensus ^ 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 oS" 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 foui- tales from Eedeker, nos. 37 to 40. Dutten means stulti, and ia 
 further iiiteusified by the adj. In the Teutonist dod = gav^k, conf. Eiclithofeu sub 
 V. dud, and supra, p. 528 on tumbo. Similar tales on the Bhon mts., only with 
 everything giant-like eiJaced, about the tollen dittisser (Bechsteiu pp. 81-91). 
 
 2 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. -17. 107. 132. 1-41. 
 149. 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. Ruins of a castle near Hom- 
 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 Buru in Norway is a large stone, which 
 one jutul fighting with another is said to have flung ohliguely 
 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 hloch 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 Wautewitzer ; but they both missed, 
 the stones having fallen wide of the mark.-'- So two combatants 
 at Refnas and Asnas threw enormous stones at each other, one 
 called sortensteen, the other hlaJc, and the latter still shews the 
 fingers of the thrower (Thiele 1, 47). A kind of slaty stone in 
 Norway, says Hallager 53% 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 filing 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 her 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. 3] 8-9). Also, 
 ■when a giant sits down to rest on a stone, or leans against a rock, 
 
 ^ Preusker in Kruse's Deutsch. alterth. 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) ; also the giant Vade makes his son Velint learn smith- 
 worh, first with Mimir, then with dwarfs. 
 
 As for smicfr in the ON. language, it does not mean faber, but 
 artificer in general, and particularly huilder ; 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 huild a bridge over the 
 Main (Deut. sag. no. 19). 
 
 The most notable instance occurs in the Edda itself. A iotunn 
 had come to the ases, professing to be a smi^r, and had pledged 
 himself to build them a strong castle within a year and a half, if 
 they would let him have Freyja 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&iJfari, 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 tales, 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 
 
 ' Herod. 4, 82 : J'xi'os 'H/^a^-^^os (palvovffi iv ir^rpri evebv, to otKe fih (Brj/jLari dvSpii, 
 i<rTi 5^ rb^ /xiyaOos Siirijxv, Trapa rhv Tvptiv Trora/xi^, in Scytbia. (Footpriut of 
 Herakles in stone, like a man's, but two cubits long.)
 
 548 GIANTS. 
 
 crowing of a cock^ and immediately all tlie 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 : ^ King Olaf of 
 Norway walked 'twixt hill and dale, buried in thought j 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 Jiimself. 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) ! - to-morrow comes thy father 
 Wind- and- Weather home, bringing both sun and moon, or saintly 
 Olafs self.' Overjoyed at this discovery,^ 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) .' 
 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 SUM, and the 
 rhyme ran : ' Slatt, satt spiran riitt (straight) ! ' They have the 
 same story in Norway itself, but the giant's name is Shalle, and 
 he reared the magnificent church at Nidaros. In Schonen the 
 giant is Finn, who built the church at Lund, and was turned into 
 
 ^ 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 Afzehus's Sago- 
 hafder 3, 83-86. 
 
 ^ Couf. the interj. ' ziss, ziss ! ' in H. Sachs iv. 3, 3''. 
 
 3 Almost in the same way, and with similar result, the name of Kumi^elstilz is 
 discovered in Kiuderm. 55; conf. 3, 98, and supra p. 505 n.
 
 GIANTS. 549 
 
 stone by St. Lawrence (Finn Magnusen^s Lex. myth. 351-2; and 
 see Suppl.). 
 
 It is on another side that the following tale from Courland 
 touches the story in the Edda. In Kintegesinde of the Dzervens 
 are some old wall-stones extending a considerable length and 
 breadth, 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 'out his ivkite mare to 
 draw a stone equal to twelve .r -■' all the way to Libau, 
 intending to drop it at the merchant's t. jor. When he reached 
 the town, they would not let ' i cross the bridge, fearing it 
 would break under the load, . ted on his removing the 
 
 stone outside the liberties. The ", -ong man, deeply mortified, 
 did so, and dropt the stone on the ro, ^ that goes to Grobin by 
 Battenhof. There it lies to this day, and the Lettons, as they 
 pass, point to it in astonishment.^ Kinte's white mare may stand 
 for the Scandinavian smith's Sva'Silfari; the defeat of the giant's 
 building designs is eS'ected 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 niir ved miu 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 aud 
 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 sjnndle and distaff on the eastern cliff ; a 
 
 1 
 
 » Commumc. by Watson iu Jahresverliandl. der karl. gesellsch. 2, 311-2.
 
 550 GIANTS. 
 
 sacred spring issued from the opposite clifF.^ According to a 
 Swedish account^ Olaf wished to sail through Varmeland and by 
 L. Vaner to Nerike, when the troll shouted to him : 
 
 kong Olaf med dit pipuga skagg (peaky beard), 
 
 du seglar for niir 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 info stove, and the king erected a cross at Dalky 
 church in Elfdals herred.^ The Danish rhyme is also quoted as 
 follows : 
 
 hor du Oluf rodeskjag, 
 
 hvi seller 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 ! ^ 
 
 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 skag (white beard), 
 hvi splitter du saa min klippevilg ? 
 
 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). Olaf s red 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 pipskcigg, wedge- 
 
 1 Danske viser 2, 12-3. Thiele 1, 32 ; conf. Faye, 118-9. !) 
 
 - Fernow's Varmeland, p. 223. j 
 
 3 Nyerup's Karakteristik af Christian 4, p. 17.
 
 GIANTS. 551 
 
 like or peaked beard, quoted by Ihre ; but tlie Norwegian rhyme 
 has ivldte heard (the barbe fieurie 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 
 (S^m. 228^) : 
 
 skaltu i gognom ganga eigi 
 
 grioti studda gar^Sa mina ! 
 
 (shalt not go through my stone-built house). This brings on a 
 dialogue, which is closed by Brynhildr with the exclamation : 
 ' seykstu gy gjarkyn ! ' (conf. p. 497u.). 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 troldqvinder (12 trold- women) de 
 stode for hannem med roTi og ten' (Danske viser 1, 94).^ 
 
 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 Eomsdal.- 
 
 It would appear, from Ssem. 145'', that giants, like dwarfs, 
 have reason to dread the daylight, and if surprised by the break 
 of day, they turn into stone : ' dagr er nu,^ cries Atli to HrimgerSr, 
 ' hafnar mark ];yckir hloegeligt vera, Jjars pu i steins lihi stendr.' 
 
 Grotesque humanlike shapes assumed by stalactite, flint and 
 flakestone on the small scale, and by basalt and granite rocks ou 
 the great, have largely engendered and fed these fancies about 
 
 ^ The Celtic fay carries huge stones on her spindle, and spins on as she walks, 
 Keightley 2, 286. Conf. supra, p. 413. 
 
 - Faye 124, who follows Schoning's Eeise 2, 128. Sanct Olafs saga pS svenske 
 rim, ed. Hadoi-ph. p. 37 : 'ell troll, som draap X miin, hau giordit i stena, och 
 stander iin ; flere 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 jcittegryter, troldgryter, yet also S. Olcs grijter 
 (Hallager 53''). 
 
 VOL. II. I
 
 552 GIANTS. 
 
 petrified giants. Then the myth about stone-circles accounts for 
 their form by dances of giants ; ^ 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 o£ the mountains are, 
 like giants, liable to transformation into stone, as indeed they 
 have sprung out of stone (p. 532-3). Rosmer havmand (merman) 
 sjjrings 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 Siegfi'ied 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, Hisi, 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 gi<iantum ; ace. to Giraldus Cambr. 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 : ' han sjorang saa vildt i bjerget om, eg blev tUflintesten 
 sorte.' 1, 228: 'han blev til en kampesteen graa.' 1, 233: ' saa /Zoy han bort i 
 roden flint, og blev saa borte med alle.' 1, 185 of a cruel stepmother : ' hun sprang 
 hort i flintesteen.' But H. Sachs too has, iii. 3, 31*. 426, ' vor zorn zu einem stein 
 springen ; ' ib. 53^, ' vor sorg zii elm stein sjwingen ; ' iv. 3, 97*^, ' vor leid wol zw 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 haviug baked a stone 
 in his bread, Soini was in such a rage that he called bears and 
 wolves to aid hiin, 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 Binorenheim 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 ivhole hreadth 
 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 ap)ples they would 
 pelt the passers-by in fun ; remains of their household stufi' 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 ' (Asbiornsen's Moe, no. 6) ; the Danish folk-song of Eline 
 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 deviFs 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 m the 
 north : when Freyr looks from heaven toward lotunheim (Sasm. 
 81) and spies the fair giantess, this is expressed in Snorri 39 by 
 'Freyr leit t nor&rcett.' In the Danish folk-song of the stolen 
 hammer, Thorr appears as Tovd (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.^ ^ 
 
 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) ^ stands midway be- 
 tween Folyi^henms, 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 
 
 ' To wish a man ' nordan till f jails' (Arvidsson 2, 163) is to -wisli 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, 655 
 
 received the by-name of yityatya (Nilsson 4, 32). The Indian 
 Mahabharata also represents HicUmhas the rakshasa (giant) ^ as 
 a man-eater, misshapen and red-bearded : man^s flesh he smells 
 from afar,^ 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 mahe 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) :^ when slain, he falls to the ground 
 like a tree (5074).* 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 
 
 ^ Tevetat's second birth (Keinhart cclxxxi.) is a rakshast, giantess, not a 
 beast. 
 
 2 ' Mightily works man's smell, and amazingly quickens my nostrils,' Arjnna's 
 Journey, by Bopp, p. 18. The same in our fairy- tales (supra, p. 486). Epithets 
 of these Indian daemons indicate that they icalk about by night (Bopp's gloss. 
 91. 97). 
 
 ^ One giant is ' hagcl al der laude,' hail-storm to all lands, Bit. 6482. 
 
 * N.B., his bones are treasured Vi\) outside the castle-gate (5881), asiuFischart's 
 Garg. 41": 'they tell of riesen and haunen, shew their bones in churches, under 
 tpwu halls.' So there hangs in a church the skeleton of the giantess struck by 
 lightning (p. 531 n.), the heathen maiden's dripping rib (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 Ai-nstadt the ' riesenribbe,' Bechst. 3, 129; conf. Jerichow and Werben 
 in Ad. Kuhn, no. 56. The horns of a giant ox nailed up in the porch of a temple 
 (l^iebuhr's Eom. Hist. 1, 407).
 
 556 GIANTS. 
 
 it on again (16114).^ The giants shew more colour as we come 
 to poems in the cycle of our hero-legend. Kuperan in the Hilrn. 
 Sifrit (Ciiprian of the Heldens. 171) rules over 1000 giants, and 
 holds in durance the captive daughter of a king. The Eother 
 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 (650. 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),^ 
 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 iip 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 carried ; 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 
 
 ' The Eomance giants are often porters and bridge-keepers, conf . the dorper in 
 Pergvit (supra, p. 535) ; yet also in Nib. 457, 4. 458, 1 : ' rise portencere/ 
 
 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/ and even we in Germany may gather something from 
 oral narration^ though not much from books. The monk of St. 
 Gall (Pertz 2, 756) has an Eishere {i.e. Egisheri, tei'ribilis) of 
 Thurgau, but he is a giant-like hero, not a giant.^ 
 
 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 hlotrisi, 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 Thorger^r 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 ]mrs^ have in themselves an intelligible 
 meaning. 
 
 ' Hiilphers 3, 47 speaks of ' lojlige berattelse om fordna jattar,^ 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 himself 
 (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 Thussaget£e 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 
 ;!^ao9.i For, as %ao9 means both abyss and darkness, so gin- 
 nunga-gap seems also to denote the world of mist, out of whose 
 bosom all things rose. How the coveinng and concealing ' hel ' 
 was likewise conceived of as 'nifl-her with yawning gaping jaws, 
 has been shewn above, pp. 312-314. 
 
 Yet this void of space had two extremities opposed to one 
 another, miispell (fire) the southern, and niji (fog) the northern ; 
 from Muspellsheim proceed light and warmth, from Niflheim 
 dai-kness and deadly cold. In the middle was a fountain Hvergel- 
 mir, out of which flowed twelve rivers named elivagar. When 
 they got so far from their source, that the drop of fire contained 
 
 ^ Xdos, from xaiVw = OHG. ginan, ON. gIna=Lat. hiare; conf. OHG. ginunga, 
 hiatus. But we ueed not therefore read ' gap ginHnga,' for the ON. ginna, which 
 has now only the sense of allicere, must formerly have had that of findere, secare, 
 whicli is still found in OHG. inginnan, MHG. enginnen (see above, p. 403, Ganna) : 
 Otfried iii. 7, 27 says of the barleycorn, ' thoh findu ih melo thar inne, inthiu ih 
 es higimie (if I split it open); inkinnan (aperire), Graff 4, 209; ingunnen (sectus), 
 N. Ar. 95. So in MHG., ' siu lierze wart ime engunnen ' (fissum), Fuudgr. 2, 
 268; enginnen (secare), En. 2792. 5722; engunnen (secuerunt), En. li78. Nearly 
 related is ingeinan (fissiculare), N. Cap. 136. From a literal ' sj^litting open ' must 
 have arisen the more abstract sense of ' beginning,' Goth, duginnan, AS. ouginnan, 
 OHG. inkinnan, pikinnan. Then gina hiare, gin hiatus, further suggest gin 
 (amplus), and ginregin (p. 320). Singularly Festus, in discussing inclware, comes 
 upon chaos, just as ' begin ' has led us to ginan. C'ohus, 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 khng, khog to crack, 
 etc., including khoghuson empty, chaos]. 'Beside ginan, the OHG. has a ehhuin 
 hiscere (Graff 4, 450), Goth, keinan, AS. erne (rima, chine, chink). The AS. has 
 also a separate word dwolma for hiatus, chaos. — Extr. from Suppl. 
 
 5-53 *■
 
 CREATION. 559 
 
 iu 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 the heat, the drops quickened into life, and a man grew out 
 of them, Ymir, called Orgilmir by tlie Hrim]7urses, 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&iimhla, 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 Buri, and his son's name Borr 
 (p. 349) .1 Borr took to him Bestla, i\xQ giant Bolporn's daughter, 
 and begat three sons, O&inn, Vili, 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 lu"Sr 
 (Stem. 35'', Sn. 8), and from them is descended the (younger) 
 race of giants (see Suppl.).-^ 
 
 The sons of Borr dragged the dead Ymir's body into the mid- 
 dle of ginnimga-gap, and created out of his hlood the sea and 
 water, of his Jiesli the earth, of his hones 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 
 
 ' In the Zend system, the firs man proceeds from the haunch of the primeval 
 bull Kayomer. 
 
 - Ymir, i.e., Orgelmir, begot ThrMgelmir, and he Bergelmir. 
 
 ^ The meaning of lu<!fr has not been ascertained ; elsewhere it stands for 
 culeus, tuba, here it is supposed to be a mill-chest. The OHG. Indara f. means 
 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 in its cradle. True, Snorri speaks not of a child, but of a grown-up 
 giant, who sits in the lu5r with his wife ; this may be a later version. [Slav, lot 
 is shallow basket, trough, tray.] 
 
 ■* Snorri at all events conceived the earth to be round, he says p. 9 : ' lion er 
 kriuglott utao, ok >ar utan urn hggr hinn diupi siar.' So iu the Lucidarius : ' dibe
 
 560 CEEATION. 
 
 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, Mld'gard'. The giant^s brain was thrown into the air. 
 and formed the clouds, Sn. 8, 9. 
 
 Ssemund's account 45^' (cdhf . 33'') differs in some points : 
 
 or Ymirs holdi var ioi"S um scoput, 
 
 enn or sveita seer, 
 
 biorg or beinom; ba'Smr or liari, 
 
 enn or hausi himinn, 
 
 enn or hans brdm ger'So bliS regin 
 
 mi'Sgar^ manna sonom, 
 
 enn or hans heila voro jmu in har^mo^go 
 
 skf 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, 
 AsJcr and Emhla. 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. 3'': 
 
 unz ]?rir komo or ]?vi liSi 
 
 oflgir ok astgir sesir at susi (uproar) . 
 
 f undo a landi litt megandi 
 
 Ask ok Emblo orloglausa : 
 
 ond (spirit) J^au ne atto, 6^ (mind) |?au ne hof^o, 
 
 la (blood) ne Iseti, ne lito (colours) goSa. 
 
 ond gaf OSinn, 6S gaf Hoenir, 
 
 la gaf Lo^r ok litu go^a. 
 
 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 7ro\v(p'\,oia^oi,o 6a- 
 XdaGrjs:), and find Askr and Embla powerless and inei't. Then 
 
 welt ist sinwel (spherical), und umbeflozzen mit clem wendelmer, darin swebt die 
 eixle als daz tutter in dem ivizen des dies ist,' conf. Bertliold p. 287, and Wackem. 
 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.
 
 CREATION. 561 
 
 OSinn endowed tliera with spirit, Hoeair witli reason, Lo'Sr 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.). 
 Thev 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. Stem. 2 says on the contrary, that the holy gods 
 in their chairs consulted, who should make the nation of dwarfs 
 out of Brtmir's flesh and his black ho7ies ; 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 pi'oduction 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 thei'e 
 dripped eight other rings of equal weight (Seem. Sl'^. Sn. 6C). 
 S^m. 195'' speaks, not very lucidly, of a hausi Hei^draupnis 
 (cranio stillantis) ; Styrian legend commemorates a giant's rib 
 from which a drop falls once a year (D.S. no. 140) .^ 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. 
 
 ' No doubt the familiar name Kibbentrop is founded on some such tradition.
 
 562 CBEATION. 
 
 Chap. XXX. Also I must call attention to the terms eitrdropi 
 Sgem. 35% eitrqvikja 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, ^dpfiaKov) 
 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 
 ginnimgagap after a giant has preceded him. It is true, Snorri 
 6 makes use of a remarkable phrase : ^ sva at qvikna^i me'S 
 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 
 Suorri'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.^ 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, O^inn 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.- 
 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. 
 
 ' 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 Zeitsclu:. 3, 156-7. Brahma too makes a man out of his own 
 arm, Poher 1, 168.
 
 CEEATION. 563 
 
 wlio were not created singly, like the giant or the god, but two 
 at once, man and wife, and tlien 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 dses 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 Hvergelmir, we may fairly assume some connexion 
 between it and the names Orgelmir, Thrud'gelniir, Bergelmir. 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 Ymir 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 
 difi"asion. 
 
 Though the word ginnungagap 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 ill mit firahim firiwizzo meista (wisest men), 
 dat ero ni was noh lifhimil (earth was not, nor sky), 
 noh paum (tree) nohheinig noli pereg (mountain) ni was, 
 noli sunna ni scein [noh sterno ni cleiz (glistened)].
 
 564 CEEATION, 
 
 uo mauo (moon) ni liuhta noh der mareoseo (sea). 
 
 do dar niwiht ni was enteo ni weuteo, 
 
 enti du was der eino almalitico 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 (coelum), mareoseo (mare, Goth, marisaivs), which must 
 be thrown into the scale, — all have a ring of the Edda : 
 
 Vara sandr ne s^er, ne svalar unnir, 
 ior'S fanz seva ne upphiminn, 
 gap var ginnunga, enn gras hvergi. 
 sol J»at ne vissi hvar hon sali atti, 
 stiornor ]7at ne visso hvar ]7ger sta^i 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 ginnimgagap.^ 
 
 These hints of heathenism have gained additional force, now 
 that OHG. and OS. songs are found to retain the technical term 
 viusjpilli = ON. onuspell ; the close connexion between niji, Nifl- 
 Jieim, and the Nlhelungen 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 ouh so herti,' and 
 the description of cliaos in Ca^dmon 7. S, particularly the term heoUtersceado 7, 
 11 ; though there is little or nothing opposed to Bible doctrine. Conf. Aristoph. 
 Aves 693-i.
 
 CEEATION. 
 
 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 : 
 
 Odo pondera, de quibus factus 
 est Adam, pondus limi, inde 
 factus (sic) est ca7'o ; pondus 
 ignis, inde rubens est sanguis 
 et calidus ; pondus salis, inde 
 sunt salsae lacriniae; pondus 
 roris, unde factus est sudor; 
 pondus floris, inde est varietas 
 ocidorum ; pondus nubis, inde 
 est instabilitas mentium ; pon- 
 dus venti, inde est anJiela fri- 
 gida ; pondus ^ gratiae, inde est 
 sensus hominis. 
 
 JEhte pundo, of j^^em dworden 
 is Adam, pund lames, of p>on 
 aworden is flcesc, pund fires, 
 of ]^on read is hlod and hat ; 
 pund saltes, of ]?on sindon salto 
 teliero ; pund ]?eawes, of J^on 
 aworden is swat; pund blost- 
 mes, of j7on is fagung egena; 
 pund wolcnes, of ]>on is onstyd- 
 fullnisse J^oltta ; pund windes, 
 of ]?onis orod'cidd; pund^ gefe, 
 of ]>on is J?oht monnes. 
 
 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 beiiete fon tha stene, thet flash fon there 
 erthe, thet hlod 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 (bi'eath), 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. 
 
 * Thif? ' pound of grace' comes in so oddly, that I venture to guess an omission 
 between the words, of jjerhaps 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 Suppl. , from the Saturn and Solomon 
 (Thorpe's Anal. p. 95, ed. Kemble p. 180), is worth comparing: here ' foklan 
 pund ' becomes ^flcesc, fyres pund hlod, windes p. cecfung, wolcnes p. vwcfex nn- 
 sta'Selfffistnes, gyfe p. fat and ge.pang, blostmena p. edgena missenllcnist, dcawes 
 p. swat, sealtes p. tearas.' — Here ' gyfe' is right in the middle of the sentence: can 
 it be, tliat both ' gefe ' and ' gyfe ' are a corruption of Geofon the sea god, gifeu the 
 sea (supra, p. 239), wliich in christian times had become inadmissible, perhaps 
 unintelligible ? It would be strange if water, except as dew, were made no use of ; 
 and the 'sea supplying thought' would agree with the French account, which 
 ascribes wisdom to liim that has an extra stock of sea in him. — Te.\xs.
 
 566 CREATION. 
 
 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 mennischen einen 
 
 uzzen von aht teilen : 
 
 von dem leime gab er ime daz fleisch, 
 
 der tow becechenit den sweihc (sweat), 
 
 von dem steine gab er im daz pein (bone), 
 
 des nist zwivil nehein (is no doubt), 
 
 von den wrcen (worts) gab er ime di adren (veins), 
 
 von dem grase gab er ime daz har, 
 
 von dem mere gab er ime daz p/tli (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) 
 
 nnte 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 dementis 
 constat, igne,aei'e, aqua et terra, humanum quoque corpus dicitur 
 microcosmus, id est minor mundus. habet namque ex terra 
 carnem, ex aqua humores, ex aere flatum, ex igne calorem. caput 
 autem ejus est rotundum sicut coelum, in quo duo sunt oculi, tan- 
 quam duo luniinaria in coelo micant. venter ejus tanquam mare 
 continet omnes liquores. pectus et pulmo emittit voces, et 
 quasi coeiestes 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 
 ossihus vigorem habet cum arboribus, in capillis et unguihas 
 decorem habet cum graminibus et floribus. sensus habet cum 
 brutis animalibus. ecce talis est hominis substantia corporea.^ —
 
 CREATION. 567 
 
 Godfrey^ educated at Bamberg', and cliaplain 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 natural 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 poudera, 
 achta wendem, alit teilen/ among 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,^ 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 eight materials God blew his 
 holy breath, and out of Adam's rib created his companion Eve 
 [the MHG. has : ' imparted his breath '] .^ 
 
 ^ Variegated eyes are the oculi varii, Prov. rain huclhs (Rayn. sub v. var), 
 O.Fr. vairs iex (Roquef. sub v.). 'We find iu OHG. bluom/e/t, au'd ' gecehet ntih 
 tien bluomon,' Graff 3, 426 ; the AS. fagung above. 
 
 2 Well, here is already ovlv fifth version, from a Paris MS. of the 15th century 
 (Pauhn Paris, MSS. fran(,-ais de la bibl. du roi 4, 207) : ' Adam fu forme ou champ 
 damacien, et fu fait si comme nous trouvons de huit parties de cho.ics : du limm de 
 la terre, de la mer, du soldi, des mtes, du vent, des pierres, du saint esprit, et de la 
 clarte du monde. De la terre fu la char, de la mer fu le sang, du soleil furent las 
 
 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 
 ' brain and clouds ' with ' thoughts and clouds.' The brain is the 
 seat of thought, and as clouds pass over the sky, so we tc 
 this day have them flit across the mind ; ' clouded brow ' we say 
 of a reflective pensive brooding one, and the Grimnismal 45*^ 
 applies to the clouds the epithet har'Smo&gr, 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 Thorr 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 furent les pensees, du vent furent les allaines, des pierres furent les 
 oz, du saint esprit fu la vie, la clarte du monde signifie Crist et sa creauce. Saichez 
 que se il y a eu Tomme 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 
 are wanting. The ' champ damacien ' is ' ager plasmationis Adae, qui dicitur ager 
 damascenus ,' 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^ tlie mountains as 
 his boneSj 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,^ 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 MHGr. poetizer of Genesis 
 (Fundgr. 2, 15) launches out into such minuti^ : — 'Duo Got 
 zeinitzen stucchen den man zesamene wolte rucchen, duo nam er, 
 sosich wane, einen leim ziihe (glutinous lime), da er wolte daz 
 daz lit zesamene solte (wished the limbs to come together), 
 streich des unterzuisken (smeared it between), daz si zesamene 
 mohten haf ten (stick) . denselben letten (clay) tet er ze adaren 
 (made into veins), uber ieglich lit er zoch denselben leim zach, 
 daz si vasto chlebeten, zesamene sich habeten. uz hertem leime 
 (hard lime) tet er daz gebeine, uz proder erde (crumbly earth) 
 hiez er daz fleisk werden^ uz letten deme zdheii machet er die 
 adare. duo er in alien zesamene gevuocte, duo bestreich er in 
 mit einer slote (bedaubed him with a slime), diu selbe slate wart 
 ze dere hute (became the skin) . duo er daz pilede (figure) urlich 
 
 1 ' Die leiminen,' the loamen folk, Geo. 3409, is said of men, as we say ' e luto, 
 ex meliori lutu licti.'
 
 570 CKEATION. 
 
 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 
 leiTYi herte, die adare pugen sich swa zesamene gie daz lit (blew 
 his 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 compounding of man out of 
 several materials appears to be still known to him. And traces 
 of it are met with in the folk-poetry. ^ 
 
 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.^ 
 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 
 
 ^ The giants mould a man out of clay (leir), Sn. 109. The Finnish god H- 
 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 ^o life (see Suppl.). 
 
 2 "Oyu/xttTtt 5' Tj^Xios re Kai dvTiSosaa cre\7]vt]. Euseb. UpoTrapaaK. 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 Hephgestua out of earth mingled with water, and 
 then Hermes endowed her with speech, "Fip<ya 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),^ 
 from his foot the first sudra (servant and artizan). And so, no 
 doubt, would the Eddie tradition, were it more fully preserved, 
 make a diff'erence 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." Heading of these miraculous births, who can help 
 thinking of Athena coming out of Zeus^s head {TpcToyeveta), and 
 Dionysus out of his thigh {fjL7]poppa(})')]<;) ? As the latter was 
 called hifjbrjrwp (two-mothered), so the unexplained fable of the 
 nine mothers of Heimdyir (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 thej^rs^ 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 Ashr to the Isco of heroic legend has already been 
 discussed, p. 350. If by the side of Ashr, the man, there stood 
 
 1 E femoribus natus = firavya, firuja, Bopp's Gloss, oi". 
 
 2 Majer's Mythol. taschenbuch 2, 4.
 
 572 CREATION. 
 
 an EsTija, 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. Bub 
 the Edda calls them Aslir and Emhla : embla, emla, signifies a 
 busy woman, OHG. emila, as in fiur-emila (focaina), a Cinderella 
 (Graff 1, 252), from amr, ambr, ami, ambl (labor assiduus), 
 whence also the heroes name Amala (p. 370). As regards Ashr 
 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 Germani from germinare, 
 because the Germans are said to have grown on trees ; ^ we have 
 here the possibility of a complex chain of relationships. The 
 Geogr. of Ravenna says, the Saxons removed from their ancient 
 seats to Britain ' cum principe suo, nomine Anchis.' This may 
 be Hengist, or still better his son Oesc, whom I have identified 
 with Askr.^ 
 
 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 lent (populus), OHG. liut, has for 
 its root liotan (crescere, pullulare), OS. liud, liodan ; ^ and the 
 sacredness of woods and mountains in our olden time is height- 
 ened by this connexion. And similar liotions 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 airb Bpv6<i iaai TraXai^drov ovS airo irerprj'i • 
 
 for not of fabled oa/i; art thou, nor rock;^ and there must have 
 
 ^ D. S. no. 408. ATentin IS** ; conf. the popular joke, prob. ancient, on the 
 origin of Swabians, Franks and Bavarians, Schm. 3, 524. 
 
 2 In the Jewish language, both learned and vulgar, Ashkenaz denotes Ger- 
 many or a German. The name occurs in Gen. 10, 8 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. 
 
 2 Populus however is unconn. with populus a poplar. 
 
 ■* 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^efJLevai airb Spvo^ ^S' airo Trerpr]^, II. 22, 126.^ 
 aXka TIT} /uLOC ravra irepl hpvv rj 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 Pyi-rha 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.^ Even 
 the Jews appear to have known of a mythical creation out of 
 stones, for we read in Matth. 3, 9 : ort Siivarat 6 ©eo? e/c tmv 
 XiOoov TovTwv ijetpai TeKva tco 'A^pad/j, (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 light 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 one ' whose father got drowned on the apple (or nut) tree.' Also, 
 ' not to have sprung from an oak-stem,' Etner's Unw. doct. 585. ' Mia gof ist au 
 niid abbem nossbom aba choh,' ' and my dad didn't come off the nut-tree,' Tobler 
 337^ who wrongly refers it to the Christmas-tree. 
 
 ^ Homer's i^hrase is : ' chat from oak or rock, as youth and maiden do.' — 
 Tbans. 
 
 - As Deucalion and Pyrrha create the race of men, so (ace. to a myth in the 
 Eeinhartssage, 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.
 
 674 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 O, 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.^ 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 aphgeresis 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 g-iant, 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 - 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).^ 
 
 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 Cffidmon 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 TVolfg. 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 sujiposed connexion of the 
 latter with the ON. fable. That the concealed children are not called up, is at 
 variance with aU German accounts.
 
 CEEATION. 675 
 
 Bible makes two separate actions, Adam^s creation coming first, 
 and Eve's being performed afterwards and in a different manner.^ 
 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 Theogouy, there ascend out of chaos first Gaia 
 (earth) the giantess, then Erebus (corresp. to Niflheim) and 
 Night ; but Gaia by herself brought forth Uranus (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 OSinn, 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 titans 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 daemons, 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 gi'Oimd 
 like Adam. [The Bible, we know, has two different accounts of man's creation : 
 the first (Elohistic) in Gen. 1, 27, ' nude and female created he them ; ' the second 
 (Jehovistic) in Gen. 2, 7, ' formed vian of the dust,' and in vv. 21. 22, ' took one of 
 his ribs, . . . and the rib . . . made he a icuman.' The first account seems to 
 imply simultaneous creations. — Tkans.]
 
 676 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 
 Embla has its parallel in the stone-throwing of the Greek myth, 
 and the race of hex'oes 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.^ 
 
 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 pei'ished, 
 but the ark floated on the flood. Then Jehovah stayed the rain, 
 the waters returned from ofl 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.^ Then Noah 
 came out on the dry earth, and offered a clean burntoffering, and 
 
 ^ Ulph. renders KaraKKvaixb^ by midjasveipdins, sveipan meaning no doubt the 
 same as KM^eiv, to flush, rinse, conf. AS. swapan verrere. Diluvium is in OHG. 
 ztnmezjluot or sinfluot (like sinwaki gurges, MHG. sinwsege) ; not so good is the 
 OHG-. and MHG. sintvluot, and our siindfluth (si?i-flood) is a blunder. 
 
 ' Sailors let birds fly, Pliny 6, 22. Three ravens fly as guides, LandnamabOk 1, 2.
 
 DELUGE, SINFLUT. 577 
 
 Jehovali 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 0. 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 creatine all thino^s, and the 
 human race itself. The insolence and violence of the annihilated 
 giants resemble those of the sons of Blohim who had mingled 
 with the children of men ; and Noah's box (/ciyS&jro?) is like 
 Bergelmi's lu^r. 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,^ 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 aii-, 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 in its claws. 
 Close by stand the same human pair on firm land, holding up 
 their right hands. Beside the ark appear the letters Nfl (Noah), 
 and this Apamea is distinguished by the by-name of Ki^coTO'i.'^ 
 
 According to Greek legend, Zeus had determined to destroy 
 mankind; at the prompting of Prometheus, Deucalion built an 
 ark, which received him and Fyrrha 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 ofiered 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 
 
 ^ Buttmann On the myth of the Dehige, p. 21. 
 
 - Conf. the Annolied 308 seq., which brings the Bavarians from Armenia. 
 
 3 All this in Buttmann, pp. 24-27.
 
 578 CREATION. 
 
 the approacli of storm by her flying back^ and of fair weather by 
 her keeping away. Lucian (De dea Syria, cap. 12. 13) calls him 
 AevKoXiwva tov ^Kvdea (the Scythian) ; if that sprang out of 
 ^tavdea} 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 ^^ but all these accounts are wanting in epic details.^ 
 
 A rich store of these opens for us in the Indian Mahabharata.* 
 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 Nauhandhanam (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 ; 
 
 1 CKTeEA from CICTGEA is Buttmann's acute suggestion ; but lie goes 
 farther, taking this Sisythes 'or Sisuthros to be Sesothris, Sothis, Seth ; and Noah 
 to be Dionysos, and a symbol of water. 
 
 2 BiTttm. p. 45 seq., who connects it with Okeanos and Ogenos. 
 
 ^ It is remarkable, that in a beautiful simile, therefore without names or places, 
 Homer depicts a kind of Deluge, II. 16, 384 : 
 
 ois 5' iiirb XaiXaTTL wdcra KeXaifyj ^i^pi.de x^'^v 
 fjlx.a.T OTTUpLvQ, ore Xa^poraTov xe'et vOcop 
 Zei;s, ore drj p dvopeacri KorecrcrdfJ-evos x'^^f""'?^??! 
 ot jSiT] elv dyoprj (XKoXias Kpivuiai ^^yCttcrras, 
 e/c 6^ SiKrjv eXacrcocrt, deuip ottlv ovk aX^yovres. 
 jxivvdeL di re kpy dvOpuTTuv. 
 
 Even as crouches the darkening land, overcrowed by the 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. 
 * Bopp's Die siindflut, Berl. 1829.
 
 DELUGE. 579 
 
 now shall Manus 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. t 
 
 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, ai'e 
 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.-^ 
 
 One more story of the Deluge, which relates the origin of the 
 Lithuanians, deserves to be introduced.- 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 Waudu and 
 Weyas (water and wind) upon the sinful earth, who laid all 
 things waste for twenty nights and days. Looking down once 
 
 ^ Conf. the capture of the soothsaying marmennil, p. 434. 
 2 Dzieje starozytne narodu Litewskiego, przez Th. Narbutta. Wilno 1835. 
 1,2.
 
 580 CREATION. 
 
 more, when he happened to be eating celestial nuts, Pramzimas 
 dropt a nutshell, and it lighted on the top of the highest movn- 
 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 tim^ 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 Grod 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 vaguely 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 
 being warned by them, fled up the mountain, aud 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 
 messenger 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. ludai-a, 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. 681 
 
 the sole survivor of the sunken city.^ Conf. the story of Dold at 
 the end of Ch. XXXII. Another and older narrative, found even 
 in the British Triads, comes much nearer to those given above : 
 When the lake of Llion overflowed and submerged all Britain, 
 the people were all drowned save F'wijvan 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 a vane (beaver) 
 ashore out of the Llion lake, and it has never broken out since.^ 
 
 Of still narrower limits are our German tales, as that of the 
 dwarf seekiug a lodging at Ralligen 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 Fraueusee (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.^ 
 
 1 Edw. Davies's Brit. Mythol. 146-7. 
 
 2 Ibid. 95. 129. Villemarque, Contes bretons 2, 294. Mabinogion 2, 3-11. 381. 
 ^ Sole example of a Deluge- story among Slavs, by whom cosmogouic ideas in 
 
 general seem not to have been handed down at all. 
 
 ■* \V. von Humboldt's Kawisprache 1, 240. 3, 449. Majer'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
 
 WATEE. 583 
 
 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 unseen 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.' 
 
 Passages proving that the Alamanns and Franks worshipped 
 rivers and fountains are cited at pp. 100-1 and in the Appendix.^ 
 
 1 Goth, vato, ON. vain, OHG. wazar, OS. icatar, AS. wester, Dan. vand, Slav. 
 vodd, Lith. wcmdu, Lett, uhdens, Gr. v5wp ; then, corresp. inform to Lat. aqua, but 
 meaning fluvius, Goth, ahva, OHG. aha, AS. ed, ON. a ; the Goth, vet/a, OHG. 
 wdc wages = 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. i
 
 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, orare 
 ad fontes, offerre ad fontes, munus deferre, ad fontes Inminaria 
 facere, candelam deferred This last no doubt was done only or 
 chiefly at night, when the flame reflected from the wave would 
 excite a religious awe.^ The Saxons also were fonticolae : wyllas 
 and flutwoeter 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 aelmessan gehate o'S'Se 
 bringe to hwilcon ivylle'; 4, 19 : 'gif hwa his wseccan set senigum 
 ivylle haebbe (vigilias suas ad aliquem fontem habeat) ' ; the 
 Canones Edgari § 16 forbid ivilweord'anga (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) 
 ae/Sovac Trorafj.ov'i (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 fx'om the lap of earth ; a spring is in our older speech 
 urspriiic (-ges), and also^nmno.^ 
 
 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 ; '^ 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 Wihtrasd cap. 13 impose them on deofolgild in general. 
 
 ' At Christmas people look into their wells with candles. 
 
 ^ From prinnan (ardere), as sot, another word for well, comes from siodan 
 (fervere), welle (lluctus) from wallan (fervere), sual (subfrigidus) from suelan (ardere), 
 conf. Gramm. 2, 29. 34 ; sprudeln to bubble up is from spriihen to fly off as sparks 
 do. In such words fire and water get wedded together. 
 
 ^ The Heliconian horse-fount (itttto/cp^j'tj) was struck open by Pegasus : ' novi
 
 WATEB. 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 ai-e 
 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 heilawde, 
 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, 149'^ : 
 ' 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 heilaivdc,' and in a 
 like sense 248. 283. Applied to Christ and his cross. Mar. 224 : 
 'der bourn 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 spriug-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),^ 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 
 
 fontis Dura medusffii quem praopetis nngiila rupit,' Ov. Met. 6, 257 seq. So the 
 vein of gold in a liill is laid open by a blow from a hoof. Ehea opens a spring in 
 Arcadia with her staff : 
 
 avTaviicracra 6ea /xiyav vipbOt trrjxw 
 
 TrXrj^ev 6pos aK-qirTpi^' t6 di oi olxo. ttovXv ZUarri, 
 
 (K 5' ^xeei* fjieya x^C/xa. Calliinach. hy. Jov. 28. 
 
 1 Zehn ehen eines weibes (lier ten marriages), Leipz. 1735, p. 235.
 
 586 ELEMENTS. 
 
 given a special narae^ betliptania.^ As far back as 387, Cbrv- 
 sostom preaching an Epiphany sermon at Antioch says that 
 people at that festival drew running water at rtiithiight, and Tcept 
 it a loliole yea.r, and often two or three (no doubt for thaumaturgic 
 uses), and it remained fresh and uncorrupted.^ 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 
 heilawac,^ 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 hefore 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.* 
 Magic water, serving for unchristian divination, is to be collected 
 hefore 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).^ Here I bring in once again the Hessian 
 
 1 The first manifestation of Christ was his birth, the second his baptism 
 (Candlemas), the third the marriage in Cana : 'Tertia apparitio fuit postea simihter 
 eodem die anno revohxto, cum esset 30 annorum et 13 dierum, sive quando 
 manifestavit se esse Deum per viutationem aquae in vinum, quod fuit primum 
 miracukim apertum, quod Dominus fecit in Cana Galilaeae, vel simpUciter primum 
 quod fecit. Et haec aj^paritio dicitur bethphania a ^rjTw, quod est domus, et cpdveiy, 
 quod est apparitio, quia ista apparitio facta fuit in domo in nuptiis. De his tribus 
 apparitionibus fit solemnitas in hac die.' Durantis Eation. div. offic. 6, 16. The 
 church consoHdated the three manifestations into one festival. 
 
 - Tom. 2 (ed. Montfauc, Paris 1718), p. 369 : otd tol tovto /cai /jLecrovvKriq) Kara 
 TT}V ioprrjv TavTrjv dTravTes udpevaafxevoi of/caSe to. vajj-ora dirorldevTaL, Kal eb iviavrbv 
 o\6kXt]P0v (pvXdTTOvcri, are dr] cfqixepov ay Laa 6 ivTtiiv tQiv iddTwif Kal to crij/j.eioi' yiverai 
 ifapyh, ov diacpdeLpofjLivijs ttjs tQv vdaTCjv eKeivwv (pvaews rip /MrjKei rov xpocou, dXX 
 eis eviaVTov 6\6K\r]pov Kal 5uu) Kal rpia Irrj rod cry)ixepov dvTXrjdivTos dKepaiov Kal 
 veapov p.€vovTos, Kal yuerd roaovTov xpo'"^" '''O'S ApTi. twv Trrjyu>v e^apiraadelai.v vdacnv 
 afiiXXojfievov. 
 
 2 And also heilawin ? Frauenlob MS. 2, 213b on the ' garden that bears 
 heilwin: Altd. bl. 2, 294. 
 
 ■* 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. 
 
 * The rite, like others cited by Hartlieb (who wrote in 1455), may be of classic 
 origin. In yaarpoiMavrela, i.e. divining by a bellied jar^ {ydaTpij) 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 agaiyi, but 
 
 du muost des urspringes han 
 
 underm velse, e in heschin der tac (ere day beshine it) . 
 
 Parz. 254, 6. Tit. 5456. 5732.^ Curious customs shew us in 
 what manner young girls in the Pyrenees country tell their own 
 fortunes in spring water 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.^ 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.^ But certain springs and 
 wells may have stood in especial repute. Of high renown are 
 the ON. Mimishrunnr and TJrd'arhrunnr (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 halla (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 oflfered at such springs. Of the salutary effect of hot and 
 chali/heate springs people must have been aware from immemorial 
 time, witness the Aquae Mattiacae in the Roman time and those 
 
 1 The hardeninrj and repairing of swords in vater (sver^ lier'Sa, Sfem. 136^) 
 was certainly believed in by the Germans too. The Vilkinasaga, cap. 40 p. 100, 
 says : 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 Trnja, and there it was tempered. Our Eckenlied, str. 81, agrees with 
 this, but is still more precise : ' dannoch was ez niht vollebruht, do fuorten'z zwei 
 wildiu getwerc wol durch niun kiiuecriche, biz daz si kameu zuo der Drdl, diu da 
 ze Troige rinnet, daz swert daz was so liehtgcmal: si harten'z in der Drale, des 
 wart ez also 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 ? 
 
 " A man bitten by an adder will not die, if he can leap over the nearest water 
 before the adder does so. Lenz's Schlangenkunde, p. 208. 
 
 » Bohmer's Reg. Karolor. nr. 740 (an. 841) ; Ecc. Fr. orient. 2, 893 ; ' der 
 Necker vUuzet fiir HeiUcbrunuen (flows past Holy-well),' MS. 2, 68''.
 
 588 ELEMENTS. 
 
 '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.^ 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 : ^ 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.).^ 
 
 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 S. Hans aften, 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 au 
 instance from the Miracula S. Agih, written in the 12th century: Marvellous cures 
 were wrought at the hrooh of St. Agilus. Sed interim quorundam vesaniae occur- 
 rere hbet, qui in digito Dei nequaquam haec fieri aestimantes, daemoniacae, pro 
 nefas, attribuunt potestati. Cumque miracula diffiteri nequeunt, id solum iu 
 causam calumniae adsumunt, quod in agresti hunt loco, ubi nullus Dei cultus, ubi 
 nullae sanctorum memoriae. prudentiam ! verentur homines sublimi ingeuio, 
 ne ad ludibrium mortalium afaunis, mjiiiphis vel satyris, ceterisve ruris numinihus, 
 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.) 
 The Swedish people ascribe the healing power of some s^Drings to white snakes. Iu 
 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 this water-7iiaide?i vfith the snake appears (Bexell's Halland 2, 320 ; 3, 
 303). Multitudes from Norway and HaUaud visited a spring named S. Olaftikialla, 
 dropt money-offerings in, and carried on other superstition (Odman's Bahusliin p. 
 169). In christian times healing fountains are believed to spring up near the 
 tombs of holy men, Bex. Hall. 3, 09 ; 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 water- 
 vxaiden 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. fiir altd. lit. 1, 260-3 from MonteviUa, 
 from the Titurel and from H. Sachs.
 
 WATEE. 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/ 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: 'in 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 secux'o del di, tutti 
 huomini 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~ 
 
 ^ Franc. Petrarcliae De rebus familiar, epistolae, lib. i. ep. 4 : Aqnis digressum, 
 sed prius, iinde ortum oppicli nomen jiutaut, aquis bajauo more tepentibus ablutum, 
 excei^it Agrippina Colonia, quae ad sinistrum Rheni latus sita est, locus et situ et 
 flumine clarus et populo. Mirum in terra barbarica quanta civilitas, quae urbis 
 species, quae virorum gravitas, quae munditiae matronarum. Forte Johannis 
 haptistae vigilia erat dum illuc applicui, et jam ad occideutem sol vergebat: con- 
 festim amicorum monitu (nam et ibi amicos prius mihi fama pepererat quam 
 meritum) ab hospitio traducor ad fiuvium insigne spectaculum visurus. Nee 
 fallebar; omnis enim ripa praeclaro et ingenti mulierum agmine tegebatur. Ob- 
 stupui, dii boni, quae forma, quae facies, quis habitus ! amare potuisset quisquis 
 eo uon praeoccupatum auimum attulisset. In loco paullum altiore constiteram, 
 unde in ea quae gerebantur inteuderem. Incredibilis sine oiJeusione concursus 
 erat, vicissimque alacres, pars h/^rbis odoriferis incinctae, reductisque post cubitum 
 vianicis, Candidas in giirgite mauvs ac brachia lavahant, nescio quid blandum pcre- 
 grino murmure coUoquentes. [A few lines omitted.] Unum igitur ex eo [amicorum] 
 numero admiraus et ignarus rerum percunctatus vergiliano illo versiculo : ' Quid 
 vult concursus ad amnem, quidve petunt auimae?' responsura accejji : pcrci'tustinn 
 gentis ritum esse, vulgo persuasum, praesertim femineo, omnem totius aiuii calamita- 
 tem imminentem fluviali illius did ablutione purgari, et deincei^s laetiora succedere; 
 itaque lustratumem esse a?un/am,inexhau3toque semper studio cultam colendamque. 
 Ad haec ego subridens : ' nimium felices ' inquam 'Rheni accolae, quouiam ille 
 miserias jrargat, nostras quidem nee Fadus unquam jjurgare valuit nee Tiberis. Vos 
 vestra mala Eritanuis Eheno vectore transmittitis ; nos nostra libcuter Afris atque 
 lUyriis mitteremus, sed nobis (ut iutelligi datur) pigriora sunt fiumina.' Commote 
 risu, sero tandem inde discessimus. [A few lines omitted.] The letter is of liiSO, 
 and addressed to Card. Colonna. We find it quoted so early as by Kaisersberg 
 (Omeiss 35*=).
 
 690 ELEMENTS. 
 
 nounced by tliat Father as a relic of paganism : ' natali Joliannis, 
 de solemnitate superstitiosa pagana, Cliristiani ad mare veniebant, 
 et SB baptizabant ' (OpPv Paris 1683, torn. 5, p. 903); and again: 
 ' ne ullus in festivitate S. Johannis in fontibus aut lyaludihus aut 
 in jiuminihus, nocturnis aut matutinis horis se lavare praesumat, 
 quia haec infelix consuetude adhuc de Paganorum observatione 
 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 year, 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.).^ 
 
 There are lakes and springs whose waters periodically riss 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 sooii after (no. 103). A spring that either runs 
 over or dries up, foreboding dearth, is called liiiwjer quelle, hungei'- 
 hrunnen (Staid. 2, 63). Wossingen near Durlach has a hunger- 
 hrunnen, which is said to flow abundantly when the year is going 
 to be unfruitful, and then also the fish it produces ai'e small.^ 
 
 ' In Poland and Silesia, and perhaps in a i^art of Eussia, girls who have over- 
 slept matiu-time on Easter Monday are soused with ivater by the lads, and flogged 
 with birch twigs ; they are often i^ulled out of bed at night, and di-agged to a river 
 or cistern, or a trough filled with water, and are ducked. The Silesians call this 
 scUmagostern (even Ester's Oberhess. idiot, has sciimakustcrn — ^smg the rod at 
 Easter) ; perh. from Pol. smie, Boh. smyti, so that smigust would be rinsing 
 [Sdppl. says, ' better from smagac to flog'] . The Poles say both smic 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 Eussian gov. 
 of Archangel, the people hathe in the riuer on June 23, and sprinkle kupahiitsa 
 (ranunculus aeris), Kai'amzin 1, 73-4 [the same is also a surname of St. Agrippina, 
 on whose day, June 24, river-bathing (kupaluia) commences]. Everywhei-e a 
 belief in the sacredness of the Easter-bath and St. John's-bath. 
 
 " Mone's Anz. 3, 221. 340, who gives a forced and misleading explanation of the
 
 HUNGEE-SPEING. 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 Kosia 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 Mei'seburg^s report (1, 3) of lake 
 Glomazi in the Slav parts of the Elbe valley : ' Glomazi ^ 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- 
 fluentiuTYi efficit animos. Quando autem saeva belli tempestas 
 ingruerit, sanguine et cinere certum futuri exitus indicium prae- 
 monstrat. Hunc omnis incola plus quam ecclesias, spe quamvis 
 dubia, veneratiir 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, e^ijjso liqnoris hahitu seqiientis anni copias jprospecturus. 
 Postero die, populo prae foribus excubante, detractum 
 simulacro poculum cui'iosius speculatus, si quid ex inditi liqnoris 
 mensnra suhstractum fuisset, ad sequentis anni inopiam pertinere 
 putabat. Si nihil ex consuetae foecunditatis habitu diminutuni 
 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 brmgs shame, confusion) : such a 
 one was pointed out to me on the plain near Cassel, and Simpliciss. 5, 14 mentions 
 the schnndlibnch by Oberneheim, which only runs when misfortune befalls the land. 
 [SrrPL. adds the MHG. schaiitJiach, Weisth. 1, 760, and ' der schanden bechelin,' 
 Frauenlob p. 186] . So, when the Liitterborn by Herbershausen (Helperhusen) 
 near Cnittingen runs, it is a dear season ; but when the spider builds in lielpcrhouse 
 mill, and the swallow in the millwheel, the times are good. 
 
 ' Al. ' Glomuzi, Zlumici ' ; now the Lommatsch district. 
 
 - Capitul. an. 794 (Pertz 3, 74) : • experimento didicimus, in anno quo ilia 
 valida famis irrepsit, ebulUrc vacuas annouas (empty ears), a daemouibus devoratas.'
 
 592- ELEMENTS. 
 
 Whirlpools and waterfalls were doubtless lield 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 Ceesar, 
 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, Dsm.fos, and the Isl. sog. 1, 226 expressly 
 say, 'blota'Si fors'in (worshipped the f.).'' The legend of the 
 river-sprite fossegrim was touched upon, p. 493 ; and in such a 
 fors dwelt the dwarf Andvari (Stem. 180. Fornald. sog. 1, 152). 
 But animal sacrifices seem to have been specially due to the 
 whirlpool {Bivo<;), 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 : 
 
 fS Br) Zrjda Tro/Vei? lepevere ravpoiJ<;, 
 ^u)oij<i S' eV Scvrjac KaOiere n,u)vv)(a^ lttttov^' 
 
 (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 Se ap')(alov KaOleaav e? ri-jv Aeivyjv 
 (a water in Argolis, conn, with 8lvo<i) rca UoaethwvL I'ttttou^ oc 
 yipyeloi, /ce/cocr/ievou? ■^aXtvot';. Horace, Od. 3, 13 : fons 
 Bandusiae, non sine floribus eras donaberis haedo (see Suppl.). 
 
 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 ausa, 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 omanutij omakhnuti, to rebound. 
 Vuk, under tlie 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 ivater off the millwheel (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. ^ 
 
 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. 173-6). ^ 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 v:ith water. This ceremony, reported by 
 Burchard of Worms (Sup. C, 20P) 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 difierences 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 ivrapt np in grass, herbs and flowers, that nothing of 
 
 ' The Peruvians believe iu a rain-goddess, who sits in the clouds witli a pitcher 
 of water, ready to pour it out at the right time ; if she delays, her brother ■with 
 thunder and lightning smites the pitcher in pieces. Garcilaso de la Vega's Histt. 
 Incarum perx;auorum 11, 27 ; couf. Talvj's Characteristik der volkslieder, p. 12G. 
 
 * 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 : 
 ' Papaluga (father Luga), climb into heaven, open its doors, and send down rain 
 from above, that well the rye may grow ! '
 
 594 ELEMENTS. 
 
 her person is to be seen, not even the face.^ 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 hucJcet 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 !' 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 
 xvith field herbs and flowers : this child is called Trvpirrjpovva. 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 {\ of a farthing). The Mod. 
 Greek hymn is in Theod. Kind's rpajM^La tt}? vea<i ' EXX.d8o^, 
 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 TrvpTrrjpovva' " 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 oflF 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 he the root, dodo-la may be a diuiin.]
 
 EAIN-MAKING. DUCKING. 595 
 
 future illnesses. Celtic tradition, without bringing in girl or 
 child, makes the 2?oiiring 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 sjiill it on the stones ; immediately the rain-clouds rise 
 and refresh the land. ^ 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 Ins foot crosswise in the fountain of Bar- 
 enton ; they are then sure of its raining before the procession 
 arrives home again.^ 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,^ as in the Liege procession (pp. 174-5), 
 with which again that described by Petronius agrees (p. 175) ; 
 only hei-e 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 waterhird seems -identical with dodola and 
 pyrperuna. The man who is the last to drive out on Whitmonday •* 
 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 ivaterhird 
 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 houghs, hlaclcen his face and pitch him into the brook 
 (Denis, Lesefr. 1,130). In these two cases the ' votis vocare 
 
 » Roman de Eon, v. 11514 (the passage extracted in the notes to Iwein, pp. 
 262-3). 
 
 2 Revue de Paris, tome 41, pp. 47-58. Villemar adds, that children tlirow 
 pins into the fountain, while they call out : ' ris done, fontaiue do Bcreudon, et je 
 te donnerai uue I'piuglc 1 ' and 'the fay of the fountain is supposed to be made 
 friendly by the f^ift. Conf. 'libamina lacui exhibere', p. 596. 
 
 3 boii Quixote 1, 52 (Ideler 2, 435). And in other places it was the custom m 
 time of drought, to carry the bodies of saints about, Flodoard. rem. 4, 41.^ 
 
 * As the girl who oversleeps herself on Easter morning is ducked (p. 590).
 
 596 ELEMENTS, 
 
 imbrera' has dropt out altogether, and been replaced by a mere 
 Whitsun drollery at the cost of the laziest man ; ^ 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, 
 merminnes (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 dtemon 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.^ Precautions are also taken in drawing water from 
 a well : before drawing any, the Greeks at Mykono salute three 
 times in honour of Teloni (fountain-sprite).^ 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 Virisionensium situs agello (Vierzon, in Biturigibus) 
 aquarum mole copiosus, utpote daemoyiibus consecratus ; et si 
 aliquis causa qualibet ingrederetur eundem, repente funihus 
 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 ei'at in Gabalitano territorio (Gevaudan) cogno- 
 mento Helanus, lacum habens magnum. Ad quem certo tem- 
 pore multitude rusticorum, quasi libamina lacui illi exhibens, 
 
 ' 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. 51-1). 
 
 ' Villoison in Maltebrun, Annales de voy. 2, 180, Artemidorus's Oneirocrit. 
 2 27 (Reiii 1, 189) admits well-nymphs : vvij.<pcii. re yap elaiv ei> ry (pp^ari.. Fauriel: 
 TO ffTOLX^wv ToO iroTafioO.
 
 HOLT WATEKS. LAKES. 597 
 
 Hnteamina projiciebat ac pannos qui ad usum vestimenti virilis 
 praebentur : nonnulli lanae vellera, plurimi etiam formas casei ^ 
 ac cerae vel panis^ diversasque species unusquisque juxta vires 
 suas, quae dinumerare perlongum puto. Veniebant autem cum 
 plaustvis potum cibumque deferentes, mactantes animalia et per 
 triduum epulantes. Quarta autem 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 putai-et evadere. Sic fiebat per singulos 
 annos, et iuvolvebatur insipiens populus in errore/ — No god or 
 spirit stews bis face here, the yearly sacrifice is offered to the 
 lake itself, and the feast winds up with the coming tempest. 
 Gervase of Tilbury (in Leibuitz 1, 982) tells of a lake on Mt. 
 Cavagum in Catalonia : ' in cujus summitate lacus est aquam 
 continens subnigram et in fundo imperscrutabilem, Illic mans'io 
 fertur esse daemonum ad modum palatii dilatata et janua clausa ; 
 facies tamen ipsius mansionis sicut ipsorum daemonum vul- 
 garibus est incognita ac invisibilis. In lacum si quis aliquam 
 lapideam aut aliam solidam projecerit materiam, statim tanquavi 
 offe.nsis daemonibus tempestas erumpitJ^ 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 
 Miimmelsee, 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 Titlsee, 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 
 
 ' Formages, whence fromages. 
 
 2 This raisiug of a storm by throioing 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 (Djeut. sag. no. 59. Simplic. 5, 9), of the Pilatussee 
 (Lothar's Volkssag. 232. Dobenek 2, 118. Gutslaff p. 288. Mone's Anz. 4, 423), 
 of L. Camarina in Sicily (Camarinam movere), and above all, of Berenton well in 
 Breziliande forest, Iwein 553-072, where however it is the well-water poured on the 
 well-rock that stirs up the storm : conf. supra, p. 594, and the place in Pontus men- 
 tioned by Beneke, p. 269. The lapis manalis also conjured up rain, 0. Miiller's Etr. 
 2,97.
 
 598 ELEMENTS. 
 
 to sound the deptli of the lake (Moneys Anz. 8, 536). There is 
 a similar story iu 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 shai'e found an old horse's skull 
 fastened to it.^ 
 
 It is the custom in Esthonia 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 WoJihanda, a rivulet of Livonia. It rises 
 near Ilmegerve, a village of Odenpii 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 Jioly 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 ^ 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 : ' it is our ancient faith, the men of old have 
 so taught us (p. 25, 258); mills have been burnt down on this 
 
 * The people about L. Baikal believe it has no bottom. A priest, who conld 
 dive to any depth, tried it, but was so frightened by the lus (dragons, sea-monsters), 
 that, if I remember rightly, he died raving mad. — Teans. 
 
 2 A short account of the holy brook (falsely so called) Wohhanda in Liefland, 
 whereby the ungodly burning of Sommerpahl mill came to pass. Given from 
 Christian zeal against unchristian and heathenish superstition, by Joh. Gutslaff, 
 Pomer. pastor at Urbs in Liefland. Dorpt 1644 (8vo, 407 pp. without the Dedic. 
 and Pref.). An extract in Kellgren (Suomi 9, 72-92).
 
 HOLY LAKES AND STREAMS. 599 
 
 brook before now (p. 278), lie will stand no crowding." The Estli. 
 name is ' poba yogge/ the Lettic ' 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 
 with 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?" All 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: 'get 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 
 his 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.^ 
 
 ' Fr. Thiersch in Taschenbuch fiir Hebe uud freunclschaft 1809, p. 179. Must 
 not Eim be the same as Emhach (mother-beck, fr. emma mother, conf. (iim mother- 
 in-law) near Dorpat, whose origin is reported as follows ? When God had created 
 heaven and earth, he wislied to bestow on the beasts a king, to keep them in 
 order, and commanded tliem to dig for his reception a deep broad beck, ou 
 whose banks he might walk ; the earth dug ont of it was to make a hill for the 
 king to live on. All the beasts set to Avork, 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 1810. 1, iO-12). The two stories differ as to Ihe 
 manner of in'eparing the new bed. 
 
 VOL. II. jr
 
 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 Shamander with 
 Hephasstus : the river is a god, and is called dva^, Od. 5, 445. 
 451. The Indian Oanges too is an august deity. Smaller 
 streams and fountains had nymphs set over them.' 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. 43''. 
 Sn. 4. I single out Leiptr, by whose clear water, as by Styx or 
 Acheron, oaths were sworn. S^em. 165'': 'at eno liosa Leiptrar 
 vatni.'' A dasmon of the Rhine is nowhere named in our native 
 traditions, but the Edda calls the Rfn (fern.) svinn, askunna 
 (prudens, a diis oriunda, Sasm. 248^). 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. 225).^ Equally venerable were islands 
 washed byT;he 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 Waltharius 
 1343, and the ' fluctus decumanus^ [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 Komans 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 at a,va.s patr Us 
 amiiibus dicnre.' 
 
 " Gallus Ohem's Chronik von Reichenau (end of 15th cent.) quoted in Schon- 
 huth's Eeichenau, Freib. 1836, p. v. : 'the isle is to this day esteemed honourable 
 and hohj ; unchristened babes are not buried iu it, but carried out and laid beside a 
 small house with a saint's image in it, called the chindli-bild.
 
 EA, ISLAND. SEA. FIRE. 601 
 
 according to tlie .Edda, there lies in the deep [sea an enormous 
 'worm/ mi%ar^s-ormr, biting his own tail and begirding the 
 whole earth. The immensity of ocean (Goth, marisdivs) is ex- 
 pressed in the OHG. names endilmerl and weiidihneri (Graff 2, 
 829) ; conf. enteo and wenteo (p. 5G4), entil and wentil (p. 375). 
 An AS. term gdrsecg I have tried to explain in Zeitschr. fiir d. a. 
 1, 578. As the running stream will suffer no evil-doer in it, so 
 is ' daz mer so reine, daz ez keine bosheit mac geliden/ so clean 
 that it no wickedness can bear, Wiener merfart 892 (see Suppl.) . 
 
 2. Fire. 
 
 Fire/ like water, is regarded as a living being : corresponding 
 to quecprunno (p. 588 n.) we have a quecjiur, daz quecke fiwer, 
 Parz. 71, 13 ; Serv. vatra zhiva, ogan zhivi (vivus, Yuk 1, xlvi. 
 and 3, 8. 20) ; to irvp drjplov efxylrvxov of the Egyptians, Herod. 3, 
 16; ignis animal, Cic. de N. D. 3, 14, i.e. a devouring hungry 
 insatiable beast, vorax flamma; frekr (avidus). Seem. 50^'; bitar 
 fiur, 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, veixeiah, 
 11. 23, 177; the land gets eaten clean by it, Trvpt x^^^ ve/xerat, 
 2, 780; 'leztu eld eta iofra bygdir, Saem. 142''; it is restless, 
 aKufiaTov irvp, 11. 23, 52. To be spoken to is a mark of living 
 things: ' heitr ertu hripuSr ! ' (hot art thou. Fire), Seem. 40^ 
 The ancient Persians made a god of it, and the Indian Agni 
 (ignis) is looked upon as a god. The Edda makes fire a brotlier 
 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 cock on your roof is a threat of the incen- 
 diary ; ' ein roten han aufs stadel setzen,' H. Sachs iv. 3, Q'o'-^ ; 
 voter schin, Gudr. 786, 2. 
 
 An antique heathen designation of the great World-fire, ON. 
 muspell, OHG. OS. muspilU, mudspelli, mutspeUl, has already 
 been noticed, p. 558. The mythic allusions here involved can 
 only be unfolded in the sequel ; the meaning of the word seems 
 to be ligni perditor, as fire in general is also called haul vidar, 
 
 1 Names for it, Gramm. 3, 352 ; Eddie names, Sffim. 50'', Su. 187-8.
 
 602 ELEMENTS. 
 
 grand vicfar (bane, crusher, of wood), Sn. 126, her alls vi&ar, 
 Ssem. 228*^. Another difficult expression is eikin fur, Sasm. 83''. 
 Of vafrlogi (quivering flame), suggesting the MHG. 'daz hibende 
 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 Vidcanus together, 
 and the Edda Jire and sun, praising them both as supreme : 
 ' eldr er beztr med yta sonum, ok solar syn/ fire is best for men, 
 Saem. 18^^ (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 liearth-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. 
 liasta 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 Oeiov, divine smoke (II. 8, 135. Od. 22, 
 481. 493). In 0. Fr. poems I often find such forms of cursing 
 as : mal feu arde ! Tristr. 3791 ; maus feus et male fiambe 
 m'arde ! Meon 3, 227. 297. Een. 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 breahs loose, breaks oid, gets out, 
 as if from chains and prison : ' worde viir los,' Doc. in Sartorius's 
 Hanse p. 27 ; in Lower Germany an alarm of fire was given in the 
 words ' fiir los ! ' ON. ' einn neisti (spark) war^S 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 flammis propius suggressi, ictu fustium aliisque 
 verberibus ut feras (see p. 601) absterrebant, postremo tegmina 
 corpore direpta injiciunt, quanto magis jprofana et usu pollut'a,
 
 FIRE-WOESHIP. 603 
 
 tanto magis oppressura ignes. So, on valuables that have caught 
 fire, people throw some article of clothing that has been worn 
 next the skm, or else earth which has first been stamped on ivith 
 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 hack 
 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; 'iar^eldr 
 rann ofan,' 4, 12 (see Suppl.). 
 
 Needfire. — 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 ringen 
 (harness) hiuwen si genuoc,* Nib. 2215, 1 ; uz ir helmen daz 
 wilde fiwer von den slegen vuor entwer,' Alt. bl. 1, 339 ; ' daz 
 fiur loilde loadlende druze vluoc,' Lanz. 5306 ; ' si sluogen 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 (flainmam concussis ex more lapidibus elicere. Vita 
 Severini cap. 14), or its generation out of wood was regarded as 
 more primitive and hallowed. If by accident such wild fire have 
 arisen under 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 
 'de i(jne fiicato de ligno, id e^i nodfijr' ; the Capitulare Carlomani
 
 604 ELEMENTS. 
 
 of 742 § 5 (Pertz 3, 17) forbids Mllos sacrilegos ignes quos nied- 
 fijr vocant.^ 
 
 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, palum sepi extrahunt, extracto funem 
 circumligant, illiimque hue illuc ducunt, donee ignem eoneipiat : 
 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. Reiskius/ in Uu- 
 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 nothfiir 
 or nothfeuer. On a day appointed there must in no house he 
 any jiame 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 nothfe.iier, 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 
 
 ^ Ignorant scribes made it metfratres, the Capitularia spuria Beuedicti 1, 2 
 (Peitz iv. 2, 46) have nedfratres. 
 
 2 Eector of Wolfenbiittel school, v. Gericke's Schottelius illustratus, Leipz. 
 1718, p. 66. Eccard's Fr. or. 1, 425.
 
 NEED-FIEE. 605 
 
 collected pile of wood is again pulled asunder, yet in such 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 bo kindled, every citizen shall put his own fire clean 
 out, and afterward fetch him fire again from the other/ Kuhn's 
 Miirkische sagen p. 369 informs us, that in many parts of the 
 Mark the custom prevails of making a nothfeuer on certain occa- 
 sions, and particulai'ly 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 di-iven 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 xvild 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 extinguvih every hit 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 rjen 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 Zeitschr. des hess. vereins 2, 281. 
 
 ^ Ny* a word about sheep : supposing cocks and hens wore likewise hunted over 
 the cosi'is, it would explain a hitherto unexplained proverb (Keiuhart xciv.).
 
 606 ELEMENTS. 
 
 cords. About tlie 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 luliirled 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.^ 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 wildfire should be evoked by 
 friction is indispensable, it cannot b^ 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 tho ropes of the wooden 
 roller are pulled hy two chaste hoys.^ Need fires have remained in 
 use longer and more commonly in North Germany,^ yet are not 
 quite unknown in the South, Schmeller and Stalder are silent, 
 but in Appenzell the country children still havt^ a game of o-uh- 
 bing a rope against a stick till it catches fire : tiiis they call ' de 
 tilfel hale/ unmanning the devil, despoiling him of his strength.^ 
 
 ' Is there not also a brand or some light carried home for a redistribution of 
 fire in the village ? 
 
 " Biisching's Wochentliche nachr. 4, 64 ; so a chaste youth ihas to strike the 
 light for curing St. Anthony's fire, Superst. I, 710. 
 
 ^ Conf. Conring's Epist. ad Baluz. xiii. Gericke's Schottel. p. 70. Diihnert 
 sub V. noodfiir. 
 
 •* Zellweger's Gesch. von Appenzell, Trogeu 1830. 1, 63 ; who oibserves, that 
 with the ashes of the fire so engendered they strew the fields, as a pj'otectiou 
 against vermin.
 
 NEED-FIRE. 607 
 
 Bat Tobler 252^ says, what boys call de tilfel Jidla 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 ivhich the lightning hath stridden, let a saw 
 be made thee of his wood, therewith shalt thou saw wpon 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 fi'om 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. hnioSa (quassare, terere, 
 tundere) ; ^ 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. wri^an, 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, 
 
 ' OHG. pihniutit (excutit) , Gl. ker. 251. hnotot (quassat) 229. hnutten (vibrare) 
 282 ; N. has fnotun (quassare), Ps. 100, 6. Bth. 230 ; conf. nieton, to bump. ON. 
 still has bnio'5a in hno'S (tudes, malleus), bno'Sa (depsere), hnu'Sla (subigere). It 
 might be spelt hiiotfiur or huotfiur (bnutfiur), 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. nua (terere, fricare), from which a subst. not might be derived by 
 suffix. Nay, we might go the length of supposing that nut, ndut'S, nau'Sr, need, 
 contained from the first the notion of stress and pressure (conf. Graff 2, 1032. 4, 
 1125). 
 
 " Ihre's De superstit. p. 98, and Glossary sub. v. wredeld. Finn. Magn.,
 
 608 ELEMENTS. 
 
 fruit-trees or nets fumigated with it became tlie more productive 
 of fruit or fish. On this fumigation with widen 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- 
 moor a ivheel 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. bjaraan, a magic 
 utensil, Chap. XXXIV.
 
 NEED-FIEE. 609 
 
 brought liim to beggary, and that he dared not say those words 
 again. The whole country beheved 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.^ ' 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 hirch- 
 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 oblong groove on the floor ; and another 
 pole is placed liorizontally 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 all 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 upi-ight 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,^ 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,^ 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 
 cightij-one (9 x 9) married men, being thought the necessary 
 number for effecting this design, took two great planks 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 descriiJtion of the process from James Logan's ' The Scottish 
 Gael, or Celtic manners as preserved among the Iligblanders,' Loud. 183L 2, Gi; 
 though here ho copies almost verbally from Jamieson's Supplem. to the Scot. Diet, 
 sub V. neidfyre. 
 
 2 Descr. of the Western Islands, p. 113. 
 
 3 From tin, Jr. teiue (fire), and egin, Ir. eigin, eigean (vis, violeutia) ; which 
 seems to favour the old etymology of nothfeuer, unless it be simply a translation of 
 the Engl, nccdiiio [which itself may stand for i/icutMreJ .
 
 610 ELEMENTS 
 
 thereof produced fire ; and from this forced fire each famiJij is 
 su-pplied 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. \, 425) tells us, that one Whitsun morning he saw 
 some stablemen ruh fire out of wood, and hoil their cabbage over 
 it, under the behef 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 fi^re 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 clei'gyman, he made 
 inquiries. The people did not like to talk of the aSair, 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.^ 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.). 
 
 1 Fr. Majer's Mytliol. taschenb. 1811, p. 110.
 
 NEED-FIRE. 611 
 
 It is still more interesting to observe how nearly tlie old 
 Roman and Greek customs correspond. Excerpts from Festus 
 (0. Miiller 106, 2) say: 'ignis Vestae si quando interstinctus 
 esset, virgiues verberibus afficiebantur a pontifice, quibus mos 
 erat, tahulam felicis materiae tarn diu ferehrare, 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 carrvinar of water in a sieve, of which there is some 
 account to be given further on. Plutarch (in Numa 9) makes 
 out that new 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.^ But Lemnos, the island on which Zeus had flung down 
 the celestial fire-god Hephsestus,^ 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.* 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 ivJbeel 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 qnam riram intcWige flnmmam, Ov. Fast. 6, 29u. 
 
 - Ace. to the Finnish myth, the tire created by the gods falls on the sea iu 
 balls, it is swallowed by a salmon, and men afterwards find it inside the fish when 
 caught. Kimcs pp. 6-22. 
 
 3 Philostr. Heroic, pp. 7W. Weleker's Trilogie, pp. 247-8. 
 
 * Acta sanctor., calend. Febr. p. 112".
 
 612 ELEMENTS. 
 
 spokes: Hliet niugenspetze fial' survives in the Fi-isian 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. Oar weisthiimer (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 bei^rehand against future sicknesses. Nicolaus Gryse 
 (Rostock 1593, liii*) 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 
 the 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.^ 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 healtine or beiltine, otherwise spelt 
 heltein, and corrupted into helton, heltim, heltam. La means day, 
 
 1 Hyde remarks of the Guebers also, that they lighted a fire every year.
 
 NEED-FIRE. BEALTINE. 613 
 
 teine or tine fire^ and beal, beil, is understood to be the name of 
 a god, not directly connected with the Asiatic Belus/ 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, TertuUian 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 he sacrificed to Baal, whose favour they 
 mean 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, nothiug 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 needfire 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 
 iheiune boil,' i.e. between two fires. ^ That the sacrifice was 
 
 1 7^<'/, n<il, Isidor. Etym. 8, 23. 
 
 - O'l'lahcrty iu Transact, of Irish Acad., vol. II, pp. 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 exstinguerentur, et nuUi 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.^ 
 
 Leo (Malb. gl. i, 35) has ingeniously put forward an antithesis 
 between a god of war Beat or Bael, and a god of peace Siglie 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. 444 n.) : to Beal were offered the May fires, healtine, to Sighe 
 the November fires, samhtheine (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 PJloI ; 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 ? Pholtag 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. 
 
 1 Conf. the accounts in Mone's GescMchte des heidenth. 2, 485. 
 - 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 
 
 Whicliever 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 Ehine, 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 'm,nuntains 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.^ 
 
 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 
 Briiunrode in the Harz the fires are lighted at evening twilight 
 
 ^ Job. Timeus On the Easter fire, Hamb. 1590 ; a reprint of it follows Reiske's 
 Notfeuer. Letzner's Historia S. Bonif., Hildesb. 1602. 4, cap. 12. Leiikf<ld's 
 Autiq. gandersb. pp. 4-5. Eberb. Baring's Bescbr. der (Lauensteincr) Saala, 
 1744. 2, 96. Hamb. mag. 26, 302 (1762). Hannov. mag. 1766, p. 216. Batb- 
 lef's Diepbolz, Brem. 1767. 3, 36-42. (Pratje's) Bremen und Verdon 1, 165. 
 Bragur vi. 1, 35. Geldersche volksalmauak voor 1835, p. 19. Easter tire is in 
 Danish prj^-sA-e-^Zi/s or -bhtat ; whether Sweden has the custom I do not know, but 
 Olaus Magnus 15, 5 affirms that Scandinavia has Midsummer tires. Still more 
 surprising that England has no trace of an Easter fire ; we have a report of such 
 from Carinthia in Sartori'a Keise 2, 350. 
 
 VOL. ir, 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 
 liunt 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.^ 
 
 For these ignes paschales there is no authority reaching beyond 
 the i6th century; but they must be a great deal older, if only for 
 the contrast with Midsummer fires, which never could penetrate 
 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 Ostard 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.^ 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,^ 
 and such Easter lights are still mentioned in the 16th century.'* 
 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 ivith a steel. The people flock to this fire, carry- 
 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. Jiiger (Ulm, p. 521} speaks of a consecration of fire and 
 of logs. 
 
 1 Rosenkranz, Neue zeitschr. f. gesch. der germ. volk. i. 2, 7. 
 
 2 Letzner says (ubi supra), that betwixt Brunstein and WibbreclitshaiTsen, 
 where Boniface had overthrown the heathen idol Eeto (who may remind us of Beda's 
 Rheda), on the same Eetberg the people ' did after sunset on Easter day, even 
 within the memory of man, hold the Easter fire, which the men of old named 
 bocks-thorn.' 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). 
 
 ^ Franz Wessel's Beschreibung des pabstlichen gottesdienstes, Stralsund ed. by 
 Zober, 1837, p. 10.
 
 EASTER' FIRES. 617 
 
 Almost everyvvliere during the last liuudred yeare tlie feeble- 
 ness of governments has deprived the people of their Easter fires 
 (see Suppl.).! 
 
 Midsummer Fires. ^ — 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 = sunnewende 
 (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 naehsten suneweuden,' 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.'^ 
 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, sunbentfewry and even now among the 
 Austrian and Bavarian peasantry sunciwetsfoir, sunwentsfeuer . 
 H. Sachs 1,423*^: 'auch schiirn die bubn (lads poke) sunwent- 
 feuer.' At this season were held great gatherings of the people : 
 'die nativitatis S. Johannis baptistae in conventu populi maximo' 
 (Pertz 2, 386) ; 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 jiwip over the glimmering 
 coals; formerly grown-up people did the same. In Superst. I, 
 
 ^ ' Judic. inquiiy resp. the Easter fire burned, contr. to prohib., on the Kogeln- 
 berg near Volkmarsen, Apr. 9, 18.33,' see Niederhess. wochenbl. 1834, p. 2229''. 
 The older proliibitions allege the unchristian character, later ones the waste of 
 timber. Even bonfires for a victory were very near being sujipressed. 
 
 - The best treatise is : Franc. Const, de Khautz de ritu ignis in natali S. 
 Johannis bapt. accensi, Vindob. 1759, 8vo. 
 
 * All the good MSS. have, not sunnewende, but sunewende, which can only 
 stand for sunwende, formed like suntac. We also find ' zu xinniiltten,^ Scheflcr's 
 Haltaus, pp. 109, 110 ; gilit here corresp. to Goth, gahts (gressus), and allows us to 
 guess an OHG. sunnagaht. 
 
 ■• Hahn's Monum. 2, 693. Sutner's Berichtigungen, Miinch. 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 Nui*nberg 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 Johaiinisfeiier, Der haber is gar theuer (oats are so dear). 
 Haberje, haberju! fri fre frid ! 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 ueed- 
 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 
 5P : ' On St. John's day they make a simet flre [corrupt, of sun- 
 went], and moreover wear upon them, I know not from what 
 superstition, quaint ivreaths of mug wort and monlis-liood ; nigh 
 every one hath a blue plant named larkspur in hand, and whosu 
 loohetli into the fire thro' the same, hath never a sore eye all that
 
 MIDSUMMEE FIRES. 619' 
 
 year ; he that would depart home unto his house, castefh this his 
 plant into the fire, saying', So depart all mine ill-fortune and be 
 burnt up with this herb ! ' ^ So, on the same day, were the waves 
 of water to wash away with them all misfortune (p. 589). But 
 in earlier times the polite world, even princes and kings, took 
 pai't 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 f actus ante domum consuliim inforo (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 dominoriim, rege inspiciente/ At Augsburg 
 in 1497, in the Emp. Maximilian's presence, the fair Susanna 
 Neithard kindled the Midsummer fire with a torch, and with 
 Philip the Handsome led the first ring-dance round the fire.* 
 A Munich voucher of 1401 renders account : ' umb gi'as und 
 knechten, die dy piink 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 deu purgerinen hei dem sunhentfwr,' (Sut- 
 ner's Berichtig. p. 107|. On St. John's eve 1578, the Duke of 
 Liegnitz had a bonfire made on the Gredisherg, 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 Loi-rainian 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 with straw, 
 
 * On June 20, 1G53, the Niirnberg town-council issued the following order : 
 Wliereas experience heretofore hath shewn, that after 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 sonncnwendt or 
 zimmet fire kindled, and thereat winebibbing, dancing about the said fire, leaping 
 over the same, with burning of sundry herbs and 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 Niirnberg town neither can nor ought 
 to forbear to do away with all such unbecoming superstition, paganism, and peril 
 of fire on this coming day of St. John (Neuer lit. anz. 1807, p. 318). [Sunwend 
 fires forbidden in Austria in 1850, in spite of Goethe's ' Fires of John we'll cherish, 
 Why should gladness perish ? ' — Suppl.] 
 
 - Gasseri Ann. august., ad an. 1497, Schm. 3, 2G1 ; couf. Eanke's Roman, u. 
 German, volk. 1, 102.
 
 620 ELEMENTS. 
 
 SO that none of the wood is left in sights 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 dovmhill to the Moselle. It 
 often goes out first ; but if alight when it touches the river, 
 it prognosticates an abundant viiita,ge, 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 gii'ls, they 
 break out into cries of joy, answered by the men orr the hill ; and 
 inhabitants of neighbouring villages, who have flocked to the 
 river side, mingle their voices in the universal rejoicing.^ 
 
 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.).^ 
 
 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 fiunt ignes, 
 qui significant S. Johannem, qui fuit lumen et lucerna ardens, 
 praecedens et praecursor verae lucis . . . ; rota in quibusdam 
 locis volvititr, ad significandum, quod sicut sol ad altiora sui 
 circuli pervenit, nee altius potest progredi, sed tunc sol descendit 
 in circulo, sic et fama 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. Gehenna, 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 0pp. pia et spirit. 
 Mogunt. 1605, that Paulus lived opposite Treves, on Cevenna, named Mons Pauli 
 after him ; but of ApoUo and the hrewheel 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 solemnitatibus solstitia (?) aut valla- 
 tiones vel saltationes aut casaulas aut cantica diabolica exerceat/^ 
 
 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." 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 young people _/ttm^ 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.'^ 
 
 In many places they drag some of the charred brands and 
 charcoal to their homes : salutary and even magical efi'ects 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 Jiands (Mem. des autiq. 8, 451). Fathers of 
 families whisk a biin.ch of white midlein (bouillon blanc) and a 
 leafy spray of walnut through the flame, and 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, 
 
 ^ The Kaiserchronik (Cod. pal. 361, l^) ou the celebration of the Sunday : 
 
 Swenne in kom der sunnintac, 
 
 so vlizete sich Rome al diu stat (all R. bestirred itself), 
 
 wie si den got mohten geeren (to honour the god), 
 
 die allirwisisteu herren (wisest lords) 
 
 vuorteu einiz al umbe die stat (carried a thing round the citj') 
 
 daz wan geschaffen same ein rat (sliapeu like a wheel) 
 
 viit hrinnenden liehien (with burning lights) ; 
 
 wie groze sie den got zierten (greatly glorified the god) ! 
 
 - Mem. de I'acad. celt. 2, 77-8. 3, 447. 
 
 3 Millin's Voyage dans le midi 3, 28. 341-5.
 
 622 ELEMENTS. 
 
 every commune looks out the tallest and slenderest tree, a pine or 
 fir on the bills^ 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). 
 
 Strutt ^ 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 afteiis hlits, 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." Nor- 
 way also knows the custom: 'S. Hans aften brandes der baal 
 ved alle griner (hedged country-lane's), 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.^ Italian sailors lighted them on board ship out 
 at sea, Eel. Eabri 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 ilolbech's Dialect. Lex. 150. Lyngbye's Nord. tidskr. for oldk. 2, 352-9. Finn 
 Magn. Lex. myth. 1091-4. Arndt's Reise durch Schweden 3, 72-3. 
 
 3 Statuta urbevetana, an. 1491. 3, 51 : Quicunque sine licentia officialis fecerit 
 ignem in ahqua festivitate de nocte in civitate, in xl sol. denarior. pimiatur, 
 excepta festivitate S. Johannis bapt. de nieuse Junii, et qui in ilia uocte furatus 
 iuerit vel abstulerit ligua vel tabulas alterius in lib. x den. puniatur.
 
 MIDSUMMER FIRES. 623 
 
 Yanse dias, vienen dias, venido era el de Sunt Juan, 
 donde Christianos y Moros hazen gran solenidad : 
 los Christianos echan juncia, j los Moros arraijhan, 
 los Judios echan eneas, per la fiesta mas honrar. 
 
 Here nothing is said of fire/ 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 pai-t 
 of the celebration, e.g. mugwort, monks-hood, larkspur (p. 618), 
 mullein and walnut leaves (p. 621). Hence the collecting of 
 all such John' s-herhs in Germany (Superst. I, 157. 189. 190), and 
 of S. Hans 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 aXi,8fxa (?) was 
 diligently sought on that day and hung up over doors. 
 
 In Greece the women make a fire on Midsummer Eve, and 
 jii7np over it, crying, ' I leave my sins.' In Servia they think the 
 feast is so venerable, that the sun halts three times in reverence.^ 
 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 hum 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 
 Ci'oats hresz, i.e. striking of light, from kresati (ignem elicere), 
 Pol. krzesac j and as May is in Irish mi-na-bealtine (fire-month), 
 so June in Slovenic is kresnik. At the kres there were leafs of 
 joy performed at night ; of lighting by friction I find no mention. 
 Poles and Bohemians called the Midsummer fire sobotha^ 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 Pami^eluna 
 (cir. 1510), in his treatise De superstitionibus (Tract, tractatuum, ed. Lugd. 1544. 
 9, 133) : Cum in die S. Johaunis propter jucunditatem multa pie aguutur a 
 fidelibus, puta pulsatio campauarum et if/iu^s jucunditatis, similiter summo mane 
 exeunt ad colligendas hcrbus odoriferas et optimas et mediciuales ex sua natura et 
 ex plenitudinevirtutum propter tempus. . . quidam i(/nes (iccendunt in compitis 
 viarum, in agris, ne inde sortilegae et maleficae ilia nocte trausitum faciant, ut 
 ego propriis oculis vidi. Alii herOax collectas in die S. Johaunis iiicendeittes contra 
 fulgura, tonitrua et tempestates credunt suis fumigatiouibus arcere daemones et 
 tempestates. 
 
 ' As he is supposed to leap three times at Easter (p. 291).
 
 624 ELEMENTS. 
 
 Bohemians used to lead their cows over it to protect them from 
 witchcraft. The Russian name was kupdlo, which some explain 
 by a god of harvest, Kupalo : youths and maidens, garlanded with 
 flowers and girt with holy herbs, assembled on the 24th June, 
 ligJded a fire, leapt and led their flocks over it, singino- 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 song. 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 kwpoles 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 
 mugwort (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). 
 
 Paciaudi" 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. 2,30-2. Dobrovsky denies 
 a god Kupalo, and derives the feast from kdpa (haycock) ; Hanusch p. 201 from 
 kupel, kaupel, kupadlo (bath, poud), because ace. to Slav notions the sun rises out 
 of his bath, or Viecanse pouring of water may have been practised at the festival. 
 
 2 De cultu S. Johannis baptistae, Eomae 1755, dissert. 8, cap. 1. 2.
 
 (palilia). 625 
 
 In Deut. 18, 10 and 2 Chron. 28, 3 is mentioned the heathen 
 custom of making sons and daughters pass through afire. In 
 reference to this, Theodoret bp. of Cyrus (d. 458), makes a note 
 on 2 Kings 16, 3 : elhov yap ev ricn iroXeaiv aira^ tov eVoi;? eV 
 Ta2<i irXaTelai'i dTTTO/jieva'i irvpa^ ical Tavra<i Ttm? vTrepaWofievov'i 
 Kal TTT^SwvTO.? ov fjiovov TTalSa'i aWa Kal dv8pa<;, ra 8e ye ^pe(f)'r] 
 irapa tu>v fxrjrepcov irapa(^ep6iJieva hta Tri<i (f)\o'y6^. eSoKec 8e 
 rovTO diroTpoTTLaa/xoii elvat Kal KcidapaL^;. (In some towns I saw 
 pyres hghted once a year in the streets, and not only children 
 but men leaping over them, and the infants passed through the 
 fiame by their mothers. This was deemed a protective expiation).^ 
 He says *' once a year,' but does not specify the day, which would 
 have shewn us whether the custom was imported into Syria 
 fx'om Rome. On April 21, the day of her founding, Rome kept 
 the palilia, an ancient feast of herdsmen, in honour of Pales, a 
 motherly divinity reminding us of Ceres and Vesta. ^ 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 sufiice : 
 
 727. certe ego transilui positas ter in ordine flammas. 
 781. moxque per ardentes stipulae crepitantis acervos 
 
 trajicias celeri streuua membra pede. 
 795. pars quoque, quum saxis pastores saxa feribant, 
 
 scintillam subito prosiluisse ferunt ; 
 prima quidem periit ; stipulis excepta secunda est, 
 
 hoc argumentvixn. fiamma palilis habet. 
 805. per flammas saluisse pecus, saluisse colonos ; 
 
 quod fit 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 
 tJie fire by their mothers, we are not told here ; we know how 
 the infant Demophoon or Triptolemus was put in the fire by 
 
 ' 0pp., ed. Sirmond, Paris, 1642. 1, 352. 
 
 - Tlie masc. Fa Us-, which also occurs, may remind us of the Slav god of 
 shepherds, Euss. I'olos, Boh. U'eles,
 
 626 ELEMENTS. 
 
 Ceres, as Achilles was by Thetis, to insure his immortality.^ 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 neiv moon : 
 ra? e'v ral^ vov/xrivlaL'i vtto TLVOiv Trpo rcov olk€L(j)v ipyao-rrjpicov rj 
 oXkwv ava7rTo/jbeva<i 7rvpKaLa<;, a? Kal virepaXkeaOai rtve'?, Kara 
 TO eOo<; ap')(cuov, eiri'^eLpovaLv, (itto irapovro'i KaTap<yr)6r]vai 
 •jTpoardrTo/xev (The Jlres 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 fornncem -ponerfi pro sanitate febrium,' 
 and 'ponere infantem j«(xto ignem,' Superst. B, 10. 14, and p. 200*.
 
 OTHER FIRES. 627 
 
 Easter and Midsummer^ but nearer to Easter when that falls late. 
 A feature common to all three, and perhaps to all public fires 
 of antiquity, is the wheel, as fnction 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), couf.the trefoir in Brand's Pop.antiq. 
 1, 468. At Marseille they burnt the calendemi 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 ( Raynouard 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 suum adducendam esse dicebat.' The hewing of 
 the Christmas block is mentioned in the Weisthiimer 2, 264. 302. 
 On the Engl, yule-clog see Sup. I, 1109, and the Scandinav. 
 julblok is well known ; the Lettons call Christmas eve hlukhii 
 wahkars, block evening, from the carrying about and burning of 
 the log (blukkis).i Seb. Frank (Weltbuch 5P) reports the fol- 
 lowing Shrovetide customs from Franconia: 'In other places they 
 draw a fierij i^lough 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 rtm into the vale at full speed, which to look 
 upon is like as the sun were running from the sky.' Such a 
 
 1 ' So the Lith. A:a//tYZos = Chiistmas, from kalada, a log.' — Sltpl.
 
 628 ELEMENTS. 
 
 ' hoop-triindUng ' on Shrove Tuesday is mentioned by Schm. 1^ 
 544; the day is called funlcentag (spunk.), in the Rheingau hall- 
 feuer, in France ' la fete des hrandoiis.' ^ 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, hadniah, 
 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 Tcoleda, Pol. 
 koleda, Russ. koliada, answering to the Lat. calendae and the 
 chalendes above ; ^ they had games and dances, but the burning 
 of fires is not mentioned. In Lower Germany too haland 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 Hakouar go'Sa, cap. 16, we are told: ' eldar scyldo vera a 
 midjo golfi 1 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 skaV still practised in a part of Sweden 
 and Norway (Sup. K, 122-3). At Candlemas two tall candles 
 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 
 thi'ower will die ; if upright, he remains alive.^ 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.'i 
 
 3 A similar throwing backwards of an emptied glass on other occasions, Sup. I, 
 514. 707.
 
 OVEN. BONFIRE. 629 
 
 door, they all hend the knee, take one bite of cake, and drinJc 
 eldhorgssMl (the fire^s health) ; what is left of cake or drink is 
 cast into the jiame. 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 ofen, MHG. oven, OHG. ovan, ON. ow. represents the Goth. 
 auhns, 0. Swed. omn, ofn, ogn, Swed. iign, 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, ogan, ogen, ogn. Boh. ohen, Lith. ugnis, Lett, tiggnns, Lat. 
 ignis, Sanskr. Agjii the god of fire. Just as the Swedish servants 
 hneel doivn 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. ^ 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. Ago 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 
 jocunditatis, 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 
 
 ' Haus und kindenn. 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 Shit (Schlam- 
 pampe),' Leipz. 1696 and 1750, act 3, sc. 8: ' Come, let us go and kneel to the oven, 
 maybe the gods will hear our prayer.' In 1558 one who had been robbed, but had 
 sworn secrecy, told his story to the Dutch-tile oven at the inn. Rommeirs Hess, 
 gesch. 4, note p. 420. Joh. Miiller's Hist. Switz. 2, 92 (a.d. 1333). ' Nota est in 
 eligiis TibuUi Januae porsonificatio, cui amantes dolores suos uarrant, quam orant, 
 quam increpant ; erat enim daemoniaca quaedam vis januarum ex opiuioue veterum,' 
 Disseu's Tib. 1, clxxix. Conf. Hartuug's Eel. der Rom. 2, 218 seq.
 
 630 ELEMENTS. 
 
 (RA. 265). ' Faculis et faustis acclamationibus, ut priorlbus 
 regibus assueverant, obviam ei (non) procedebant/ Lamb, scbafn. 
 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 : ' von kleinen kerzen manec 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 IV.'s 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. ' Taceo coronas tarn luminoso fulgore a luminaribus 
 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.^ Like water, like fire, they are all 
 regarded as a being that moves and lives : we saw how the words 
 animus, spiritus, gelst (pp. 439. 461) come to be used of genii, 
 and the Slav, dukh 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: Oxistr, Zephyr, Blaser (p. 461), 
 Blaster, Wind-and-weafher (p. 548), proper names of dwarfs, 
 elves, giants. In the Lithuanian legend the two giants Wandu 
 (water) and Way as (wind) act together (p. 579). To the^ OHG. 
 wetar, OS. wedar, AS. weder (tempestas) corresponds the Slav. 
 veter, vietar (ventus, aer) : and to Goth, vinds, OHG. wint, the 
 Lat. ventus. The various names given to wind in the Alvismal 
 (Ssem. 50*) 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. 
 
 ^ Our hift I include under the root Kuban, no. 530, whose primary meaning 
 is still obscure ; couf . kliubau kluft, skiuban skuft.
 
 AIR. THE WINDS. 631 
 
 Thus personification already peeps out in mere appellatives; 
 iu the mythic embodiments themselves it is displayed in the most 
 various ways. 
 
 Woodcuts and plates (in the Sachsenspiegel) usually represent 
 the winds, half symbolically, as Mowing faces, or heads, 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 dwarfs : ' undir hvert horn (each corner) settu ]?eir dverg% 
 Sn. 9 (p. 461) ^ ; but by the Greeks as giants and brethren : 
 Zephyrus, Hesperus, Boreas, Notus (Hes. Theog. 371), and 
 Boreas's sons Zetes and Kalais are also winged winds (Apollon. 
 Argon. 1, 219). Aeolus {al6\o<i nimble, changeful, many-hued), 
 at first a hero and king, was promoted to be governor and guider 
 of winds {Tafj,t7]ii dviixcov, p. 93). In Russia popular tradition 
 makes the four winds sons of one mother,'^ the 0. 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 lokul (glacies), and lokul Snoir (nix), the 
 king whose children are a son Thorri and three daughters Fonn, 
 Drifa, Mioll, all personified names for particular phenomena of 
 snow and ice (Sn. 358. Fornald. sog. 2, 3. 17). Kari however is 
 brother to Hler (p. 241) 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 crv ' bias Imri ! ' is echoed 
 in that of the Swedish sailors ' bias hajsa ! ' 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 
 dev Jiur-rote wint,' Nib. 2212, 4. In the same line of thought a 
 higher divinity, Nior"Sr, has the sovereignty given him alike over 
 
 ^_ And therefore ostroni, tvestroni, sundroni, nordioni are masc. nouns ; the 
 Gothij forms would be duatroncis, etc. 
 
 - Iluss. volksmiirchen, Leipz. 1831. p. 119. 
 
 * ' Vetre vetrilo gospodine,' Hanka's ed.'^Tp. 12. 36. 
 
 ■» E.g. in Nahis, p. 180 (Bopp's 2 ed.). Kiuderm. uos. 15. 88. 
 
 VOL. II. O
 
 632 ELEMENTS. 
 
 water, wind and fire (p. 217) ; and Lop f?* (aereus) is anotlier name 
 for Loki (p. 246). A plirase in Csedm. 181, 13 seems worthy of 
 notice : ' lyft-Jielms hepeaht,' galea aerea tectus (see Suppl.). 
 
 When in our language we still call one kind of tempest (0H&. 
 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 prtit, Gl. Hrab. 975^ Jun. 230. Diut. 2,182. Gl. 
 florent. 982^-3M^; MHG.iomc^es briU (Gramm. 2, 606), Tit. 3783. 
 swinder (swifter) danne windes brut, Ms. 2, 13 P. lief spilnde 
 als ein w.b. durch daz gras, Fragm. 19*. alsam in rore diu w. b., 
 Eeinfried 159'\ varn mit hurt als ein w. prut, Frauend. 92, 13 ; — 
 it is only the proper names that seem to be lost.^ 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 meanino- 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 ' furious host/ 
 what is it but an explanation of the stormwind howling through 
 the air ? The OHG. ziii, turbines, we have traced to Zio, pp. 203. 
 285; and the stoi-m-cloud was called maganwetar (p. 332 last 1.). 
 But the whirlwind appears to be associated with Phol also (pp. 
 229. 285), and with an opprobrious name for the devU (schweine- 
 zagel, siiuzagel, sustert, sow^s tail), to whom the raising of the 
 whirl was ascribed (Superst. I, 522) ^ 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 frau Hilde,frau Eolde (p. 285). In Kilian 
 693 it is a fahrendes weib ; in Celtic legend it is stirred up hj fays, 
 
 1 Oritliyia carried off by Boreas (Ov. Met. 6, 710) 'could with perfect justice 
 be named icindeshrut by Albrecht. 
 
 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 neiv 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 knije- 
 thruwing is also known to Germ, superstition evei-y where (I, 554).
 
 wind's beide. 633 
 
 and tlie Irish name for it is sigh gaoite (O'Brien) ^ sigJtgaoithe 
 (Croker III, xxi) ; in a whirlwind elvish sprites can steal (Stewart 
 p. 122). It is a popular belief in Sweden^ that the skogsra 
 (wood-wife) makes her pi-esence known by a violent tvhirlwind 
 which shakes the trees even to breaking. The Slav, i^olednice 
 (supra, p. 478u.) 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 ^ sits at the end of heaven : 
 from his ivings cometh all wind upon men, Saem. 35^. Snorri 
 defines it more minutely : He sits at the north side of heaven, 
 and lulien 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 : ' sva vi'Sa sem valr flygi" varlangan dag, oc standi hyrr 
 undir bdda vcengi,' far as falcon flies a summerlong day, when 
 stands fair wind under both his wings. Light clouds threatening 
 storm are called in Iceland hlo-sigi (Biorn 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 Garnda's loings, 
 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? 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; Ilicherus 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- 
 
 ^ The giants often put on the arnar ham (erne's coat) : Thiazi in Sn. 80. 82, 
 Suttixngr in Sn. 86. 
 
 - Day also was imaged as a bird, who dug his claws into the clouds. 
 
 ' Scott's Pirate, Ediub., 18'22. 
 
 •• It ought not to be overlooked here, that at the west door of OSin's hall there
 
 634 ELEMENTS. 
 
 tiirnum converterunt. Nam Germaui earn in favonium (Up. 
 Germ, folin) 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.' 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. Jahrb. 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, 2P: 'jarlanc ist 
 reht daz der ar winke dem vil siiezen 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,^ vultur and vuUurnus point to each other; 
 dv6fio<} (wind) and deT6<i (eagle) are likewise from one root 
 doo, dri^L? According to Horapollo 2, 15 a s])arrowhawk with 
 outspread wings represents the wind. 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: 'rode on the wings of the winds'; 
 Ps. 18, 11. 104,3: Wolavit super pennas ventorum/ which 
 
 also hung a wolf, and over it an eagle (drujjir orn yfir, Saem. 41''), and that the 
 victorious Saxons fixed an eagle over the city's gate, sujjra, p. 111. 
 
 1 Festus : ' aquilo ventus a vehementissimo volatu ad iustar aquilae appel- 
 latur ' ; conf. Hesychius, d/ctp6s 6 poppas. 
 
 2 Wackernagel on Ablaut (vowel-change) p. 30. Eustathius on the II. 87. 15 
 Eom.
 
 WIND. STOEM. 635 
 
 Notker translates 'iiberfloug die vettacha dero windo ' ; and 
 Martina 7'^ has^ in allusion to the biblical phrase, ' der lif 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 liohho (kocka) ; but a poem descriptive 
 of the northstorm, begins : ' Came the eagle on from Turja, down 
 from Lappmark sints a bird/ and ends : ' Neath his wing a 
 hundred men, thousands on his tail's tip, ten in every quill there 
 he.' ^ And in a Mod. Greek folk-song the sparrowhawk (as in 
 Horapollo) calls upon the winds to hush : diro to, rpUopcjja ^ovva 
 lepaKi eavpe Xakid ' irdylreT,^ dip€<;, ■wd-'^ere diro-^e k dWrjv fiiav 
 /BpaBid." 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 
 {derof;), on the sea the brisk lord Boreas : the sun sets, the eagle 
 goes to sleep, and Boreas goes home to his mother ; ^ 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 eflluvia 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 ? ^ 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 
 
 ' Finnish runes, Ups. 1819, pp. 58-60. 
 - Fam-iel 2, 236. Wh. Miiller 2, 100. 
 3 Fauriel 2, 432. Wli. Miiller 2, 120. 
 
 * Sup. I, 343. 1013. Kircbhofer's Schwei?:. spr. 327. CI. Brentano's Libussa 
 p. 432. Sartori's Eeise in Karnten 2, 164. Leoprecbting 102.
 
 636 ELEMENTS. 
 
 idea of iotunn, p. 519), aud they try to pacify him by pouring out 
 flour in the air.^ 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 afterwai'ds 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. 
 FasoU 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 
 Kai'i 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 luiiid 
 is ' Forniots sonr ' and ■' Oegis broSir.''^ Now, as Hler was called 
 by another nation Oegir, i.e. XJogi, 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 
 occm^s nowhere else, perhaps means the sea-mutterer ? Sclim. 2, 
 552. 653 has maudern, mutern, murmurare. — These demi-gods 
 and giants stand related to Donar the supreme director of clouds 
 and weather, as ^olus or Boreas to Zeus. 
 
 And from Zens it was that the favourable wished-for wind 
 proceeded: /lto9 ovpo<i, Od. 5, 176. Wuotan (the all-pervading, 
 
 1 Sup. I, 282. Praetorius's Weltbeschr. 1, 429 : At Bamberg, when a violent 
 wind teas rafjing, 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. 
 
 - ' Forniots sef ar ' = sea and wind, Ssem. 90^
 
 WIND. STOEM. 637 
 
 p. 630) makes 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 iveter,' 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 O^inn was Vi&rir, the weatherer: 
 ' at ]?eir sogSu han ve'Srum nrSa,^ he governs weathers (Fornm. 
 sog. 10, 171). Such a god was Pogodato the Slavs, and the Pol. 
 pogoda, Boh. pohoda, still signifies good growing or ripening 
 weather [Russ. god = time, year; pogoda = weather, good or bad]. 
 Tijphon in Egyptian legend meant the south wind, Hes. Theog. 
 301. 862. 
 
 The Lettons believed in a god of winds and storms Ohhipeernis, 
 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 Grimolfr and Gi'imarr, 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 Tliorgercfr and Irpa (p. 98). In the Skald- 
 skaparrafd 154 ThorgerSr is called Hijlgahru&r or king Holgi's 
 daughter, elsewhere Jiorgahrud'r and Jidrgatrdll (Fornald. sog. 2, 
 131), sponsa divum, immanissima gigas, which reminds us of our 
 ■imnd's-hride. Both the sisters sent foul tveather, 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 Hei-Si and Hamglom, Fornald. sog. 2, 72, Ingibiorg, ibid. 
 3,' 442 (see Suppl.).^ 
 
 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 immlssores tempestatum, qui quibusdam incanta- 
 tiouibus grandinem in vineas messesque mittere perhibentur.' 
 Then Charles the Great in his Capit. of 789 cap. 64 (Pertz 3, 6i) : 
 
 ' Okka, or auka, storm ; peore forehead. Stender's Gramm. 2G6. 
 2 Conf. p. '6'6'5, -163 liuli/Jiiulmr.
 
 638 ELEMENTS. 
 
 ' ut nec cauculatores et incantatores^ nee tempestarii vel oblio^a- 
 tores non 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 
 tonitrna hominum libitu posse fieri. Dicunt enim, mox ut audie- 
 rint tonitrua et videriut 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 aitram. 
 
 1, 146 : Plerosque autem vidimus et audivimus tanta dementia 
 obrutos, tanta stultitia alienates, ut credant et dicaut, quandam 
 esse regionem quae dicatur Magonia, ex qua naves veniant in 
 nuhibiis, in quibus fniges quae grandinibus decidunt et tempesta- 
 tibus pereunt, vehantur in eandem regionem, ipsis videlicet nautis 
 aereis dantibus pretia tempestarUs, et accipientibus frumenta vel 
 ceteras fruges. Ex his item tam profunda stultitia excoecatis, ut 
 hoc posse fieri credant, vidimus plures in quodam conventu homi- 
 num exhibere vinctos quatuor homines, tres viros et unam femi- 
 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 temp)estarios, 
 qui dispersam grandinem et late p>er 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 levi flatu 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. STOEM. 639 
 
 messibus et vindemiis, propter siccitatem agricolas seminare uon 
 posse. Quare non obtinetis apud tempestarios vestros, ut mittant 
 auras levatitias, quibus terra inrigetur, et postea seminare possitis? 
 
 ], 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 imhres, sonantia aquae tonitrua et levatitias auras posse 
 fieri. 
 
 1, 162 : In tantum malum istud jam adolevit, ut in plerisque 
 locis sint homines miserrimi, qui dicant, se non equidem nosse 
 imraittere tempestates, sed nosse tamen defenders a tempestafe 
 liahitatores loci. His habent statutum, quantum de frugibus suis 
 donent, et appellant hoc canonicum. Many are backward in tithes 
 and alms, canonicum autera, quem dicunt, suis defensoribus (a 
 quibus se defendi credunt a tempestate) nullo praedicante, nullo 
 admonente vel exhortante, sponte persolvunt, diabolo inliciente. 
 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. 382 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 countiy 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 ; JQst 
 as little can we tell whether ho 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-ship, except in 
 H. Sachs, who in his schwank of the Lappenhiluscr ii. 4, 89*^ 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. 96''' introduces quite unconnectedlj 
 the nehelscliiffs 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, 
 ' De proprietatibus rei^uni' lb, 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 oflferunt atque vendunt. Globum 
 enim de filo faciunt, et diversos nodus in so connecteiites , usque ad 
 ires nodos vel plures de globo extraJd praecipiunt, secundum quod 
 voluerint ventum habere fortiorem.^ Quibus propter eorum in- 
 credulitatem illudentes, daemones a'erem concitant et ventum 
 majorem vel minorem excitant, secundum quod plures nodos de 
 filo extrahunt vel pauciores^ et quandoque in tantum 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 GO'', 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;^ 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 North ^ (see Suppl.). 
 
 The Norse legends name wind produced by magic gorntnga-ve&r. 
 Ogautan (like Aeolus) had a ve&r-helgr (-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. Uirho, a top or teetotum used in magic : 'citum 
 retro solve, solve turbinem,' Hor. Epod. 17, 7. 
 
 2 Fornm. sog. 2, 2i6. Isl. sog. 1, 9. 100. 151. Conf. Torfaeus's Hist. Vinlandiae 
 antiquae, Hafn. 1705. 
 
 3 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 ha^jpened to see some peasants makiug 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 ireather or dry ; dry, if they set them 
 upright, wet if they laid them along (Ueber die Ehsten, p. 48) ; supra pp. 593-7.
 
 STOEM. 641 
 
 king Eirikr, son of Eagnar Lodbrok^ bore the surname of 
 ved'fhattr (ventosi pilei) : wliichever way he turned his hat, from 
 there the loished for ivind would blow (Saxo Gram. 175. 01. 
 Magnus '3, 13. Gejer^s Hiifder 582). One of our nursery-tales 
 even, no. 71, tells of a man who can direct the weather by 
 setting Jiis hat straight or askew. There is an expression in 
 the Edda, vindhidlmr (Stem. 168^), 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, Saem. 
 145. So morning-deiv 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, 124"), all take us back to mel (lupatum equi) ; 
 conf. note on Elene p. 164, where mel is dex'ived 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 hahhy, 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 snowsiS 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 Fonn, 
 Drifa, Mioll (p. 631) appear also to touch one side of Holda. The 
 Lettish riddles, ' putns skreen, spahrni pill,' and ' putns skreen, 
 spalwas putt'^ mean a rain-cloud and a snotv-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, 
 
 ' Bird flies, wings drip. Bird flies, feathers drop. Stender's Gramm. 2G0.
 
 642 ELEMENTS. 
 
 Hludana p. 256, and others ; in wliich the ideas of the ancients 
 about Terra, Gaia, Ops, Ehea, Oybele, 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 ')(^6ot)v 7ro\vl36retpa, 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. ^ To die was * to 
 sink to the earth,'' ' til iarSar (til moldar) hniga/ ' to kiss the 
 earth,' still more prettily in ON. ' i moffurcett falla ' (Nialss. cap. 
 45), in maternum genus cadere, to fall back into the womb of 
 terra mater} They also said ' iar&ar tnegin kiosa' (vim telluris 
 eligere, r.e. invocare), Ssem. 27^; and as the Greeks made the 
 falling giant acquire new strength the moment he touched the 
 ground, the Edda has ^ aukinn iar&ar megni' (auctus vi telluris), 
 118'', 119^.^ 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: "^uns solt diu erde nicht tragen,' Troj. 491 [conf. "^art 
 cursed from the earth,' Gen. 4. 10-12]. Secrets were entrusted 
 to the earth, as well as to tire 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. zurha : ' 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 ' chreneschruda (dat.) jactare ' by the Roman 
 
 ^ Irstantent (they rise again) fon themo fulen legare, uz fon tlieru axgu, fon 
 i^iex-a falaunsgu, fon themo irdisgen herde, 0. v. 20, 25-8. 
 
 ^ Ancient tombs have been discovered, in which the bodies neither he 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 jjosture 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 : 
 ' ged is fagus clach do 'n lar, is faigse na sin cobhair choibhi,' near as a stone is to 
 the ground, the coibhi's hel}) is nearer still, which seems to imply the earth's prompt 
 assistance as well as the priest's.
 
 EAETH. 643 
 
 ' pur am herbam tollere/ as the Hel. 73^ 7 has hrencurni, an OHG. 
 gloss reincurnes = frum.eiiti, MHG. 'daz reine gras,' Iw. 6446, and 
 grass and 'dei* 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 hinsman. It was a solem.n legal ceremony of heathen 
 times, which the christian Capitulars abolished. Against my 
 interpretation, however, Leo has now set up a Celtic one (cruin- 
 neach coUectus, criadh terra) ,^ 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 ofifers another and no less significant 
 name ; the piece of turf [under which an oath was taken] is 
 called iar&men, iar&ar men ; now ' 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 
 lar&ar men, Erda's necklace, the greensward being very poetically 
 taken for the goddess's jewelry. The solemn ' ganga undir 
 lar&ar men' (RA. 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,^ 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.^ Among the Greeks too, grasping the sod 
 
 1 Zeitschr. f. d. alterth. 2, 163 seq. Malb. gl. 2, 119. 150. 
 
 - Brissonius De regno Pers. 3, 66—71. Ilerod. 4, 127. 5, 18. Curtiusiii. 10, 
 108. Aristotle llhet. ii. 22, 37. Also Judith 2,7: hoiijA^ei.v -yrju kuI voup (Cod. 
 alex. ed. August!) . 
 
 ^ Barthold's Frundsberg p. 58-9. In the Mid. Ages, when a nun was conse- 
 crated, her kinsmen, as a sign that she renounced all earthly possessions, threw 
 eartli over the maiden's arm; conf. Svenska visor 1, 176 : 
 det voro sS manga grefvar bald,
 
 644 ELEMENTS. 
 
 signified taking possession of land, especially in tlie case of 
 emigrants. As Eapliamos sits on the prow of the Argo, Triton 
 appears in human form and presents him with a clod of eortJi as a 
 gift of hospitality. Euphamos takes the symbolic eai'th {jBcoKaKa 
 SaLfioviav), 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.).^ 
 
 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,^ and of every herb except 
 burs ; and then at length the charm is repeated over it. With 
 their seedcorn people mix earth from th-ee 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 X6(f)ot and (f3dpayye<i (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 whova. fairguni 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 (civitas, viz. Nemtsi, Nimptch) 
 in pago silensi, vocabulo hoc a quodani monte, nimis excelso et 
 grandi, olim sibi indito : et hie ob qualitatem suam et quantitatem, 
 cum execrauda gentilitas ibi veneraretur, ah incolis omnibus nimis 
 
 som hade deraf stor harm (great sorrow), 
 
 der de nu kastadf den »narta mull (black mould) 
 
 allt ofver skrin Valborg's arm. 
 
 1 Pindar's Pyth. 4, 21-44. 0. MiiUer'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 
 
 honorahatur.' The commentators say it is tlie Zobtenberg in 
 Silesia (see Suppl.). 
 
 Here and there single stones and rocJis, 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. stanweor&ang , ' bringan to s^awe/ Thorpe pp. 
 380. 396) . This worship of stones is a distinguishing character- 
 istic of Celtic religion/ 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 Glermany, holy stones were 
 either mahlsteine of tribunals or sacrificial stones : oaths were 
 taken 'at ursvolum unnar steini,' ' at enom Jivita lielga steini/ 
 Stem. 165'\ 237^ lieilog fioll 189'\ 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.' - Notice the MHG. phrase : ' to squeeze a stone with 
 
 ^ Conf. Armstrong sub v. earn and clachbrath ; O'Brien sub v. earn ; H. 
 Scbreiber's Feen, p. 17 on tbe menbir and pierres fites, p. 21 on tbe ijierres 
 branlantes. Of spindle-stones I bave spoken, p. 41U. 
 
 - Tbis mode of expression is doubtless veiy old ; bere are specimens from 
 MHG. : ez erbarmet einem steine, Hart. erst, biicbl. 175"2. wjur sin hi'rz<; steinen, 
 swer (wlioso) si weinen sasbe, ze weinen im gescba^lie, Herb. 68<i ; ir klage mobte 
 erbarmen einen stein 89''. erbarmen ein steinhertez herze, Flore I-IDS. ir jamer 
 daz mobt einen t^els erbarmen, Lobengr. p. IG. ez mobt ein stein beweinet ban 
 disc barnuinge, Dietr. 48*. Mark, tbe stones did not weep of tbemselves, but were 
 moved to sympathy by the weeping and wailing of tbe hapless men, which as it
 
 64G ELEMENTS. 
 
 straps, till its veins drop blood/ MsH. 2, 235'^, suggested no 
 doubt by the veins which run through some stones (see Sup pi.). 
 
 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), Douar, Uogi, Holda. 
 Fire, lightning under Donar, Loki. Air, wind under Wuotan, 
 rr6. Earth under Nerthus and many others, mentioned on 
 p. 641-2. 
 
 were penetrated their ears. So in Holberg (Ellefte juni 4, 2) : horte jeg eu sukken 
 og hylen, som eu steeyi maatte grade ved. And Ovid (Met. 9, 303) : moturaque 
 duras Verba qiieror silices. Luke 19, 40 : oi Xidoi KeKpd^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 ; ^ 
 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 
 
 • 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 harm him ; one single shrub she 
 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) uiiqucthandes so filo antkeunian scolda, that is 
 endagon ertha bivoda, hrisidun thia hohuu hcrgos, harda sienos clubuu, feliso^ 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. 148. 
 307), in this case the mourning for Baldr, so like that for the Saviour. Herbert 
 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, 3'', and all the objects 
 there appealed to, offer their help. 
 
 VOL. II. ^■^^ P
 
 648 TREES AND ANIMALS. 
 
 higher beings dwells animals that wait upon them. The two 
 classes can hardly be separated, for incori-ect 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.i Trees are also consecrated to individual dsemons, 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 vi/xco, then nimid 
 also may answer to Gr. i/e/io?, Lat. nemus, a woodland pasture, 
 a grove, a sacrum silvae (p. 69).^ Documents of 1086 and 1150 
 
 * 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 : 
 fons 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- 
 nouian wood, the nemus of Neithus, the Slav lucus Zutibure, the Prussian grove 
 Eomowe. Among the Esthonians it is held infamous to pluck even a single leaf 
 m the sacred grove : far as its shade extends (ut umbra pertingit, RA. 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 Dag5 is in 
 Esth. Hioviah, because there is a consecrated wood near the farmhouse of HioJwt 
 (Thorn. Hiiirn.). "^ 
 
 - Like helid (heros), gimeinid (communio), frumid, pi. frumidas (AS. frym'Sas, 
 pnmitiae), band (clamor, inferred from Tacitus's baritus). 
 
 3 Can nimid have been a heathen term for sacrifice ? Ahnemen in the 13th cent, 
 mennt mactare, to slaughter (used of cattle), Berthold p. 46, as we still say ahthun, 
 abschneiden, Ulph. ufsneijmn ; Schmid's Schwab, wtb. 105 ahnehmen 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 Nlmodon, Nlmeden (Moser's Osnabr. gescli., urk. 31. 
 56. 8, 57. 84) ; the resemblance may lead to something further 
 (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 : ' vota ad arhores facere 
 aut ibi candelam seu quodlibet munus deferre ; arborem colore ; 
 votum ad arborem persolvere ; arbores daemonibus consecratas 
 colore, et in tanta veneratione habere, ut vulgus nee ramum nee 
 suradiini audeat umpidare.' It is the AS. treow-weorffiing (cultus 
 arborum), the ON. biota lundinn (grove), Laudn. 3, 17. The 
 Acta Bened. sec. 2 p. 841 informs us: ^ Adest quoque ibi (at 
 Lutosas, now Leuze) non ignoti miraculi fag us (beech), sicbter 
 quam lumiiiaria 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 Rosenplanter's Beitr. 9, 12, that only a few 
 years ago, in the parish of Hai-jel, 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} Of the Thunder-god's holy oak an 
 account has been given, pp. 72-3-4. 171. 184; and in Gramm. 
 2, 997 the OHG. scaldeih (ilex) is compared with the AS. names 
 of plants scaldhyfel, scaldjjyfel 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, neman would therefore be to cut, kill, divide, and nimidas the victims slain 
 iu the holy grove, uuder trees ? Couf. wliat is said in the text of the Langobardic 
 tree of sacrifice. Celtic etymologies seem rather out of place for this plainly Saxou 
 Indiculus. Adelung already in Mithrid. 2, 65. 77 had brought into the field Nemetes 
 and nemet (temjilum) ; Ir. naomh is sanctus, neamh (gen. nimhe) coelum, niem- 
 headh land consecrated, belonging to the church. 
 
 ' The superstition of the Lausitz Wends holds that there are woods which 
 yearly dcinaiul a human victim (like the rivers, p. 491); some person must lose his 
 life in them : 'hohla dyrbi kojzde Ijeto jeaeho czloweka mjecz,' Lausitz men. 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 arhorem, in qua suspense corio cuncti qui 
 aderant terga vertentes arbori celerius equitabant, calcaribus 
 cruentantes equos, ut unus alterum posset praeire, atque in eodem 
 cursu retroversis manihus in corium jaculabantur. Sicque parti- 
 culam modicam ex eo comedendam superstitiose accipiebant. Et 
 quia stulta illic persolvehant 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 cultiim legis 
 majorum suorum, quos nominatim bellicosissimos asserebaut.' 
 When Eomuald was gone to Naples, 'repente beatissimus Barbatus 
 securim accipiens et ad votum pergens, suis manibus iiefandam 
 arborem, in qua per tot teniporis spatia Langobardi exitiale sacri- 
 legium perficiebant, defossa hamo a radicibus incidit, ac desuper 
 terrae congeriem fecit, ut nee indicium ex ea quis postea valuerit 
 reperire.'' ^ 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 pioles 
 in honour of divine beings, that the Goths of Jornandes truncis 
 suspendehant 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," hence the whole place was named ' ad 
 votum.'' What was the meaning of hurling javelins through the 
 suspended skin, is by no means clear ; in the North it was the 
 custom to shoot through a hanging raio oxhide (Fornm. sog. 3, 18, 
 4, 61), as a proof of strength and skill. Doing it backwards 
 
 ^ Another Vita Barbati (ibid. p. 112) relates as follows : ' Nam quid despica- 
 bilius credendum est, quam ex mortuis auimalibus non carnem sed corium accipere 
 ad usum comestionis, ut i^ravo errori subjecti Langobardi fecerunt ? qui suarum 
 festa solennitatum equis praecurrentibus unus altero praecedente, sicut mos erat 
 geiitilium, arhori ludificae procul uon satis Benevento vota sua solvehant. Suspensa 
 itaque putredo corii in banc arhorem divam, equorum sessores versis post tergum 
 brachiis ignominiam corii certabant lanceolis vibrare. Cumque lanceolis esse 
 vibrata pellis mortua cerneretur, veluti pro remedio animae ex hac illusione corii 
 partis mediae factam recisionem gustabant. Ecce quali ridiculo vanae mentis 
 homines errori subjacebant pestifero ! ' 
 
 - 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.'^ Why the 
 particle of skin that was knocked 6ut should be eaten, it is hard 
 to say ; was it to indicate that they were allowed to participate 
 in the sacrifice? (p. 4G ; 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 greiv 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 frau, 
 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 asJc, to this veiy 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),'^ (conf. Chap. XXVII., Ronn). 
 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), OHG. 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 
 
 ^ So the best he.ad had to be touched backwards, RA. 396 ; so men sacrificed 
 with the liead turned away (p. 493), and threw backwards over their heads (p. 028). 
 
 - A scholium on Ad. of Bremen's Hist. eccl. (Pertz, scr. 7, 379) is worth 
 quoting: ' Propo ilhid templum (upsaheuse) est arbor maxima, late ramos extendeus, 
 aestate et hiemc semper vircns : cujus ilia generis sit, nemo scit. Ibi etiam est fons, 
 ubi sacriticia Paganorum solent exerceri, et homo vivus immergi, qui dum im- 
 mergitur (al. inveuitur), ratnm erit votum populi.' To sink in water was a good 
 sign, as in the ordeal (KA. 924; conf. Chap. XXXIV., Witch's bath). 
 
 ^ Esculus Jovi sacra, Pliny Ki, i (5).
 
 652 TREES AND ANIMALS. 
 
 called ellorn, ell-horn.'^ 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).- The juniper, wacholder, plays an impor- 
 tant part in the marchen of machcmdelhoom ; in the poem of the 
 Mirror's adventure, fol. 38, occurs the mysterious statement : 
 
 Fraw Wecholfer, ich sich Dame Juniper, I see 
 
 daz du ir swester bist, that thou her ^ 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 disregai-ded the warning, and 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.'^ 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, liomesprites ; they are called in Swed. 
 
 ' AS. elle7i. The Cauones editi sub Eadgaro rege, cap. 16 (Thorpe, p. 396), 
 speak of the sorcery practised ' on ellenum and eac on o'Srum mislicum treowum ' 
 (in sambucis et in aliis variis arboribus). 
 
 - 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.] 
 
 ^ My faithless lover's. 
 
 ■• 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 this addition, that at 
 the second stroke blood flowed from the root, the hewer then went home, and soon 
 fell sick.
 
 TSEES. 653 
 
 ho-trdd, in Dan. hoe-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. 
 Heldeub. 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 
 B.osegarden enclosed by a silken thread. In Sweden? they call 
 these gardens elftrdd-gardar. 
 
 The Greek dryads ^ and hamadryads have their life Ihiked to a 
 tree, and as this withers and dies, they tliemselves 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.^ 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 : 
 
 Hie etiam Cereale nemus violasse securi 
 dicitur, et lucos ferro temerasse vetustos. 
 Stabat in his ingens annoso rohore quercus, 
 saepe sub hac dryades festas duxere choreas . . . 
 Contremuitj gemitumque dedit Deoia 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 Kuhlilndch. 122). An Austrian marchen (Ziska 
 38-42) tells of the stately ^r, 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 pi7ie (fichte) whoso bark the 
 boy splits with a gold and silver horn. Magic spells banish the 
 ague into f ran 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. Mai'tin, ed. Amst. 1G65, p. 457 : ' Dum in vico quodam tem- 
 plum antiquissimura diruisset, et arhorem pinum, quae fano crat 
 proxima, esset aggressus excidere, tum vero antistes illius luci 
 ceteraque gentilium turba coepit obsistere ; et cum iidem illi, dum 
 templum evertitur, imperaute domino quievissent, succidi arhorem 
 
 * AS. gloss, u-iidu-elfcnne, wood-elfins, fem. pi. 
 
 ^ ' Nou sine bamadryadis fate cadit arborea trabs.' Ausonius.
 
 654 TEEES AND ANIMALS. 
 
 11011 patiehantur. lUe eos sedulo commonere, nihil esse religionis 
 in stipite ; Deum potius^ cui serviret ipse, sequerentui* ; arborem 
 illam exscindi oportere, quia asset daemoni dedicata' (see Suppl.). 
 A great deal might be written on the sacred ness 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 
 heir, 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 hei'oes. 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 plo7npe, the Frisians pompe : strictly speaking, 
 the broad leaves floating on the sea are poinpebledden, and the 
 fragrant white flowers, golden yellow inside, swannehlommen 
 (flores cygnei) ; which recals the names given at p. 489, nix- 
 blume, ndckhlad, 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;^ our 
 Gudrunlied (1373) knows all about it, and furnishes Herwic of 
 Sewen or Selanden with a sky-blue flag : ' sehleter 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, Bralima 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 he adds, that the people are to this day very careful in picking and carrying the 
 plomisen: if you fall with the flower in your hand, you get the falling sickness. 
 Plomben, our plumpfen, ON. pompa, 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 oblique 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 metarnorjoJiosis 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). 
 
 Quadrupeds. — 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.^ The 
 other horses of the ases are enumerated by Ssem. 44* and Sn. 18, 
 without specifying to which they belonged. Several names are 
 formed with ' faxi ' (jubatus, comatus, OHG. vahso), as Skinfaxi 
 (Saem. 32. Sn.ll), Gullfaxi (Sn. 107-10), Hrtmfaxi {Ssem. 32. 
 91. Sn.ll), Freyftxi (Vatnsd. 140-1). Of these, Gullfaxi the 
 gold-maned belonged to giant Hrungnir, Skinfaxi the shiny- 
 
 • Old riddle on O^inn and Sleipnir in the Hervararsaga : ' 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 i)iece with our old habits of speech ; tluis 
 in the Weisthiimer it is said the olhcers uf the court shall come to the assize with J 
 mouths, meaning three men on horseback and a dog.
 
 (joQ TREES AND ANIMALS. 
 
 maned was tlie steed of Day, and Hrimfaxi the rimy-raaued 
 (p. 641) of Night. But even Faxi by itself is a name for horses, 
 e.g-, Fornald. sog. 2, 168. 508. Arvahr (early-waker) , AUvi&r 
 (all-wise) are horses of the sun-chariot, Saem. 45. Sn. 12 ; on 
 Arvakr's ear, on Alsvinn's ^ hoof, there were runes written ; also 
 runes 'a Sleipnis tonnom (teeth) ,^ Sa3m. 196% as well as on the 
 beards paw and the wolPs claws. ^ Sva&Ufari 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 AlsviSr; he is said to be still alive 
 in Ardennes forest, where you may hear him neigh every year on 
 Midsummer day (Quatre fils Aimon ISC'"). The track of Schim- 
 ming's shoe stands printed on the rock, Vilk. saga cap. 37 (see 
 Suppl.). 
 
 The Freyfaxi in Vatnsdselasaga was owned by a man named 
 Brandr, who is said to have worshipped it (at hann hef'Si atrunaS 
 a Faxa), and was therefore called Faxabrandr. The unpublished 
 saga of Hrafnkell is known to me only from Milller^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 ];aun grip i eigo sinni, er hanom 
 l^otti betri enn annar, J^at var hestr bleikalottr at lit, er hann 
 kallaSi Freyfaxa, hann gaf Frey vin sinom (supra, pp. 93. 211) 
 Jjenna hest hdlfami. a ]?essom hesti hafSi hann sva mikla elsko 
 (love), at hann strengdi J^ess heit (vow), at hann skyldi ]>eixn 
 manui at bana ver^a, er ]?eim hesti ri"Si an hans vilja.' Brand's 
 ' atrunaS ' 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 : ^ Tidings came to 
 the king, that the TrjBudir (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 I'e- 
 plied: 'ei munum ver briota likuesTci Freys, jmat ver hofum leingi 
 
 1 S\'i5r, gen. svinns, like ma'Sr, manns. 
 
 2 Reminding of the Germ. Beast-apologue (Eeinh. cclxiii.). In Fornald. sog. 
 1, 169 Rafn prefers, wrongly I think, the reading ' hof Si,' head. 
 
 » Ed. Skalh. 1698. 1690. 2, 190 cap. 49 ; this cap. is left out in Fornm. sog. 2, 
 189, but inserted at 10, 312.
 
 HORSES. 657 
 
 honutn })ionat ok hefr 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 (jnl sau hans menn stoS- 
 hross nokr viS vegin, er J^eir sog'Su at hann Freyr a3tti). 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 (go'Sin),^ 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 ? ' ' He has often spoken to us, foretold the 
 future, granted plenty and peace (veitti oss ar oc f riS) .' ' 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 horsQs were consecrated to 
 Freyr, and maintained in the hallowed precincts of Ids 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 
 {GidJfaxi, STiinfaxi) ; mon gloar (juba splendet), So3m. 92''^, Ij^sir 
 mon af mari (kicet juba ex equo) 32'', as indeed the Lat. jubar 
 suggests juba, because a mane does radiate, and light sends out 
 
 ^ So that there were other statues standing beside Fi"ey"s.
 
 658 TEEES AND ANIMALS. 
 
 beams in the mannei' of hair.^ Qulltoppr, Silfrintoppr are names 
 of horses whose tails were tied round with gold or silver^ Sn. 44. 
 The names Oyllir and Gler (golden, glitteringj 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 entry, 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 (8, 831; conf. 2, 541). A foal 
 was esteemed even purer and nobler than a horse (see Snppl.).^ 
 
 Tacitus (Germ. 9, 10), after saying ' lucos ac nemora conse- 
 crant,^ adds : ' Proprium gentis, eqiiorum quoque praesagia ac 
 monitus experiri. Puhlice aluntur, iisdem nemo7'ibus ac lucis, 
 candidi et nullo tnortali opere contadi, quos presses sacro curru 
 sacerdos ac rex vel princeps civitatis comitantur, himiitusque ac 
 fremitus observant. '^ec ulli auspicio major fides, non solum 
 apud plebem, sed apud proceres, apud sacerdotes : se enim 
 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 auguriis 
 equorum,' without describing them further. A horse's neigh is 
 an omen of good (Sup. I, 239).'^ To warriors victory was fore- 
 tokened by their chargers' neighing (OHG. 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 oi;t of the mane or tail of a saereJ horse were treasured up. 
 Franz Wessel relates, p. 14, 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. 
 
 - A foal's tooth, it seems, was hung about the person, and worn as a safeguard. 
 A MHGr. poet says: ' gevater unde fuU-zant an gruzen uceten sint ze swach,' god- 
 fathers and foal's teeth are too weak in great emergencies, MS. 2, 160^. To let 
 children ride on a black foal makes them cut their teeth easily, Superst. I, 428. 
 From Eracl. 1320. 1485 fill-zene appear to be the milk-teeth shed by a foal (see 
 Suppl.). 
 
 ^ What the breath of a swine has polluted, is set right again by that of the 
 horse (Sup. I, 820. K, 92) ; the hoi'se 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 Grimsborken (Asb. 
 and Moe, no. 38) a foal is suckled by twelve mares, and gets to 
 talk sensibly (see Suppl.). 
 
 And as Mimics 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 
 lor caterpillarg : "'^^palo imponantur in hortis ossa capitis ex 
 eljuino 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.^ This was called a neidstange 
 (spite-stake). Saxo Gram. p. 75 : Immolati diis equi ahscissum 
 caput conto excipieyis, subjectis stipitihus distentos faucium rictus 
 aperuit, sperans se primes 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, obscoeuita- 
 tis apparatum intelligens, silere socios cautiusque se gerere jubet, 
 nee quemquam temere prsecipitare sermonem, ne incauto effamine 
 ullum 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, 
 contum quo equi caput rejixeraiit fluvio citimum 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 : continue namque excussa cervice mens ferentem stipes 
 oppressit. — Egilssaga p. 389 : Egill tok i hond ser heslis staling 
 (hazel rod), ok geek a bergsnaus nockura, pa er vissi til lands 
 inn. yX tokhann liross-lii'ifad' ok seiti up d staungina. silSan veitti 
 
 * Wolves' heads wore in like manuer held opeu with hazel rods and hung up 
 Isengr. 6i5-7-8. Eeiuardus 3, 2'j3. 312. Heiuhart, introd. p. Ixix.
 
 660 TREES AND ANIMALS. 
 
 hann formala ok maelti sva : ' hei- set ek upp ni&staung, ok snj^ 
 ek bessu ni'Si a liond Eiriki koniiagi ok Guunhilda drottningu.' 
 liann sneri hross-lwf&inu inn d land. — At otlier 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 : lokull skar karls hofut a siilu endann, ok risti a runar med 
 ollum |;eim formala sem fyrr var sagdr, si-San drap lokull mer 
 eina (killed a mare), ok opnu^u hana hia briostinu, foirffu 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.^ The Jahrb. 
 of the Meckl. verein 2, 118 says, these horses' heads are nailed 
 transversely on each gable-end (kiihlende) 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 
 Rheetia (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 earher 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.). 
 Preetorius (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. C33-4:). The heathen practice of fastening up animals' 
 heads explains many very old names of places in Germ, and France, as Berhaupten, 
 Tlerhaupten, Roshaupten, 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, 6G7), with the addition in Goldast (Scr. rer. Alem. i. 2, 198j : ' et idcurco 
 Tocatus est ille locus caput equi, quia omnes venatores reliquerant ibi sues caballos, 
 et pedestres ibaut ad venaudum.' 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.
 
 HOESES. 661 
 
 hedsre-stakes ; also that if at niojlit 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/ 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 throwh into the Midsummer fire with a view to 
 magical effects (p. 618).^ 
 
 Preetorius'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 : ' Terram cum tremore 
 infodiunt, quo sortibus eraissis [imm. ?] rerum certitudinem du- 
 biarum perquirant. Quibus finitis, cespite viridi eas operientes, 
 eqiium, qui maximus inter alios habetur et ut sacer ah his vener- 
 atur, super Jixas in terram duorum cuspides hastiliwm inter se 
 transmissorum supplici obsequio diicunt, et praemissis sortibus 
 quibus id explicavere prius, per hunc quasi divinuTn denuo 
 aurjurantur ; et si in duabus his rebus par omen apparet, factis 
 completur j 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 
 cahallum mirae magnitudinis, et pingueni, 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 modo solebaut praediscere. Hastae novem dis- 
 ponebantur humo, spatio unius cubiti ab invicem separatae. 
 Strato ergo caballo atque frenato, sacerdos, ad quem pertinebat 
 custodia illius, tentum freno jjer jacentes hastas transversum 
 dueehat tor, atque roducehat. Quod si pedibus inoffensis hastisque 
 
 ' Conf. Fornald. sijg. 2, 1G8. 300, what is said of Faxi's hross-hauit . 
 
 2 Wliy should the monks in tlie abbey have a caput caballinum ? Keinhar.^us 
 3, 2032. 2153. Does the expression spun out of a dead horse's head ' in Burc.ad, 
 WalJis i, 2, mean euchautud ?
 
 662 TREES AND ANIMALS. 
 
 indisturbatis equus transibat, signum habuere prosperitatis, et 
 securi pergebant; sin autem^ quiescebant/ — Here tbe lioly steed 
 is led across nine spears lying a cubit apart from one another, in 
 Dietmar's older narrative over the points of ttoo 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 equumiitxxlo possidebat (numen), c\i]\x& j iibae ant caudae 
 pilos convellere nefarium ducebatur. Hunc soli sacerdoti pascendi 
 insidendique jus erat, ne divlni animalis usus quo frequentior hoc 
 vilior haberetur. In hoc equo, opinione Rugiae, Svantovitits (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,^ 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 miuistrorum opera disponi solebat, in quorum 
 quolibet hinae e traverso jundae conversis in terram cuspidibus 
 figebantur, aequali spaciorum magnitudine ordines disparante. 
 Ad quos equus ductandae expeditionis tempore, solenni jorecatione 
 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 mutabatnr.' — 
 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 ivhite as in Tacitus, not hlack 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 Supi)!.).
 
 HOESES. 663' 
 
 our children's game) took away their sacred horse from the 
 Lutizers, and rode home to Saxony on it himself: 'Barcardus 
 Halberstatensis episcopus Luiticiorum provinciam ingressus in- 
 cendit, vastavit^ avectoque equo quern pro deo in Rheda^ colebant, 
 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 
 Ehetra, and Saxo and the author of the Vita Ottonis that of 
 Sviatovit at Arkona ? Each of these gods ^ 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 E-iesumwold on 
 the confines of N. and S. Ditmarsen is said to have been a holy 
 wood, in which human sacrifices were offered, and ivhite horses 
 consecrated to gods were maintained.^ 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 Hese 
 or Heseholt.^ In the grove tiuo ivhite 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 staves. 
 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. 
 
 ' Not ' in rheda ' (WedekincT's Notes 1, 173). Ehetra, a chief place of Slav 
 heathenism, placed by Adaiu of Bremen in the land of the Rethaiii, where stands 
 the temple of lledigost ; Dietmar gives the Lutiz to\\Ti in the ' grau Eiedera ' itseK 
 the name of Eiedegost. 
 
 * Sviatovit or Svantevit has been confounded with St. Vitus, sanctus Vitus 
 (couf. 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. 
 
 ■• This Hese-ivnod may however remind us of the ' silva Heisi, Hese ' on the 
 Ruhr in Westph. (Lacombl. no. 6. 17. G4. 2G0) and the ' silva caesia' of Tacitus. 
 
 VOL. II. Q
 
 (664 TREES 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 
 Ae immolatione (fratris Theoderici cisterciensis) sorte inquiritur. 
 Ponihir lancea, calcat equus ; pedevi 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 coloris, propter deos sues non aude- 
 bant aliqualiter equitare.' Dusburg 3, 5 (see Suppl.).^ 
 
 The sacrificing of horses, and the eating of liorseflesh inseparable 
 from it, have been noticed (pp. 47-49). Strabo reports, that the 
 Veneti 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.^ 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 coustructa ' in Jornandes, and 
 the arj^ia of the Scythian kings in Herodotus (see RA. 676, and 
 Suppl.).s 
 
 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 hullocks 
 were sacrificed, and hidls drew the car of the Prankish kings, RA. 
 262. War-chariots continued to have oxen till late in the Mid. 
 Ages : ' capto ducis (Lovaniensis) vexillo, dicto gallice standart, 
 
 1 Sup. M, 35 shews that Esthonians ascribe j)rophetic powers to the horse. 
 
 ^ Ledebour's Eeise nach dem Altai, Berl. 1830. 2, 54-5. 
 
 3 A Sansk. name for the horse is Snbhrdtri, brother of Sri (Lakshmi), because, 
 like her (and Aphrodite) it rose out of the sea-waves, Pott 2, 407. Still more 
 natural is the identification of horse and ship.
 
 OXEN. 665 
 
 opere plumario a regina Angliae ei misso, quod fastu superbiae 
 quadriga bourn ferebat/ Chapeaville 2, 69 (an. 1129). A chariot 
 drawn hj four white oxen in Lorraine occurs in ScbefFer's Haltaus, 
 p. 251. In Plutai'ch^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 bulFs head in their arms (Mascov 1, lo). 
 At Hvitabaer the people worshipped an ox (Fornald. sog. 1, 253), 
 at Upsal a coiu {I, 254. 260-6. 270-2 ; see Suppl.). 
 
 Whilst among horses the stallion is more honoured than the 
 mare, among neat the coiu seems to take the lead. Kine were 
 yoked to the car of Nerthus [and two milch- kine to the ark of 
 Jehovah] . The Bdda speaks of a cow named Aud'ambla, 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 ' atriina^r a ku.^ King Eysteinn of 
 Sweden put faith in a cow called Sthiija : ^hun var sva, miok 
 blotin (so much worshipped), at menn mattu eigi standast lat 
 hennar' ; they used to lead her into battle, Fornald. sog. 1, 25i. 
 260. King Ogvaldr carried a sacred cow with him everywhere, 
 by sea and by land, and constantly di'ank of her milk (Fornm. 
 sog. 2, 138. 10,302).! 
 
 The horns of cows, like the manes of horses, were adorned 
 with gold: ' gullhyrndar kfr,' Saem. 73^*. 14P; 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 gaus (bos and vacca), root go, ace. gam, Pers. 
 ghau, gho, corresponds to Lett, gohw, OHG. chuo, AS. cil, ON. 
 hyr. What is more important, ' go ' likewise means terra and 
 plaga (Bopp's Gram. § 123. Gloss, p. 108"^), so that it touches 
 the Gr. <yd, 777. Taking with this the presence of Ait&ambla in 
 the Norse history of creation, we can perhaps connect rmta (the 
 earth) and R'uulr (p. 251) with our rind armentum ; it is ti'ue 
 this 'rind' originally began with hr (Grafi'4, 1171), and is the 
 
 ' What can the black coxa mean in the following phrases? ' the h. c. crushes 
 him ' (Hiipers Livliind. idiot. 131) ; ' the b. c. has trodden him ' (Etner's Apoth. 
 514). The Hor. Belg. 6, 97. 101 (conf. 223) speaks ' van ouser goedeu blaren coe, van 
 miere blaren coe ' ; and Jr. elfeum. cxx. of the blue cow. It is dangerous to Ivill 
 the black cow, Sup. I, 887. A Slovc'nic name for the rainbow is w«i'ra=black cow. 
 [Eug. ' the b. c. has trodden ou his foot,' of sorrow, esp. bereavement.]
 
 666 TREES AND ANIMALS. 
 
 AS. hrj'Serj hro'Ser, but Avho can tell whether ' rinde ' cortex was 
 not once aspirated too ? EvpcairT], the name of one quarter of 
 the earthj must surely also mean earth {evpeia the broad), and on 
 p. 338 I made a guess that Europa, whom Zeus courted in the 
 shape of a bull, must herself have been thought of as a cow, like 
 lo ; 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.^ 
 The Israelites also made a burnt- offering of 'a red heifer (Goth, 
 kalbo) upon which never came yoke,^ Numb. 19, 2 (see Suppl.). 
 
 The hoar and the /le-^oai were holy sacrificial beasts (p. 50-1-2), 
 the boar^ dedicated to Freyr (p. 213), he and she goats to Thorr 
 (p. 185), as goats are even yet considered devil's creatures. ^ To 
 that divine hoar'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 liices- 
 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. ])er, AS. 
 bfir (Goth. bais?). 
 
 3 While God (Wuotan) made the 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 GeirroSr, 
 there was ^eingi hundr sva olmr, at a hann mundi hlaupa/ the 
 king bade seize the dark-cloaked giant, ' er eigi vildo hundar 
 ara^a,^ Ssem. 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 : 
 
 ovS' dpa T7]\e/jba')(0'i cSev avriov, ovB' ivorjcrev, 
 ov <ydp TTcb Travreacn, deol ^alvovrat €vapj€2<i, 
 dW' ^08vaev<i re Kvve<i re iSov, Kal p' ou)^ vXdovro, ^ 
 Kvv^7]6/xa} eTepoicre Std aTaOfxolo cfio/Srjdev, 
 
 (the)- did not bark, but fled whining through the tent). — The 
 howling of dogs is ominous (Sup. 1, 493), and gives notice of fire. 
 Sinn is provided with dogs, 'ViSris grey/ Seem. ISl'^ ; so are 
 the norns (p. 410), 'noma grey/ 273'\ 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: 'saga me, 
 hwilc man erost weere ivid" hund sprecende ? ' and the other 
 answers : ' ic ]?e secge, sanctus Petrus.' The Nialss. cap. 158 p. 
 275 contains a spell to save from the power of the watersprite : 
 ' runnit hefr hundr pinn, Petr 'postoli, till Rums tysvar (twice), ok 
 mundi (would) renna it J^ri^ja sinn, e£ ]7ii 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. 
 Iv. ccvii. 446),^ and that with our ancestors the bear passed for 
 the king of beasts (p. xlviii. seq. ccxcv.). A doc. of 1290 (Lang's 
 Reg. 4, 467) presents the surname 'Chuonrat der lieiligbdr' ; with 
 this connect the name Halecbern (Trad, corb. Wig. § 268), the 
 ON. Ilallblorn, 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 Dame cle Paris 2, 272 : he 
 states, from a book or from oral tradition, that tlie Gipsies call the fox picdbleu, 
 coureur des bois, the violi piedyriti, picddure, and the bear vieux or grandplre.
 
 668 TREES AND ANIMALS. 
 
 Asbiorn, AS. Osheorn, OHG. Anspero, and ON. Ashirna, 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. Biorn 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 
 apKTo<; : 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 ' Vetrli&i 
 skald' in Fornm. sog. 2, 202, and a Vetrli&i 3, 107 whose name 
 reproduces his father's name Asbiorn.^ The myth of the wliite 
 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 g{a7it 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, Ge7-i and Frehi, were sacred to O^inn : whatever food was 
 set before him, he gave to them to eat, Sn. 4 ; they were, so 
 to speak, the hounds of the god ( ViSris grey) . I should like to 
 know where Hans Sachs picked np that striking notion of the 
 Lord God having chosen wolves to be His hunting dogs.^ A 
 son of Loki, Fenrisidfr, 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.,^ 
 
 ^ The name Weturlit is also found in the Necrolog. augiense (Mone QS*"). 
 
 " Ed. 1658. i, 499*1 : 'die wolf er im erwelengund ('gan choose), und het sie bei 
 ihm fill- jagdhund.' 
 
 2 Klaproth finds in Japanese books, that the people in Japan worship the inari 
 (fox) as a tutelar god : httle 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 morniug, 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 kindermarchen 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 fressimi, 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. Gats 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) : ' 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 kornbaand paa stoer under 
 aaben himmel ved laden og foe-huset till spurrens fode, at de 
 naste aar ikke skul giore skade (do no harm next year) paa 
 ageren,' Hiorthoi Gulbrands dalen, Kb. 1785. 1, 130; it was a 
 sacrifice ofi'ered to the birds, to keep them from ravaging the 
 crops. It reminds one of the legacy to birds on Walther von 
 der Vogelweide^?! tombstone, whose very name denotes ' pascua 
 avium.' j 
 
 Gods and god'desses often change themselves into birds, but 
 giants possess thjs same power too. The Esthonian god Tarapila 
 fiies from one j4ace to another, p. '77; the Greek imagination 
 pictured icinge/t gods, the Hebrew winged angels, the Old German 
 a maiden with swan's wings. The Norse gods and giants put on 
 an eagle's coatj, arnar-ham, p. 633n., the goddesses a falcon's coat, 
 vals-ham, p. ;^02. Wind is described as a giant and eagle, p. 
 633, and sacrod eagles scream on the mountains : ' orn gol aria,
 
 '670 TREES AND ANIMALS. 
 
 arar gullo/' Seem. 142^ 149^. Wolfram thinks of the earth as a 
 bird, when he says, Wh. 308, 27 : 
 
 so diu erde ir gevidere rert 
 
 unde 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 ' den rode 
 hane galer over taget,' the red cock crows 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 Voluspa 54 sets before us ^Fialarr, fagur-rauffr 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, ViSofnir, perches on Mimamei^Sr, Ssem. 
 109^; with him Finn Magnusen (Lex. myth. 824. 1090) would 
 connect the cock they stick on the Maijpoi^. The Wends erected 
 cross-trees, but, secretly still heathen at hoart, they contrived to 
 fix at the very top of the pole a weathercoci"} 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-steep le was introduced ; 
 it can hardly have been a mere weather-vane at first. Guibertus 
 in Vita sua, lib. 1 cap. 22, mentions a gallus svper 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 birdf s name being 
 the same as that of St. Gallus ; they even left the minster stand- 
 
 ^ Annalen der Churbr. Hannov. lande, 8 jalirg. p. 284. Souk 3 thiuk the cock 
 referred to Peter's denial. 
 
 \
 
 COCK. KAVEN. 671 
 
 ing foi' fear of him : ' monasterio, eo quod Gcdlus, deus ejus, 
 ignipotens sit, tandem omisso ^ (ibid. 106).^ Tit. 407: ' tiz golde 
 ein ar geroetet, gefiuret unde gefunkelt ufjeglich Tcriuze geloetet.' 
 True, the cock is an emblem of vigilance, and the watchman, to 
 command a wide view, must be highly placed ; - 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 hing, 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 cther^s cunning. Two ravens, Huginn and 
 Muninn, 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.^ 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, SB'') 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 i^eXdoov ovk aveaTpe-y\re (Gen. 8, 7), 
 
 > 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 oiif the bells, they 
 suddenly tied, ahquid ibi esse divalis numinis suspicati sunt (Pertz 2, 573). Here 
 the cock does not come into play, the bells do it all. 
 
 " Miinster's Sinnbilder der alten Christen, p. 55. As Gregory the Great explains 
 gallus by ' praedicator ' (0pp., Paris 1705. i, 959. 9G1), 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 quidquid veuturum 
 sit louge prospiciat,' ibid, i, 1283. 
 
 •' in a Slovunic 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, 
 deutsches wtb. Gratz lb33. p. 096.
 
 672 TEEES AND ANIMALS. 
 
 our Teutonic poetizers must make Mm alight on carrion, Caedm. 
 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. Bom.estic fowls 
 discuss the impending ruin o£ the castle, Deut. sag. 1, 202. In 
 the Helgaqvi^a, Seem. 140-1, a wise bird (fugl fro^huga^r) is 
 introduced talking and prophesying to men, but insists on a 
 temple 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 snahe, KM. no. 1 7. Sigur^r 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 (ig'Sor) give him 
 sound advice, S^em. 190-1. To kill sivallows brings misfortune : 
 ace. to Sup. I, 378 it occasions four weeks' rain ; 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 storh too was held inviolable, he is like swallows 
 a herald of spring ; his poetic name certainly reaches back to 
 heathen times, but hitherto has baffied all explanation. OHG. 
 glosses give odebero, Grafi" 3, 155, udebero, Sumerl. 12, 16, 
 otivaro, odebore, Fundgr. 1, 386, odeboro, Gl. Tross; MHG. 
 adebar only in Diut. 3, 453 ; MLG. edebere, Brun's Beitr. 47, 
 adebar, Reinke, 1777. 2207; M. Neth. odevare, hodevare. Rein. 
 2316. Clignett 191; New Neth. oijevdr ; 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. ot opes) and child-bringer, which last 
 fits in with the faith, still very prevalent, that the stork brings
 
 SWALLOW. STOEK. WOODPECKER. 673 
 
 babies. If^ beside the OS. partic. odan, AS. eaden, ON. au^inn 
 (genitus), we could produce a subst. ud^ ead (proles), all would be 
 straight. The prose word, OHG. storah, AS. sto7'c, ON. storkr, 
 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 looodpecher was held sacred by ancient peoples of Italy, 
 and ranked as the bird of Mars, "Apeo^ 6pvL<; : perched on a 
 wooden pillar {eirl ki,6vo<; ^vXlvov) 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, Mp/xrjvrai, ol 
 TlLKevrlvoi hpvoKoXdiTTov rrjv 68ov rjyecrafiivov, Strabo v, p. 240. 
 And he purveyed for Komulus and Remus when the wolf^s 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,^ 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 merzajiilli (March-foal, Staid. 2, 199. 
 Tobler 310'-), the simplest explan. is from picus martins ; yet fiiilimay be for vcigeli, 
 and so March-fowl or Martin's fowl ; see more in Chap. XXXV., Path-crossing.
 
 674 TREES AND ANIMALS. 
 
 chimney. And to tliis 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. ^ The green-pecker has the alias giessvogel, Austr. 
 glssvogel (Stelzhamer's Lieder pp. 19. 177), goissvogel (Hofer 1, 
 306), Low G. giltvogel, gietvogel, gnffugd (Ehrentr. 1. 345), Engl. 
 rainhird, rainfowl, because his cry of ' geuss, giess, giet^ (pour !) 
 is said to augur a downpour of rain. About him there goes a 
 notable storv : When the Lord God at the creation of the world 
 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, ' from henceforth thou shalt wear black hose, and 
 never slake thy thirst at the brook, but pick the raindrops ofi" 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, 'pjingstvogel, regenpfeifer, but a snipe (Hofer 1, 306. 341), 
 whose cry likewise forebodes a storm (p. 184), or the curlew 
 (numenius arquata), Fr. jpluvier (pluviarius). Boh. Jcoliha, Pol. 
 
 ^ Eytchkov's Journ. thro' the Euss. Emp., trsl. by Hase, Eiga 177^. p. 124,
 
 WOODPECKER. MAGPIE. SPARROWHAWK. CUCKOO. 675 
 
 Jculig, hullik, LG. regenivolp, ivaterwolp (Brem. wtb. 6, 286). In 
 our own 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. ^ The cry of this woodpecker (zhunia) the Servians 
 call klikchi, kliknuti, kliktati, as they do that of the vila [p. 436, 
 but there wrongly ascribed to the tapping noise]. Wood- 
 peckers by their tapping shew the way to the river (Lay of Igor 
 79) ; 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 vie, magpie (pica) . In ON. her name is 
 shacfi (masc, says Biorn), Swed. shata, Dan. shade, which may 
 be referred to the abstract notion of damnum, OHG. scado ; at 
 the beginning of the Volsunga saga there occurs a man's name 
 Shad'i, which Finn Magn. (Lex. 699) declares to be the goddess 
 Skacfi. 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 inagpie, because her chatter warns the people of the 
 wolfs approach : ' porter la crepe (pancake) a la pie,' Mem. des 
 antiq. 8, 451. 
 
 In Old Bohemian songs the sparrowhawk (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," 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 ' 
 
 ^ Carniol. ^una, Pol. Boh. zluwa, Boh. also wlha, wolga. 
 
 2 Goth, giiuks ? OHG. gouh (Hoffm. 5, 6), AS. gedc, ON. gaukr ; MHG. gouch, 
 MS. 2, i;-52i>, also reduplicated (like cuculus) gucgouch, MS. 1, 132*, guggouch, MS. 
 1, 1GG-' ; our gukuk, kukuk, Up.G. guggauch, gutzgouch.
 
 676 TREES AND ANIMALS. 
 
 chides him, shepherds declare that he is drowned or kidnapped. 
 There is a remarkable line : 
 
 Tempus adest veris ; cuculus, modo rumpe soporem.^ 
 
 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 : ' gugger, wie lang leb i no ? ' and in Lower Saxony : 
 
 hiihuJc 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 (Schiitze^s Hoist, idiot. 2, 363). In some 
 districts ^ the rhyme runs : 
 
 hukuh beckenknecht, 
 
 sag mir recht, 
 
 wie viel jar ich leben soil ? ^ 
 
 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 Oudiu (De script, eccles. 2, 327-8, ed. Lips. 
 1722) gives the Conflictus veris et hiemis under the name of ' Mllo, sancti Amandi 
 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 they 
 fall into the 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 
 Conflictus. 
 
 2 Aegid. Albertini narrenhatz, 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 uud ernst ' c. 391. 
 
 ' So in Mod. Greek : kovico /xov, kovkuki. /xov, ki dpyvpoKovKixKi /xov, ir6aovs xpj^/oi/j 
 di va ^TjiTw ;
 
 CUCKOO. 677 
 
 whicli 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 : 
 
 goh, goh, sitt pa quist (on bough), 
 
 sag mig vist (tell me true], 
 
 hur manga ar (how many years) 
 
 jag o-gifc 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, sdrgijh ar smorgok.^ 
 
 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 we 
 
 read : 
 
 daz weiz der gouch, der im fiir war 
 
 hat gegutzet hundert jar. 
 
 Caesarius heisterbac. 5, 1 7 : ' Narravit nobis anno praeterito 
 (? 1221) Theobaldus abbas eberbacensis, quod quidam conversus, 
 cum nescio quo tenderet, et avem, quae cuculiis dicitur a voce 
 nomen habens, crehrius cantantem audii'et, vices iuterruptionis 
 numeravit, et vigiuti duas inveniens, easque quasi pro omine 
 
 ^ Arndt's Rcii-o (lurch Schw. 4, 5 — 7. The snipe is in Sweil. korspjok, ON. 
 hrossayaukr (horse- iuckoo), and she too has the gift of divination, p. 184.
 
 678 TEEES AND ANIMALS. 
 
 accipiens, -pro annis totidem vices easdem. sihi coniputavit : ' eia ' 
 inquitj ' certe viginti duobus annis adhuc vivam, ut quid tanto 
 tempore mortificem me in ordine ? redibo ad seculum, et seculo 
 deditus viginti annis f ruar deliciis ejus ; duobus annis qui super- 
 sunt poenitebo/ — 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 fans ris, 
 
 ' jou te conjur ' fait il^ ' de oris, 
 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 ' timehird ' in Ms. 1, 88* : ' diu 
 vroide vlogzet (joy flies) gelich dem zUvogel 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 : ' dum sciat inde natam 
 exprobrationem foedam putantium vites per imitationem cantus 
 alitis temporarii, quern cuculum vocaut. 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 245'^ : 
 
 wenn der gugger chond gegugga end ^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 fro'Shuga'Sr), ' began to sing, One cucu.'
 
 CUCKOO. 679 
 
 they imagine that lie never sings before the 3rd of April, and 
 never after Midsummer : 
 
 am dretta 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 haiuJc. 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,^ p. 113 of the Lat. ed., 
 has a remarkable account of the worship of a Slavic god Zyvie : 
 ' 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 vitae " auctor habe- 
 batur, longam et prosperam valetudinem. Praecipue tamen ei 
 litabatur ab iis qui primnm cantum cuculi audivissent, ominantes 
 superstitiose tot annas se victiiros quoties vocem repetiisset. Opin- 
 abantur enim supremum hunc universi moderatorem transfigurari 
 in ciiculum 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- 
 morpliosis, just as that Saxon rhyme called him 'kukuk vani 
 haven.' 
 
 To the Servian haiduks it betokens evil when the kuJcavitsa 
 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 wlule the cuckoo is silent (enn gaukriun ]?ag(Si). 
 
 The cuckoo can prophesy both good and ill ; in dealing with 
 him (as with other birds of enchantment, owls, magpies) you 
 
 > Kronika polska przez Prodosza, Warsz. 1825, and in Latin ' Chronicon 
 Slavosarmaticum Procosii,' Varsav. 18"27 ; 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. 
 
 - zywy, alive ; zywie, to sustain life, nourish. 
 
 II. K
 
 680 TEEES AND ANIMALS. 
 
 have to weigh your words and questionSj 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 (/awfe. A MHGr. poem (Fragm. 38^) has: ^peterlin und 
 louch hat hegucket 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 significari, 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 cuchoo on her staff, and a bas-relief repi'esenting 
 the wedding procession of Zeus and Hera has a cuckoo 'perched on 
 Zeus's sceptre (as on that of the Lombard king) ;i 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 Gpova^ (from 0p6vo<;, seat of the 
 Thunderer? supra p. 183) or Qopva^, received after that the 
 name of 6po<i kokkv'^lov (Pausanias ii. 36, 2). Well, and we have 
 gowk's-hills in Germany : a Gauchsherg near Kreuznach (Widder's 
 Pfalz 4, 36), others near Durlach and Weinsberg (Moneys Anz. 6, 
 350), a Guggisherg in Switzerland (Joh. Miiller, 1, 347. 2, 82. 
 Tschachtlan p. 2), Gockerliherg (KM. no. 95) ; the name might 
 be accounted for veiy 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 Gouchesherc. 
 
 Here the men of Gauchsberg are shown up as talking wisely and 
 acting foolishly ; Gauchsberg is equivalent to Narrenberg (fooFs 
 
 1 Welckeron 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). ^ As far back as the 10th cent, gouh has the side-mean- 
 ing of fool (N. ps. 48, 11. 93, 8. urheizkouh, war-fool, N. Bth. 
 175); the same everywhere in the ]3th (Walth. 22,31. Trist. 
 8631. 18215), though commonly with a qualifying adj. or gen. 
 pi. : ich tumber gouch, MS. 1, 65^. tumber denn ein gouch, Troj. 
 8126. 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, 468». rehter witze ein gouch, MS. 2, 124^ der 
 niffire ein goichelin (dim.), and gouchgouolt (augm.), Ben. 209. 
 The ON. gaukr is likewise arrogans morio. Hans Sachs occa- 
 sionally uses GcmcJiherg^ in the same sense, ii. 4, llO'^ (Kempten 
 ii. 4, 220^), extr. from Goz 1, 52. Yet originally in Gauchsberg 
 the bird himself may very well have been meant in a mystic sense 
 which has fallen dark to us now (see Suppl.).^ 
 
 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, gduchelin formerly meant 
 bastard (Nib. 810, 1. Aw. 1, 46), as the Swiss giigsch 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 deviPs 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 ' the cuckoo and his clerh (or sexton) ' ! by which clerk is 
 meant the Jioopoo (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 Iwoiooo any further ; does the 
 
 ' Hence we find, as substitutes for it, Affenherc (Docen's Misc. 2, 187) ; Affen- 
 berc and NancnUil, MsH. 3, 200^'; AJ'enta'l, ibid. 213;^. Winsbeke 45,7. Eeuner 
 16469 ; Apenbery and Narrenberg in the Plattd. ' Narragonia ' 77'^ 137'' ; Esclsberc, 
 Diut. 2, 77. Animals whose stupidity was proverbial of old, are the ox, ass, ape, 
 goat, goose, gowk and jay : vi'5 osvinna wpa, Sicm. 25'^. atrunur apa 55-'. Notk. ps. 
 57, 11 has ruoh (stultus), i.e. hruoh, AS. hroc (graculus, Gramm. 3, 361). 
 
 2 Much oftener Scluilksbern (rogxie's hill) in the phrase ' in dtu schalksperg 
 hawen (hew) ' i. 5, o24''. iii. 3, 28''. 54^. iv. 3, 20^. Sl^. 40* ; the reason of which I 
 do not know. ' Sc]i(ilkxber(/ wine grows in Frauconia.' ' Heuricus dictus de Scalkes- 
 bergh,' Spilker 2, 148 (an. 1268). 
 
 ^ Those who crave other explanations, will find plenty in Mone's Anz. 6, 350 
 seq. ' Gouchsberg is Caucasus, as Elberich is the sjjirit of Elburj, diabulus the 
 Persic div,' and so forth.
 
 G82 TEEES AND ANIMALS. 
 
 one sing to tlie 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 ijeewit has the same things said of 
 him. 
 
 The froth on willows, caused by the cicada spumaria, we call 
 JcuJcuJcs-speichel, Swiss guggersjjeu, Engl. cucTcoo-spit, -spittle, Dan. 
 giogespyt, but in some places witch's spittle, Norweg. trold- 
 kiaringspye :^ 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. 
 gouchesampfera, Swiss gxiggersauer, AS. gedcessure, Dan. gioge- 
 mad, giogesyre, it being supposed that he loved to eat it ; our 
 hukulisbrot, gauclilauch, Fr. pain de coucou, panis cuculi. Cuckoo- 
 flower : kuhukshlume, gauchhlume, flos cuculi. Pimpernel : gaucli- 
 heil, etc., guckganchdorn, Fischart's Geschichtskl. 269^. 
 
 The Slavs all make this bird feminine, and see nothing bad, 
 nothing fiendish iii it : zezhulice sits on the oak, and bewails the 
 passing away of spring, Koniginh. MS. 174. The Servian kiiJca- 
 vitsa was once a maiden, who wept her brother's death till she 
 was changed into the bird ; ' sinia (gray) kukavitsa,' Vuk 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. 
 '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. 
 
 Bobin redbreast is on no account to have his nest disturbed, or 
 ihe house will be struck with lightning : it is the redstart's nest 
 
 ^ Summer-freckles in Bavar. gugker-schegJ;en, cuckoo-spots, Schm. 2, 27 ; conf. 
 Hofer 1, 337.
 
 REDBEEAST. TITMOUSE. 683 
 
 that draws down the flash. The latter the Swiss call husr'otlieli 
 (house-redliug) ; if you tease him or take him out, your cows 
 will give red milk (Tobler 281). Were these birds sacred to 
 Donar the red-bearded ? And has that to do with the colour of 
 their throat and tail ? They say the redbreast drops leaves and 
 flowers on the face of a murdered man [or ' babe ^] whom he 
 finds in the wood; did he do this in the service of a god^ who 
 therefore would not suS'er him to be molested ? 
 
 The tiny titmouse^ whom he called gossip, was able to outwit 
 even Reynard himself. The weisthiimer tell us in what estima- 
 tion this little forest bird was held, by setting the severest penal- 
 ties on his capture : ' 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 hermeisen, der 
 sal geben ein koppechte hennen und zwelf hunkeln, und sechzig 
 schilling pfenning und einen helbeling,' Dreieicher wildbann 
 (Weisth. 1, 499). 'wer eine kolmeise fienge mit limen ader mit 
 slagegarn, der sal unserme herrn geben eine falbe henne mit sie- 
 ben hiinkeln,^ 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,^ regard it as prophetic and auspicious, 
 and even call a soothsayer sihlneeks.^ Also the Spanish name for 
 the titmouse, cid (lord), or cid paxaro (lord sparrow), is worth 
 considering. Titmouse, wren and woodpecker (bee-wolf) are 
 confounded in popular belief; what is meant is the tiniest 
 prettiest bird (see Suppl.). 
 
 • Meise, OHG. meisfi, AS. mAse, Nethl. meze, Fr. mesange, O.Fr. mesengo. 
 
 2 Lith. zyle, zylcle ; Pol. silvora, Boh. sykora, Buss, zi'nika, siuitsa, Slov. 
 senitsa, Serv. sienitsa. The Lettic name maybe derivable from sinuaht, the Lith. 
 from zynoti (scire), so that the full form would be sinnele, zynle, the sage knowing 
 bird? The jay also is in Lettic sihls. To the Swed. Lapps <((if;«; signifies not 
 only wood-pecker, but superstitious divination ; tayetet is to understand. In view 
 of that, oiir spccht (woodpecker) seems to belong to a lost root spiban, spah, sptihun, 
 whence also spehOn (explorare), and spdhi (sapiens, prudens). 
 
 3 Mag. der lett. lit. gesellsch., Mitau 1838. G, 151.
 
 684 TEEES AND ANIMALS. 
 
 Eeptiles. — Snahes, 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 
 shapeSj 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 : ' His vero diebus, quamvis sacra baptis- 
 matis unda Langobardi abluerentur, tamen priscum gentilitatis 
 ritum tenentes, sive bestiali mente degebant, hestiae siinulacliro , 
 quae vulgo vipera novamdituv , jiectehant colla, quae debite suo de- 
 bebant flectere Creatori. . . . Praeterea Romuald ej usque 
 sodales, prisco coecati errore, palam se solum Deum colore fate- 
 bantur, et in abditis viperae shnulachi'um, 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.^ 
 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 memento abscinderem caput ejus.' A passage in the 
 other Yita also is pertinent here : ' Quinetiam viperam auri 
 vietallo forinatam summi pro magnitudine dei supplici devotione 
 venerari videbantur. Unde usque hodie, sicut pro voto arboris 
 Votum, ita et locus ille Census, devotiones - ubi viperae redde- 
 bantur dignoscitur appellari.' About ' votum ' I expressed my 
 mind, p. 650n. ; ' census ' signifies the Goth, gild, gilstr, OHG. 
 helt, h'elstar (p. 38-9 and E.A. 358). The two words votum and 
 
 ^ As the gold of the swan-rings was made into pots, and what remained over 
 was the goldsmith's profit. 
 
 ' 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 mi'Sgar"Ss-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 Svdfnir 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 ? ^ 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. ncedre, ON. na&ra (also masc. na"Sr, like Groth. 
 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 jfire-spitting beast on the Gartensee (L. di Garda) with 
 Wolfdietrich and a lion, to both of whom it gives enough to do : 
 
 Nun liorent durch ein wunder, wie das tierlein ist genant : 
 es heisst zu welsch ein zunder, zu teutsch ein saribant, 
 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 parents. This 
 agi'ees closely with the statements in the Physiologus (Diut. 3, 
 29, 30. Hoffm. 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 stoJlenwurm (Wyss's Reise ins 
 Berner Oberland, p. 422), and in Salzburg hirgstutze, Schm. 1, 
 196 (see Suppl.). 
 
 ^ ' Summi pro magn. Dei ' may possibly mean ' instead of (worshipping) the 
 majesty of the Most High.' — Tkans.
 
 686 TREES AND ANIMALS. 
 
 Plenty of old tales are still told of home-snakes and unkes} 
 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 Mil them is nnluchy. 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 Volksmarchen (Vienna 1822, p. 51) ; nearly all 
 bring in the milk-drmking ^ and the golden croivn. 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 armfuls. 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).^ 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. unk, gen. unkes, MS. 2, 209^. 206*: ' from copper one divideth gold 
 with an unke's ashes' ; hence an alchymist was called unken-hrenner (Felix 
 Malleolus de nobilitate et rusticitate, cap. 30). By unke is properly meant the 
 rana portentosa (bull-frog?), but often snake or reptUe in general. Like the 
 weasel, it is called caressingly ' miimelein, viiiemal,^ aunty. Schm. 2, 576. 
 
 - Down to the recurring formula : ' ding, iss auch brocken ! ' (thing, eat crumbs 
 too) ; ' friss auch mocken, nicht lauter schlappes ! ' (not only slops) Mone's Anz. 
 8, 530 ; ' friss auch brocken, nicht lauter briihe ! ' ibid. 6, 175. 
 
 3 A similar story of the king of snakes from Litbbenau in the Spreewald of 
 Laiisitz (Biisching's Woch. nachr. 3, 342) in Eeusch no. 74.
 
 I 
 
 SNAKE. 687 
 
 every time gave it warm cow's milk to siqj. 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 (Schm. 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 oflFering 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} 
 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 
 'peena mahtes^ unmolested in the house (Mag. der lett. gesellsch. 
 6,144). There is m?7fc set for them in pots. The Lithuanians 
 also revered snakes, harboured them in their houses, and offered 
 them sacrifices.^ Egyptian snake-worship was witnessed by 
 Herodotus 2, 74. 'Nullus locus sine genio, qui per anguerii 
 plerumque ostenditur,^ Serv. ad Aen. 5, 95, 
 
 Snakes were devised as a charm in swords and on helmets 
 (Seem. 142'') : 
 
 liggr me'S eggjo ormr dreyfaSr, 
 enn a valbosto verpr nad'r hala. 
 
 The ormr or yrmlingr was supposed to run from the sword's hilt 
 
 • Voigt's Geschichte Preussens 1, 584. 
 
 2 Seb. Frauk's Weltbuch 55''. Mone's Heidenth. 1, 98. Adam. brem. de situ 
 Daniae, cap. 21, of tbe Lithuauians : ' draconcs adorant cum rolucribus, quibus 
 etiam vivos litaut liomiues, quos a mercatoribus emunt, diligenter omuino probatos 
 ne maciilam in corpore liabeant.'
 
 688 TREES AND ANIMALS. 
 
 (lielz^ hialt) to the point and back again (Kormakss. p. 82-4. 
 Vilk. s. p. 101). Vitege liad 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 dracfie, a non-German word 
 coming from the Lat. draco, Gr. hpciKwv, and introduced very 
 early, OHG. traccJio, AS. draca, ON. dreki. The Elder (or 
 Seemund's) Edda has dreki only once, in the latish Solarl. 127^; 
 elsewhere it is ormr, AS. wijrin, 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'S ' 4541, by night he flies, and 
 hence is called uhtscead'a 4536 (nocturnus hostis, aggressor), and 
 Jijftscea&a (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 the 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 
 skrrSa (repere, to stride), Saem. 186. Sn. 138; and he is the 
 wyrm or di-aca slain by Sigemund and Fitela in Beow. 1765. 
 1779. In the Nib. 101, 2 and 842, 2 he is called lintrache, lint- 
 drache, in the Siegfriedslied 8, 2 Untwurm : 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, linj^s, AS. liiS, 
 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,^ suitable alike to snake 
 and woman ; the derivative weak form linni (masc.) in ON. 
 signifies again coluber, serpens. And Jj{m.hnrg= Lintbiirg, 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, litlie, pliable, give the most suitable meaning, Germ. 
 gelind soft, lindern to mitigate ? — Trans.
 
 DEAGON. 689 
 
 lie upon gold, and are illumined by it ; gold itself was poetically 
 named worm-hed, ON, ormbe'Sr or ormbe'Ss-eldr (wormbed'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 ' 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 (Ssem. 
 188^ 189'^) ; the expression is 'i lyngvi ' (from lyng, heath), and 
 the spot is named Guita-heiSi ; hence in other cases also the word 
 lyngvi, lyngormr (heath-worm) stands for dragon. The Vols. 
 saga c. 17 distinguishes lyngormr a. small snake from drehi a large 
 one; so that our OHG. heimo, OS. heina, AS. hdma, spoken of 
 on p. 387, may be identical with lyngvi ; Vilk. saga c. 17, p, 31 
 expressly calls heima ' allra orma skcmatr ' (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 hced'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 uhtsceaSa, Beow. 4536 ; wintrum froS (wise 
 with years) 4548 ; j^reo hund (300) wintra heold on hrusan (earth) 
 4550; at the same time they are covetous, envious, venomous, 
 spitting flame : niff'draca, Beow. 4540 ; dttorscea&a 5673, fyre 
 befongen 4541, ongan gledum spiwan 4619, deorcum nihtum 
 ricsian 4417. It is said of Fafnir, Seem. 186: ' screi'S af guUi, 
 bles eitri, hristi sik ok bar'Si hof'Si 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^ pi-ovince to extirpate not only the 
 giants, but (what was in a measure the same thing) the dragons ^ 
 in the world : Tborr himself tackles the enormous miSgariSs-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 l^ngorm 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 
 Ragnar 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 features enter deeply into the 
 legend of Siegfried (see Suppl.) } 
 
 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 BpuKcov 
 comes from SepKeiv to look, illumine, flash out, <f)do<i BiSopKe 
 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, ' 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. zmeh is the fiery dragon 
 guarding money, zniii/e 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 Titui-el 3313 — 17 of a similar tale of Eodolz, 
 conf. Parz. 518, 18 and Diut. 3, 59.
 
 DEAGON. BEETLE. 691 
 
 leads to glitter, gold and fire. The Lith. smakas seems borrowed 
 from Slavic; whether connected with AS. snaca,\9, a question. 
 Jungmann says, zmek is not only a dragon, but a spirit who 
 appears in the shape of a wet bird/ usually a chicken, and brings 
 people money; Sup. I, 143 says you must not hurt earth-chicks 
 or house-adders ; Schm. 1, 104 explains erdhiinlein (earth -chicken) 
 as a bright round lustre, in the middle of which lies some- 
 thing dark; conf. geuhuon, 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 rjp 
 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 heetle-worship I am able to disclose. 
 
 We have two old and pretty general terms : OHG. chevor, 
 cheviro, MHGr. kever, kevere, NHG. kdfer, N. Neth. kever, AS. 
 ceafor, Engl, chafer. We have no business to bring in the Lat. 
 caper (which is AS. heefer, 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 kiifermassig for agilis, vivax (Gramm. 
 2, 571. 1013). The AS. has oeafortun, cafertun, for atrium, vesti- 
 bulum ; ' scarabaeorum oppidum ' as it were, because chafers 
 chirp in it ? ^ The second term, OHG. wibil, wehil, MHG. wihel, 
 
 1 Zmoldy is drenched, zmoknuti to wet ; ' mokry gako zmok,' dripping like an 
 earth-sprite. 
 
 ' Here again the female being has the advantage over the male. 
 
 ' Hclbliug, speaking of an ill-shaped garment, starts the query (1, 177), where
 
 B92 TEEES AND ANIMALS. 
 
 NHG. wehel, wiehel, AS. wifel, wefel, Engl, weevil, agrees with 
 Litli. wcibalas, wahalis, Lett, luahbols, and I ti-ace it to webea 
 (weave^ wave) in the sense of our ' leben und weben/ vigere, 
 moveri ; we say^ ' kriebeln und wiebeln ' of the swarming of 
 beetles.-^ 
 
 To the Egyptians the beetle (scarabaeus, Ko.vdapo';, Kdpa(3o<;) 
 was a sacred beings 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 Romans 
 called lucaniis, Nigid. in Pliny 11, 28 (34), with which I suppose 
 is connected the well-known luca hos, lucanus or lucana bos, a 
 name which got shifted from the horned beast to a tusked one, 
 the elephant (Varro 7, 39. 40. 0. Miill. 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. Jiorntroll. 
 Again, a Lat. name for scarabaeus terrester was taurus, Plin. 30, 
 5 (12), which keeps my lucanus bos or cerviis, in countenance. 
 To the female the Bohemians give the further name of babka 
 (granny). 
 
 On p. 183 we came 'across a more significant name, donner- 
 guegi, don7ierpuppe, 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. torhagge, Swed. tortyfvel, Norweg. tordivcl, 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 
 
 miglit be the back and belly of one that was hidden away in such a cJieverpeunt ? 
 He calls the ample cloak a chafer-pound or yard, in whose recesses you catch beetles. 
 This keverpiunt answers to the AS. ceafnrtun. 
 
 ' Slavic names are, Boh. chraust, Pol. chrf},szcz ; Boh. brauk, bruk, prob. from 
 bruchus, jipovKos. [Kuss. zhuk ; the ' gueg ' of S. Germany ?]
 
 BEETLE. CHAFER. 693 
 
 force it has in torsdag (p. 126) and tordon (p. 166); ' bagge/ 
 says Ihre p. 122, denotes juvenis, puer, hence servant of the god, 
 which was afterwards exchanged for dyfvel=diefvul, devil. 
 Afzehns (Sagohafder 1, 12. 13) assures us, that the torbagge was 
 sacred to Thor, that in Norrlandhis larva is called mulloxe (earth- 
 ox, our Swiss donnerpuppe ? conf. iotunoxi), and that he who 
 finds a dung-beetle lying on Jtis hack (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 ' tord,^ stercus (Engl, turd) 
 and the 'wifel' above, and answers to the Dan. skarnbasse, 
 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 torfdijill, as if turf- devil, from 
 torf, gleba. There is also the N. Neth. tor, torre beetle, and 
 drehtorre dungbeetle [or devil's coach-horse ; also Engl, dumhle- 
 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 (Maikafer) ^ used to be escorted in from the woods 
 
 with much ceremony; we have it on good authority, that this 
 
 * Maiknfer (like maiblume) sounds too general, and not a people's word. And 
 there is no Lat. name preserved either. The Greek fi-qXoXovOrj designates our mai- 
 kafer or our goldkiifer ; boys tied a string to it and phiyed with it (Aristoph. Nub. 
 763), as our boys do. The It. scarafagfjio is formed from scarafone (scarabaeus) ; 
 the Fr. hanueton a dim. of the obsolete hanne horse, which may have been the term 
 for the stagbeetle (still potzf/a?*?, Bruin's horse, in the Wetterau), Fr. cerf volant, 
 Dan. eciiJiiort, Swetl. ckhjort, i.e. oak-hart. The Mecklenb. ekbiucer, oak-chafer, as 
 well as the simple siirer, sever, sehher (Schiitze's Hoist, idiot. 4,91) is applied to the 
 maikafer; in other parts of L. Saxony they say maittiircl, inaiscibel. This silver, 
 zdver (Brem. wtb. 4, 592. 5, 310) is surely no other than kafer with change of k 
 into z, s ; Chytrajus's Nomencl. saxon. has ' zever, and !]oldzever=^ goldkuier.' Or 
 does the HG. ziefer belong here, contrary to the etymol. proposed on p. 40? In 
 the Westerwald p'dwitz, k'owitz is maikafer, and in llavensberg povommel dungbeetle 
 (Kuhn's Westfal. sagen 2, 188), almost agreeing with Esthon. pona chafer, beetle. 
 Like the various names for the stagbeetle, niaybeetlo, dungbeetle, goldbeetle, the 
 traces of ancient beetle-worship seem also to meet, tirst in one, then in another of 
 them. A scarafone who brings succour occurs in Pentamer. 3, 5 (see Suppl.).
 
 694 TEEES AND ANIMALS. 
 
 continued to be done by the spinning girls in parts of Sclileswig 
 as late as the 1 7th century.^ 
 
 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- 
 heetles, 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 Anz. 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 horseheetles 
 (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 (skalkrak) 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. gotteskUhlein (God's little cow),^ 
 gotteskalb, herrgotteskalb, herrgotts-thierchen (-beastie), Jierr- 
 gots-voglein (-birdie), Marienvoglein, ilfarie?iA;a/er, Marienkalblein ; 
 Engl, ladijcoiv, ladybird, ladyfly; Dan. Marihone (-hen); Boh. 
 hrawha, hrawicka (little cow). In Up. Germany they call the 
 small goldbeetle (chrysomela vulg.) fraua-chiieli, ladycow (Tobler 
 
 ^ 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 thus : ' A quaint procession 
 of the erewhile amazons of the spinning-wheel at Schleswig, for fetching in of a 
 cantharis or viaykdfer with green boughs, whereat the town-hall of this place was 
 decked out with greenery.' The feast was still held in 1(330 — 40. 
 
 2 The Euss. 'Buzhia korovka, has exactly the same meaning. — Trans.
 
 CHAFEE. BEE. 695 
 
 204'') and ' der Hebe froue henje/ our lady's hen (Alb. Scliott's 
 Deutsche in Piemonfc 297), in contrast to herra-chiiell the 
 coccinella (Tobler 265^), 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 Freijjuhoena, 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 Grermany was strongest) that has a 
 bete a dieu, vacJie a dieu ; Span, and Ital. have nothing like it. 
 At all events our children's song : 
 
 Marienlcdferchen, flieg aus ! (fly away) 
 
 dein hauschen brennt, (burns) 
 
 dein miitterchen flennt, (weeps) 
 
 dein vaterchen sitzt auf der schwelle; (sits on the threshold) 
 
 flieg in 'n Jdmmel 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 sim].' With us too the chil- 
 dren put the Marienkafer or sonnenkafer on their finger, and ask 
 it, like the cuckoo: ' sunnenkielien (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 loffeh dezue.' Here the chafer, like the snake, is oS'ered 
 'milk and crumbs and a silver spoon thereto.' In olden times he 
 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 pai'adisc 
 (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 I, 128 ed. 2). The clear sweet honey, 
 
 VOL. II. s
 
 696 TREES AND ANIMALS. 
 
 which bees suck out of every blossom, is a chief ingredient of the 
 ■ drink divine (p. 319), it is the r/Sela iBcoSy] of the gods, Hymn, in 
 ' Merc. 660 ; 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 : fMeX-icrcrai avru> KadevSovri irpocreTrkrovro re 
 Kol eirXacraov irpo^ ra ^eiA.?; tov Krjpov' a/3%^ /i€V Tlivhdpw 
 TTOtetv acr/jLara iyevero roLavrrj, 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 ; ^ 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 of 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,' Yarro, 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 Prankish 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 Yggdrasil the 
 Edda makes a dew trickle, which is called a ^fall of honey,' 
 and nourishes bees (Sn. 20).^ 
 
 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, suavitatem illam praedulcis 
 eloquii i^ortendenteg. Plin. 11, 17 (18). 
 
 ^ Ceram ex floribus, melliginem e lacrimis arborum quae glufluum pariuut, 
 salicis, ulmi, arundinis succo.
 
 BEE. 697 
 
 in the ffolden asre 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 bees had 
 constructed of honeycombs as large as town-gates (Mem. de 
 Tacad. celt. 5, 202). Bees weave a temple of wax and feathers 
 (Schwenk's Gr. myth. p. 129. Herm. Mtiller'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 5m 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. fieXtaaa, 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 ' rex apium,^ Lith. bittinis, M. Lat. chosdrus 
 (Ducange sub v.), yet AS. beomodor. Boh. matka. The Gr. 
 iaaijv is said to have meant originally the king-bee, and to have 
 acquired afterwards the sense of king or priest, as /jbiXia-aa also 
 signified priestess, especially of Demeter 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 mixt 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 foi^m Jiimins, 
 himinn, and most other Teutons hi mil ; even Swed. Norw. Dan. 
 have himmel. The Saxon race has moreover two terms peculiar 
 to itself: one is OS. liehhan, hevan, AS. heofon, Engl, heaven, 
 and still in Lower Saxony and Westphalia, hehen, heven, haven, 
 hawen. 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.'^ 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 hlmil 
 the supersensual. Alb. of Halberstadt (ed. 1545, 145^) uses 
 
 ^ Himel, Lapekoer fen Gabe scroar, Dimter 1834, p. 101. 103, hemmel, Hansens 
 Geizhalz, Sonderbg. 1833. p. 148. himel, Friesche wetten 348. himul, As. 274.
 
 SKY. HEAVEN. 699 
 
 heben (rhym. neben) of tbe place. Reinolt von der Lippe couples 
 the two words : ' himel und heben von vreuden muz irkrachen/ 
 burst witli joy. People say : ' de heven steit niinimer to ' ; ' wenn 
 de heven fallt, ligg wi der all unner ; ' ' de sterren an dem haven ; ' 
 in Westphalia hebenscheer means a sky overcast without rain, and 
 even heben alone can sig^nify cloud. ^ In hdvenhune (p. 156), in 
 kukuk vam haven (p. 676), the physical sense preponderates, 
 whereas one would hardly speak otherwise than o£ ' going to 
 himel/ or himelrik. Yet this distinction seems to be compara- 
 tively recent : as the AS. heofon can be used in a purely spiritual 
 sense, so the poet of our Heliand alternates between himilriki 
 149, 8 and hebannki 143, 24, himiJfader 145, 12 and hebancuning 
 143, 20. And of course himil had originally, and has everywhere 
 in HG., the physical meaning too ; hence uplilmil in Hel. 88, 15, 
 just like upheofon in Csedm. 270, 24. The root of hebhan, hevan, 
 heofon, is probably a lost Gothic, ' hiba, haf,^ cognate with Lat. 
 capio, so that it is the all-capacious, ON. vifffeffinir, wide-fathom- 
 ing or encompassing sky.^ 
 
 The other Saxon term may be placed on a level with the Gr. 
 aW/jp (thin upper air), whilst himil and hevan answer to oupav6<; ; 
 it is OS. radur, AS. rodor. In Csedmon we find rodor 183, 19. 
 207, 8. uprodor 179, 10. 182, 15. 205. 2. rodortimgol (star), 
 100, 21. rodorbeorht 239, 10. Its root ead lies buried as yet 
 in obscurity ; it has disappeared from all modern dialects [except 
 as Rother in proper names?]. I am inclined to connect with 
 it the ON. ru&all (sol), which has nothing to do with rau^r 
 (ruber). From the AS. poets using indifferently ' wuldres gim' 
 and ' heofones gim ' (Beow. 4142. Andr, 1269) ; heofonbeorht, 
 rodorbeorht, tvuldorheorht ; heofontorht, siuegltorht, widdortorht ; 
 we might almost infer that wuldor (glory) originally meant 
 coelum, which would throw light on the OHG. name Woldarhilt. 
 And the same with sivegel (aether, coelum) : conf. swegles begoug, 
 
 1 Sanskr. nabas, Slav, nobo (coelum), pi. nebesa, Gr. ^^(pos, Lat. nubes, uobula ; 
 Ir. neamh, Wei. nev, Armor, uef, Lett, debbes (coelum), debbess (nubes) ; conf. Lith. 
 dangus above [and sky, welkin, witb ON. scv, Germ, wolke, cloud] . 
 
 - ' Hills of heaven' ai-e high ones, reaching into the clouds, often used as proper 
 names : himinfioll, Svcra. 148". Yngl. saga cap. 39 ; Himinhiorp, Swm. il, 92'' is 
 an abode of gods; spirits haunt the IlimiUnhero (mons coelius, Pertz 2, 10); 
 Himilesherri in Hesse (Kuchenbecker's Anal. 11, l.'i?. Arnsb. urk. 118); a Ilim- 
 melisberp in Vestgiitland, and one in Halland (said to be HeimSall's) ; Himelierc, 
 Fraueudienst 199, 10.
 
 700 SKY AND STAES. 
 
 Beow. 1713; under swegle (sub coelo), Beow. 2]49; sweglrsid 
 (coeli currus), Cod. exon. 355, 47 ; OS. suicjli. 
 
 I call attention to tlie AS. sceldhyrig, Csedm. 283, 23, which 
 has no business to be translated refugium or sheltering 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 ' skioldum J^okt, lagt gyltiim slddldum, sva sem span]>ak,^ Sn. 2, 
 thatched with golden shields as with shingle-roof (p. 702 and 
 Suppl.). 
 
 Eddie names in Sasm. 49''. 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 Oupav6<i, 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) : 
 hreggmtmir, rain-shedder, from hregg imber ; and vetmimir , 
 moistener ? conf. vseta humor. 
 
 To express star, constellation (sidus), our older speech, in 
 addition to stairno, sterno, steorra, stiarna (Gramm. 3, 392) and 
 • OHG. himilzeichan (Hymn. 4, 2), has a symbolical term, OHG. 
 Mmilzvngd, Diut. 1, 526^ and Gl. Doc. 249 ; OS. himiltungal, Hel. 
 18, 2; AS. heofontungol, rodortmigol ; ON. Idmintungl. Even 
 the simple tungol has the same sense in AS., and a Gothic gloss 
 on Gal. 4, 3, gives ' 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 belief 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 flickering motion like that of the 
 tongue]? The moon's steady light does not bear that out, nor the OHG. form 
 without the I.
 
 SUN. MOON. 701 
 
 or settle (see Chap. XXIII) ; but similar chairs (KM. 25), and 
 a seat-going (sedelgang) are attributed to all the stars. N. Bth. 
 210. 223 says, Bootes ' trago ze sedele gauge/ and ' tiu zeichen 
 ne gant nicht in sedel.' 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 ' hlod'um yppa,' sidera 
 extollere, of the Voluspa (Sifim. P), the three creative ' Bcirs 
 syuir ' having set up as it were the tables of the firmament : 
 bioSr 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.).^ 
 
 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 lieht,' 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 sMn (jubar), the East Franks 
 call her schein (Reinwald's Henneb. id. 2, 159).^ In the under- 
 world the moon bore the name of hverfandi Jivel, whirling wheel, 
 and in Styria (esp. the Brack 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 
 ill 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. Seem. bO'' Sn. 177. 223. The Norse 
 rune for S is named sal sun, the AS. and OHG. sigil, sugil, for 
 which I have proposed (Andr. p. 90) the readings segil, sagil, 
 sahll, and may now bring in support the Goth, sduil and 
 Gr. rjXioq. But the Gothic letter (?) (= HV) is the very symbol 
 of the sun, and plainly shews the shape of a wheel ; we must 
 
 • 
 ^ Wagen waggon belongs to weg 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, steirouo straza, wega wulkono.' The Indians also call the 
 
 sky path of clouds, Somadeva 1, 17. 2, 157. 
 
 * So in Mod. Gr. ^eyydpi brilliance, a name whose surprising identity whh the 
 
 Oli, feitt/ari (Sn. 177) 1 have akeady noticed elsewhere.
 
 702 SKY AND STAES. 
 
 therefore suppose it to have been the initial of a Goth. 
 Jivil = AS. hweoJ, ON. hvel. From 'hvel^ was developed the 
 Icel. liiol, Swed. Dan. hjul, 0. Swed. hiugJil; and from 'hweol 
 hweohP the Engl, wheel, Nethl. wiel, andFris. ^EaZ (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.^ The word wheel seems to be of the same root as 
 while, Goth. Itveila, OHG. huila, 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 sldeld, 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 skill/ then 
 adds a remark of his own : ' wanda selbiu diu sunna einemo 
 shilte 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 Edda says O^inn 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 
 inrjentis chjpei ; quid, non haec omnia magno 
 « sol videt e coelo ? soli tamen unicus orhis. 
 
 1 The Norse initial H is occasionally dropt : in Icel. both hiiila 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 trille 
 
 juul i by,'' trundling yule into town ; Outzeu sub. v. jol, p. 145.
 
 SUN. MOON. 703 
 
 Like the giant^ tlie god (Wuotan, tlie sky) has but one eye, 
 which is a wheel and a shield. In Beow. 1135 ' bedcen Godes ' 
 is the sun, the great celestial sign.^ With this eye the divinity 
 surveys the world, and nothing can escape its peering all-piercing 
 glance^; all the stars look down upon men.^ But the ON. poets, 
 not content with treating sun, 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 
 ' gimstemn himius ' (gemma coeli) ; so in AS. ' heofones gim/ 
 Beow. 4142 and ' wuldres giin,' Andr. 1289 (see Suppl.). 
 
 And not only is the sun represented as the god^s eye looking 
 down, but as his full fac& and countenance; and that is how we 
 draw his picture still. Otfried says of the sun being darkened 
 at the Saviour's death, iv. 38, 5 : 
 
 In ni liaz si nuzzi thaz sconaz 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 Mundilfdri. 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 fem., 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 bi'other, and 
 the star (zvezda) its sister. To think of the stars as children or 
 young suns is nothing out of the way. Wolfram says in Wh. 251, 
 5 : ' jungiu silnnelin mohten wahsen.' 
 
 ' The Servians call the deepest part of a lake oho (eye), Vuk's Montenegro 62. 
 2 When the Iliad 14, 314 says: 
 
 oi)5 div vCjC diadpcLKOi 'HAi6j Trep, 
 ovTF Kal o^vraTov TreXerai (pdos eiaopdaadai, 
 it resembles the lay of Wolfram 8, 28 : 
 
 Obe der suunen dri mit blicke wseren (if there were 3 suns looking), 
 sin m(')hteu zwischeu si geliuhten (they could not shine in between]. 
 
 ' lipia^iaTov &<TTpuv pvktos 6(pOaKp.6^, Aesch. Sept. c. Th. 300.
 
 704 SKY AND STAES. 
 
 Down to recent times, our people were fond of calling the 
 sun and moon frau sonne and herr mo7id} Aventin 19*" : ' frauw 
 Sonne geht zu rast und gnaden/ In tlie country between the 
 Inn and Salzach thej say * der her Man' meaning no more than 
 simply moon, Schm. 2, 230. 582. Gesner in Mithrid., Tur. 1555, 
 p. 28 : 'audio veteres Germanos Lunum 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. 13.6: 'qua etiam ratione 
 in veteri idololatrico luna non domina, dominus appellator : 
 
 bis gottwillkommen, neuer mon, holder herr, 
 mach mir meines geldes mehr !. " 
 
 Also in Nicolaus Magni de Gawe (Superst. E, 10): ' vetulam 
 novi, quae credidit solem esse deam, vocans eam sanctatn domi- 
 nam ; ' and earlier still in Eligius (Sup. A) : ' nullus dominos 
 solem aut lunam vocet.' ^' 
 
 In these invocations lingers the last vestige of a heathen 
 worship;, perhaps also in the sonnenJehn, sun-fief (RA. 278) ? I 
 have spoken on bowing to the sun, p. 81, and cursing by him, 
 ' der sunnen haz varn,^ p. 19, where he is made equal to a deity.* 
 In the same way the knees were bent and the head bared to the 
 oiew moon (Sup. E, 11). In taking an oath the fingers were 
 extended towwrd tJie sun (Weisth. 3, 349) ; and even Tacitus in 
 Ann. 13, 55 relates of Bojocalus : 'solem resjpiciens et cetera 
 sidera vocans, quasi coram interrogabat, vellentne intueri inane 
 solum ' (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 (Gorrss Meisterl. 184). Hence ia O.Fr. Solaiis, •without the 
 article,. Bekker on Ferabras p. 163. 
 
 2 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 
 Bun-worship, (Ledebur's Allg. arch. 14, 370. Temme's Altmark p. 29), though the 
 first syll. ijlaiuly 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 Mcini (Sn. 12), this last has claims to an equal rank. 
 Yet Seem. 1'^ calls Sol ' sinni Mana/ companion of the moon, 
 sinni being the Goth. gasin]'ja, OHG. kasindeo, sindo ; and it is 
 remarkable that the Merseburg Lay gives the divine Siinnd not 
 a companion brother, but a sister Sindgund (supra p. 308), whose 
 name however still expresses attendance, escort ; ^ may she have 
 been a morning or evening star ? We should have to know first, 
 what distinction a dim remote antiquity made between sduil and 
 sunno in respect of gender and mythical use ; if ' sauil, sagil,' like 
 sol and rj\io<i, was masc, then Sunna and Sindgund might be 
 imagined as female moons like Luna and SeXijvr], yet sol is always 
 fem. 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 'she' is described like other gods (pp. 17. 26. 
 324), as blithe, siveet and gracious^ 0. iv. 33, 6 speaks of her 
 ' gisiuni hlidaz, 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 frouwe Snnoie ! ' Hail to thee. Lady Sun ! 
 
 du bist al der werlt wunne ! Art all the world's delight.' 
 
 so ir die Sunnen vm sehet. When ye see the sun glad, 
 
 schoenes tages ir ir jehet. The fair day to her ye ascribe, 
 
 der eren ir der Sunnen jehet, 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, Slioll dogging the steps of the sun, 
 'B.aii of the moon ; they come of a giant race, the mightiest of 
 whom, Managarmr (moon-dog), apparently but another name for 
 Hati, is sure some day to overtake and swallow the moon. How 
 
 ' Conf. simnagahts, sungiht (solis iter), p. C17 n., and sunnan s'lfffcct (iter), 
 Casdm. 182, 25.
 
 706 SKY AND STAES. 
 
 extensively tliis tradition prevailed, has already been shewn 
 (pp. 244-5).^ A parhelion or mock-sun (vadersol) is in Swed, 
 called solvarg, solulf, sun-wolf_, Ihre'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 
 ail 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 ohscuratur, 
 vociferare praesumat ; ' it is the cry of ' vince luna ! ' " that the 
 Indicul. paganiar. means in cap. 21 de defectione lunae, and 
 Burchard (Sup. C, IDS'") by his ' clamoribus a,nt auxilio splendorem 
 lunae deficientis restmirare.' 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 pulsaverim, ipsa die 
 circa vesperam tanta vociferatio populi exstitit, ut irreligiositas 
 ejus penetraret ad coelum. Quod quum requirerem, quid sibi 
 clamor hie velit, dixerunt mihi, quod lahoranti lunae vestra vocife- 
 ratio suhveniret, et defectum ejus suis clamoribus adjuvaret.' ^ 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.^ 
 The Indian belief is, that a serpent eats up the sun and moon 
 when they are eclipsed (Bopp's Gloss. 148^*), or a demon (rahus) 
 devours them (Bopp's Nalas, pp. 153. 272. Somadeva 2, 1 5. 187). 
 
 1 I add from Fischart's Garg. 130'': 'sah den u'o(/ des mons.' Eabelais 1, 11 
 has : la lune des lovps. In old calendars, eclipses are rejrireseuted 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 MabiUon'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.' 
 
 ^ It is only among Greeks and Slavs that I have not come across them.
 
 ECLIPSES. 707 
 
 To this day tlie 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 (lunae 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. Hiarn, Mitau 
 1794 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 Gi'onland 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 orh of day. The plains 
 and heights of Tripoli resounded with the death-dirge (the cry 
 ' 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 Suppl.). ^ 
 
 A Mongolian myth makes out that the gods determined to 
 punish Arakho for his misdeeds, but he hid so eiJectually, that 
 no one could find out his lurkingplace. They therefore asked 
 the sun, who gave an unsatisfactory answer; but when they 
 asked the ynoon, 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.^ Here a noticeable 
 
 ' Morgenblatt 1817 p. 159"; conf. Niebnhr's Beschr. Arab. 119. 120. 
 
 2 Be'nj. BerHinann's Nomad, streifereien 3, 41. Ace. to Georgii Alphab. 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 sim and moon. [South of L. 
 Baikal it is the king of hell that tries to swallow the moon. — Trans.]
 
 708 SKY AND STARS. 
 
 feature is the inquiry made of the sun and moon, wlio overlook 
 the world and know all secrets (Castren^s Myth. 62). So in our 
 fairytales the seeker asks of the s\m, 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 momingstar (danitsa) hold a colloquy 
 on the affairs of men (Vuk 3, 3). During an eclipse of the sun 
 (I don^t know whether of the moon also) our people cover the 
 wells upj 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 RA. 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/ unless the word halfmoon here means something 
 else. 
 
 In Bavaria there is a Mondsee, OHG. Mdninseo (lunae lacus), 
 in Austria a Mdnhart (lunae silva, rj Aovva vXt] in Ptolemy);- 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 period of from 29 to 30 days 
 was therefore called men6J?s, mdnod, from mena, mano. Hence 
 also it was natural to count by nights, not days : ' nee dierum 
 numerum sed noctium computant, sic constituunt, sic condicunt, 
 nox ducere diem videtur,' Tac. Germ. c. 11. 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 176G. suppl. p. 71-2. 162. 
 
 2 Can Manliart liave come from Maginhart ? Helbl. 13, 190 has Meinharts- 
 here.
 
 PHASES OF THE MOON. 709 
 
 the day and solar time, wlietlier of warriors (RA. 297), or of 
 servants (353), or of tribunals especially (814-6). If, on tlie 
 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 inciderit, certis dlehus, 
 quum ant inchoatur lima ant 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 ao"ain. 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 Grothic for TravaeXTjvov vrsisfuUiJjs m., or fidlip n. (gen. pi. 
 fulli]7e), from which we may also infer a niujij)s for vov/xrjvla. 
 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 fijUed', to judge by the 
 name of the month ' winterfyllrS,' 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 niumctni and folmani,^ to which Graff 2, 222 
 adds a niwilune; MHG. daz niumoene and volmoene, the last in 
 Trist. 9461. 11086. 11513 (see Suppl.). 
 
 » Also niu-wer mano, N. ps. 80, 4. foUer muno, ps. 88, 38. In Cap. 107-8 he 
 uses vol and wan (empty), and in Cap. 147 hornaht, halbsca/tig and J'ol; couf. Hel. 
 Ill, 8 wa7iod olitho wahsid.
 
 710 SKY AND STAES. 
 
 In ON. the two periods are named by the neuters ' ny ok nicf/ 
 habitually alliterating ; ny answers to novilunium, it signifies the 
 new light, and ■aid' the declining, dwindling, from the lost root 
 ni'Sa naS, from which also come the adv. niSr (deorsum) and the 
 noun naS (quies, OHG. ginada) . So that n^ lasts from the begin- 
 ning of the first quarter to the full, and ni'S 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 niSamyrkr total 
 darkness (luna silens). Kind gods created these for men of old 
 to tell the year by : ' vy ok nid' skopo nyt regin oldum at ar-tali/^ 
 S«m. 34^. ' Miini styrirgongu tungls, oc r^'Sr nyjiim oc niffum,' 
 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 (Soem. 2^) Nyji and Nid'i are dwarfs, i.e. spirits 
 of the sky, who are connected, we do not exactly know how, with 
 those lunar phases ny ok niS." Of changeful things it is said ' J>at 
 gengr eptir nyum ok niSum,' res alternatur et subit lunae vices. 
 0. Swed. laws have the formula ' ny oc nicfar,' for ^ at all times, 
 under any phase,' Gutalagh p. 108. So ' i ny ok ni&a' 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 eher nye og ncee/ ' hverken i n^/e eller 
 o^ce,' i.e. never, '^naar nyet tandes,' quando nova luna incenditur ; 
 this nfe was in 0. Dan. ned, need. To the ni'Samyrkr above 
 answers a Swed. nedmork, pitchdark. The Norse terminology 
 differs in so far from the H. Germ., that it expresses the total 
 obscuration by ni'S, while we designate it by neumond {i.e. ny) ; 
 with us new-moon is opposed to full-moon, with the Scandina- 
 vians nv5 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 ^Ifar call the moon drtali (OHG. jdrzalo ?), Ssem. 49^ 
 
 2 Comp. with ' ni^ ok nf ' the Gr. eyrj Kal via.
 
 PHASES OF THE MOON. 711 
 
 part to nymane, nymaane, whereby the old ' ned, nse ' has become 
 superfluous, and the meaning of 'ny' somewhat modified.^ 
 
 Though the OHG. remains do not offer us a neuter niuwi,^ such 
 a form may have existed, to match the Norse ny, seeing that the 
 Miilhausen statute of the 13th cent. (Grasshof p. 252),in granting 
 the stranger that wouki settle in the town a month's time for the 
 attempt, says ' ein nuwe und ein wedil, daz sint vier wochin : ' 
 that Martin von Amberg's Beichtspiegel has ' das vol und das 
 neii,' Dasypodius still later ' das newe, interlunium/ and Tobler 
 33P ' das neu, der wachsende mpnd.' For the waning moon, 
 Tobler 404'' gives ' nid si gehender (going down),' which reminds 
 one of «i(5'; otherwise 'der schwined mo/ OHGr. 'diu sutnenta 
 mauin,' 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. ivedel : ' im was unkunt des 
 manen wedel,' Martina 18P; NHG. ivadel, ivddel,h\it more among 
 the common folk and in the chase than in written speech. Pic- 
 torius 480, Staid. 2, 456, Tobler 441^^ have wedel, ivddel full-moon, 
 wddeln to become full-moon, when her horns meet, i.e., when she 
 completes her circle. Keisersperg's Postille 138** : ' ietz so ist er 
 niiw, ietz fol, ietz alt, ietz die erst qvart, ietz die auder qvart, 
 ietz ist es ivedel ' ; here full-moon and wedel are not so clearly 
 defined as in another passage of Keisersperg (Oberliu 1957) 
 on March : ' wan es ist sein loedel, sein volmon.' In Dasy- 
 podius : * plenilunium, der volmon, loddel.' ""^ The Germans in 
 Bohemia commonly use ivddel for full-moon, and Schm. 4, 22 
 produces other notable authorities. But the word is known in 
 Lower Germany too ; Bohmer's Kantzow p. 266 spells it ivadel,^ 
 
 * Modern Icel. names are : bluny (black new, interlunium) ; pi'im (nova hina), 
 also nyqveikt tungl ; halfvaxid tungl (first (juarter) ; fullt tuwjl (plei;ilunium) ; 
 Mlfprotid tungl (last quarter). Here too the old names have gone out of use, 
 ' biilnv^ ' replaces ni^, and ' prim ' n^. 
 
 - Notker's Capella 100 bas ' manen niwi ' fem. 
 
 3 Yet under luna be has ' plenihiiiinm voUmon oder 7;7V(c7?,'and the same under 
 7»'i(c7t ( =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 ^lucbar's 
 Noricum 2, 36 the waxing and waning moon are called the gesunde and the kranhe 
 man (well and ill). 
 
 •* Following Tacitus, he says, the Germani alwayschoseeither new or full-moon, 
 for after thf wadcl they thought it unlucky. \Yadel 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 STAES. 
 
 the Brem. wtb. 5, 166 ' ivaal, vollmond ' (like aal for adel, a 
 swamp), and Kilian ' ivaedel, senium lunae/ From the phrase- 
 ology of Superst. I, 973 one would take wddel 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 luadel, luedel means that which wags to and fro, and 
 is used of an animal's tail, flabrum, flabellatn, cauda; it must 
 either, like zunga and tiingl, refer to the tip or streak of light in the 
 crescent moon, or imply that the moon cruises about in the sky.^ 
 The latter explanation fits a passage in the AS. poem on Finnes- 
 burg fight, line 14 : ' nu seine's ]>es mona iva&ol under wolcnum/ 
 i.e., the moon walking [wading] among the clouds, wa'Sol being 
 taken for the adj. vagus, vagabundus. Probably even the OHG. 
 ivadal 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, pusjyilis 
 first quarter, jmsdyUs last qu., delczia luna decrescens, lit. trunca, 
 worn away, tarpijos interlunium (from tai'p, 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., melmes 
 
 punte luna accrescens, wezza melines ^ luna senescens. Finnic : 
 
 uusihuu novil., tmjsikuu plenil., yliJcuu luna accr., alaJcuu deer., 
 formed with uusi novus, taysi plenus, yli superus, ala inferus, 
 
 which supports our explanation of the ON. ni^. The Servians 
 
 divide thus : miyenci novil., ouladina luna accr., lit. young, pu7ia 
 plenil., tishtap luna deer. Sloven mlay, mlad novil., pjolna plenil., 
 ship plenil., but no doubt also luna deer., from shipati to nip, 
 impair. Pol. now and Boh. nowy novil., Pol. pelnia and Boh. 
 
 1 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 loedel meant 
 that oscillation, it would apply equally to new and to full moon. — Trans. 
 
 2 Wezza mehnes, the old moon, la a Scotch ballad : ' I saw the new moon late 
 yestreen wi' he ai(M ?HOo?i iu her aim.' Jamiesou 1, 159. Percy 1, 78. Halliwell 
 pp. 167-8.
 
 PHASES OF THE MOON. 713 
 
 auplneh 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 in its various 
 branches once possessed other names beside nid' and ivadel. 
 
 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.^ 
 
 Caesar 1, 50 reports to us the declai^ation of wise women in the 
 camp of Ariovistus : 'non esse fas Glermanos 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 35''. S6^), neiv-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 : ' novam lunam observasti pro domo facienda 
 aut conjugiis sociandis ' (Sup. C, 193''), 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, 
 
 ' New-moon was peculiarly holy to ancient people^;, thus to the Greelcs the evrj 
 Kal via, which was also expressed by ivrj alone = Sauskr. anui (new moon). The 
 return of Odysseus was expected at that season, Od. 14, 162 : 
 
 Tov /j-iv (pdivovTos fJ.riv6i, tov 5' iaraixivoLO. 
 
 Rama's birth is fixed for the new-moon after vernal eiiuinox (Schlegol on Eamfiy. 
 i. 19, 2). Probably bealteiue were lighted at this new-moon of spring.
 
 714 SKY AND STARS. 
 
 boys at the full^ probably to give tbe 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 cles 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 tho 
 utmost of the growing light, without the accessory notion oi 
 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. ^ 
 
 Kt 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 wedel ^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 Iwlz-waclel : ' in the bad wiidel (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.' ^ 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 gi^ow- 
 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 Esthonians say to the new-moon : ' Hail, moon ! may you grow old, and 
 I keep young ! ' Thom. Hiarne p. 40. 
 
 - In Demerara grows a tree like the mahogany, called walala ; if cut down at 
 new-moon, the wood is tough and hard to si^lit, 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 OF THE MOON. 715 
 
 load the legs (Tobler 404^') ; 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, 245) ; 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.^ 
 
 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 hoven den grand wast, by o/hemende maan, dat 
 onder den grand wast, by ^oenemende 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, 
 
 ' "^Tincvor at play turns his back to the moon, has bad luck (I, 801). But the 
 seaman in bis hammock takes care not to face the full-moon, lest he be struck with 
 blindness.
 
 716 SKY AND STAES. 
 
 kus se kuh maal). lu the sermon of Eligius (Sup. A), the 
 sentence ' nee luna 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.^ The Mongolian 
 doctrine also sees in these shadows the fig-ure of a hare." Bocrdo 
 Jagjamuni or Shigemuni [the Buddha Sakya-rauni], 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.^ To the Greenlander's fancy 
 these spots are the marks of Malina's fingers, with which she 
 touched the fine reindeer pelisse of Anninga (Major'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 Byi-gir, and carrying the pail Ssegr 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 Bergmanu's Streifer. 3, 40. 204. Majer's Myth. wtb. 1, 540. 
 
 3 Donee's Illustr. of Shaksp. 1, IG from the lips of a French traveller, whose 
 telescope the Cingalese had often borrowed, to have a good look at the hare in the 
 moon.
 
 MAN IN THE MOON. 717 
 
 Mani, as one may see from the earth (sva sem sia ma af iorSii), 
 Sn. 12. That not the moon's phases but her spots are here 
 meant^ is phiin enough from the figure itself. No change of the 
 moon could suggest the image of two children with a pail slung 
 on their sJioulders. Moreover, to this day the Swedish people see 
 in the spots of the moon two persons carrying a big huchet 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 wood-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 hack and the bundle of hrushtvood (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 sti*ess laid on the keeping of the christian holiday ; the 
 man suJBfers punishment not so much for cutting firewood, as 
 because he did it on a Sunday.^ The interpolation is founded on 
 Numb. 15, 32-G, where we are told of a man that gathered 
 sticks on tho 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 ; ^ in case the 
 full-moon's name of wadel. wedel in the sense of a bunch of twigs ^ 
 
 1 Dalin 1, 1,58 : men iinuu fins den meningen bland vfir almoge. Ling's 
 Eddornas sinnebildsliii-a 1, 78 : iinnu stiger alluiiinheten i Sodraswerge, att m3,uens 
 flackar aro tvenne varelser, som biira en bryggsS. (bridge-bucket, slnug pail). 
 
 - A Westphalian story says, tbe man dressed the church with thorns on 
 Sunday, and was therefore put, bundle and all, into the moon. 
 
 3 Hebel has made a pretty song about it, pp. 8G-9 : ' me het em gsait der 
 Dieterle,' on which Schm. 2, 583 asks : is this Dietrich of Bern, translated in 
 classic fashion to the sky? We must first make sure that the poet found the name 
 already in the tradition. 
 
 ■• In the Henneberg distr. icadel means brushwood, twigs tied up in a bundle, 
 esp. fir-twigs, wadthi to tie up brushwood (lleinwald 2, 137) ; this may however 
 come from the practice of cutting wood at full-moon.
 
 718 SKY AND STAES. 
 
 lias itself arisen out of the story (p. 712), it must be of pretty 
 high antiquity. In Tobler^s Appenzell sprachsch. 20^' we are 
 told : An arma ma (a poor man) het alawil am sonnti holz 
 ufg'lesa (picked up wood). Do hed em der liebe Gott d'wahl 
 g'loh (let him choose), ob er lieber wott i' der sonn verbrenna, 
 oder im mo' verfriira (burn in sun, or freeze in moon. Yar. : 
 in'n 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. Er hed a'^Msc/i^Zi 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. ] SO'' : ' sah im mon ein mdnnlin, 
 das holz cjestolden 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 
 
 iering a hush of tlwrnis on his hake, 
 
 which for his theft might clime no ner the heven. 
 
 In Eitson'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), 
 
 071 his hot forhe is burthen he hereth ; 
 
 hit is muche wonder that he na doun slyt (slideth), 
 
 for dontelesse he valle, he shoddreth and shereth, 
 
 when the forst freseth much chele he byd (chill he bideth) ; 
 
 the themes 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 hush 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 hear- 
 ing a hurthen of wood for the sacrifice of himself on Mount Moriah 
 (Praetor. Weltbeschr. 1, 447) ; or it is Cain carrying a bundle of 
 thorns on his shoulders, and offering to the Lord the cheapest gift 
 from his field. ^ This we find as far back as Dante, Parad. 2, 50. 
 
 che sono i segjii hid 
 di questo corpo, che laggiuso in terra 
 fan di Cam 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 forcata di 
 pruni.' And another commentator : ' accommodandosi alia favola 
 del volgo, che sieno quelle macchie Caino, che inahi una forcata 
 di spine.' 
 
 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. ^ 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 
 
 ^ The story of the first fratricide seems to have made a peculiarly deep im- 
 pression on the new converts from heathenism ; they fancy hiin a wicked giant, 
 conf. Beow. 213 scq., and supra p. 525. 
 
 2 "Water, an essential part of the Norse myth, is wanting in the story of the 
 man with the thornbush, but it ro-appears in the Carniolan story (for kramcrisch 
 read krainerisch) 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 STARS. 
 
 recht int midden van der mane, 
 dat men in duitsche heet ludergheer ; 
 
 in another passage it is lendegher^ (for leudeglier?); and Willems 
 in Messager de Gand, 1, 195, following a MS. of 1351, reads, ' dat 
 men in dietsch lieet loclegeer ; ' but none of these forms is intel- 
 ligible to me. Perhaps the proper name Ludger, Leodegarius, 
 OHGr. 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. 621), 
 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, pei'suasio adjicit.-* I would have turned this passage to 
 account in Chap. VI., as proving the existence of Germanic gods, 
 
 1 Van Wyn's Avondstonden 1, 306. Bilderdijk's Verklarende gestachtlijst der 
 naamworden 2, 198 has ludegeer, ludegaar, and explains it, no doubt wrongly, as 
 luikenaar (leodiensis). However, he tells the old story : ' 't mannetjen in de maau, 
 dat gezegd werd een doornbosch op ziju rug te heben, en om dat by 't gestolen had, 
 niet hooger ten hemel te mogen opklimmeu, maar daar ingebannen te ziju.' 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 3, 1 (Tsch. 1, 
 368) quotes from Posidonius a very similar story of the noise 
 made by the setting sun in the sea between Spain and Africa : 
 fM€L^ai Svvecv rov 7]\iov iv rfj TTapcoKeavLTiSt jxera ■\lr6(f)ov irapairXri- 
 o't(ii<i, toaavel ai^ovTO^ rod TreXdyov'i Kara cr^ecrcv avrov hua rb 
 ifMiriirreiv et? rov /3v66v. 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 oifen ? ' ^ Ic ]?e secge, for]?on heo locaS on helle.' 
 ' Saga me, hwi scineS heo swa redde on morgene ?' ' Ic \e secge, 
 forj^on hyre twyna^ hwte'Ser heo m^g oSe [orig. |7e] ne mteg 
 )?isne 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 tx^ friend ov foe} 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 foi-etold. 
 Conversely, though hardly from native sources, it is said in the 
 Renner 10984 that every star has an angol who directs it to the 
 place whither it should go. 
 
 • Swem die sternen werdent gram, 
 deui wirt der mdue lihte alaam. Frid. 108, 3.
 
 722 SKY AND STAES. 
 
 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. S^m. 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 
 Btdyeiv trajicere — are by our people ascribed to a trimming of 
 the stars' light ; they are like the sparks we let fall in snufiing a 
 candle. We find this notion already in Wolfram's Wh. 322, 18 : 
 
 Dehein sterne ist so lieht, No star so bright 
 
 em filrbe sich etswenne.^ but trims itself somewhen. 
 
 Hence our phrase of ' the stars snufiing themselves,' and our 
 subst. sternputze, sternschnuppe. These falling stars are ominous,^ 
 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 408^) . 
 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 74^. 119^, 
 peacock-tail (Sclim. 1, 327) ; and its tail in Detmar 1, 242 schin- 
 schove, 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, 468^^ (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 
 
 ^ MS. n. reads ' subere sich.' Even OHG. has furban (mundare, expiare). 
 " So with the Greeks (Reinh. fuchs p. Ixxii.). In a poem of Beranger: ' men 
 enfant, un mortel expire, son etoile tombe a I'instant.'
 
 SHOOTINa 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, we 
 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, mornhigstar, OHG. cipant- 
 sterno, tagasterno, like the Lat. vesper and lucifer.^ The tunkel- 
 sterne in Ms. 1, 38^ seems to be vesperugo, the eveningstar be- 
 ginning to blaze in the twilight, conf. Gramm. 2, 526. An OHG. 
 uhtosterno morningstar, N. Bth. 223, is from uhta, Goth, uhtvo 
 crepusculum. Gl. Trev. 22^ have stelbom hesperus; can this be 
 stellbaum, the bird-catcher's pole? But in Eol. 240,27 'die 
 urmaren stalhoume ' 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 nahffare for eveningstar 
 (Heumauni 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 Ska^i. Obinn took Thiassi's eyes and threw 
 them against the sky, where they formed two stars, Sn. 82-3. 
 These augu Thiassa are most likely two stars that stand near 
 
 1 In an old church-hymn Lucifer is provided with a chariot : currus jam poscit 
 phosphorus (reita giu fergot tagastern), Hymn. 2, 3.
 
 724 SET AND STARS. 
 
 each other, of equal size and binghtness, 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 ' 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 ivaggon, 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 264^) : 
 when the herra-ivaga stands low, bread is cheap, when high, it is 
 dear. 0. v. 17, 29 uses the pi. ' wag and gistelli,' meaning at 
 once the greater waggon and the less ; which last (Ursa minor) 
 Berthold calls the wegeUn} 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 (temo), on 
 the strength of which the AS. sometimes has Jyid alone : wcenes 
 pisla (thill), Boeth. Rawlins. 192'\ References 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 Tliorr, who stepping 
 into his chariot holds the seven stars in his hand (Thor statt 
 naken som ett barn, sin 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 ' Arturus ' is rendered wagan (though Gl. Hrab. 
 
 ' Ich han den glanzen liiviehoagen und daz gestirne beselien, 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 lucientes carros forman.
 
 CHAELES'S WAIN. 725 
 
 95P has ^arctus' tlie he&v z=ivagan in himile), that is explained 
 by the proximity of the star to the Great Bear's tail, as the very 
 name apKrovpo<; shews. ^ I have to add, that Netherland cities 
 (Antwerp, Groningen) have the stains of the Great or the Lesser 
 Bear on their seals (Messager de Gand 3, 339), and in England 
 the Charles-wain is painted on the siguboai-ds of taverns. 
 
 The Greeks have both names in use, apKTo<; bear, and afxa^a 
 waggon, the Romans both itrsa and ijlaustrum, as well as a 
 septentrio or septentriones from trio, plough-ox. Fr. char, cliarriot, 
 Ital. Span, carro. Pol. woz (plaustrum), woz niebieski (heavenly 
 wain). Boh. wos, and at the same time ogha (thill, sometimes og, 
 wog) for Bootes ; the Blyrian Slavs hola, pi. of kolo wheel, there- 
 fore wheels, i.e. wain, but in their hola rodina and rodoJcola ^ I 
 cannot explain the adjuncts rodo, rodina. Lith. gryhdio rats, 
 gryzdo rats, from ratas (rota), while the first woi'd, unexplained 
 by Mielcke, must contain the notion of waggon or heaven ; ^ Lett. 
 ratti (rotae). Esth. wanhri tdhhed, waggon-stars, from wanker 
 (currus) ; Hung, gontzol szeJcere, from szeker (currus), the first 
 word being explained in ' Hungaria in parabolis ' p. 48 by a 
 mythic Gontzol, their first waggoner. Pi-ominent in the Finnish 
 epos are pdiwd the sun, 'kuu 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,* 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 hocina, bugle ;^ 
 by Icelanders fiosakonur a lopti, milkmaids of the sky, Biorn sub 
 v. F. Maguusen's Dag. tid. 104-5 (see Suppl.). 
 
 ^ [From oSpos keeper, not ovpa. tail] . ' kpKToc^v^a^ [bear-ward, or as we might 
 say] Waggoner, is Bootes, of whom Greek fable has much to tell. Ai'ctunis 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 what of that ? This roda seems to be rota, rad, wheel over a<:ain. 
 
 ^ Lith. Bible, Konigsb. 1816, has in Job 9, 9 grtjzo 7oezinimas ; gryzdas, 
 grizulas is thill, and wezimmas waggon. 
 
 ■* Can this be reconciled with the statement, p. 729, that Finn. otawa = bear? 
 The Mongol, for bear is utege. — Tuans. 
 
 5 Don Quixote 1, 20 (ed. Ideler 1, 232 ; conf. 5, 261).
 
 726 SKY AND STARS. 
 
 The small, almost invisible star just above tlie middle one in 
 the waggon's thill has a story to itself. It is called waggoner, 
 hind, in Lower ■ Germany dilmeke, thumbkin, . dwarf, Osnabr. 
 dilmke, Meckl. duming, in Holstein ' Kcins Bilniken, Hans Diimhl 
 sitt opm wagn.'' They say that once a waggoner, having given 
 our Saviour a lift, was ofi'ered 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 Miillenhoff's 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 noa praeteriissent, 
 etiamsi minor quam Alcor, das JcnecJitgen, der dilmeJie, das reuter- 
 lein, hneclitfinh fuisset; ' and again on the thief's thumb, p. 140 : 
 ' fabula de polUcari auriga, 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 [rjvio-x^o'i) or inventor Ericlitlionms among the 
 stars, though not in the Great Bear, but between Perseus and 
 the Twins in the galaxy. The Bohemian formdneJc, wozatag 
 (auriga) or howoznij signify Arcturus, Bootes and Erichthonius 
 (Jungm. 1, 550. 3, 401), and palecJcy u wozu thumblings on 
 waggon. But in Slovenic, it seems, hervor (Murko 85. Jarnik 
 229^) and hurovzh mean the waggoner and the Polar Star. 
 
 The cluster of brilliant stars in which the Greeks recognised 
 the figure of Orion ^ 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. Gei'many 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 
 Eomans, ace. tg Yarro and Festus, called it Jugula, it is not known why.
 
 WAGGONER. ORION. 727 
 
 designation, like tliafc of waggon, wliicTi arose in the childlike 
 fancy of a pastoral people. OHG. glosses name Orion pfiaoc 
 (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 pleucli, Engl, •plough, is said of Charles's wain. Some 
 AS. (perhaps more OS.) glosses ti-anslate Orion by ehurd'ring, 
 ehurffning, ehirdring, ehirthiring (Gl. Jun. 369. 371), ^ which in 
 pure AS. would have been eoforSryng, eforSring ; it can mean 
 nothing but boar-throng, since |?ryng, as well as ]?rang. Mid. 
 Lat. di'ungus, 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 epurdrunc, but its relation to luwaring 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 
 Jacohs-stah, Boh. Jahuhalml ; 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 tdlihed, spear stars, from ' wardas ' spear, and 
 perhaps staff, like St. James's staff. The Lithuanians szenpjuwis, 
 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 ' three-mowers ' ? for in the 
 same way several Slav nations have the name kosi scythes. Boh. 
 Jcosy (Jungm. 2, 136), Pol. Icosij (Linde 1092''), Sloven, koszi 
 (Murko 142) mowers. Other Slavic names of Orion are shtupka 
 (Bosn. Bible, 3, 154), for which we ought to read shtapka, in Vuk 
 shtaka crutch, crosier, from our stilbchen, Caruiol. pdlize staves, 
 in Stulli hahini sdapi old wives' staves ; and h'uzUice/ wheelers, 
 rovers? from 'kruziti' vagari (see Suppl,). 
 
 1 Tlio second passage has ' eburdnung,' an error, but an evidence of the MS.'s 
 age, for in the 8-9th cent, the second stroke of r was made as long as that of n. 
 
 " Dobrowsky's Slavin p. 425 ; the Pol. l;ruzlic is crocklet, mug. Hanka's 
 Altbohm. glossen have 6G, 857 kruzlyk circuloa, \)d, 161 krusslyk lix, which I do 
 not understand. Can it be crutch ? 
 
 VOL. II. U
 
 728 SKY AND STARS. 
 
 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 siehen-gestirn, OHG. thaz sihimstirri, 
 0. V. 17, 29. Diut. i. 520\ Gl. Jun. 188 (where it is confounded 
 with the Hyades not far off, in the Ball's head). Beside this 
 purely arithmetical denomination, there are others more living : 
 Gr. JlXemSe?, Ion. IlXrj'iu.Se'i , seven daughters of Atlas and 
 Pleione, 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 TreXeta? wild dove, which 
 is usually ireXeia} Lat. Vergiliae, of which Festus gives a lame 
 explanation. A German poet writes virilie, Amgb. 42^. 
 
 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 klucJce, klucherin, 
 kluckhenne, hrut-henne mit den hunlein ; Dan. aften-hone, even- 
 ing-hen (-/iou?ie, Dansk. digtek. middelald. 1, 102); Engl, hen with 
 her chickens ; Fr. la poussiniere, in Lorraine poucherosse, covrosse 
 (couveuse, brood-hen, qui conduit des poussins)^ ; Gris. cluotschas 
 or cluschas the cluck-hens ; Ital. gaUineUe ; Boh. slepice s kurdtky 
 hen with chickens; Hung. Jiastih, Jiastyuk 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 thi'ee gifts representing siin, 
 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 jpolecine. 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- 
 
 ^ The Suppl. adds : ' the Pleiades, Uke doves, carry ambrosia to Zeus, but otic 
 ohvays gets lost in passing the Planctae rocks, and Zeus fills up their number again, 
 Atheri. 4, 325-6.' — Homer tells the story simply of doves, TreXatat, Od. 12, 61. — Tbans. 
 
 2 Conf. Pentam. 4, 8 'li sette palommielle,' seven children transformed. 
 
 8 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. Treasare- 
 hunters dig for the costly cluckie with her chicks ; conf. the 
 sunken hoard, Chap. XXXII. A Mien and twelve hiinkeln^ was 
 also an earthly fine, Weisth. 1, 465. 499. I am not sare that we 
 are entitled to connect the nut with ' Iduns huot ' ; but what is 
 'sun, moon and cluckie^ with us, is with the Finns far more 
 plainly ' piiiwa, kuu, otawa,^ i.e. sun, moon, bear. The Span, name 
 is Mas siete cahrillas' seven kids.^ Pol. bahy old wives, Russ. 
 haha old wife [and nasedka sitting hen], Linde 1, 38*; Serv. 
 vlasJdtsi (Vuk 78), vlashnitsi, (Bosn. Bible 3, 154, 223), Sloven. 
 vlastovtse swallows? but Jarnik 229*' explains it ' rarastiibe,^ which 
 I do not understand. The O. Boh. name too is obscure, sczyet- 
 nycze pleiades (Hanka's Glossen 58"^)= 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. setinsU, 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 sihenstlm ' ? because the 
 army is so thickly spread over the land ? (see Suppl.). 
 
 The origin of the Pleiades is thus related : Christ 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. 676 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. ^ In Lith. the Kids are artojis su jdaczeis plougher with 
 oxen, and Capella neszeja tvalgio food-bearer (f.). Hanka's 0. 
 Boh. gl. 58*^ gives Itrusa for Aldebaran, przyczek for Arcturus. 
 We might also expect to find names for the Hyades and Cas- 
 
 1 Don Quixote 2, 41 (Tdel. 4, 8.3 ; conf. 0, 242). 
 
 2 Cymric and Gaelic Bibles (.Job 9, 0), retain the Latin names from the Vulgate; 
 from which it does not follow that these languages lack native names for st irs. 
 Armstrong cites Gael, crannarain, baker's peel, for the Pleiades, and draghlod, lire- 
 tail, for the Lesser Bear.
 
 730 SKY AIJD STARS. 
 
 siopeia. But many stars are habitually confounded, as tlie 
 Pleiades with the Hyades or Orion, and even with the Wain and 
 A returns ; ^ 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 ehurdrung really belong to Orion. By 'plough' the 
 Irish Fairy-tales 2, 123 mean the Wain rather than Oi'ion, and 
 who knows but the ' throng of boars ' may really stand for the 
 'Tdhe<i (from v^Y 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 : 
 t:^ ash, nD^3 kimeh, ^^D3 ksil;^ which the Septuagint renders 
 TiXemSe?, eairepo'i, dpKTovpo<i, the Vulgate 'Arcturus, Orion, 
 Hyades,' and Luther Hhe Wain, Orion, the Glucke (hen).' In 
 Job 38, 31 kimeh and ksil are given in the LXX as TrXetriSe?, 
 ^flpLcov, 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 flpicov, 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 ; "* on the whole 
 it seemed likeliest, that (1) ash was the Arabian constellation 
 om en ndsh, (2) kimeh or chima the Arab, toriije, (3) ksil the 
 Arab, she'd (sihhel) ; the three corresponding to Ursa majoi'. 
 
 ' Eeisersperg's Postil 206 : ' the sea-star or the Wain, or die henn mit den hiinlin 
 as ye call it.' Grobianus 1572 fol. 93'' : ' wo der wageii steht, und wo die gluck mit 
 kiinkeln geht.' Several writers incorrectly describe the ' diimke, diiming ' as ' sie- 
 bengestirn ' ; even Tobler, when he says 370'' ' three stars of the siebeng. are called 
 the hoises, near which stands a tiny star, the waggoner,' is evidently thinking of the 
 Wain's thill [Germans often take the ' seven-stars' for Ursa instead of Pleiades] . 
 
 ^ It has long been thought a settled point, that Suculae (little sows) was a blun- 
 dering imitation of 'TaSes, as if that came from 6s a sow, whereas it means ' the 
 rainers ' from iJeLv to rain (' ab iinbribus,' Cicero; 'phivio nomine,' Pliny). Does 
 the author mean to reopen the question ? Did the later Greeks and Eomans, 
 ashamed of having these ' little sows ' in the sky, invent the ' rainers ' theory ? 
 May not Suculae at all events be a genuine old Pioman name, taken from some meri- 
 torious mythical pigs? — Trans. 
 
 * 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 '^piwv in LXX, and the other two times it is 
 Orion in Vulgate. Luther and the Engl, version are consistent throughout. — Trans. 
 
 * Beschr. von Arabieu p. 114 ; some more Arabian names of stars, pp. 112—6.
 
 CONSTELLATIONS. 731 
 
 Pleiades and Sirius. If we look to the verbal meaniugSj ndsh, 
 which some Arabs do change into ash, is feretrum, bier or 
 barrow/ a thing not very different from a ' wain ' ; kimeh, Icima 
 seems to signify a thick cluster of stars, much the same sense as 
 in that name of ' sieve ' : Isil, 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," 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 three 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 agi-ee- 
 ment is important, 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 rahihow in the sky has given rise to a 
 number of mythic notions. Of its rounded arch the Edda makes 
 a heavenly hriclge over which the deities walk ; hence it is called 
 
 ' Bocharti hierorz. , ed. Kosenmiiller 2, 680. 
 
 " Origin of the Grk constell. (in Abb. der Berl. acad. 1826, p. 19-63).
 
 732 SKT AND STAES. 
 
 Ashril (Saem. 44*), more commonly Bif-rost (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 (Ssem. 46'-), 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 ^ extends to Himinbiorg, HeimdalFs dwelling 
 (Sn. 21), and Heimdallr is the appointed keeper of the bridge; 
 he guards it against hrimthurses and mountain-giants,^ 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. scurhoga, shower-bow, C^dra. 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 dish, or a treasure lies buried ; that gold coins 
 or pennies drop ovd, of the rainbow. When gold-pieces are picked 
 up, they are called regenbogen-schusselein (-dishes), patellae Iridis, 
 which the sun squanders in the rainbow. In Bavaria they call 
 the rainbow hvmmelring, sonnenring, and those coins hiniTnelring- 
 schiissehi (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,' Plant. Curcul. 1, 2 ; 'purpureus pluvias 
 cur bibit arcus aquas ? ' Propert. iii. 5, 32. TibuU. i. 4, 41. Virg. 
 Georg. 1, 380. Ov. Met. 1, 271. One must noi point with 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 Briinr-spordr (we still sj^eak of a bridge's head, tete de pont), as if an animal 
 iad laid itself across the river, with head and tail resting on either bank. But we 
 must not omit to notice the word sjwrdr (prop, cauda piscis) ; as rost, rasta denote 
 a certain stadium, so do the Goth, spattrds OHG. spitrt a recurring interval, iu 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 bruarspordi,' 
 Sam. 196* mean the rainbow? 
 
 5 Giants are often made bridge-keepers (p. 556 n.): the maiden Mo^gu'Sr guards 
 giallarbrfl, Sn. 67.
 
 RAINBOW. 733 
 
 exposing to great danger? Is 'beliusen unebene uf regenbogen' 
 (Tit. Halm 4061) to be unequally seated? In H. Saclis ii. 287 a 
 man gets pushed off the rainbow. The Finns have a soug 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 77ionstrare nefas esse credunt; qui hanc 
 monstraverit, huic subito ulcus in manu faturum. Iridem habent 
 Sinae pro signo libidinis effrenatae quae regnat/ ^ 
 
 The Slavic name for the rainbow is 0. SI. diiga, Serv. and 
 Russ. duga, duga nebeshia, Boh. diiha, prop, a stave (tabula, of a 
 cask), hence bow ; the Servians say, any male ci'cature that 
 passes under the rainbow turns into a female, and a female into 
 a male (Vuk sub v.).^ 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, warrawihksne, liter, the 
 mighty beech ? Lith. Laumes yosta, Lauma's or Laima's girdle 
 (sup. p. 416) ; also dangans yosta heaven's girdle, ]dlpi)inis 
 dangaus heaven's bow, uroryJiszte 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 S. 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 lpi<; was, as in the O. Test., a token of the 
 gods, II. 11, 27; but at the same time a half-goddess 'I/^t?, 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 Chi-king ex lat. P. Lacharme, interpr. Jul. l^rolil, p. 242. 
 
 * Like the coutrury ellccts of tlio planet Veuus ou the two sexes ia Superst. 1, 167.
 
 734 SKY AND STAES. 
 
 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 hort 
 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) : 
 
 So man den regenbogen siht, 
 so enzaget diu werlt niht 
 dan darnach iiber vierzecjdr ; 
 
 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 iotuun, had a daughter named NStt, black and dingy 
 like the stock she came of (svort oc dock sem hon atti gett til) ;^ 
 several husbands fell to her share, first Naglfari, then Anar (Onar)^ 
 a dwarf, by whom she had a daughter lor^, who afterwards 
 became OSin^s wife and Thor's 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 Dai/, 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. 6'55-6). 
 
 The name Dellingr, the assimilated form of Degltngr, 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, dsBg, tac^ I have tried to find a root 
 (Gramm. 2, 44), and must adhere to my rejection of Lat. ' 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, 117.^ On the other hand, in ' dies' 
 and all that is like it in other languages, there plainly appeared 
 
 ' This passage was not taken into account, p. 528 ; that Nifj;ht and Hclle 
 should be black, stands to reason, but no conclusion can be drawn from that about 
 giants as a body. Notice too the combination ' sviirt ok dock,' conf. ji. 445. Here 
 giant and dwarf genealogies have evidently overlapped. 
 
 2 Conf. Hanpt's Zeitsclir. 3, 144. 
 
 3 [Sanskr. dali urere, ardere (Bopp's Gl. 1()5) does seems the root both of dies 
 and Goth, dags, which has exceptionally kejDt prim, d unchanged. MHG. tac still 
 retained the sense of heat : ' fiir der heizcn suuuen tac,' MB. 2, 8i\ — 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 ' dgeg, tag ' ; 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 rjn-ap, rjfj,ipa I do 
 regard as near of kin to the Teut. himins, himil ; there is also 
 'Hfiepa a goddess of day. 
 
 The languages compared are equally unanimous in their name 
 for night : Goth, nalits, OHG. naht, AS. niht, ON. nott (for natt), 
 Lat. nox nuctis, Gr. vv^ vvkto^, Lith. naJctis, Lett, nahts, O. SI. 
 noshti, Pol. and Boh. noc (pron. nots). Sloven. 7iozh, Serv. notj, 
 Sanskr. nakta chiefly in compounds, the usual word being nis, 
 nisd (both fem.). Various etymologies have been proposed, but 
 none satisfactory.^ 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. nahta^ the noun nahts seems to come, just as from 
 magan mahta, lisan lista come the nouns mahts, lists. Now 
 
 ' [Bopp 198^ and Pott 1, 160 explain nisd 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, biuah are lost to us ; I first assumed ganahum, 
 binabum, but afterwards ganadhum, because binafiht = 'i^ean in 1 Cor. lU, 23, and 
 ganatiha avrapKeia occurs several times. The u (a(i 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 nah nahum, nahta, even though Ulphilas had written 
 nah naUhum, nadhta.
 
 DAY. NIGHT. 737 
 
 Gotli. ganahan^ OHG. kinahan, means sufficere, so tliat nahts 
 would be the sufficing", pacifying, restful, quiet, at the same time 
 e/ficient, strong, apKia, which seems to hit the sense exactly. 
 Add to this, that the OHG. duruh-naht is not only pernox, totara 
 uoctem 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 
 ' d urchnacht, nox illunis ^? = the Scand. ni'S (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 rjfxap: ' sani mir der heilic tac ! ' 
 Ls. 2, 311. 'sa mir daz heilige Ueht ! ' Roth. 11^. 'die liehen 
 tage,' Ms. 1, 165^^. Mer liebe tag/ Simplic. 1, 5. Hence both 
 are addressed with greetings : ' heill Dagr, heilir Bags synir, 
 heil Nott ok nipt ! orei^om augom litit ockr ]?innig, ok gefit 
 sitjondora sigur ! ' they are asked to look with gracious eyes 
 on men, and give victory, Saem. 194^; and the adoration of day 
 occurs as late as in Mart, von Amberg's Beichtspiegel. ' diu edele 
 naht, Ms. 2, 196''. 'diu heilige naht,' Gerh. 35^1. 'sam rair din 
 heilic naht hint ! ' so (help) me Holy Night to-night, Helbl. 2, 
 1384. 8, 606. 'frau Naht,Ms H. 3,428=* (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 di^awu 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,^ 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 Xef/coTrcoXo? rj/xepa, the ivkite-horsed. The riddle in 
 Reinmar 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 
 
 ^ i.e. day or moruiug is there before the sun, who backs them up, so to speak : 
 unz daz diu suuue ir liehtcz schiueu lot dem morgeu iibcr berge, Nib. 15G4, 2.
 
 738 DAY AND NIGHT. 
 
 or driving deities peeps out. Again, a spell quoted in Mone's 
 Anz. 6, 459 begins witli ' 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 Palfar 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 : Goth, sunna ur-rinni}j, Mk. 4, 6. 16, 2. 
 OHG. ar-rinnit; daran ah rV- rail diu sunna, N. ps. 103, 22 ; MHG. 
 si was uf er-runnen, Mar. 189. ON. ]>a rann dagr upp, 01. helg. 
 cap. 220. Rinnan is properly to run, to flow, and here we see 
 a strict analogy to the O. Rom. idiom, which in like manner uses 
 manare of the rising day : ' diei principium mane, quod tum 
 mdnat dies ab oriente,' Varro 6, 4 (0. Miiller p. 74) ; ' manar 
 solern dicebant antiqui, cum solis oinentis radii splendorem jacere 
 coepissent ' (Festus sub v.). Ulphilas never applies ur-reisan 
 (sufgere) to the sun. The Span, language attributes to the 
 rising sun a pricking (apuntar) : ' yxie el sol, dios, que fermoso 
 apuntaha,' Cid 461 ; ' quando viniere la manana, que apuntare 
 el sol,' Cid 2190. After rising the sun is awahe, 'with the sun 
 awake' means in broad daylight (Weisth. 2, 169. 173. 183), 
 ' when sunshine is up ' (2, 250) . AS. ' hador heofonleoma com 
 hlican,' 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 [vnit) , pisliiac (occidit),-^ Gl. Ker. 254. Diut. 1, 274*. 
 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 solsLrfall and mhetr, Engl, suns*?^ ; so OHG. *■ denne 
 sunna kisaz/ cum sol occumberet, Diut. 1, 492% implying that he 
 sits down, and that there is a seat or chair for him to drop into 
 
 ' Intrans., as we still say uiederscblagen, zu boden sclilagen.
 
 SUNRISE. SUNSET. 739 
 
 at the end of liis journey. His setting is called OHG. sedalkanc, 
 Hym. 18, 1 ; sedal ira kat (goeth) 14, 2. AS. selehjong^ setlrdd, 
 Casdm. 18i, 19. oSSoet sunne gewdt to sete gJidan, Andr. 1305. 
 cSSget beoriit geicdt sunne swegeltorht to sete glidan 1248. OS. 
 seg sunne to sedh, Hel. 86, 12. sunne ward an sedle 89, 10. 
 geng tliar aband tuo, sunna ti sedU 105, 6. scred wester dag, 
 sunne te sedle 137, 20. so tliuo gisegid wartli sedle ualior hedra 
 sunna mid hebantunglon 170, 1. Dan. for vesten gaaer solen til 
 sclde, DV. 1, 90, in contrast to ' sol er i ausfri (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 nnter den Westergihel geht ' (1, 836) ; 'bis die sonue 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.' ^ Ovid's 
 ' axe sub Jiesperio ' 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 eniim vestra,' giahamarr being chasmatis rupes 
 occidentalis. I shall have more to say about that in another 
 connexion; conf. however Landnama bok 215: sol i anstrl ok 
 vestri. MHG. diu sunne gie ze sedele, Dint. 3, 57. als diu 
 sunne in ir gesedel soldo gan, Morolt 38*; but what place on 
 earth can that be, whose very name is told us in 14'', ' ze Geildt, 
 da diu sunne ir gesedel hat ' ? the capital of India ? (see p. 743 
 note.) I suppose kadam, MHG. gaden (cubiculum), Mor. 15=^ 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 
 
 ' ON. and AS. distinguish between two periods of the evening, an eavVier apt an 
 tcfen = vespera, and a later (/rt'W, c-ir(7(/ = contioinium : ' at qveldi,' S;em. 20\ 73*', 
 nieans at full evening, when night has fallen and its stillness has set in. I derive 
 cwild, 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 conticiuium, AS. cwildtid. If ' chuiltiwerch ' 
 in a doc. of 817 means cwildweorc, work in tlic late evening, which is not to be put 
 upon maidservants, then OHG. too had a cliuilt corresp. to cwild and qveld, qvold. 
 In Cffidm. 188, 11 I propose to read : ' cwildrof a codon on Ia'6'ra last,' i.e. (belluae) 
 vesperi famosae ibant in vestigia malorum. 
 
 2 In fixing boundary-Hues Westergihel is eveu used topographically, Weisth. 1, 
 464-5. 485. 498. 550-0.
 
 740 DAY AND NIGHT. 
 
 ir lieliten Llic liinz ir gelesen, Parz. 32^ 24. He goes to his 
 bed, his bedchamber : Dan. 'solen ganger til senge,' DV. 1, 107. 
 ' solen gik til livile/ 1, 170. MHG. diu sunne gerte lazen sich 
 zuo reste, Ernst 1326. diu sunne do ze reste g'le, Ecke (Hag.) 
 110. nu wolte diu sunne ze reste und ouch ze gemache nider gan, 
 Dietr. 14*^; so M. Opitz 2, 286 : ' muss docli zu rude gehen, so 
 oft es abend wird, der schone himmels-schild.^ OE. the sun 
 was gon to red, 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 
 gndden' (dat. pi.), Mor. 37*. 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. 19^) 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 
 zadije {is gone) nor sijede (sits) ; if you say zadye, he answers 
 ' zashao pa ne izishao ' (gone, not come out) ; ^ if you say syede, 
 he tells you ' syeo pa ne ustao ' (sat down, not risen) ; but to 
 ' smiri se ' the answer is ' smiryo se i ti ' (rest thee also thou) ? 
 And with this I connect the Eddie saw on the peculiar sacreduess 
 of the setting sun: 'engi skal gumna i gogn vega sid'sMyiandi 
 systor Mana,^ Seem. 184^, none shall fight in the face of the 
 late-shining sister of the Moon (see Suppl.) 
 
 Lye quotes an AS. phrase ' ?Qr 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 
 
 ^ Kopitar tells me, ' zashao etc' is rather an imprecation : mayst thou go in (per- 
 haps, lose tliy way) and never get out ! So ' syeo etc.', mayst thou sit down and 
 never get up ! 
 
 2 Mod. Greek songs say, 6 ^Xtos e^acriXeve, i^acxiXe^e (Fauriel 1, 56. 2, 300. 432), 
 i.e. has reigued, reigns no more in the sky, is set ; and the same of the setting 
 moon (2, 17G).
 
 SUNSET. 741 
 
 actually used of tlie sun's motion : beofones gim glad ofer 
 grundas, Beow. 4140 [and * to sete glidan^ twice in Andreas]. 
 But 'gongan to glade ^ seems nonsense; perhaps we ought to 
 suppose a noun glaede with the double meaning of splendor and 
 gaudium. Both the ON. gla^Sr and OHG. klat signify first 
 splendidus, then hilaris, two notions that run into one another 
 (as in our heiter = serenus and hilaris) ; Mat 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, 
 
 schoenes tages ir ir jehet, Ye own the fine day is hers, 
 
 des dankt ir ir, und Gote niht. Ye thank her, not God. 
 
 In Switzerland I find the remarkable proper name Sunnenfroh 
 (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 
 glsede ' may have meant. In ON. I have only once fallen in with 
 solargla&an (occasus), Fornald. sog. 1, 518. We learn from 
 Hire's Dialectlex. p. 57^" 165% that in Vestgotland 'gladas' 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, 463. 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 Weisthumer : so die sun /wr gold gat (1, 197), als die 
 Sonne in gait 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 Hhe paschal piper,' Haupt's Zeitschr. 1, 
 547. Nor would I stop even there, I would also account for that 
 noise, that dang once ascribed to the 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. 
 
 Darnaeli kund sich diu sunne 
 
 wol an ir zirkel riden (writhe) : 
 
 der siieze ein iiberwunne, 
 
 ich wsBii die siieze nieman molit erliden. 
 
 mit done do diu zirkel ruorte ; 
 
 seitenklanc und vogelsanc 
 
 ist alsam glicli der golt gen kupfer fuorte. 
 
 (Then in his oi'b 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.^ 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. (Rawl. 193^) : ' and ];eah monnum ]?ynce'S |?aet hio 
 on mere gauge, tinder see swife, ]?onne hio on setl glideS.' So 
 the ancients said hvvai, and mergere of the sun and stars, ' occasus, 
 interitus, vel solis i)i oceanum mersio ' (Festus).^ 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 kebadon (bathe) in demo mereivazere. 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 cegi,' Fornm. sog. 
 2, 302, and in MHG. ' der se, da diu sunne iif get ze reste,' MS. 
 2, 66''. 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 ' she ' takes a bath, a notion universally preva- 
 
 1 Pansan. 1, 42. Philostr. Yita Apoll. 6, 4. Heroic. 4. Pliny 36, 11. Tac. 
 Ann. 2, 61. Juven. 1.5, 5. 
 
 ' 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 het( diu 
 miiede sunne ir liehten blic hinz ir gelesen.
 
 DAYBREAK. 743 
 
 lent among tlie Slavs also : at eve she sinks into lier batli 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.^ 
 
 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 tinder vide (Ihre sub v.) .^ But the AS. word in : 
 ' hador sgegl wuldortorht gewat under wd&n 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 nijian nces,' sub terrae crepidinem, Andr. 
 1306 (couf. 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, MHG. ' der 
 sunne (here masc.) hinder gegat,' MS. 2, 192'' (see Suppl.).-' 
 
 We will now examine other formulas, which express dayhrealc 
 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 kldwen diirch die wolhen sint geslagen (his claws through the 
 clouds are struck), er stigetuf mit grozer kx'aft, ih sih ihn grawen, 
 den tac ; ' and in part third of Wh. (Cass. 317^) we read: 'daz 
 diu wolken waren gra, und der tac sine da hete geslagen dureh die 
 naht.^ 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 : ' hrgefn blaca heof ones 
 Wynne bliS-heort bodode,' niger corvus coeli gaudium laeto corde 
 nuntiavit.^ That piercing with the claw to raise a storm (p. 633) 
 makes one think of an eagle, while an Oriental picture, surprisingly 
 
 ^ Hanusch, Slav. myth. p. 231, who connects with it the si^lashing with water 
 at the Kupalo feast, and derives that name from knpel, kf^piel. 
 
 - Esth. piiiiw katsub metsa ladwa, the sun walks on the tips of the wood. 
 
 ^ Gudr. 116, 2 : ' der sunne schln gelac vcrborgen hinter den wolken ze 
 Gustrdtc. verre ' I understand no better than Geilatc (p. 73'J) ; but both seem to 
 mean the same thing. 
 
 * So in a Weisthum (3, 90) : ' de sunne uppo dcm hogesten gewest clawendich.' 
 
 » Conf. volucris dies, Hor. Od. iii. 28, 6. iv. 13, 1(3. 
 
 VOL. II. X
 
 744 DAY AND NIGHT. 
 
 similar, suggests rather the king of beasts, who to us is thebear.^ 
 AH 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: *^When 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 : ' dseg byS 
 Dryhtnes sond' says the Lay of Runes. And in this connexion 
 we ought to consider the formation of such names as BgeWce^, 
 Swipc?oe^, 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 : ' 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 : ' und Lisli uf de 
 zeche goht 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, waes 
 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, IGS**. riche muotes alsam der tac, Wigal. 5222. der tac 
 wil gerwhen (prevail, prosper), MS. 1, 27^^. 2, 23^; 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, 147^^. merge fruo, als der tac 
 erstarket (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 ah ir trone, den sie 
 ze Kriechen hielt mit ganzer vi'one, der tac ivil in besitzen, MS. 
 1, 2^; conf. ^daiXeveiv said of the sun (see Suppl.). 
 
 1 The Arabs call the first glimmer of dawn the wolfs tail, Eiickert's Hariri 1, 
 215.
 
 DAYBREAK. 74") 
 
 Sometimes ifc appears as if tlae day, whether pictured as man 
 or as beast, were tet J lered, and delayed in dawning: h'gata,fune 
 ligata dies, Reinh. Ixiv j he approaches slowly, hindered by the 
 bands : eiu naclit doch nicht gejpunden ist an einen stehchen, hoor 
 ich sagen, Suchenw. 22, 30. Has that in Fergiit 1534, 'quam 
 die dach ghestrid 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 he had for money, Zeitschr. f. d. a. 1, 27 ; like 
 a slave bound by a cord ? 
 
 The Romance tongues (not the Tent.) often signify the break 
 of day by a word meaning to prick: Fr. poindre, ^p. 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, Woma, is a thrill of nature (p. 144), 
 such as we actually experience at dawn, when a cool breeze 
 sweeps through the clouds. Expressions in point are the AS. 
 dceg-v)uma Ceedm. 199, 2G. Cod. exon. 175, 4. dceg red-worn a., 
 Andr. 125, 8. Cod. exon. 179, 24, morgen-sweg, Beow. 257. 
 diine on daegred, Casdm. 289, 27. £er deegrede j^get se dyne becom, 
 Ctedm. 294, 4 ; conf. Introd. to Andr. and El. xxx. xxxi, and the 
 allusion to Donar, p. 736. 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, Mou vaaiiw par son 
 I'aube esclarcie.' Cod. reg. 7183, 3% ' un matin par son I'auhe, 
 quant el fu aparue ' ; ibid. 5% ' un matin par son I'auhe, quant 
 li jor esclaira' ; ibid. 16P, /"an matin ^ar sow Vauhe, si con chante 
 li gaus (gallus).' Cod. 7535, 69'', ' a matin par son I'auhe. 1
 
 746 DAY AND NIGHT. 
 
 add a few instances from the Charlemagne, ed. Michel 239, 'al 
 matin sun la (?) lalhe' ; 248. 468. 727, ' al matin par sun lalhe' ; 
 564, ' le matin par sim lalhe.' Was it not oi-iginally 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, Renart 2617. In Pi-ovengal, Ferabras 182, 'lo 
 mati sHs en lalba ' ; 3484, ' lo matinet sus lalba.' In It., Buovo 
 p. m. 84. 99. 155, una mattina su V alba, i.e. sur I'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' : ^the sun began 
 to peep ' says a Scotch song, Minstr. 2, 430 ; so the Danes have 
 j)ipefrem : ' hist piper solen /rem, g'lv Grud en lyksom dag ! ' says 
 Thom. 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.' Bat, 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 ' shreik of day' (Hunter's Hallamsh. gloss, p. 81), which 
 can mean nothing but ' shriek ' ; and in the Nethl. ' krieh, krieJcen 
 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, krekel (cicada). A remarkable 
 instance of the two meanings meeting in one word is found in 
 the Goth, svigla {av\6<i), OHG. svekala (fistula), by the side of 
 the AS. swegel (lux, eether), OS. suigli (lux). 
 
 Oar own word anhrechen (on-break) implies a crash and a 
 shaking, MHG. sa do der ander tac ilf brack (Frauend. 53. 109) ; ^ 
 
 1 Conf. Bon. 48, 68 ; and I must quote Ls. 3, 259 : ' do brack der tac da herfiir, 
 diu nabt von dem tac wart kinent (became yawning, was split ? conf. supra p. 558), 
 diu sunne wart wol scliinent.' The Gute Frau 'has twice (1539. 2451) : ' do der tac 
 durch daz tach (thatch) lilhte unde brack.' We might perh. derive ' ixi brach ' from 
 brehen, but we now say anhrechen, anbruch.
 
 DAYBREAK. TWILIGHT. 747 
 
 Eugl. break (as well as rush, hlusli) of day. Span. ' el alva 
 rompe.' 0. Sp. ' apriessa cantan los gallos^ e quieren quebrar 
 albores/ Cid 235. ' ya (juiebt-an los albores, e vinie la manana' 
 460. ' trocida es la noche, ya quiebran los albores ' 3558. 0. Fr. 
 Taube cneve/ Ren. 1186. 'ja estoit Va,uhe crevee' 1175. Hantost 
 con I'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 crepiisculurti contains the same idea. 
 The Spaniard says also ' el alva se He,' laughs ; and the Ai'ab 
 Hhe morning sneezes' (see Suppl.).^ 
 
 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 
 {evvv^ov), Mk. 1, 35, OHG. iihtci, or as N. spells it uolita, OS. 
 uhta, AS. iihte (most freq. 'on uhtan/ Ctedm. 20, 26. 289, 31. 
 294, 2. Cod. exon. 443, 24. 459, 17. 460, 14. 'on uhtan mid 
 gerdsege,' Beow. 251), ON. otta (Biorn says, from 3 to 6 a.m.). 
 The root has never been explained j 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. ardagi (conf. ardegis, mane) ; an OHG. crtac or 
 ertago is unknown to me. Next comes the notion of diluculum, 
 ON. dagsbrun, dagsbiarmi, dagsbirta, fi'om brun = ora, margo, as 
 if supercilium, and biarmi, birta = lux: but OHG. tagarod, tagarot 
 (Graff 2, 486-7); AS. dmgred, Ccedm. 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 i-odur, roSuU (coelum) on 
 p. 699. The gender also wavers between masc. and fem.~ We 
 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 Kiickert's Hariri 1, 375. In the Novelas of Maria de Zayas 1, 3 is a song 
 oeginning : ' si se rie el alva,' elsewhere she has ' quaudo el alva muestra su ale'ire 
 risa ; ' conf. j). 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. 
 
 2 Yet conf. OHG. morgau-rot, -ruto, and -rota (Grali 2, -iSG) ; MHG. iifgender 
 morgenrCt (is it niorgeu rot?), Walth. 4, G ; but daz morgenrot, Trist. 8285. 9402.
 
 7-iS DAY AND NIGHT. 
 
 tagerod sina facchelun inzundet habe/ liave kindled his torches. 
 And in urkunden we meet with a man's name DagJiarot (Falke's 
 Trad. corb. p. 5), also a place named Wivin-tagaroth (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, Ren. 15666. 15712. 16441 [conn, with 
 dagsbrim, Suppl.]. The ON. has no dagsrod^ but it has sSlarrod 
 aurora, Fornm. sog. 8, 346. [Suppl. adds ^me'S dagroed'om,' 
 Seem. 24'"']. The M. Nethl. has a second term dachgrake, 
 daglierake (fem.), graken for the night's blackness brightening 
 into gray ; so MHG. der grdive tac, daz grdive licht, MS. 2, 49*, 
 der tac wil grdwen, Wolfr. 4, 11; 'si kos den alten jungen 
 grdwen grtsen (tac)' ; 'junc unde grd der morgen iif gat/ MsH. 3, 
 427'' (see Suppl.). 
 
 After aurora follows the full morning, Goth, maurgins, OHG. 
 morkan, OS. morgan, ON. morgun, strictly avpuov. 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, secai-e 
 (see Suppl.). 
 
 To names for the rising day stand opposed those for the sink- 
 ing. For Qy^e, o-^la Ulphilas puts andanahti, the times towards 
 night, but also seijyii (serum), as the Mod. Greeks call evening 
 the slow, late, to l3pdSv, and morning the swift, early, to Ta^v, 
 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 ddmmerung, stands especially for crepusculum, 
 and is connected with AS. dim, Lith. tamsus, Slav, temni [dark, 
 from tma, tenebrse] . 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 : 
 AbentrSt 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 Ap>antr6d (see 
 Suppl.).! 
 
 » MHG. der dhentrnt, Walth. 30, 15 ; but ' do diu ahentrot (f.) witeu ir lieht der 
 erden but,' Uoliich 1488.
 
 DATBEEAK. TWILIGHT. 749 
 
 To the Greeks and Romans 'Hcaq, Aurora, was a goddess, and 
 slie is painted in the liveHest colours. She rises from the couch 
 {e/c \e^i(ov, as our sun goes to bed, p. 740) of her husband 
 Tithonos^ Od. 5, 1 ; she is the earlj-born {TjpL<yeveLa), the rosy- 
 fingered (poSoSaKTvXo';, II. 1, 477) ; she digs her ruddy fingers 
 into the clouds as day does his claws, p. 743 ; she is also called 
 Xpv(r66povo'i golden-throned, like Hera and Artemis. The Slavs, 
 instead of a goddess of dawn, appear to have had a god, Yutri- 
 hogli (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, eijnal 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 domes 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 iu Kollar (Zpievauky 
 p. 247, conf. 447) runs thus :
 
 750 DAY AND NIGHT. 
 
 Hainal svita, giz den biely, H. sliines, 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, Eeynal, Hennil 
 with a Servian or Bohemian god of herdsmen Honidlo ; ^ 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 snn 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 sorrow. 
 We say, ' happy as the day,' and Shaksp. 'jocund day '' ; Reinolt 
 von der Lippe 'er verhltde 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 : ' gsest inne swsef o]?]?set hraefn 
 blaca heofenes wynne hUd'-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 dagshrun sid)/ Sasm. 167"^; ' nu ver'Sr hann sva feginn, 
 s em fug I 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 frouwen min, reht als des tages 
 diu kleinen vogellin/ MS. 1, bl^ ; ' froit sich min gemiiete, sam 
 diu kleinen vogelliu, su si selient den morgenschin,' MS. 2, 102^. 
 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 
 fiaSrar,' cocks' feathers make a din. ' a la maiiana, quando los 
 gallos cantaran/ Cid 317. ^i coc cantoient, pres fu del esclairier.' 
 ' I'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, 
 007) vv^, II. 10, 394, for does not she drive a chariot? She falls 
 or sinks from heaven, 'la nuit tomhe,n\x\t tomhante, a la tomhee de 
 la nuit; ' she hricht ein (breaks or bursts in, down), whereas day 
 hricht an (on, forth) ; she gathers all at once, she surprises. In 
 
 1 Jungmann 1, 670. 72i. Hanusch pp. 369-70.
 
 NIGHTFALL. iOl 
 
 Matth. 14^ 15, where the Vulg. has 'hora jam praeteriit/ Luther 
 Germanizes it into ' die nacht fdllt daher ' (on, apace) ; and 0. 
 Germ. ah*eady used the verbs aiia gdn,fallan in this sense : aband 
 unsih ana geit, ther dag ist sines sindes, 0. v. 10, 8. in ane 
 gdencla naht, N. Bth. 31. der abent begunde ane gdn, Mar. 171. 
 schiere viel do 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 7Aio 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. 62'\ 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.^ diu tageweide diu wil hin (the day^s 
 delight it will away), der abent siget vaste zuo, Amgb. 2^^. 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 sinMichter nacht, Schoch stud. D. 4*. And we 
 still say ' till sinking night. ^ " Much the same are : nu der 
 abent, diu naht zuo gefloz (came flowing up), Troj. 13676. 10499. 
 AS. '£efen com sigeltorht swungen,' Andr. 1246. — But this set- 
 ting in, gathering, falling can also come softly, secretly, like 
 a thief: diu naht begunde sUchen an (creep on), Dietr. 68^. nu 
 was diu naht geslichen gar iiber daz gevilde (fields), Christoph. 
 413. do nu diu naht her sleich, und diu vinster in hegreif (dark- 
 ness caught him) 376: so thiu naht hijmg, Heh 129, 16. do 
 hegreif in die nacht, Florsheim chron. in Miiuch 3, 188. wie 
 mich die nacht hegrif, Simplic. 1, 18. hett mich die nacht schon 
 hegriffen, Gotz v. Berl. p. m. 164. In MHG. we find predicated 
 of night ' ez benemen,' to carry off (the light ? the victory ?) : 
 unz iuz diu naht henam, Gudr. 879, 1. ne hete iz in diu naht 
 henomen, Diut. 3, 81 (conf. Gramm. 4, 334). Ilroswitha says, in 
 Fides et spes : ' dies abiit, nox incumhit.' 
 
 ^ Both times ' segen' in text ; if sigen an (vincere) were meaut, we should ex- 
 pect the word day in the dative. 
 
 2 Goethe says sweetly : For Evening now the earth was rocking, And on the 
 mountains hung the Night.
 
 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 : 
 '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. 7866. ' Nu begunde ouch strucJien 
 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.' ^ 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 sUchen 
 
 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.^ 
 
 Earth devours the departing day (see Suppl.). 
 
 I find the older poets dwelling more on the sense of gloominess : 
 
 1 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 harboui'age for her prepares. Next her banners, 
 soon Night herself came on. 
 
 ' Lucifer interea praeco scandebat Olympo, Walthar. 1188. Lucifer ducebat 
 diem, Aen. 2, 801. Evening is called in Sunskr.rajanhnukha, night's mouth, which 
 reminds one of ' Hella's mouth : ' so is morning ahaniukha, day's mouth. Bopp's 
 gloss. 27''. 281". 
 
 ^ 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 
 see'st, until that he might from her flee, then could he hoist him up from east.
 
 NIGHTFALL. NIGHT. 753 
 
 vv^ 6pj>vaLri the dusky, in Homer. ' tlio warth aband cuman, naht 
 mid neflu,' Hel. 170, 25. 'diiQJindere ragende nacht/ gloomy low- 
 ring (jutting), Sclireckensgast, Ingolst. 1590, p. 114. 'die eitele 
 nndfinstere nacht,' Kornmann's Mons Ven. 329. 'oiipende niht,^ 
 Beow. 1088. 1291, conf. genip (caligo). ' scaduhelm/ Beow. 1293. 
 ' nilithelm geswearc deorc ofer dryhtguman ' 3576. 'nihthehn to 
 glad,^ Andr. 123. El. 78 : to her, as a goddess, is ascribed, quite 
 in 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 hlach night/ 
 Ke\at,vri<i vuacto? o/xfia in Aeschylus (Pars. 428) for thick dark- 
 ness as opposed to the bright eye of night, the moon, p. 702 
 (see Suppl.).^ 
 
 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. 
 
 Eeckoning 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 hcerfestniht (ON. haustnott, haustgrima), 
 the Scandinavians a hokunott (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 rnodranecht (modra niht)," i.e. ma- 
 trum noctem appellabant ob causam, ut suspicamur, ceremoniarum 
 quas in ea pervigiles agebant.^ Who were these mothers ? 
 
 ' Images now familiar to us, about quenching the lamps of daj', I have not met 
 with in the old poets ; but the night burns her tapers too. bhaksp. describes the 
 end of night by ' night's caudles are burnt,' Horn. & J. 3, 5. 
 
 2 Afzclius 1, 4. 13 has no right to speak of a modernatt, which is not founded 
 on Norse docs., but simply borrowed from Beda. [Can 'modre niht ' have meant 
 ' muutere 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 personahty 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 eflfaced 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 glecPifugla (laetitia 
 volucrum) for summer, and sut oh 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.^ 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. lenden, 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 6ro<i by jer, and ivtavTo^ either by aj?n. Gal. 
 4, 10, or atapni, John 18, 13, a word that has died out of our 
 language everywhere else, but still lingers in the Gothic names 
 Athanagildus, Athanaricus (A]?nagilds, A];nareiks) ; it seems 
 
 1 The Pol. iar looks like '4ap, but this is understood to be for Piap, fiaap, Lat. 
 ver for verer, veser, closely coun. with Lith. wasara (aestas) and Sanskr. vasanta, 
 Benfey 1, 309. Of the same root seems the Slav, vesua, wiosna (spring), but hardly 
 the ON. vasa^r, which means sharp winter. 
 
 751
 
 SEASONS. 755 
 
 akin to €To<i, 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 6x09 and ivt,auT6<i remains uncertain, for in Od. 
 1,16 (eVo? ^X66 7repc7r\o/j,evcov iviavroiv, a year went past with 
 circling seasons) ivtavroi are sections of a year, while other 
 accounts make an iviavrof contain three errj. This comp. 
 ivtavTo^; holds in it the simple eVo?, Lat. annus ^ (see Suppl.). 
 
 The year was supposed to make a circle, a ring (orbis, circulus) : 
 jares umhi-hring, jdr-hring, umhi-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 
 ^ 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 Hatzlerln's book as late as the 
 14th cent. (57'^. 77% espec. 196—201 in Haltaus's ed.) where the 
 year is pictured as a newhorn habe, a neiuhorn 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. netu, without the addition of ^year' or 
 'child' (just as in naming the new-moon, p. 710, n;y-, niuwi) : 
 [' des glinn dir alles der ncwgehorn ! ' this the Newborn grant 
 thee all, Hiitzl. 196,,. So in other new-year's wishes: ' wunsch 
 ich dir ain vil gut jar zu disem new,' Wolkenst. p. 167. 'gen 
 disem saeligen guoten newen/ Ad. Kellei''s Altd. ged. p. 10. — 
 Suppl.] . 
 
 Otherwise I hardly find the year as a whole (conf. the riddle, 
 p. 737) exalted into a person, except in adjurations, spells and 
 
 1 For amnus, says Bopp's Gloss. Skr. 16'' ; Bcnfey 1, 310 explains iviavrvi by 
 Skr. amiivat, &7j being am&, new-moon.
 
 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 jCtr gang dich an ! ' a 
 blessed year betide thee, Ls. 3, 111 ; and ' daz dich ein veiges jar 
 miiez ana komen ! ' a doomed (fey) year be thy dole, Ls. 1, 317. 
 In AS. 'o'S l^aet o^er 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., Caadm. 71, 10; ' fela missera ' 180, 
 23. Beow. 306 ; ' hund missera,' Beow. 2996. 3536 = the 50 
 winters in 4413; ' misserum frud, missarum frod,' Ccedm. 104, 
 30. 141, 16 (wise with age, like 'gearum, deegrime, fyrndagum 
 frod,' Gramm. 1, 750). In the Edda I find only 212^•^ ^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. mis^ri 
 (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 
 disturbance 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. /J>eao<i, /j,eaao<; 
 compared with Sanskr. madhyas, or ^vaaoq =^/3v66<;. No ^mis- 
 seri, missiri ' meets us in the OEG. 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 ivintro 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 ' toU vetr a gam all ^ 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. sumarlaugr, vetrlangr, are 
 supplemented by a haustlangr (the whole autumn) . 
 
 The Greek year has only tJtree seasons, eap, 6epo<i, ^etyLtcui/, 
 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 
 suflBcient proof of a third or fourth. The twofold division is 
 further supported by the AS. terms midsumor and midwinter, 
 ON. mi&sumar, mi&vetr, 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 mif- 
 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 daeg 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 fidurdogs and ahtaudogs 
 in Ulphilas (see Suppl.). 
 
 Tacitus, after saying that the Germans cultivate grain only, 
 and neither enclose meadows nor plant orchards, adds : ' undo 
 annum quoque ipsum non in totidem digerunt species : Idems et 
 ver et aestas intellectum ac vocabula habent; auct mnni perinde 
 nomen ac bona ignorantur.' Here auctumnus evidently refers to 
 garden-fruit and aftermath, while the reaping of corn 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 the OHG. herpist, herhist, AS. liearfcst, seem at 
 
 1 OHG. aranmilnot, from aran (mossis), Goth, asans ; the 0. Saxons said 
 l)ew6d or Leo, Hel. 78, 14. 79, 1-i ; Nctlil. bouw, homed.
 
 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.^ 
 Then also for mythical purposes the two seasons are alone avail- 
 able, though sometimes they are called spring and winter, or 
 spring and autumn ^ (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 Oepo^ by asans 
 (harvest-time). The declension follows from OHG. siimar = 
 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 Svdsu&r (Ssem. 34'^. Sn. 23. 127), 
 a name derived from svas (earns, 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 Vdsaff'r (ibid.) the dank and 
 moist : a grim coldhearted kindred. But both sets, as we should 
 anticipate, come before us as giants, Svasu'Sr and Sumar of a 
 good friendly sort, Vasa^r, Yindsvalr and Yetr 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. 
 
 - 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 our jahr, is neut., and of course impersonal. Winter they call zima 
 (fem.). 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 : Euss. and Boh. vesna, Pol. wiosna ; Sloven. 
 vy-gred (e-grediens, in Germ. Carinthia misiviirt), mlado leto (young summer), 
 mladletie, po-vdand, s-pnmlad, s-prot-letie (fr. s-prot, against), all denoting spring; 
 the South Slavs espec. felt the need of parting spring from summer. Autumn is 
 in Serv. yesen, Sloven, yezen or predzima (prae-hiems), Euss. osen. Zima must be 
 very old, Lith. ziema, Gr. x^'-fJ-'^v, Lat. hiems, Skr. hemanta. Onv fiilhling, friihjahr 
 (early year) is neither 0. nor MHG., but formed during the last few cents, on the 
 model of printemps or primavera ; apatling, spatjahr (late year) is also used for 
 autumn. On auswarts and eiinccirts conf. Schm. 1, 117. 4, 161.
 
 SUMMER. 759 
 
 SO that here again the twofold nature of giants (p. 528-9) is set 
 in a clear light. The Skaldskaparmal puts them down among the 
 ancient iotnar : 209^ Somr (al. Somir) ok Svdsiid'r, 210^ Vindsvalr 
 ok Vicfarr (1. Yetr). 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, 2P : ' till Summer step 
 this way.^ ^ In MHGr. the one is commonly called lieb (lief, 
 dear), the other leid (loathly, sad) : ' der liehe 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 stile des Winters wapen tragen,' my song should W.'s 
 livery wear, MS. 1, 178^. ' 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. ' er (der Winter) ist dir 
 gehaz, er en-weiz niht umbe waz, selten er des ie vergaz, swenne 
 er dinen stuol hesaz, 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 repi'esentative, 
 and just as full of life and personality. (All three receive the 
 title ©f lord : ' min herre Winter ! ' MsH. 3, 267^ ' her Meie ! ' 
 d, 443*^. ' her Meige ! ' Walth. 46, 30). May makes his entry : 
 ' so der Meige in gat,' Meist. Alex. 144*^. ' so der vil siieze 
 Meige in gat,' Trist. 537. ' Meige ist komen in diu lant,' Ms. 1, 
 
 ^ Alse die Somer quam int lant, Reinaert 2451. alse de Sonuner queme int 
 lant, Reineke 2311. do here de SiDiuiu'r trat, Wiggert 2, 48. 
 
 - Without article, therefore not com. noun; couf. p. 704 note, Solaus. 
 
 VOL. II. Y
 
 760 SUMMER AND WINTER. 
 
 13^. Ben. 364. ' der Meie sin ingesinde li^fc/ lias his retinue 1, 
 14^. ' des Meien tur ist {if getan, MsH. 3, 296^ ' der Mei ist in 
 den landen hie ' 3^ 230^. ' so der Meie sinen Ttrame schouwen 
 lat (his store displays), unde %n gat mit vil manigem liehten 
 male ' 30, 30^. ' vil manager hande varwe (full many a hue) 
 hat in sinem hrdme der Meige/ MS. 1, 59^^. *der 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. ' da ist der Meie und al sin kraft, er und sin geselle- 
 schaft diu (sic 1.) ringent manige swaei-e (lighten many a 
 burden) ; Meie hat im angesiget ' overcome him (winter), Ben. 
 449. * ich lobe dich, Meie, diner kraft, du tuost Sumer sigehaft,' 
 thou makest S. victorious (both prop, n.), MS. 2, 57^. ' ob der 
 Meige ze velde lac,' Ls. 1, 199. 'so der Meige alrerst w ^a^.'* 
 Frauend. 14. ' der Mei hat sin gezelt bestelt,' set up his tents, 
 camp, MsH. 3, 303^. ' des Meien scMlt,' 3, 307^ ' Sumer der 
 hat sin gezelt nu gerihtet liberal,' Ms, 2, 57^. 'des Meien 
 waldencBve kiindet an die sumerzit,' May's forester announces 
 summertide, MsH. 3, 230''. ' die (waldes ougeuweide, forest's 
 eye-feast) hat der Meie fiir gesant, daz si kiinden in diu lant sin 
 kunft ' 3, 227^. ' der Meie viieret den wait an siner hende/ leads 
 the wood by the hand, MS. 2, 8P; 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 strdze/ Ben. 42. 
 ' uf des Meien strdzen/ MS. 23^. ' Meie, ich wil dir nig en,' bow 
 to, Ben. 398. 'event den Meien,' Ben. 184. MsH. 1, 147'^'^. 
 ' der Meie habe des danc ! ' thanks thereof,-^ Ben. 434. May and 
 Summer put on their verdant attire : 'der Meie ist iif sin griienez 
 zwi gesezzen,' MS. 2, 75*. May hears complaints, he commands 
 his flowers, 1, 3^. 'des Meigen vriunt (attendant), der grliene 
 wase (sward), der het uz bluomen angeleit (laid on) so wiinecliche 
 sumerkleit,' Trist. 562. ' der vSumer 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 Burners giiete (goodness),' which seem to imply an ancient 
 worship (p. 29, era). I add a few more references : MsH. 1, 52^. 60'. 61''. 194a. 
 305^ 348^ 3, 222''. Notice: ' Got gebe daz der herbest sin ere volhringe ! ' that 
 autumn his worship fulfil, MS. 2, 180\
 
 WINTER. 761 
 
 selben kleit, Ahrelle maz, der Meie sneit/ April measured, May 
 cut out, MS. 2, 94^. ' diu (kleider) liet gegeben in (to them) 
 der Meie z'einer niuwen wat (weeds, clothing),' MsH. 3, 286''. 
 ' Mei hat enprozzen berg und tal' 3, 188''. ' Sumer hat gesendet 
 uz sin wunne, der Meie spreit uf diu lant sin wat ' (2, 291). ^ ' der 
 bliienden heide voget (heath's controller) ist mit gewalt uf uns 
 gezoget (has rushed), hcGvt wi er mit winde broget (blusters) uf 
 wait und im gevilde,' MsH. 1, 193^ (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 Rtf and 8ne,' Ben. 398. ' der Meie loste 
 bluomen uz Rifen bande' 437. 'manegen tac stark in sinen 
 handen 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, 
 192*. 'der W. und sine hneclite (his men), daz ist der Rife und 
 der Wind; Hartm. erst, biichl. 834. MsH. 3, 232^ What 
 Summer clothed. Winter strips bare : ' ilher diu oven ^ 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 gevilllet dinen sac' 2, 386^^; 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 secJce schoiip 
 (shoved into his sacks), er enspielt in noch enkloup,' Ben. 304. 
 Yet, ' sunder Rtf en danc, allez griienez in froiden lit,' no thanks 
 to Jack Frost, all green things are in glee, MS. 1, 34''. ' 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 zo mote,' to meet 
 thee, Amgb. 29=^; and Walther 39, 9 : ' weizgot, er lat ouch dem 
 Meien den strit,' Winter gives up the battle ; conversely, ' der 
 Sumer sinen strit dem Winder Ifit,' Warnung 2386. And, what 
 is more than all, one poem ^ has preserved even the mythic name 
 
 ' So that ' des Meigen wat, kleit ' MS. 2, 105-6-7 is a metaphor for foliage, and 
 ' hoten (messengers) des Sumcres ' 1, 97*^ for flowers. 
 
 2 ' Walt hat oren, velt hat gesiht,' wood has ears, field has sight, MS. 2, 131» ; 
 ' velt hat oren, wait hat ougen,' eyes, 185''. 
 
 =* Nithart's, Ben. 38i. To this poet we owe the hveUest images of Summer 
 and Winter.
 
 762 SUMMEE AND WINTER. 
 
 of the Rime-giant : it is Aucholf, formed just with the suffix -olf, 
 which like -olt is characteristic of monstrous ghostly beings ; ^ 
 the root auka^ OHG. ouhhu, means augeo, so that Oucholf may 
 contain the notion of enormous, gigantic " (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.^ 
 
 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, 
 200'^. 2, 78^. Ben. 453; die zit mit sange hegen (keep), Misc. 
 2, 198; den Sumer emiofdhen, MsH. 3, 207^ 2li^ 232^ ' Sumer, 
 wis (be) empfangen von mir hundert tusent stunt (times) ! ' Ben. 
 328. Wrouwen und man empfiengen den Meien,' MsH. 3, 185^. 
 'dawartder Mei empfangen wo\' 3, 218^. 219*. 'den Meigen 
 enpfdhen und tanzen^ 1, 47^. ' nu woluf griiezen (greet) wir den 
 siiezen ! ' 1, 60^. 'ich wil den Sumer griiezen' 3, 446'\ * helfent 
 griiezen mir den Meien,^ MS. 1, 202**. 'si (diu vogellin, small 
 fowl) wellent alle griiezen nu den Meien ' 2, 8 1**. ' willekome her 
 Meige ! ' 1, 57**. ' sit willeJcome her Meie ! ' 1, 59*. 'so wol dir, 
 lieber Sumer, daz du komen bist ! ' MsH. 2, 316**. A song in 
 Eschenburg's Denkm. 458 has the burden ' willkommen Male ! ' 
 (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 de7i Sumer viinden/ MsH. 3, 202''. 
 
 Whoever had spied ' den ersten viol ' * 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. 202^ (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. Notlier in Cap. 27 calls 
 ' herhest unde lemo, 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,' Eichth. 46 (huersa thiu thiustera 
 naclit and thi nedkalda icinter ur tha tuner hleth). 
 
 '' Florum prima ver nuntiantium viola alba, Pliny 21, 11 (38).
 
 HEEALDS OF SUMMEE. 763 
 
 scliouwen). H. Sachs iv. 3, 49 seq. describes the same festival; 
 round ihefa'st summer flower they dance and sing. ' den ersten 
 hluomen vlehten/ MS. 1, 41'^ (see Suppl.). 
 
 That thej^7's^ 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 {dyy€\o<i eapo<i). The swallow^s return was 
 celebrated even by the Greeks and Romans: Athenaeus 8, 15 p. 
 360 gives a ^eXtSoVicr/xa/ 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 \, and 
 traverse all the streets, singing a sweet spring-song; the singers 
 carry a sivallow carved out of wood, which stands on a cylinder, 
 and keeps turning round. ^ * 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,^ and a drink of honour was served out to them 
 from the town-cellar. An epigram by Joach. Olearius begins : 
 
 Ver laetum rediit, i-ediitque ciconia grata, 
 aspera dum pulso frigore cessat hiems.* 
 
 The cuckoo may also be regarded as the announcer of spring, 
 and an O.Engl, song appeals to him : ' sumer is icumen in, llinde 
 sing ciicu ! ' Hone's Daybook 1, 739 (see Suppl,). 
 
 The proclaiming of summer by songs of the younger folk still 
 
 1 Ilgen. opusc. pbilol. 1, IGo. Zell's Ferienschr. 1, 53. 88. Scbueidewin's 
 Delectus 2, 465-6. 
 
 - Faiiriel 2, 256. Disc, prolim. xxviii. More fully in Tlieod. Kiud p. 12. 
 
 ^ Alpeurosen (Bern 1817J ji. 4'J ; coiif. Rebel's song Der storoh. 
 
 •• llostock IGIU ; couf . Job. Praetorius's ' Storcbs und scbwalben-winterquartier,' 
 Francf. 1676, p. 185.
 
 764 SUMMER 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, entry, 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 vaiy greatly.^ Often there is only a wreath, a doll, an 
 animal carried about in a basket, and gifts demanded from house 
 to house.^ Here it is a coch, there a crow or a fox,^ that the 
 children take round, as in Poland at the time of coleda (new- 
 year) they go about with a stuffed wolf, collecting gifts (Linde 
 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 fall of meaning, in which youths 
 and maidens take part. Two disguised as Summer and Winter 
 make their appearance, the one clothed with ivy or singriin, 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 more 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 spectators, and break out into praises of the 
 conqueror. 
 
 ' The most diligent collector of them, though in a scattered disorderly way, is 
 Chr. Heinr. Schmid of Giessen, both iu the ' Journal von uud fiir 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 Kriinitz's Encyclop. 58, 681 
 seq.. Grater's Idunna 1812 j). 41, Biisehing'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 Dominieae Laetare, quern vulgo appellant den tod austreiben,' 
 Lips. 1690 (in Germ. 1710), and Joh. Casp. Zeumer 'de Dominica Laetare,' Jena 
 1706. 
 
 - Let the summor-cMldren 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 WINTEE. 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 hinans in garten 
 und wollen des Sommers ivarten (attend), 
 wir wollen hinter die hecken (behind the hedges) 
 und wollen den Sommer wecken (wake), 
 der Winter hats verloren (has lost), 
 der Whiter 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 ^ ist da, 
 
 er Jcratzt 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, rosenhlumen (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 hlumen 
 
 bringen uns den Sommer, 
 der Sommer ist so keck (cheeky, bold), 
 und wirft den Winter in den dreck (flings W. in the 
 dirt). 
 Or : Stab aus, stab aus, 
 
 hlas 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- 
 
 ' For Sommer ? conf. Bajldajg for Boaldor, p. 222-9, and Day, p. 738. 
 
 2 Also ' stam aus ' or ' sta 7/uih.v,' and ' heib aus, treib aus, dem W. ist ein aug' 
 aus.' Stabaus may be for staubaus = up aud away, Schm. 3, 002 ; couf. Zingerle 
 2, 147,
 
 766 SUMMEE AND WINTEE. 
 
 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 ivhite 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 ivrapi in straiv, stands for Winter, another 
 deched with ivy for Summer. First the two fence with their poles, 
 presently they close and wrestle, till Winter is thrown and his 
 straiu garment strict off him. During the duel, the rest keep 
 singing : 
 
 stab aus, stab aus, 
 
 stecht dem Whiter die augen aus ! 
 
 This is completely the 'rauba birahanen, hrusti giwinnan, caesos 
 spoliare armis ' of the heroic age ; the barbarous punching out of 
 eyes goes back to a still remoter antiquity.^ 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 treihen 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 Rhon 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, 195''. 'Mai hat den W. erslagen', slain, 
 Hiitzl. 131, 58. ' vehten wil der W. kalt gegen dem lieben Sumer,' MsH. 3, 423".
 
 EXPULSION OF DEATH. 767 
 
 Then: Wir liaben den Tod liinausgetrieben (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 Wititer'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} 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 ~ (in, and out again). 
 
 ^ Seb. Frank's Weltbuch SI'' thus describes the Shrovetide custom in Fran- 
 ^-onia : ' Four of them hold a sheet by his 4 corners, whereon is laid a straw 
 ■rippet in hose, jerkin and mask, like a dead man, the which they toss up by the 
 corners, and catch him again in the sheet. This they do the whole town through, 
 t Midlent they make in some places a straiv man or imp, arrayed as a death, him 
 16 assembled youth bear into the nigh lying villages. And by some they be well 
 ■ceived, eased and fed \vith dried jjears, milk and peas ; by others, which hold it 
 presage of coming death, evil entreated and driven from their homesteads with 
 id words and oftentimes with buffets.' 
 
 • This seems to indicate, that the deity of Death is not to be annihilated by 
 s ducldng, but only made sensible of the people's dissatisfaction. Cruel Death 
 s during the year snatched many a victim, and men wish, as it were, to be 
 !enged on him. This is of a piece with the idea brought out on jj. '20 : when 
 god has not answered your expectations, you bully him, you isluugc his image 
 h water. So by the Franconiaus, on a failure of the wine-crop, St. Urban's 
 ^'ge, who had neglected to procure them wine (Fischart's Garg. 11) wasjlung into 
 ^•brook, or themiul (Seb. Frank SI*"), or the luater-trough, even in the mere antici- 
 P'jn of a poor vintage (Agricola's Sprichw. 498. Grater's Idunna 1812, p. 87). 
 '^^he Bavarians, during St. Leonhard's solemn procession, would occasionally 
 '^'him in the river (Schm. 2, 473). We know how the Naples people to this day 
 8*^ work with their San Gennaro, how seamen in a storm ill-use St. James's 
 ^™', not to speak of other instances.
 
 768 SUMMER AND WINTEE. 
 
 tragen ihn vor des biedermanns haus (up to the goodman's 
 house) . 
 
 Wollt ihr uns kein schnialz 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 e in 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 aus^ (drive D. out), 
 
 den alien iveibern in das haus (into the old women's house). 
 Or : hinter's alte hirteuhaus" (behind the old shepherd's house). 
 Further on : 
 
 hatten wir den Tod nicht ausgetrieben (not driven D. out), 
 
 war er das jahr noch inne geblieben^ (he'd have staid all the 
 year). 
 
 Usually a puippet, 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 maij' 
 
 1 Luther parodied this song in his Driving of the Pope out, Journ. von u. fiij 
 D. 1787. 2, 192-3. 
 
 2 ' Dem alten Jiiden in seinen bauch, etc.', into the old Jew's belly, on to tb 
 young Jew's back, the worse for him ; over hill and dale, so he may never com 
 back ; over the heath, to spit^ the shepherds ; we went through the greenwooc 
 there saug birds young and old. Finn Magnusen (Edda 2, 135) would have us tak 
 the old ' Juden ' for a ibtunn. 
 
 3 J. F. Herri, on certain antiquities found in the Erfurt country 1787, p. 2' 
 has the line : ' wir tragen den Krodo in's wasser,' but confesses afterwards (Jour 
 V. u. f. D. 1787. 483-4) that he dragged the dubious name into the text on pure co - 
 jecture. The more suspicious becomes the following strophe in Hellbach's Sup - 
 to the Archiv v. u. f. Schwarzburg, Hildburgh. 1789. p. 52 : ' wir tragen den al'-n 
 thor (fool) hiuaus, hinter's alte hirtenhaus, wir haben nun den sommer gewonnn. 
 iiud Erodes macht ist weggekommeu,' K'.s power is at an end. The expressjns 
 in the last line smack of recent invention.
 
 SUMMER FESTIVAL. 7G9 
 
 ^ole} In the Alfcmark, the Wendisli villages about Salzwedel, 
 especially Seeben (where we saw Hennil still in use, p. 749), 
 have preserved the following custom : at Whitsuntide uaeu- 
 servants and maids tie fir-hrancJies, straiv and hay into a large 
 figure, 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. Kuhn'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 vv^inter 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.- 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 be some 
 
 ^ At Leipzig in the 17th cent, the festival had become so discredited, that they 
 had the straw jnippet carried about and immersed by women of ill fame. 
 
 - Sartori's Neueste Eeise d. Oestr., Vienna IKII. 2, a-18. The Styrian battle- 
 song is printed in Biisching's Wcich. nachr. 1, 22G-8.
 
 770 SUMMER 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.^ 
 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 8mrt ze wsy. Now bear we I), from the village, 
 
 nowe Leto do wsy ; new Summer to the village ; 
 
 witey LHo 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. Laueustein 1640, d. Liiheck '98) in Evang. 
 Erquickungstunden, Leipz. 1698 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. 16-40, 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. 1B2), 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 i^p. 259 seq. : ' The 
 last year, on Dominica Quinquag. (4 weeks bef. Laetare), I again pubhcly prayed 
 every man to jDut away, once for all, these pagan doings. Alas, I was doomed to 
 see the wicked worldlings do it worse than before. Not alone did children carrying 
 long sticks wrapt in green leaves go about within doors, and sing aU 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 vhlage from house to house with a bag-pipe, 
 singing, 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 hghtmiuded maids, 
 that took part in the accursed business.' 
 
 \
 
 EXPULSION OF DEATH. 771 
 
 Elsewhere : 
 
 Sm7't plyne po wode^ D. jSoats down tlie water, 
 
 nowe Leto k nam gede,^ new Summer to us rides. 
 
 Or: 
 
 Stni't gsme wam zanesly, D. we've from you taken, 
 
 nowe Leto prinesly. new Summer to you brought. 
 
 In Moravia : 
 
 Nesem, nesem Marenu. We bear, we bear Marena. 
 
 Other Slavs : 
 
 Wyneserae, wyneseme Ma- 
 
 inuriendu. Remove we Mamurienda. 
 
 Or: 
 
 wynesli sme Murienu se wsi, we've taken Muriena out, and 
 
 pi'inesli sme May nowy do wsi.^ brought new May to the town. 
 
 At Bielsk in Podlachia, on Dead Sunday they carry an idol of 
 plaited hemp or straio through the town, then drown it in a marsh 
 or pond outside, singing to a mournful strain : 
 
 SmierS 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.^ The Sorbs in Upper Lausitz make the figure 
 of straw and rags ; she who had the last corpse must supply the 
 shirt, and the latest bride the veil and all the rags ; ^ 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 : 
 
 Lec7 hore, lecz hore ! Fly high, fly high, 
 
 jatabate woko, twist thyself round, 
 
 pan dele, pan dele ! fall down, fall down. 
 
 * Celakowsky's Slowansie narodni pisue, Prague 1822. p. 209. He quotes other 
 rhymes as well. 
 
 2 J. Kolliir's Zpiewanky 1, 4. 400. 
 
 3 Hanusch Slav. myth. 413. .Tungmann sub v. Marana, who puts the Polish 
 rhyme into Bohem. thus : Smrt wege po plotu, sukagjc klopotu. Couf. a Morav. 
 song (Kukla in d'Elv 107-8-9). 
 
 * ludicul. superst. 27-8 : ' de simulacris de iianniA factis, qtiae per campos pnr- 
 tant.' The Esthonians ou New year's day make an idol of straw in the shape of a 
 man, to which they concede the name of metzikn and the power of protecting their 
 cattle from wild beasts and defending their frontier. All the people of the village 
 accompany, and set him ou the nearest tree, Thorn. Hiiiru, p. 40.
 
 772 . SUMMEE AND WINTEE. 
 
 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 carry 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 hack, for no 
 one likes to keep him; and they easily come to words and 
 blows about it.^ 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. ^ 
 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 p)6^p 'into people's ivindoivs (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 tui'ned home singing, with constant repetition of the 
 words : ' we have driven out Death, we bring back Summer.' ^ 
 
 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. 
 
 * Lausitz. Mag. for 1770, p. 84-5, from a MS. of Abraham Frencel. 
 
 2 Chr. Arnold's Append, to Alex. Eossen's Uuterschiedn. gottesdienst, Heidelb. 
 1674. p. 135. 
 
 3 Anton's first Versuch iiber die alten Slaven, p. 73-4.
 
 EXPULSION OF GODS. 773 
 
 DlugosZj^ and otliers 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 Ziewonia, fixed on poles or drawn on 
 drags, to a marsh or river, and there drown them ; ^ paying 
 them so to speak, their last homage. Dlugosz's explanation of 
 Marzana as 'harvest-goddess^ seems erroneous; FrenceFs 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 imiet' po puti 
 z Wesnij 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.^ 
 
 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 smrtedhia, 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 cliron. Polon. ii. 1, 22. 
 Mart. Cromer lib. 3, ad a. 065. Mart. Hanke de Silesior. uomiuibus, p. 122-3. 
 
 2 So the Kussian Vladimir, after his conversion, orders the image of Perun to 
 be tied to a horse's tail, beaten, and tliroun into the Dnieper. Afterwards, when 
 the Novgorod Perun was in like manner thrown into the Volkhov, he set ui), while 
 in the river, a loud lament over the peojile's ingratitude. 
 
 2 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 Eoman vestals 
 hoxe pufj)ets plaited of rushes to the Pons Sublicius, and di'opt them in the Tiber, 
 Ov. Fast. 5, 620 : 
 
 Turn quoque priscorum virgo simulacra vjrorum 
 mittere roboreo scirpea ponte solet. ,
 
 774 SUMMER AND WINTER. 
 
 in most places, Laetare is tlie festive day, and is there called 
 Sumvierday. , 
 
 There is no getting over this unanimity as to the timti 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-yeai', i.e. of their leto; to Germans the ari'ival of 
 summer or spring, for in Mai'ch their stork and swallow come 
 home, and the first violet blows. But then the impersonal ' leto ' 
 of the Slavs fights no battle with their Srnrt : 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 
 thing in the festival ; vanquished Winter has indeed his parallel 
 in 8mrt, 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 countiy, Meissen or Thuriugia. 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.^ 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 Schutze 3, 165), therefore not on Laetare; and the words 
 they sing have no explicit reference to summer and winter.
 
 MAY-ELDING. 775 
 
 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 houghs, 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 Suynmer 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. 372n.], han /orer os sommer,' or ^ och hdr oss 
 sommer i hy,' DV. 1, 14. Sv. forns. 1, 44. ' hdra maj i by,' 
 Dybeck runa 2, 67; in Schonen 'fore somma i hy ') 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 hye' 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 mnjtnde, by dropping a wreath on her 
 head. Winter and his conflict with May are no longer mentioned 
 
 VOL. 11. z
 
 776 SUMMEE AND WINTEE. 
 
 in the Sclionisli and .Danish festival. Many towns had regularly 
 organized majgreve gilde} 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." There is a 
 remarkable description in Mundelstrup's Spec, gentilismi etiam- 
 num superstitis, Hafn. 1684 : 'Qui ex junioribus rusticis contum 
 stipulis accensis flammatum efScacius versus sidera tollere 
 potuerit, praeses (gadebasse) incondito omnium clamore de- 
 claratur, nee non eodem tempore sua cuiqiie ex rusticis puellis, 
 quae tunc temporis vernacula appellantur gadelam, distribuitur, 
 et quae praesidi adjicitur titulum hunc gadinde merebitur.^ 
 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 humo 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 ? * The maigreve at Greifswald, May 
 
 1, 1528, is incidentally mentioned by Sastrow inhisLebensbeschr. 
 
 1, 65-6; a license to the scholars at Pasewalk to hold a maigraf 
 
 1 Ihre sub v. majgrefve. Skraordning for Knutsgillet i Lund an. 1586, § 123-7 
 in Bring's Monum. scaneusia, p. 207-10 ; the same for Malmo, p. 211. Er. Tegel's 
 Hist. Gustavi i. 1, 119. Nyerup's Danske cligtek. 1, 246. 2, 136. 143. Thiele 1, 
 145-58 ; conf . 200. For the Zealand custom see Molbech's Hist, tidskrift 1840. 
 1, 203. Tlie maigreves in Eibe are mentioned by Terpager in Eipae 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 viidsoinmers-lam, y). 359. 
 
 ^ The italics here are mine. Each man has a gadelam, but only the leadex 
 a gadinde. — Teans. 
 
 ^ Conf. EA. 821-6 on the time of assizes.
 
 MAY-EIEING. 777 
 
 jaunt, in a Churcli- visitation ordinauce of 1563 (Baltisclie studieu 
 6, 137) ; and more precise information lias lately been collected 
 on the survival of May-riding at Hildesheim, where the beautiful 
 custom only died out in the 18th century. ^ Towards Whitsun- 
 tide the maigreve was elected, and the forest commoners in the 
 Use had to hew timber from seven villages to build the May- 
 waggon ; all loppings 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 niaigrev and maigron, i.e. 
 maigriifin (Schiitze 3, 72). The Schleswig maygrave-feast (festum 
 fi'ondicomans) is described in Ulr. Petersen's treatise already 
 quoted (p. 694 n.).- 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.'^ All over German}'-, to this day, 
 
 1 Koken and Liintzel's Mittlieilmigen 2, 45-61. 
 
 2 He says : ' the memory of this ancient but useless May-feast finally passed 
 hy inheritance to the town-cattle, which, even since 1G70, had every Mayday a gar- 
 land of beech-leaves thrown about the neck, and so bedizened were di-ivun home ; 
 for which service the cowherd could count upon his fee. ' 
 
 3 Geldersche Volksalmanak voor 18:35, pp. lU-28. The song is given in Hoffm.
 
 778 SUMMER AND WINTER. 
 
 we have may-hushes brought into our houses at Whitsuntide : we 
 do not fetch them in ourselves, nor go out to meet them.^ 
 
 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 midnight, 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 m^aiepole, maipollj and was drawn 
 hy 20 io 40 yohe 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 exactly 
 answers to the May-waggon of L. Saxony, and the lord of the 
 May to the May-grave.^ 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 mojum colligendum in 
 nemora' 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 ''der meienhcere 
 man,' Parz. 281, 16 j conf. ' pfingestlicher (pentecostal) kiiniges 
 name,' MS. 2, 128^ 
 
 On the whole then, there are four different ways of welcoming 
 
 Horae belg. 2, 178-180. Couf. ' ic wil den mei gaen houwen voor mijus 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 sacriiicial rite? On no 
 account must woodroof (asperula) be omitted in prejiaring it. 
 
 " Fuller descript. in J. Strutt, ed. Lend. 1830, p. 351-6. Haupt's Zeitscln:. 5, 
 477. 
 
 2 The AS. poems have no passage turning on the battle of S. and W. In Beow. 
 2266 ' H waes winter scacen ' only means winter was past, ' el ibierno es exido,' 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- 
 riding, or fetching of the May-waggon. On the Rhine merely a 
 battle of Winter and Summer, without immersion,^ without the 
 pomp of an entry. In Franconia, Thuringia, Meissen, Silesia and 
 Bohemia only the carrying-out of wintxy Death ; no battle, no 
 formal introduction of Summer.- 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,^ 
 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. 675-6). The idea of a Summer-god marcliiiig 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. 268), Berhta 
 
 ' It was a different thing therefore when in olden times the Frankfort boys and 
 girls, every year at Candlemas (Febr. 2), threw a stiijf'ed garment into the Main, and 
 sang : ' Reuker Uder schlug sein mutter, schlug ihr arm uud bein entzwei, dass sie 
 mordio schrei,' Lersner's Chrou. p. 492. I leave the song unexplained. 
 
 - Yet Summer as a contrast does occasionally come out plainly in songs or 
 customs of Bohemia and Lausitz. 
 
 ^ 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 
 Edda: in Fiullsvinnsmal and Harbardsliod (th. 2, 135. 3, 4-1 of his Edda), in Saxo's 
 Oiler and Othiu saga (th. 1, lUG. Lex. 765), in that of Thiassi (Lex. 887), because 
 OSinn sets the eye of the slain giant in the sky (p. ), and Winter is also to 
 
 have his eyes punched out (p. 7(>5) ; to me Uhland (Ueber Tlior p. 117. 120) seems 
 more jirofouud, in regarding Thiassi as the storm-eagle, and kidnapped liiunn as 
 the green of summer (ingriin, so to speak) ; but the nature of this goddess remains a 
 secret to us.
 
 780 SUMMER AND WINTEE. 
 
 (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 eve 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, withi^ro, Wuotan, Nerthus. But if we admit goddesses, 
 then, in addition to Nerthus, Ostara 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, 52^ 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, 57* (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, 
 
 biut daz ostersaUs zer linken siten bind o. to thy left side, 
 
 bis dur Kiinzen huchgemuot, be for K.'s sake merry, 
 
 leite uns viir daz Tinkiiftor, lead us outside the T. gate, 
 
 Ifi den tanz al uf den wasen riten ! let dance, on turf be rid. 
 
 This binding on of the ' Easter seax,' or sword-hnife, 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 in 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 Whiter, 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) %et/Aa)v and eap have 
 a quarrel.-^ 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 arhorum ramos, eosque 
 ante domorum fores ponat, et denique unusquisque eo die aliquid 
 viridis ramuscuU 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 La3tare, 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 
 
 ' Creuzer's Symb. 2, 429. 494, following Hermann's interpret, of names, makes 
 of the giant Briareus ?i fighting icintcr-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 saw her through the body ; at last they pretend they 
 have found her, and begin sawing something, and afterwards 
 burn it.^ But the same custom is also found among 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 saion through the middle.^ The North Slavs call 
 it hdhu rezati, 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.^ 
 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 chi-istianity over the heathen gods by knocking 
 doivn logs of ivood. 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 
 
 ' Alex. Laborde's Itineraire de I'Espagne 1, 57-8 ; conf. Doblados briep. 
 Hone's Dayb. 1, 369. 
 
 - Anton's Versuch iiber die Slaven 2, 66. 
 
 ^ Linhart's Geschichte von Krain 2, 274. 
 
 ^ The Ital. inverno, SjJan. invierno, is however masc. 
 
 » In Swabia and Switz., fronfasten (Lord's fast = Ember days, Scheffer's 
 Haltaus p. 53) has been corrupted into a frau Paste, 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 1838, d. 101 (see Suppl.).
 
 LOG-FELLING. GOSSAMER. 783 
 
 of Winter at all. In Geo. Torquatus's (unpublished) Annal. 
 Magdeb. et Halberst. part 3 lib. 1 cap. 9 we are told that at 
 Halberstadt (as at Hildesheim above) tliey used once a year to 
 set up a log in the marketplace^ and throiv at it till its Jiead 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 hear (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 beat' 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. ^ Until we know the whole tradition more exactly, 
 we cannot assign it its right place. Lei and Polel ax'e usually 
 likened to Castor and Pollux (Linde i. 2, 1250''), to whom they 
 bear at least this resemblance, that their names, even in old folk- 
 songs, make a simple interjection, ^ as the Romans used the twin 
 
 » Hall. allg. Iz. 1807. no. 256, p. 807. 
 
 ^ Pol. lelum, poldum ; Serv. lele, leljo.lclja (Vuksub v.) ; \Valacb. lerurn (couf. 
 lirumlarum, verba ellutitia). It seems to me hazardous to suppose them sous of 
 Lada as C. and 1*. were of Leda. Couf. sujjra p. iJGO.
 
 784 SUMMEK AND WINTER. 
 
 demigods to swear by. Fliegender sovimer, Jlugsommer, sommcr^ 
 fliig, graswehe, are our names for the white threads that cover the 
 fields at the beginning of springs and still more of autumn ; the 
 Spring tissue is also called maidensummer, Mary's yarn, Mary's 
 thread (p. 471), that of autumn aftersuramer, autumn yarn, old- 
 rvives' summer ; but generally both kinds are covered by the one 
 name or the other. Nethl. slammefje (draggletail ? Brem. wtb. 4, 
 799) ; Engl, gossamer (God's train, trailing garment), also samar, 
 simar (train) ; Swed. dvdrgsndt (dwarf's net), p. 471. Boh. ivlacka 
 (harrow, because the threads rake the ground ?) ; Pol. lato sivieto 
 inarcinsMe, 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. But 
 the autumn gossamer has another Slavic name : Pol. bahie lato, 
 old wives' summer. Boh. bahslce Veto, or simply habj, 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 interpreted 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 lorappage of leaves represents 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 variations, 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 down of logs at Halberstadt (p. 783), there was also
 
 DRESSING UP IN GREEN. 785 
 
 a hear and a boy with a sword (conf. supra p. 304 n.) in the pro- 
 cession ; that Vildifer, a hero disguised in a hearsldn, is led about 
 by a musician, and dances to the harp. ^ Doubtless a dramatic 
 performance of ancient date, which we could have judged better, 
 had the M. Nethl. poem of here Wislau^ been preserved; but 
 tlie name Yildifer seems to be founded on an OS. Wild-efor, 
 which originated in a misapprehension of the OHG. Wildpero 
 ('pero^ ursus being confounded with 'per' aper), as only a 
 dancing bear can be meant here, not a boar. Now this bear 
 fits well with the gadehasse of the Danish May feast (p. 776). 
 Schmidts Schwab, wtb. SIS'" mentions the Augsburg ivaterhird : 
 at Whitsuntide a lad wraj)t from head to foot in reeds is led 
 through the town by two others holding hirch-houghs 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-king ; a young peasant is escorted into the 
 woods, is there enveloj)ed in green hushes and houghs, 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. ^ In other places it is on Whit-Sunday 
 itself that the man who was the last to drive his cattle to pasture, 
 is ivr-apt in fir and hirch houghs, 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-loohy : so with the 
 latest riser in every house. The sleeping away of sacred festive 
 
 • Vilk. safja, cap. 120-1 ; mark, that the minstrel gives him the name of Vitrleo 
 (wise liou), which should of course have been Vitrbiorn ; for a bear has the sense of 
 1*2 men (Reinh. p. 445). The people's ' king of beasts ' has been confounded with 
 that of scholars. 
 
 " Horae belg. 1, 51. Mone's Niederl. volkslit. p. 35-6. Conf. Wenezlan, Altd 
 bl. 1, 333. Wislau is the Slav. Weslav, Waslav (Wenceslaus). 
 
 3 Eeichsauz. 1796. no. 90, p. 947. The herdsman that drives earliest to the 
 Alpine 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 accurate ac- 
 counts of Whitsun customs in the Marks. In the Mittelmark 
 the houses are decorated 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-sleipe 
 (dew-sweep),^ 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-kddm 
 ov pingst-hdclrel. At Havelberg the cow that came home first 
 at night used to be adorned with the crown of flowers, and the 
 last got the thau-schleife ; now this latter practice is alone kept 
 up.^ 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 hoy, viz. they clothe him from head 
 to foot in ivild flowers, and at noon lead him from farm to farm, 
 the deiv-sweeper pronouncing the rhymes. In other places a pole 
 decked with flowers and ribbons is carried round, and called the 
 bammel (dangle) or ping s-kddm, 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- 
 hrosel. In some parts of the Mittelmark the muffled boy is called 
 the kaudernest. On the Droraling the boys go round with the 
 pnngst-kddm, and the girls with the may-hride, collecting gifts. 
 Some villages south of the Dromling have a more elaborate 
 
 ^ So named, because it has to touch the dewy grass : which confirms my 
 interpretation of the Alamannic tau-dmnil (E.A. 94, 630), supra p. 387 note. 
 
 ^ In some places a winning horse lias a stick cleft in three fixed on his head 
 and richly encircled with the finest fiowers ; 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. o28.
 
 DRESSING UP IN GREEN. 787 
 
 ceremonial. On * White Sunday/ a fortniglit before Easter, the 
 herdboys march to the pasture with white sticks (supra p. 766) , 
 and with these they mark off a spot, to which no one may drive 
 his cattle till Whitsuntide.^ This being done, the smaller boys 
 name their brides " to the bigger ones, and no one must reveal 
 the name till Whitsunday, 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 fiistge 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 loth cent, 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 
 idolum colebant,' Chapeaville 2, 98. To this day poor women 
 in Holland at Whitsuntide carry about a girl sitting in a little 
 
 1 While this fallow parjture is beinj; railed off, the new lads (those who are tend- 
 ing for the first time) have to procure bones to covei- the branches of a fir-tree which 
 is erected. The tree is called the r/ibbet of bones, and its top adorned with a horse's 
 shtll (Kuhn 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. -17; the good 
 Lubbe's hill of bones is also in point, p. 5*26. 
 
 ^ This namiiirj of brides resembles the cri/ing of fiefs on Walbnrgis eve in 
 Hesse, on the L. Rhine, the Ahr and the Eifcl, Zeitschr. f. Hess, gesch. 2, 272-7. 
 Diefl'enbach's Wetterau p. 234. Ernst Weyden's Ahrthal, Bonn 1839, p. 216. 
 And who can help remembering the ON. heit strengja at Yule-tide ? when the 
 heroes likewise chose their loved ones, e.g. iu Su;m. IIG' : ' HeMnu strougdi heit til 
 Svavo.'
 
 78S SUMMER AND WINTER. 
 
 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 pinxterbloein 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 lidlap or luilah (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 ^ 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 Ilrede (March) and Eastre (April), p. 289. Phol, who had 
 his Phol-day (p. 614), seems also to have ruled over a Phol-mdnot 
 (May and Sept.), conf. Diut. i. 409, 432, and Schefi'er'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.^ 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. 
 
 ^ Martius 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. 789 
 
 speak of an gerra and ajftera Geola, aerra and eeftera LiSa, ami 
 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 
 spnrcalia.
 
 CHAPTER XXV. 
 TIME AND WORLD. 
 
 Ill 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 space. 
 
 Ulphilas translates '^(^povoq, Kacpof;, lopa alternately by mel, 
 hveila, peiJis, yet so that ^meP usually stands for ')(^p6vo<i or 
 KaLp6<i, rarely for wpa, and 'hveila^ mostly for wpa, seldomer for 
 ■)(^p6vo<; and Kaipo^ ; the former expressing rather the longer 
 section of time, and the latter the shorter. Mel, OHG. miil, AS. 
 moel, ON. mdl, lit. mark or measure, is applied to measured 
 speech or writing as well as to a portion of time ; on the contrary, 
 hveila, OHG. htitla, MHG. wile, AS. hwil (p. 702), denotes rest, 
 and is purely a notion of time, whereas mel was transferred from 
 space to time. We come across peihs (neut. gen. ]?eihsis) only 
 twice, viz. Rom. 13, 11: ' vitandans |?ata |?oihs, j^atei mel ist,^ 
 etSore? rov Kaipov, on wpa, and 1 Thess. 5, 1 : ' bi }>6 j^eihsa jah 
 mela,' irepX royv ')(^p6vQ)v koI tcov KUipcov. Each passage contains 
 both ]7eihs and mel, but the choice of the former for 'x^povo^ and 
 the latter for Katp6<i shews that jjeihs is even better adapted than 
 mel for the larger fuller notion, and the most complete arrange- 
 ment would be : ]?eihs ')(^p6vo'i, mel Kaipo'i, hveila twpa. 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. jnsl, thill, for which we may 
 assume a Goth. ]?eihslo, ]'eihsla, the apparatus by which the 
 waggon 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 j^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. }?eihs has no 
 representative in the other Teutonic tongues, and in return the 
 OHG. zit, AS. tid, ON. ^id'' seems foreign to Gothic, it is natural, 
 considering the identity of meaning, to suppose that the latter 
 form arose from mixing up j^eihan (crescere) with teihan (nun- 
 tiare), and therefore that the AS. tid stands for |;id, and OHG. 
 zit for dit; besides, the OHG. zit is mostly neut., like ]?eihs, 
 whereas the fem. zit, tid would have demanded a Goth. ]7eiha]7s. 
 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. dihsmo^ above, and a Goth. 
 |>eihsma, with both of which the Lat. tempus (and temo?) would 
 perfectly agree (see Suppl.). 
 
 Like hveila, the OHG. stidla, 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.^ We express 
 the briefest interval of time by augenhlick, eye-glance; Ulph. 
 renders Luke 4, 5 iv arLyfif) ')^p6vov ' in stiJca melis,^ in a prick 
 of time, in ictu temporis ; 1 Cor. 15, 52 iv ptirf} 6(j)0a\fxou, ' in 
 brahva augins/ brahv being glance, flash, micatus, AS. twincel, 
 and traceable to braihvan (micare, lucere), OHG. prehan, MHG. 
 brehen ; ^ AS. ' on heorhtm-hwile ' from bearhtm ictus oculi, ' on 
 eagan heorhtm,' Beda 2, 13 ; ON. 'i augahrag&i,' conf. Sa3m. 1V\ 
 14^ 19**. OHG. 'in slago dero hrdwo/ N. ps. 2, 12, in a movement 
 of the eyelid (conf. slegiprdwa palpebra, Graff 8, 316); 'ante- 
 
 ^ In dihan, dihsmo the d remained, in zit it degenerated. Just so the Goth. 
 Jjvahan first became regularly OHG. duahan, then irregularly tuahan, now zwagen ; 
 the OS. thuingan first OHG. duingan, then tuingan, now zwingen. Less anomal- 
 ous by one degree are OHG. zi for Goth, du (to), and our zwerg for ON. dvergr 
 (dwarf), MHG. t were. 
 
 2 Numeral adverbs of repetition our language forms with atunt as well as vial, 
 but also by some words borrowed from space, Gramm. 3, 230. 
 
 3 Beside the inf. bnjlwn (MS. 1, 47"'. 185*. Gudr. 1356, 2) we are only sure of 
 the pres. part.: o\iiy.e-brehnider kle, MS. 1, 8^. brehender schin 2, 231^; for the 
 pret. brack, MS. 2, 52*. Bon. 48. (58, could be referred to brechen, conf. ' break of 
 day,' p. 7-47, yet the two verbs themselves may be congeners. In OHG. the perf. 
 part, appears in 2)re7ta?i-ougi (Uppus), a compound formed like zoran-ougi, Gramm. 
 2,693. The Goth, brahv assures us of the princ. parts in full, braihra, hrahv, 
 brehvum (like saihva, sahv, sehvum). But instead of an adj. braihts (bright), even 
 the Gothic has only a transposed form bairhts, OHG. peraht, AS. beorht, ON. 
 biartr ; yet our Perahta is afterwards also called Prohta, Brehte (pj). 277-9), and other 
 proper names waver between the two forms, as Albrecht Albert, Eupreeht Robert. 
 
 VOL. II. A A
 
 792 TIME AND "WORLD. 
 
 quatn supercilium superius inferiori jungi possit/ Caesar, heisterb. 
 12, 5. ' minre wilen (in less time) dan ein oucbra zuo der an- 
 dern rauge geslaben/ Griesbaber p. 274. ' als ein oucbra mac 
 M und zuo gegen/ can open and shut, Berth . 239. ' e ick die 
 bant umbkerte, oder zuo gesliiege die (or better, diu) bra/ Er. 
 5172. ^also schier so (as fast as) ein brawe den andern slahen 
 mac/ Fundgr. 1, 199 (see Suppl.).^ 
 
 A great length of time is also expressed by several different 
 words: Goth, divs (m.), OHG. ewa (f.), Gr. alcov, Lat. aevuvi 
 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 al(ov 
 (Eph. 2, 2. 1 Tim. 1, 17. 2 Tim. 4, 10), and /Sio? 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.^ Its Gothic 
 form, wanting in Ulph., would have been vair-alj?s or ' vaire 
 al|>s,^ virorum (hominum) aetas, aetas (Ufetime) 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,^ and was apparently 
 no stranger in Scandinavia itself. Snorri 15 gives the name of 
 
 1 Can brawe, OHG. prawa, ON. bra, be derived from breben ? Perbaps tbe 
 set pbrases in the text reveal the reason for it. In that case the OHG. prawa must 
 be for praba, and we might expect a Goth, brehva ? Then the Sanskr. bhru, Gr. 
 6(ppvs, would be left without the vivid meaning of the Teut. word. 
 
 - Its true meaning was so obscured, that other explanations were tried. 
 Maerlant at the beginn. of his Sp. Hist. : ' die de werelt erst iverrelt hiet, bine was 
 al in dole niet. Adam die icerelt al verwerrede.'' This deriv. from werren (impedire, 
 intricare) was, if I mistake not, also hit ujjon 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, ITo^ ; another representation gave the figure a 
 golden head, silver breast and arms, brazen belly, steel thighs, iron legs, earthen 
 feet, MS. 2, 225''; a third, a golden head, silver arms, brazen breast, copper belly, 
 steel thighs, earthen feet, Amgb. 27*'. 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 
 
 (jull-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 lotunheim. 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. ^ But in the Voluspa 
 (Stem. 8^) we see that other ages are spoken of, shegg-old (see p. 
 421), skdlm-dld, vind-old and varg-old, which are to precede the 
 destruction of the world. 
 
 To translate K6a/xo<;, Ulph. takes by turns, and often one im- 
 mediately after the other, the two words fairhvus and manasefis; 
 both must have been in common use among the Goths. Mana- 
 seps 2 means virorum satus (seed of men), and is used at once for 
 Xao'i and for Koa/xo^, thus fully conciding with the above developed 
 sense of weralt. Fairhvm 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 /coo-yu-o? properly means the ordered, symmetrical (world), 
 mundus the clean, Avell-triramed, bright, and as the Frisian laws 
 126, 26 speak of Hhi sJiSne wrald ' ; so the Slavic sviet, svet,siviat 
 is, first of all, light and brightness, then world, the open, public,'^ 
 all that the sun illumines, whatsoever is 'under the sun.^ * So 
 the Wallach. lume, the Hung, vildg, signify both light and world. 
 The Lith. sioietas, 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 maa' ilma,,t\ie Esth. 7na ilm 
 (from ilma, the expanse of air, and maa, earth), the Lapp, ilbme. 
 
 ^ 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 flowed in the rivers (conf. p. G97), Ganander 98. 
 
 - Always with single n, as in mana-ma(ir)5rja, mana-riggvs, manags (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. 
 
 " To bring to light, impart to the world, is in Serv. ' na sviet izdAti.' 
 
 ■• The Lett, word pasntile seems to have been modelled on this ' sub sole ' in 
 Eccles. 1, 3. 2, 22. So ' unter disem wolken,' llol. 9, 31.
 
 794 TIME AND WOKLD. 
 
 The ON. heimr is mundus, domus, and akin to himinn^ himil 
 (p. 698)^ as mundus also is applied both to world and sky ; 
 liehnshringla, orbis terrarum. Ulphilas renders olKovfxevri, Luke 
 2, 1. 4, 5. Rom. 10^ 18, by viidjungards ; to this correspond the 
 AS. middangeard, Csedm. 9, 3. 177, 29. Beow. 150. 1496; the 
 OHG. mitUngart, Is. 340. 385-6. 408. Fragm. theot. 17, 6. 
 mittigart, Fragm. th. 17, 3. 20, 20. 25, 9. mittiligart, Gl. Jun. 
 216. T. 16, 1. miUilgart, T. 155, 1. 178, 2. 179, 1; the OS. 
 middilgard; the ON. mi&gar&r, Seem. 1". 45^ 77^ 90^ 114^ 115^ 
 Sn. 9. 10. 13. 45. 61 ; and even a Swed. folksong 1, 140 has 
 retained medjegard. O. Engl, middilerd, mediloarth, like the Gr. 
 liecTO'yata. Fischart^s Garg. Q&^ has mittelkreiss, 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. Oegislieimr, Saem. 124''. 125% 
 and in MHG. viergarte, Annolied 444. Rol. 106, 14. Kaiserchr. 
 501. 6633. Karl. 38''; i.e. the sea-girt world, conf. Goth, 
 marisaivs (ocean), and OHG. onerikerti (aetherium),^ Diut. 1, 250. 
 Lastly, OHG. woroltring, 0. ii. 2, 13. iii. 26, 37. iv. 7, 11. v. 1, 
 33. 19, 1. erdring, 0. i. 11, 47. MHG. erdrinc, Mar. 198-9, orbis 
 terrarum, Graff 4, 1163. 
 
 According to the Edda, a huge serjJent, the mi&gar&s ormi', lies 
 coiled round the earth's circumference, ' umgior'S 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 goS fia, Saem. 55*) was the child of Loki, and 
 brother to the Fenris-ulfr and Hel ; he was called lormungandr 
 (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 
 ' earth-ring,' ring indicates the globular shape of the earth and 
 
 1 The Finnic ilma ? Festus says mundtis meant coelum as well as terra, mare, 
 aer.
 
 WORLD. 795 
 
 its planetary revolution. Manaseps, fairhvus, and we rait Tpoint, to 
 spaces and periods filled by men.^ 
 
 So far as ' world ' contains the notion of seculum and life, it is 
 significantly called, even by the OS. poet, a dream : liudio drom, 
 Hel. 17,17. 104,7. 109,20. manno drom 23, 7. 103,4. AS. 
 gumdredm, Beow. 4933 ; ' la vida es sueno.' 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 
 nhius hrede werold,' Hel. 50, 1. 131,21; MHG. ' diu hreite 
 werlt,' Mar. 161; ouv weite hreite ivelt. Also: Hhiz \ant hreitd,' 
 0. ii. 2, 18. daz hreite gevilde, Mar. 34. Wigal. 2269. diu hreite 
 erde, Roth. 4857. Wh. 60, 29. Geo. 4770, evpela x^^^- This 
 reminds one of the name of Balder's dwelling spoken of on 
 p. 222-3, hrei&a hlih, 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 
 hreite hlich ' when there is a plentiful yield of it.^ The beautiful 
 brigbt world is, as it were, a wide glance. 
 
 When ' world ' or ^ heimr ' is merely used in the general sense 
 of dwelling place, we can think of several worlds. The Voluspa, 
 Saem. 1% supposes nine worlds and nine firmaments (iviSir), conf. 
 Saem. 36^. 49% just as Sn. 222^* 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 anegenges zit, daz 
 sich diu werlt erhuop (up-hove), und muoter ir kint getruoc (bore),' Rol. 285, 12. 
 ' sit (since) diu werlt erste wart,' Ulr. Trist. 3699 ; or thus : ' sit difiiii erde geleget 
 wart,' Eol. 187, 7. ' sit diu erde akerst begunde bern (to bear),' Karl 70''. 
 
 2 In Matthesius's Sermons S-l": 'Now this Cyrus hath a silver kingdom, 
 wherein the word of God, as silver refined in the lire, is i^reached zu hreitem 
 plick.' 91'' : ' He hath sent his apostles into all the world, that they may preach the 
 gospel zu hreitem plick, as ye mining folk say.' 101'' : ' Elsewhere lead ap- 
 l^eareth in blocks, as at Goslar, where the Eamelsberg is zu hreitem plick almost all 
 lead.' 
 
 3 Nine choirs of angels, Fundgr. 1, 101. Pass. 339. 341. ' niu fylkingar engla,' 
 Fornald. sog. 3, 063 ; conf. the nine punishments of hell, Wackernagel's BastI 
 MSS. 2-1'' [Buddliist books describe 18 hells, some hot, some coidj.
 
 796 TIME AND WORLD. 
 
 with the upper world, that inhabited by man, and passages exist 
 from the one to the other. 
 
 The ON. system supposes a world-tree, asJcr 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 hrim]?urses, the third to the under world. From 
 under each root gushes a miraculous spring, namely, by the 
 heaven root TJrd'arhrunnr (p. 407), by the giants^ root Mimis- 
 hrunnr, 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 egg; from the tree there trickles a 
 bee-nourishing dew, named hundngsfall (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 Ddinn and Dvalinn. The snake Ni&hoggr (male pun- 
 gens, caedens) lies below, by Hvergelmir, gnawing at the root. 
 The squirrel Ratatoskr ^ 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 Ved'rfdlnir.'^ 
 
 The whole conception bears a primitive stamp, but seems 
 very imperfectly unfolded to us. We get some inkling of a teud 
 between snake and eagle, which is kept alive by Ratatoskr ; not 
 a word as to the purpose and functions of hawk or stags. 
 Attempts at explaining Yggdrasil I have nothing to do with; at 
 
 ^ The word contains rata (elabi, permeare), Goth, vraton, and perh. taska, pi. 
 toskur, pera : peram permeans ? Wolfram in Parz. 651, 13 has 'wenken als ein 
 eichorn,^ dodging like a squirrel. The squirrel, is still an essential feature in the 
 popular notion of a forest, couf. EA. 4^7 and the catching of squirrels at Easter 
 (supra p. 616), perhaps for old heathen uses. 
 
 - The eagle's friend, for haukr i horni (hawk in the corner) means a hidden 
 counsellor.
 
 WOELD-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 to many speculations and legends. Well, 
 a song in the ^ Wartburg War,' MsH. 3, 181 sets the following 
 riddle : 
 
 Ein edel boum gewalisen ist 
 
 in eime garten, der ist gemacht mit holier list; 
 
 sin wurzel kan der helle grunt erlangen, 
 
 sin tolde (for ' zol der ') riioret mi den tron 
 
 da der siieze Got besclieidet vriunde Ion, 
 
 sin este hreit hdnt al die werlt bevangen : 
 
 der boum an ganzer zierde stat und ist geloubet schoene, 
 
 dar ufe sitzent vogelin 
 
 siiezes sanges wise nacb ir stimme fin, 
 
 nach maniger kunst so haltents ir gedoene. 
 
 (A noble tree in a garden grows, and high the skill its making 
 shews j 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, 0. v. 1, 19 had 
 already written : 
 
 Thes kruzes horn thar obana zeigot vf in himila, 
 tbie arma joh. tbio henti tbie zeigont toorolt-enti, 
 tber selbo mittilo boum tber scowot tbesau loorolt-Jloum, 
 
 tbeiz innan erdu stentit, 
 
 mit tbiu ist tbar bizeinit, tbeiz imo ist al gimeinit 
 in erdu job im liirnile 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 : Otfried 
 may have picked up his notion from it all the same.^ It says : 
 ' Nam ipsa crux magnum in se mysterium continet, cujus positio 
 
 ^ I do not know if Lafontuine bad Virgil's verses in his mind, or followed his 
 own promptiug, when he says of an oak : 
 
 Celui, de qui la tete au ciel 6tait voisine, 
 
 et dout les pieds touchaieut a Tempiie des morts.
 
 798 TIME AND WORLD. 
 
 talis est, ut superior pars coelos jpetat, inferior terrae inhaereat, 
 fixa mfernorum ima contingat, latitudo autem ejus partes mimdi 
 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 eai'ly Father, African or Oriental; but this I doubt. As for 
 the birds with which the 13th cent, poem provides the tree, and 
 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.^ ^ So 
 that the Norse fable is deeply grounded in nature; conf. what 
 was said, p. 696, 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 from 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,- 
 
 ^ Perhaps Hrabanus Maurus's Carmen in laudem sanctae crucis, which I have 
 not at baud now, contains tlie same kind of thing. 
 
 - CaUla et Dimna, ed. Silvestre' de Sacy. Mem. hist. p. 28-9, ed. Knatchbull, 
 p. 80-1 ; conf. the somewhat different version in the Exempeln der alien weisen, 
 i).m. 22.
 
 WOELD-TREE. 799 
 
 Hereupon is founded a rebuke of man's levity^ wlio 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/ but also found its way into other channels. John 
 Damascenus (cii'C. 740) inserted it in his BapXaa/M kul ^Icodcracf),^ 
 which soon became universally known through a Latin repro- 
 duction.^ 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 columna, 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 
 ]7ria vega), so did three or four great highways branch out from 
 the Irminsiil (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 Hainault, and the 
 Thor and Roland pillars (p. 394) may have had no other purpose 
 than to mai'k 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. JeLalcddin's Divan in Hammer's Pers. redek. p. 183. 
 
 2 First publ. in Boissonade's Anecd. Graeca, torn. 4, Paris 1832, pp. 1 — 365. 
 
 3 Hist, duorum Christi militum (Opera, Basil. 1575. pp. 815 — W2) ; also printed 
 separately, Antv. s.a. (the illustration at p. 107) ; another version in buriua 7, 858 
 beq., the parable at p. 889.
 
 800 TIME AND WORLD. 
 
 subserved a very similar parfcition of tlie 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 Nt&hdggr and other serpents (named in Ssem. 
 44''. Sn. 22) have their haunt round the spring Hvergelmir, is 
 the dread dwelling-place of the death- goddess SeZ (p. 312), Goth. 
 Halja {' ov heljo/ Saem. 94% 'i heljo' 49. 50. 51, is clearly 
 spoken of a place, not a person), it is gloomy and black, like herj 
 hence a NehelJieim, cold land of shadows, abode of the departed,^ 
 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 aS?;? (Matt. 11, 23. Luke 10, 15. 
 16, 23. 1 Cor. 15, 55), the infernus 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 ' infernus ' by hella 
 (Matt. 11, 23), 'gehenna '2 by hellafiur (5, 29. 30) or hellawizi 
 (-torment 10, 28), and only ' 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 
 'ni^ar 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 helsid', 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, Meto^ ne cu^on,^ 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 
 
 ^ A dead man is called nifl-farinn, Saem. 249*. The progenitor of the Nibelungs 
 -was prob. Nehel (Fornald. sog. 2, 9. 11, Nfefill for Nefill) : a race of heroes doomed 
 to Hades and early death. ' Nibelunge : spirits of the death-kingdom,' Lachmami 
 on Nib. 342. 
 
 - From gehenna comes, we know, the Fr. gehene, gene, i.e. supplice, though in 
 a very mitigated sense now.
 
 HELL. NIFL-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 mimis declamaretur, ubi 
 tantus ille infernus esset, qui tantara muUitudinem caesorum capere 
 posset ? ' 1 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 infernum, 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 s6 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 fi-om death, for the words are 
 addressed to a dead man (see Suppl.). 
 
 Hell is represented as a lodging, an irin, as ValhoU, where those 
 who die put up the same evening (p. 145) : ' ver skulum d ValhoU 
 gista i qveld,' Fornald, sog. 1, 106 ; ' vi^ munum i aptan O&lti 
 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, crrjfxepov jxer ifxaO ecrj] iv tm irapahelafp, Luke 23, 43 have 
 Hhis 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 of 
 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).'' 
 
 » 
 
 ' Trad. Corbeiens. pp. 465. 604 makes a regular hexameter of it : 'tantus ubi 
 infernus, caesos qui devoret omnes ? ' Tliis overcrowding of Hades with the dead 
 reminds one of Galderon'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 estan ya aposentado con Lutero. 
 
 (Sitio de Breda, jorn. primera). 
 
 2 Lat. gedichte dcs X. XI. jh. p. 335, conf. 344. 
 
 ' Also in Lower Hesse : Ju'Uwpf/ by Wettesingen and Oberlistingen (Wochenbl. 
 for 1833, 952. 984. 1023. 1138), hdllcxceg by Calden (951. 982. 1022), Iwllepfad by 
 Nothfelden (923).
 
 802 TIME AND WORLD. 
 
 In the plains of Up. Germany we sometimes iind it called todten- 
 weg (Mone'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 me'S reiSinni a helveg,' 
 and the poem bears the title Eeheid', Saem. 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 gant.'' 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 (WolPs 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 infern instead of hellia.^ 
 
 The heathen hellia lay low down toward the North; when 
 Hermo^r 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 Gioll (strepens), 
 over which goes a bridge covered with shining gold ; a maiden 
 named MoSguSr guards the bridge, and she told him that five 
 fylki of dead men ~ had come over it the day before, and that 
 from this bridge the ' heliway ' ran ever lower and northwarder : 
 ' ni'Sr ok nor^r liggr helvegr.' This I 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. 
 67. The hall is named EUu&nir (al. ElviSnir), the threshold 
 fallanda forad (al. the palisade is fallanda forad, the threshold 
 l^olmoSnir), the curtain hlikjandi bol, 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. ifearn, Wei. 
 yfern, vffern. 
 
 - A fylki contains 50 (RA. 207), so tliat Baldr rode down with an escort of 250, 
 though one MS. doubles the number : ' reiS Baldr her meS 500 manua.'
 
 NIFL-HEL. 803 
 
 gates) that is meant in Seem, 226^ and Fornald. 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.^ But HeFs kingdom bears the name of Nifiheimr or Nijl- 
 liel, mist- world, mist-hell,^ it is the ninth ivorld (as to position), 
 and was created many ages before the earth (p. 558) ; in the 
 middle of it is that fountain Rvergelmir, out of which twelve 
 rivers flow, GioU 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 wei*e first imagined living with 
 her, and afterwards in her (it). In the approaches dwelt or 
 hovered the dark elves (see Sup pi.). 
 
 Niflheimr then, the mist-world, was a cold underground region 
 covered with eternal night, traversed by twelve roaring 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 filsAimon' (Cod. 7183 fol. 126 b) 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, ' con vos remanez solz, 
 noirs, hisdoz et obscurs, et laiz et tenebrox I ' 
 a Ventrer de la parte, si con hsaut trovon. 
 jusquau terme i sera, que jugerois le mont. 
 The source of this strange legend is unknown to me. 
 
 2 ' Diu inre helle, wo 7iebel und finster.' The Lucidarius gives ten names of 
 hell: stagnum ignis, terra tenebrosa, terra oblivionis, swarzia ffiimnne, etc. Clone's 
 Anz. for 1834, 313 ; conf. expressions in the OS. poet : hot endi thiustri, suart 
 si7uiahti, Hel. Go, 12 ; an dnloji thiiistron, an themo alloro ferrosten feme 65, 9 ; 
 under ferndalu 33, 16 ; dia}) dodes dalu 157, 22.
 
 804 TIME AND WORLD. 
 
 connect Helleborne in Brabant^ the source of Ilellehelce ; several 
 places are named Helleput (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 Niflheimr/ there is no 
 mention anywhere of its denizens being punished and tormented ; 
 neither 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." 
 The only exceptions seem to be the heroes that fall in battle, 
 whom 0(Sinn 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 si^a'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 ever, at once pitch-black and illumined 
 with a glow. Gehenna is interpreted hellafiuri, MHG. hellefiwer 
 Parz. 116. 18; the poet of the Holland, when he wants to picture 
 vividly this black and burning hell, turns the old fem. form into 
 a masc. : ^an thene hetan hel' 76, 22. 'an thene suartanhel' 
 103, 9. Erebi fornax, Walther 867. Nay, 0. and other OHG. 
 writers make the simple heh (pix) stand for hell^: 'in dembeche/ 
 
 ' Cfedmon still pictures the witehus (house of torment) as ' deep, dreama leas, 
 sinnihte beseald.' Striking images occur in a doc. of the 11th cent. (Zeitschr. f. 
 d. a. 3 445) : swevilstank, genibele, todes scategruobe, waliente stredema, etc. 
 
 ^ So all the Greek heroes sink into Hades' hotise 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 /o?- their inmishment, 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 descrii^tion 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 jjieeo spatiatur averno,' Eugenius 
 in Dracout. p. m. 30 : ' Ut possim ;picei poenam vitare baratliri/
 
 HELL. 805 
 
 Warnung 547 and Wernlier v. Niederrh. 40, 10; 'die pecliwelle,' 
 Anegenge 28, 19. It is a fancy widely scattered over Europe; 
 the Mod. Greeks still say irlacra for hell, as in a proverb of Alex. 
 Negri : e;^et iriaaav koI TrapdBeicTov, putting hell and heaven side 
 by side. This pitchy hell the Greeks seem to have borrowed 
 from the Slavs, the 0. SI. peklo meant both pitch and hell (Dobr. 
 instit. 294), so the Boh. peklo, hell, Pol. pleMo, Serv. pahao, 
 Sloven, pehel, some masc, some neuter; Lith, peMlv (fem.), 0. 
 Vvw^s,. picJiullis (pickullien in the Catechism p. 10 is Ace), the 
 devil himself is in Lith. piyculas, 0. Pruss. pickuls, conf. Rausch 
 p. 484. The Hungarians took their p)ohol, 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 also dat lielsclte p)ek.' 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 : 
 kvoUheimr, mundus supplicii, in Solarl. 53 (Ssem. 127^^) is unmis- 
 takably the christian idea. The OHG. hellawizi, OS. helliwiti, 
 Hel. 44, 17, AS. hellewite, expresses supplicium iuferui, conf. 
 Graff 1, 1117 on wizi, MHG. ivize, MsH. 2, 105'^; 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 Caruiola and Styria got their vlze 
 (purgatorium), for the Chui'ch had distinguished between two 
 fires, the one punitive, the other purgative, and hanging midway 
 betwixt hell and heaven.^ 
 
 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 abi/ssus (Ducange sub v.), and 
 forms the counterpart to heaven: 'a coelo usque in abyssum."" 
 From abyssus, Span, abismo, Fr. abime, is to be explained the 
 MHG. dbis (Altd. bl. 1, 295; in abisses grunde, MsH. 3, 167), 
 later obis, nobis (en abis, en obis, in abyssum). OS. helligrund, 
 
 1 Of one ill piu-gatory the Esthonians say: ta ou kakha ilma waliliel, he is he- 
 tueen two woiidt:.
 
 806 TIME AND WOELD. 
 
 Hel. 44, 22; in afgrunde ghn, Eoth. 2334; ir verdienet daz af- 
 grunde, 1970 ; ' varen ter Belle in den donhren helre,' dark cellar^ 
 Floris 1257.^ AS. se neowla grund (imus abyssus), Csedm. 267^ ] . 
 270, 16; ])set neowle genial (profunda caligo) 271, 7. 275, 31. 
 This neowel, niwel (profundus) may explain an expression in tlio 
 Frisian Asega-bok (Richth. 130, 10), 'thiu niuent hille,* where a 
 M. Nethl. text has ' de grundlose helle,' bottomless hell. Hell 
 sinking downwards is contrasted with heaven mounting upwards: 
 ' der himel allez uf get, diu helle siget allez ze tal/ Warnung 
 3375-81 (see Suppl.). 
 
 It appears that men imagined, as 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, plu'teus, 
 OHG. dil, dili, ON. jjil, J?ili): 'griiebe ich uf den dille-stein,' if 
 I dug down to the d., Schmiede (smithy, forge) 33 ; ' des hoehe 
 viir der himele dach und durch der lielle hodem vert,* its height 
 passes over heaven's roof and through hell's floor, ibid. 1252 ; 
 ' viir der himele dach du blickest, u. durch der Jielle dillestein [is 
 not this y^oor rather than ceiling?],' MS. 2, 199''; 'wan ez kumt 
 des tiuvels schrei, da von wir sin erschrecket : der dillestein der 
 ist enzwei (in-two, burst), die toten sint uf gewecket,' Dietr. 
 drachenk. cod. pal. 226^. This makes me think of the 6fi(f)a\6'i 
 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,^ 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 mfart,' 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 ' eggrunt ' stand for eck-grunt ? ' Das iuwer sele komen fizer eggrunde,' 
 Cod. pal. 349, ld'\ 
 
 - Conf. 0. Miiller's Etrusker 2, 96-7. The Finn, manala is 'locus subterraneus, 
 uM versantur mortui,' sei^ulcrum, oicus, but derived from maa (terra, mundus), 
 and only accidentally resembling ' manalis.'
 
 DILLE-STEIN. MUSPILLI. 807 
 
 like her brother Fenrir^ and every abyss gapes :^ os geliennae 
 in Beda 363, 17 is the name of a' fire-spouting well (puteus);^ 
 in an AS. gloss (Mone 887) mud' (os) means orcus. The same 
 Coll. of glosses 742 puts down sedff (puteus, barathrum) for hell, 
 and 2180 cwis for tartarus, 1284 cwis-husle, where undoubtedly 
 we must read cwis-susle. To civis 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,' 
 Csedm. 3, 28, I take to be supplicio clausum. The notion of the 
 well agrees remarkably with the fable in the Reinhart, where 
 the hero having fallen into a well wheedles the wolf into the 
 bucket; he pretends he is sitting in jparadis 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 
 haden' MsH. 2, 254^; 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, Seem. 128-9. 
 Snakes, adders, dragons dwell in the christian hell (CaGdm. 
 270-1), as at the Hvergelmir root (p. 796). It is striking how 
 the poem of Oswald (Haupt^s Zeitschr. 2, 125) repi'esents a 
 dead heathen woman as a she-ivolf, 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 Cgedmon 
 (Fundgr, 202) ; and in the Barlaam 310, Rudolf's brief but 
 poetic picture of hell ^ (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 Maspell or 
 Muspells-heimr. This is bright and hot, glowing and burning,* 
 
 1 Wallach. iad (hiatus), iadul hell. 
 
 - As evening is the ' mouth of night.' 
 
 •* Here we may'feum up what living men have reached Hades and come back: of 
 the Greeks, Orpheus in search of Eurydice; Odysseus; Aeneas. Of Norsemen, Her- 
 moSr when dispatched after Baldr, and Hadding (Saxo Gram. p. 16). Medieval 
 legends of Brandanas and Tuudalus ; that of Tanhiiuser and others like it shall 
 come in the next cha,p. Monkish dreams, visions of princes who see their ancestors 
 in hell, are coll. in D.S. nos. 4(51. 527. 530. 554 ; of the same kind is the vision of 
 the vacant chair in the Annolied T2i, conf. Tundalus Go, 7. 
 
 * Muspellsheimr is not heaven, nor are the sons of Muspell the same as the 
 light elves that live in heaven (p. 415) ; when Surtr has burnt up heaven and earth, 
 VOL. lie B B
 
 808 TIME AND WORLD. 
 
 natives alone can exist in it^.lience human beings from our world 
 never pass into it, as into the cold one of the north. It is guarded 
 by a god (?) named Snrtr, bearer of the blazing sword. 
 
 In the word Mu spell we find another striking proof of the 
 prevalence of ON. conceptions all over Teutondom. Not only 
 has the Saxon Heliand a omidspelU 79, 24, inutspelli 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.^ 
 
 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 ; ' inutspelli cutnit 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 helfau vora demo muspille, denna daz preita wasal (Grafi" 
 1, 1063) allaz varprennit,^ 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. spioU (corruptio), spilla (corrum- 
 pere), AS. spillan (perdere), Engl, spill, OHG. spildan, OS. 
 spildian (perdere) ; ^ ON. mannspioll is clades hominum, Itespioll 
 (Nialss. c. 158) perhaps bellum. But we are left to guess what 
 
 there lies above this heaven a second, named Andlcingr, and above that a third 
 named Viffbldinn, and there it is that lU/ht elves alone live now, says Snorri 22. 
 
 ^ In Nemnich, among the many names given for the bittern (OHG. horotumbil, 
 onocrotalus, ardea stellaris), there is also inuspel, which probably has to do with 
 moss and moor, not with our word. 
 
 - So I read (trans.) for ' varprinnit ' (intrans.), as ' wasal ' cannot otherwise be 
 explained. 
 
 3 OHG. M = ON. n ; conf. < wildi, kold' with ' villr, gull.' But then why is it 
 not mus]3ildi in the OHG. and OS. poems ?
 
 MUSPILLI. 
 
 809 
 
 mud, mu (mu ?) can be, whetlier 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 hani vid'ar (percussor, inimicus ligni), 
 grand vid'ar (perditio ligni), Sn. 126; the Lex Alam. 96, 1 has 
 medela, medida in the sense of lancv/itu, lancwit (Gramm. 3, 455), 
 the Lex Rothar. 305 modida, apparently for quei'cus, robur (Graff 
 2, 707), and the ON. mei&r. (perh. for meySr, as sei'Sr 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.).^ 
 
 Surtr (gen. Surtar, dat. Surti, Ssem. 9^^) 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, QQ. 88. 106. 151. 206; and curiously 'Surtr enn 
 liviti,' ibid. 1, 212. But there must have been another form 
 Surti, gen. Surta, for in both Eddas we meet with the compound 
 Surtalogi, Seem. 37*^. Sn. 22. 76. 90. A certain resinous 
 charred earth is in the North still called Surtarhrandr (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 StirtarheUir (F. Magn. 
 lex. 729); the Landnamabok 3, 10 (Isl. sog. 1, 151) tells how 
 one Thorvaldr brouorht to the cave of the iotunn Surtr a songr 
 composed about him: ''po, for hann upp til liellisins Surts, oc 
 foer^i ]7ar drapu ]>a, er hann haf Si ort um iotuninn i hellimim ' ; 
 and Sn. 209*^ 210^ includes Surtr and Svartr among the names 
 of giants. Nowhere in the two Eddas does Surtr appear as a 
 
 ^ Should any one reject these explanations, and take e.(/. OS. mudspelU for 
 ' muth-spelli,' oris eloquiuni, 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 ' inund-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 ' hcimr ' ? 
 let alone the fact that there is no later (christian) term for tho world's end or the 
 judgment-day pointing at all that way. 
 
 - 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 Heruliuu name Souo/jrouas, 
 Svartva ? The AS. geueal, of Deira has Swearta and Swerting, conf. Beow. 2406, 
 and ' sweart racu ' below.
 
 810 TIME AND WORLD. 
 
 god, but always, like other giants^ as an enemy and assailant of 
 the gods. In Voluspa 48 (S?em. 8°-) fire is called ' Surta sefi,^ 
 Surti amicus ; and in 52 (Ssem. 8'') we read : 
 
 Surtr fer sunnan meS sviga leifi, 
 skin af sver^i sol valtiva^ 
 
 i.e. Surtus tendit ab austro cum vimine gigas, splendet e gladio 
 (ejus) sol deorum : ' leifi ' is plainly another word for giant, Sn. 
 209=^; 'valtiva' can only be a gen. pi. (conf. Seem. 10=^ 52^) and 
 dependent on sol, not gen. sing, of valtivi (which never occurs, 
 p. 194) dep. on sver^i; what can be the meaning here of ' 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 8urtr nefndr, er 
 }>ar sitr a landzenda til landvarnar, hann hefir loganda sverff', 
 Surtus vocatur, qui sedet in fine regionis [i.e. Muspellsheims) ad 
 eam tuendam, ensemque gestat ardentem (see Suppl.). 
 
 The authors of the Holland and the OHG. poem, both christian, 
 but still somewhat versed in heathen poetry, alike introduce 
 miispilli 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. Seem. 8'' ; 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 
 OHG. poetry seems to have interwoven features of him into the 
 church doctrine about Antichrist, OHG. Antichristo (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 heast. 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 Etioch and Elias 
 follows from the power given them to shut heaven that it rain 
 not, and is expressly acknowledged by the Fathers.^ Their 
 bodies lie unburied in the street : after this victory the power o£ 
 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. ^ 
 
 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 j^ames, he sees 
 the mountains set o)i fire by the blood of the mortally wounded 
 Elias dropping on the earth ; no such circumstance is found in 
 any christian tradition. The shij swelters in a blaze (suilizot 
 lougiu), the earth hums (prinnit mittilagart), and his already 
 quoted ' dar ni mac denne mak andremo helfan vora demo mus- 
 pille', supported as it may be by Mark 13, 12. Luke 21, 16, 
 sounds very like the Eddie 
 
 broeSr muno berjaz ok at bonom verSa, 
 
 muno systrungar sifjum spilla, 
 
 man ecki maSr oSrum ]?yrma (Saem. 7^ 8^). 
 
 He has ' mdno fallit,^ as Ssemund has ' sol tekr sortna, hverfa 
 af himni heiSar stiornur.' Again Sn. 71 : ' ]>a drepaz brceSr fyrir 
 agirni sakar, oc engi J^yrmir fobr eSa syn i manndrapum oc 
 sifjasliti.' ^ 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 A670S -n-epl ttjs avvreKeias rod Kdcr/xov kuI -rrepl 
 Tov a.vTLXpiarov ; Dorotheus Tyr. de vita prophet, cap. 18 ; Ambrose on Apocal. cap. 
 11 ; Aug. de civ. Dei 20, 2*9 ; Greg. Magu. in moral. 15, 18. And see authors 
 quoted in Hoffm. Fundgr. 2, 102 seq. and Kausler's Aul. denkiu. 1, 48G. For later 
 times, conf. N. ps. 58, 7. 73, 10 ; Burcard. Wormat. 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. viud. 653, 121-2 ; Fundgr. 1, 195-0. 2, 100—134 ; 
 Martina 191 seq. ; Wackernag. Basle M!SS. 22-' ; and conf. Introd. to Freidank 
 Ixxi. Ixxii. 
 
 8 No stronger argument do I know for the theory that Voluspfi, is an echo of 
 our Scriptures, than the agreement of the Edda and tlie 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 giantj 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 Donar and Ellas, 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 Garrur or Fenris-ulfr ; 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 Pai'adise, 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 with a fiery sword standing by 
 
 their side.^ An AS. homily De temporibus Antichristi quoted 
 
 by Wheloc on Beda p. 495 (supra p. 161n.) contains remarkable 
 statem.ents. Arrogant Aritecrist, it says, not only strives against 
 Grod and his servants, but sets himself up above all heathen gods : 
 ' He ahef'S hine silfne ofer ealle ]m ]}e h»J?ene men cweedon j^set 
 godas beon sceoldon, on hgej^ene wisan. Swylc swa waes Erculus 
 se ent, aud AjJolUnis, ]?e hi mgerne god leton, IJhSr eac and Eoiuffen, 
 ]>e hsej^ene men heria'S swiSe. Ofer ealle ]>sds he hine genne up 
 ahef'S, forSam he laet J?cet he ana si strengra Jyonne hi ealle.' Why 
 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 Dlior indicate Norse or Danish 
 
 influence. But a decisive connexion is established by the 
 
 AS. Salomon and Saturn (Kemble p. 148) : in the great battle 
 
 ^ M. Netlil. poems in Blommaert 1, 105a. 2, 12* have simiily an 'out man' in 
 Enoch's place, but they mention the cherubiu vied enen sicenle vierin.
 
 MUSPILLI. RAGNA-ROK. 813 
 
 between God and Antichrist, we are told, Thunder was threshing 
 with hiB fiery axe, ' se Tlmnor hit |?rjsceSmid \ddve 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,^ 
 whose advent is named aldar roh (S^m. 36"*), aldar lag, aldar rof 
 (37^ 167'''),2 but more commonly ragna roh (7^ 38^ 96\ 166") or 
 ragna rokr (65^ 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 Seem. 113'' is an intensified expres- 
 sion for utter darkness ; Biorn renders rockur (neut.) crepus- 
 culum, rockva vesperascere. It is akin to the Goth, riqis cr/coro?, 
 riqizeins (rK0Teiv6<i, riqizjan (TKorl^eaOat, 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 rahu. This 
 is confirmed by the Jutish rag nebula, still more by the AS, 
 racu : '\oxin.e sweart racu stigan onginneS/ Cfedm. 81, 34 must 
 be rendered ' cum atra caligo surgere incipit.' Rokstolar (Sjsm. 
 1'', 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 
 
 ^ It is worth noting, that it is proclaimed by ^jrojr^/jt'fesses, Vala, Ilyndla ; and 
 later, Thlota (p. 9G) announced consummationis scculi dicni. 
 
 " i/o/ruptura; as they said ' regin riafaz,' dii rumpuntur, the world is going 
 to iiieces.
 
 814 TIME AND WOELD. 
 
 on p. 753, ' die finstre ragende naclit/ whicTi can hardly be ex- 
 plained from our ragen (rigere) stick out.i Ragnarok then is 
 the night of the gods, which comes 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, a,nother 
 the moon (p. 705-6), the stars fall from heaven, the earth quakes, 
 the monstrous world-snake lormungandr, seized with giant fury 
 (iotunmoSr, p. 530), rises out of the waters on to the land, 
 Fenrisulfr is set free (p. 244), and Naglfar afloat, a ship con- 
 structed out of dead men^s nails." 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 lormun- 
 gandr, Freyr with Surti*, Tyr with Garmi',^ Heimdall with Loki; 
 in every case the old gods go down, though Garmr and Loki fall 
 too, and Fenrisulfr is slain by ViSar.^ 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, terminus, fatum, 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 
 ranch, 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 regiuo-rahha, or -rah, -rahhu, according as it were fem. 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 >uss, J^urs, implying an ON. 
 pursmyrkr, giant's murk, and that would tally witli the giant nature of Surtr. 
 
 ^ This is intended to express the enormous thstance 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 i^rotracted by the wholesome pre- 
 cept, always to pare the nails of the dead before burying or burning them ; conf. F. 
 Magnuseu'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. 
 
 ^ Garmr, the hugest of all hounds (Ssem. 46*), no doubt, like Kip^epos, only 
 a metamorjjhosed giant, seems like him also to be a native of the under-world ; 
 when O'Sinn journeys to Niflhel, ' moetti hann hvelpi J^eim er or heljo kom,' met he 
 the whelp that came out of hell {di") ; he barks long, he lies chained and barks 'for 
 GmjpaheUir ' (7^ 8''). The hell-hound of christian legend comes nearer the Norse 
 wolf (see next note). 
 
 ■* Vi'Sar's victory over the wolf, in whose jaws he jjlauts a foot mythically shod 
 (Sn. 73), i-Bsembles the description in christian traditions of how the hell-hound was 
 assaUed ; conf. Fundgr. 1, 178-9.
 
 END OF THE WORLD. 815 
 
 very nature, lie being a god of fire (p. 241). After tie tuorld- 
 conflagration or Surtalogi, a new and happier earth, rises out 
 of the sea, with gods made young again, but still called Aesir, 
 Seem. 10 : a finale bearing an indisputable likeness to the Last 
 Judgment ^ and New Jerusalem of the christians. Strophe 65 of 
 the Vciluspa, which expressly mentions the reglndomr, has been 
 pi'onounced 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,^ so here and there a chris- 
 tian dogma may also have penetrated even to nations that were 
 still heathen; conversely some heathea ways of thinking lingered 
 on among christians. Consider how the author of the Holland 
 (131-2-3), while following the Gospels in describing the approach 
 of the Last Day, yet admits such rank heathenisms as ' Gebanes 
 Strom ' and ' Mudspelli.^ In the very personifying of the Judg- 
 ment day {' verit stuatago in lant,' like 'muspelli humit ') 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 I 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 hy fire, which heathens and 
 christians^ look forward to as future, stands opposed that hy 
 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. uiititago, suotiotac, suoiiotago, tuomistac, tuomtac, stuatago (Goth, 
 stauadags?) ; MHG. endetac, siienetac, tuomtac; OS. 'the lazto dag,'' domdag, domes- 
 dag, AS. domdceg, Engl, ditomx-day , ON. di'unsdagr. 
 
 - In Leyden's Coinplaynt p. 98 is actually mentioned a story, 'the tayl of the 
 wolfe and the warldis end,' which was ciu-rent in Scotland and elsewhere (supra 
 p. 245) 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, V. Magn. lex. 658-9. 
 
 a 2 Pet. 3, 12 ; couf. Freidank 179, 4.
 
 816 TIME AND WORLD. 
 
 The churcli tradition of the Mid. Ages (based on Matth. 24, 
 Mark 18, Luke 21) accepts fifteen signs as premonitions of the 
 Judgment-day ; ^ 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. 36'', Sn. 71) pre- 
 cedes the ragnarokr, and is doubtless a truly Teutonic fancy ; '^ 
 but we have a darheiiing of the sun and moon described (p. 244), 
 and an earthquake, which equally precedes the twilight of the 
 gods : ' griotbiorg gnata, himinn klofnar, gt^yr allr lotunheimr,' 
 Saem. 8''; the ordinary term in ON. is land-skidlfti, Sn. 50, or 
 'iord shUf ; ' ' landit skalf, sem a J^ree^i leki,' Fornald. sog. 1, 
 424. 503.^ For o-et,(T/j,6<i Ulphilas gives the fem. reirS, he says 
 ' aiv]>a, reirdida ; ' OS. ' ertha hicoda/ Hel. 168, 23; OHG. ' erda 
 hibinota,' 0. iv. 34, 1, and the subst. erdpipa, erdbibunga, erd- 
 giruornessi. Reinardus 1, 780 puts in juxtaposition: 'nee tremor 
 est terrae, judiciive dies ;' and Servian songs : ' ili gr7ni, 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 (Foruald. 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 (Yilk. 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.^ The Japanese say of an earthquake : 
 ' there is another whale crept away from under our country ;' the 
 
 1 Thorn. Aquiuas (d. 1274) in Librum 4 sententiar. Petri Lomb. dist. 48. qu. 1. 
 art. 4 (Thomae opp. Venet. 13, 442). Asegabok (Richth. 130-1). Haupt's Zeitschr. 
 1, 117. 3, 523. Hoffm. Fundgr. 1, 196-7- 2, 127. Amgb. 39. Wackernagel's Basle 
 MSS. 22ij. Massm. denkm. 6. Berceo (d. 1268) de log signos que aparceran ante 
 del Juicio, in Sanchez coleccion 2, 273. Thomas, Asegabok and Berceo all refer to 
 Jerome, bi;t no such enumeration of the 15 signs is to be found in his works. Eol. 
 289-90 and Karl 89* have similar signs at Roland's death (see Suppl.). 
 
 - Notice Sffim. 119*: ' J'a'San koma siiiofar ok snarir vindnr,^ and the poetic de- 
 scriptions of ivintcr in AS. writers: Andr. 1256-63. Beow. 2258. 
 
 ;» ' Lond 611 skitlfu; Sn. 66 ; ' fold for skUVfandi,' 148. 
 
 ■* Schlegel's Ind. bibl. no. 2.
 
 EARTHQUAKES. WALAHALLA. 817 
 
 Tahitians: 'God shakes the earth;^^ the Lettons: 'Drebkuls beats 
 the earth, and makes her tremble/ just as the Greeks call their 
 Poseidon (Neptune) 'Evvoaiyaio^, ^Evvo(7iha<i (see Suppl.). 
 
 Our forefathers thought of the sky not only as a roof to the 
 eai'th (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 Mi'Sgar^ to be the 
 habitation of man, they fitted up for themselves in the centre 
 of the world a dwelling-place named Asgard'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 Valfo&r and to the 
 valki/rs (p. 417).^ Into this abode, sometimes known as Od'ins 
 salir (Ssem. 148^), 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 oshasynir, sons 
 by wishing, ad-option,^ and likewise sons of the god Wish (p. 
 143). Their usual name is einherjar, egregii, divi, as OSinn him- 
 self is called Rerjan and HerjafocPr, and Jieri means the fighting 
 hero (p. 342-3). It must not be overlooked, that Thorr himself 
 is called an einheri, S^m. 68% as if a partaker of Valholl, From 
 the existence of a proper name Einheri in OHG. (e.g. Meichelbeck 
 no. 241. 476. Schannat 137), I argue the former prevalence of 
 the mythical term amongst us also ; yet not with certainty, as it 
 may be a contracted form of Eginheri, Agauheri, likeEinhart for 
 Eginhart, Reinhart for Reginhart. Valholl is covered with shields 
 
 1 Zimmerm. Taschenb. f. reiseu, jabrg. 9 abtb. 2. Adelung's Mitbrid. 1, 631. 
 
 2 Prob. also to Valaakialf, the hall covered with silver, Sicm. 41*. Sn. 21 ; conf. 
 Hlid'skidlf, p. 135. Skid!/ expresses the quivering motion of the airy mansion, 
 like bif in Bifrost. Our OHG. ' loalaeht des ewigen libes,' Is. 73, 4 seems not 
 merely posscssio vitfe (Eternns, but an emphatic term purposely chosen. 
 
 " ' Got setzet si in sine schuz,' in his bosom, Ls. 3, 92.
 
 818 TIME AND WOELD. 
 
 (Sn. 2) and numbers 540 doorSj each affording passage to 800 
 einheries at once, or 432,000 in all, Stem. 43'^. In the midst of 
 it stands a mighty tree Ljera&r, Lcerd&r, whose foliage is cropt by 
 the she-goat Ilei&nm ; 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 Elhpijrnir gnaws the branches of the 
 tree, and out of his horns water trickles down into Hvergelmir 
 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 ^ : ' mun 
 sa maSr braut rekinn ur Valhollii, ok j^ar aldrei koma,' Nialss. 
 cap. 89. To wage a life-and- death conflict with a hero was 
 called shewing him to Walhalla (visa til Valhallar), Fornald. 
 sog. 1, 424. Sagas and panegyric poems paint the reception of 
 departed heroes in Walhalla : when Helgi arrives, OSinn offers 
 to let him reign with him, Ssem. 166^; the moment Helgi has 
 acquired the joint sovereignty, he exercises it by imposing 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 ValhoU. But even the hall of a king on earth, where 
 heroes carouse as in the heavenly one, bears the same name 
 Vallwll (Seem. 244''. 246''' 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 
 Walhalla was not confined to our North, but was common to all 
 Teutonic nations. A ' vita Idae ' in Pertz 2, 571 uses the ex- 
 pression 'coelorum ijalatinae 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 ifpielmann or spielhansel (Jack player), who is turned out of 
 heaven, because he has led a bad life, and performed no deeds.
 
 WALAHALLA. 819 
 
 hw-g, vf^hich,\\ke Yalholl, was covered with golden shields (p. 700). 
 In the 'vita Wulframi^ there is shewn to the Frisian king Radbot 
 a Jioiise glittering with gold, prepared for him when he dies (D.S. 
 no. 447. V. d. BergVs Overlev. 93) ; like that described in MS. 
 2, 229b : 
 
 In himelrich ein hiis stat, 
 
 ein guldin wee darin gat, 
 
 die siule die sint mermelin, 
 
 die zieret unser trehtin 
 
 mit edelem gesteine. 
 
 A poem of the 13th cent. (Warnuug 2706 — 98) declares that 
 the kingdom of heaven is to be won by heroes only, who have 
 fought and bear upon chem scars fi'om 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 suln 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.^ 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 meklenburgsch edclman : 
 
 wat geit di diivel min supen an (to do with my quafiSng) ?
 
 820 TIME AND WOELD. 
 
 be accepted as proofs of this. Glad's-heimr is tlie name of tlie 
 spot on which Valholl is reared, Saem. 4P; in Gla&sheim stands 
 the high seat of Allfather, Su. 14. A house by the side of it, 
 built for goddesses, bears the name of Vin-golf, but it seems also 
 to be used synonymously with Valholl, as one poet sings : ' vildac 
 gla^r i Vingolf fylgja ok me'S einherjum ol drecka.' Vingolf is 
 literally amica aula, and it is by the almost identical words win- 
 hurg, winsele, as well as goldburg, 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 onons gaudii, mendelberc (p. 
 170 n.) had any reference to heaven ; but much later on, a joyful 
 blissful abode was entitled sEeldenberc (Diut. 2, 35), wonnenberg, 
 freudenberg : ' to ride to the freiidenberg at night ' says a Eec. 
 of 1445 (Arnoldi's Misc. 102); *thou my heart's freiidensal ' 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. Freuden-thal, -berg, -garten often occur as 
 names of places (see SuppL).i/ 
 
 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 miist, 
 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 Wuotau ; couf. Lisch's Mekl. jahrb. 9, 447. 
 
 1 Such a land of bhss is part of Celtic legend too, the fay Morgan (p. 412 n.) 
 conducts to it ; I read in Parz. 56, 18 : den fuort ein feie, hiez Murgan, in Ter de la 
 achoye (joie; see SuppL). Eemember also the Norse glerhiminn (coelum vitreum), 
 a paradise to which old heroes ride (larlmagus saga p.m. 320-2) ; legends and lays 
 have ylass-bergs and glass-hnrgs as abodes of heroes and wise women, e.g. Brynild's 
 smooth unscalable glarhjerg (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 rair) occurs as early as Tristan, 
 ed. Michel 2, 1U3, conf. 1, 222
 
 PARADISE, 821 
 
 joy is cliristian too. Also : ' stigen ze himel iif der scelden here/ 
 climb tlie mount of bliss, Wackern. Basle MSS. p. 5. The 
 christian faith tells of two places of bliss, a past and a future. 
 One is whei'e the departed dwell with God ; the other, forfeited 
 by our first parents' sin, is represented as a garden, Eden. Both 
 are translated irapdheiao'; 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. tvanc (campus amoe- 
 nus, hortus). Oar OHG. translators either retsbin paradisi, Fragm. 
 theot. 41, 21, or use wunnigarto, Gl. Jun. 189. 217. Hymn 21, 
 6. wunnogarto, N. ps. 37, 5; conf. * thaz wimnisama fold,' 0. ii. 
 6, n. 'after pai'adises ivunnen./ Diut. 3, 51. MHG. 'der wunne 
 garte' Fuozesbr. 126, 27. 'der wolliiste garte,' MsH. 3, 463*. 
 OHG. zartgarto, N. ps. 95, 10. The name ivunnlgarto may be 
 substantially the same as vingoJf, winsele, as wuuna for wunia, 
 Goth, viuja, lies close to wini (amicus). A strange expression is 
 the AS. neorxena-wong, neorxnawong, Ctedm. 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,^ and therefore of bliss, and 
 may be compared to Goth, vaggs, OS. Jieben-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 odas-hem 96, 20 and tlp-odas-hem 28, 20. 
 85, 21, domus beatitudinis, the 'hem' reminding us of heimr in 
 gla^sheimr, as the ' garto ' in wunnigarto does of asgarSr. Up- 
 odashem is formed like uphimil, and equally heathen. All the 
 Slavs call paradise rai, Serv. raj, Pol. ray. Boh. rag, to which 
 add Lith. rojiis, sometimes called rojaus sodas (garden of par.), 
 or simply darzas (garden). Rai as a contraction of paradise 
 (Span, parayso) is almost too violent ; Anton (Essay on Slavs 1, 
 35) says the Arabic arai means paradise." 
 
 Like Valholl, the Greek Elysium too, r/Xvaiov ireSLov (Plutarch 
 
 4, 1156. Lucian de luctu 7) was not a general abode of all the 
 
 1 The p-ntaTT] ^lor/j, Od. 4, 565. 
 
 2 To me the connexion of rai (and porh, of rdd glad, wiUing) with pal's, fxf., 
 p^Sios ipaidioi) easy, and peia easily, seems obvious. Homer's gods are pda f jjotres 
 living in ease. — Tiuns.
 
 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 wei'e housed with 
 Aides, in Hades, Achilles paces ihe flowery mead, the acr^ohe\6<; 
 Xeifxcov of the underwoi4d, 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 journey, to him is eke denied that mead, etc. Floris 
 1107 : ^iut ghehloide velt (flowery field), ten paradise.' 1248 : 
 ' waenstu dan comen int ghehloide velt, daer int paradis ? ' 1205 : 
 ' io sal varen int ghehloide velt, daer Blancefloeren siele jeghen die 
 mine gadert, ende leset bloemekine.' The French Flores in the 
 corresponding passages has camjo flori (Altd. bl. 1, 373),^ iu 
 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 j)lain : ' 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, 
 Ceedm, 32, 29 : * brade sind on worulde grene geardas.' Hako- 
 narmal 13 : ' ri'Sa ver nu sculom groena heinia gcSa,' i.e. to heaven. 
 In many parts of Germany jparadis 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 I&avdllr, in 
 whose grass the gods pick up plates of gold (for play), Ssem. 9*^ 
 10% corresponds that older Id'avollr where the ases founded As- 
 
 1 The M. Nethl. poem Beatiis 1037 places the Last Judgment ' int soete dal, 
 daer God die werelt doemen sal.'
 
 ELYSIUM. 823 
 
 garS, 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 ' a giniU,' S^m. 
 10.'' Sn. 4, 75 [but 21 gimli as nom.?], for which I propose 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,' Su. 75. Now this Gimill is clearly 
 distinct from the Odinic Yalholl : 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 Hod'r, who had gone 
 their way to the underworld long before the twilight of the gods, 
 Hoenir who had been given as a hostage to the Vanir, are named 
 in Voluspa (Sasm. 10^), as gods emerging anew; they three were 
 not involved in the struggle with Surtr. Then again Sn. 76 
 gives us Vid'ar and Vali, who unhurt by Surtalogi revive the old 
 Asgar'S on I'Savollr, and with them are associated Mo&l and Magni, 
 beside Baldr and Ho^r from the underworld ; Hoenir is here 
 passed over in silence. ViSar 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 
 Mo-Si and Magni appear as sons of Thorr by a gygr, and from 
 that time they bear the emblem of his might, the all-crushing 
 Miolnir. Unquestionably this means, that OSinn and Thorr, the 
 arch-gods of old Asgar^, 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 given birth 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 pai-adise. Not the Eddas themselves, but later Icol. 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 Goffmundr (conf. Go'Sormr p. 161) ; 
 ace. to the Saga Ereks viiSforla (Fornald. sog. 3, 519. G61-G. 670) it lay in the east, 
 not far from India. Can this ' Erekr hinu vi^forli ' be the hero of the lost MHG. 
 poem Erek der walla}re (pilgrim)? The name Odainsakr may however be an 
 adaptation of an older and heathen 0'5iusakr = Vallholl, conf. the Oden s&ker in 
 Sweden, p. 158, last line. 
 
 VOL. II. C C
 
 824 TIME AND WOELD. 
 
 Again, as Valholl had only received men wlio died by weapons 
 (vapn-dau'Sa 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 Siirtr, 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 Saem. 10* or Sn. 76, which would have been 
 the place for it. In one MS. alone (Sn. 75, var. 3) is apparently 
 interpolated ' a Gimli mecPr 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 O'Sinn, the new 
 and universal empire stands. He takes him to be that migldier 
 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, Ssem. 10^), like- 
 wise the mighty one foreseen by Hyndla, whose name she dare 
 not pronounce (|?a kemr annar enn mattkari, ]'6 |?ori ec eigi J>ann 
 at nefna. Seem. 119*) ; conf. the strengra of the AS. homily (p. 
 812). But why should she have shrunk from naming Surtr, of 
 whom no secret is made in Seem. 8*-^. 9*. 33", the last passage 
 positively contrasting him with the mild merciful gods (in svaso 
 go^S) ? 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 a>yva3aTo^ 6e6<; (Acts 
 17, 23), still more to the word that O'Sinn 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. 38* and Hervarars. p. 487; so 
 an Etruscan nymph speaks the name of the highest god in the 
 ear. of a bull.^ It has already been suggested (p. 815) that 
 presentiments of a mightier god to come may have floated before 
 
 ' O. Miiller's Etr. 2, 83, with which must be conn, the medieval legend of 
 Silvester (Conrad's poem, pref. p. xx).
 
 SURTE. 825 
 
 the heathen imagination, like the promise of the Messiah to the 
 Jews.^ 
 
 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 Eagnaroks-mythen, Copenh. 1836, argues plausibly 
 that the twilight of the gods and the new kingdom of heaven are the expression of 
 a spu-itual 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 Asgar'5, 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 
 fimhultyr, a term that in the whole of the Edda occurs but once (Sfem. 9''), and then 
 seems to refer to OSinn. 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, flmbullio'5, 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, sdivala, akin to saivs the sea, an undulating fluid 
 force, OHG. seola, sela, MHG. sele, NHG. seele, AS. sdwl, ON. 
 sal, Swed. Dan. sjdl, and hence Finn, sielii; Gr. 'v^i'%»7; Lat. Ital. 
 anima, Fr. a,me, 0. Fr. sometimes arms, Span, alma ; Russ. Serv. 
 dusha, Slov. duzha. Boh. duse, Pol. dusza, Lith. duszia, Lett. 
 divehsele. They all distinguish it from the naasc. breath and 
 spirit, av€/xo<i, which goes in and out more palpably ; often the 
 two names are next door to each other, as Lat. animus and 
 anima, Slav, dulih and dusha} 
 
 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 hlacMhorn 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. feorli, ON. fior ; but we saw (p. 793), bow from vita and /3ios there arose 
 the sum total of all that lives, the world, Goth, falrhvus. 
 
 826
 
 THE SOUL A FLOWEE. 827 
 
 118''. When the innocent are put to death, wliife 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 hriar ; 
 
 They grew till they grew unto the church-top, 
 
 And there they tyed in a true lovers knot.^ 
 
 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 7-ed 
 rose (rumena ruzhitsa, f.), Vuk 1, no. 137, so that the sex is kept 
 up even in the plants : ^ the rose twines round the fir, as the silk 
 round the nosegay. All these examples ti'eat 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 Syrin:t, 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. Jamicson 1, 33-4. 
 
 ' Therefore der rehe (vine) l)elonp;s to Tristan's grave, din rose to Isote's, as iu 
 Eilliart and the cbap-booli ; Ulricli and Heinricli made tlie plants change places.
 
 828 SOULS. 
 
 her mouth. Viutler tells us^ the ivege-ivarte (OHG. wegawartd, 
 wegapreita)j plantago, was once a woman, who by the wayside 
 waited (wartete) for her lover ; he 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.^ 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 says: 'in figure de colomh volat a ciel.'' As 
 a hinl the little brother, Avhen 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, 248^. In the underworld 
 there fly scorched birds who were souls (svrSnir fuglar er salir 
 voro), like swarms of flies, Sgem. 127*. 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 j9tt^/t 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-boru 
 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- 
 cicki^s 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 
 
 ' Servati Lupi vita S. Wigberhti, cap. 11 : Verum hora exitus ejus . . . 
 circumstantibus fratribus, visa est avis quaedam specie pulcherrima supra ejus cor- 
 pusculum ter ailvolasse, nusquamque jiostea comparuisse. Not so much the soul 
 itself, as a sj^irit who escorts it. 
 
 " Maerlant 2, 217, from a Latin source.
 
 THE SOUL A BIRD. MEADOW. 829~ 
 
 soul of his father, whose murder he 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 inDO hirds were given above, 
 (pp. 673-6. 680), under woodpecker and cuckoo. Greek mythology 
 has plenty of others (see Suppl.). 
 
 The popular opinion of Greece also regarded the soul as a 
 winged being ("v/^f^^ irvevijua ical ^Q}U(f)iov ttttjvov " says Hesy- 
 chius), not bird, but butterfiy, which is even more apt, for the 
 insect is developed out of the chrysalis, as the soul is out of the 
 body; hence "^vxij 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? In Basque, 
 '^arima' is soul (couf. 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 luisps a subsequent chapter will treat ; synony- 
 mous with them I find wiesenhilpfer , iciesenhupferin, meadow- 
 hopper, e.g. in the Magdelob (printed 1683) p. 46; its explana- 
 tion, from their dancing on marshy meadows, is right enough, 
 but perhaps too limited. Hans Sachs is not thinkiug of igues 
 fatui, when he more than once employs the set phrase : ' mit im 
 schirmen, dass die seel in dein gras umhlmpfen,' 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 umhliupfen' 
 iv. 3, 6P; 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 
 
 * Na tej mogile wyrost ci dqbeczek, 
 ua uiej bieluchny siada gotqbeczek. 
 
 - ipvxr] 5' iK crd}/xaTos Itttt}, Jlew out of the body, Batrach. 207. \f^vxT] 5^ /jkX^wv 
 
 i^^TTTT} 211. (K fJ.f\eWV Ov/XOS TTTCLTO, II. 23, 880. 
 
 ^ First in Ambr. de Morales's Antiguidades de las ciudades de Espaua, Alcala 
 1575, fol. 31^; tlience iu Gruter, aud in Spou's Miscell. erud. antiq. p. 8.
 
 830 SOULS. 
 
 meadow of the underworld spoken of in p. 822.^ 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 gehuppet hat ' 
 (MS. 2, 105^).- So the souls of the drowned keep jumping up 
 out of the jars, p. 49C (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 souFs 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 hoard a vessel, in which 
 they erected the funeral pile, set it on fire, and so committed it to 
 the sea at high water (Sn. 6Q).^ 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 skifi", and offers 
 
 ^ Those who are neither saved nor damned come into the green meadow, 
 Heinse's Ardinghello 1, 96. 
 
 ^ Conf. Helbl. 1, 354 : ' vrou Sele, tretet uf ein rippe.'' Eenart in his bucket 
 at the bottom of the well (p. 807), to humbug Ysengriu, 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 climb 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 hurled in a boat [on land] , doubtless so that on their 
 journey to the underworld, when they came to a water, they might have their ferrf' 
 at hand. ' Hakon konungr tok i>av skip oil et att hof'So Eiriks synir, ok let draga 
 a land upp ; J'ar let Hakon legr/ja Egil Ullserk i skip, oc me'S hanom alia J^a menn 
 er af J)eirra li^'i hofSo fallit, let bent par at iorS oc griot. Hakon konungr let oc 
 fleiri skip uppsetja, oc bera a valinn,' Saga H. go'Sa, cap. 27. ' Unnr var logff i 
 skip i haiiginuin,' Laxd. p. 16. ' Asmundr var heygcfr ok i skip lagcfr, J^rsell hans 
 lag'Sr i annan stafn skipsim,' Islend. sog. 1, 66. ' Geirmuudr heyg&r ok lagcfr i skip 
 ]>a,v uti skoginn fra gart5i,' 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: ' knor mun ek kaupa ok kisto stein^a,' Ssem. 264''. No boats have been 
 found, that I know of, in ancient barrows of Continental Germany.
 
 CEOSSING THE WATEE. 831 
 
 a passage ; Sigmundr lays the dead in the hoat, whicli 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 auteru 
 gubernatorum corpora unius pui^iois igne consumi praecepit ; 
 ducem quempiam aut regem interfectum proprio injectum. navigio 
 concremari.'' The dead larlmagus is conveyed in a ship by his 
 widow to a holy land, larlm. saga cap. 45. A Swedish folk-tale 
 (Afzelius 1, 4) speaks of a ijolden ship lying sunk near the 
 schliisselberg at Runemad ; in that ship Odin is said to have 
 carried the slain from Bravalla to Valliall. In the 0. 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 son 
 corps fid mis en ime nef richemeut equippee, que I' on laisseroit 
 alter au gre du vent sans conduite.' ^ 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 ]?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 kino-dom 
 of Hades. For this he charged a fare, ra TropOfila, therefore 
 they placed an obolos (the danaka) in the mouth of the dead.^ 
 This custom of putting a small coin in tlie mouth of a corpse 
 occurs among Germans too, Superst. I, 207 where a modern and 
 
 1 Cento novelle antiche 81 : La clamigella di Scalot ; the ' navicella sanza vela, 
 sanza rerni e sanza neuao sopra saglieute ' is carried down to Camalot, to the court 
 of Ke Artu. 
 
 •- Diodor. 1, 90. Eurip. Ale. 253. 441. Aen. 6, 298. At Hcrmione in Argolis, 
 supposed to be no great distance from the underworld, no money was given to the 
 dead, Strabo 8, 373. These cuius are often found iu audeut tombs, K. Fr. 
 Hermann's Autiq. 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 
 samenaulum. 
 
 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, 
 buL 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 stai'ting, 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.^ The 
 like is told, but less completely, of monks crossing the Rhine at 
 Spire.^ 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, imparts 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.^ This duty they take in turn. Those to 
 
 1 Neue volksmjirchen der Deutschen, Leipz. 1792. 3, 45-7. 
 
 ' D.S. no. 275 ; earliest auth. an account by Geo. Sabinus (b. 1608 cT. 1560). 
 Melander's Joe. no. 664. 
 
 •^ To. fiev aXXa ^pdyyoiv KarrjKooi 6vTes, (p6pov fxivTOL dirayuyriv ovSeTruwoTe 
 Trapaaxo/^fOi, ixpei/mepov avTols ck iraXaiou TovSe toD ax6ovs, inrovpyias tlvos, ojs (paaiy, 
 eveKa. \iyov<n ot Tavrrj avOpiairoi. e/c TrepiTpOTTTJs eTriKe'tadai ras twv xpvX'^v irapairoixirai 
 acplffL. On this passage and one in Tzetzes, consult Welcker in Eliein. mus. 1, 238 
 seq. Conf. Plutarch de defectu oracul. cap. 18 (ed. Eeiske 7, 652) : '0 5e A-qfx-qrpLos 
 ^(pV tQv trepl T7]v BpeTavi/lav viiaoiv eivai TroXXds eprj/xovs (T7ropd5a$, &iv ivias daLjuovuv 
 Kai Tjpdjwv 6vop,d'gecrdai, ifKevaai 5e avrbs iaropias Kal deas ^V€Ka, noixirrj rod ^aaiXewi, eU 
 TTjv ^yyiara Kei/xevTjv tlcv ep7]/j.wv, e'xouo'ai' ov ttoWovs iiroLKOvvTas, lepovs di Kal dcrvXovs 
 iravTas inrb tuv Bperavvwi' ovras. d(piKOfi€Vov 5' avrov vewarl, avyxv<T'.v /u,eyd\7jv Trepl 
 Tov dipa Kal 5ioarjp.€ias TroXXas yeveadai, Kal Trvevfiara Karap'payrjvai Kal ireaelv 
 TTpijcTTTJpas. iirel d' iXdxfiriae, Xeyeiv tovs vricriwras, on tQv Kpeiaffovwv tlvos ^KXeitj/is 
 yeyovev. Cos yap Xijxvos dvarcTOfxevos (pavai deivbv ovdh ex^'i ff^ivvifxevos 6e iroWoh 
 XvTTTjpos iaTLV, oiirws at fj^eydXai. \j/vxal rots pi.ev dz'aXci/x^J'ets ev/j-evels Kal dXvTrovs ^X"^"'"') 
 al 6e ffjSeaeis aiirOiv Kal <p6opal TToXXaKis fi^v, ws vvvL, Trvev/nara Kal fctXas Tpiirovai, 
 TToXXaKLS oe Xoip-iKols irddecTLV depa (pappidTTovcriv. eKel fxevroi /niav elvaL vrjaov, ev ri tov 
 Kpovov KaTeipx^aL cppovpovfxevov virb tov Bptdpeu) KadevSovra. decrp-bv yap avTqi tov 
 iiirvov p.€iJ,7ixav7]<xdai, ttoXXous de Trepl avTov elvai dalpiovas orraSoC'S /cat depdirovTas. This
 
 CEOSSING THE WATEE. 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 (bale 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 tie 
 Z'e;i/«?r, 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 loheels of a 
 waggon overloaded with souls, it is covered with a white pall, 
 and is called carr an ancou, carrikel an ancoic, soul's car (Mem. 
 de I'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 fur away, with his retinue of servants, is like 
 a Wuotan enchanted in a mountain, conf. Humboldt in Herm. Miillev p. 4-iU-l. 
 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 Eufinum 1, 123 — 133) had heard of those 
 Gallic shores as a trysting-place of flitting ghosts : 
 
 Est locus, extremum qua pandit Gallia littus, 
 oceani praetentus aquis, ubi fertur Ulixes 
 sanguine libato populum movisse silentem. 
 Illic wnhrarwni tenui stridore volantum 
 flehilis auditur questus : simulacra coloni 
 pallida, defunctasque vident migrare Jiguras ; 
 
 and not far from that region are Britain, the land of the Senones, 
 and the Rhine. 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 hones, across the vale of 
 death, into the sea on whose shore stands open the mouth of 
 hell's abyss^ (see SuppL). A North English song, that used to 
 be sung at lyke wakes, names ' the bridge of dread, no brader 
 than a thread,' over which the soul has to pass in the under- 
 world (J. Thoms^ 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.^ 
 
 The same meaning as in the voyage of souls over the gulf or 
 
 1 Owen's Diet. 2, 214. Villemarqu« 1, 135. 
 
 2 The narrow bridge is between purgatory and paradise, even Owain the hero 
 had to cross it (Scott's Minstr. 2, 360-1). 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 (Eiseumenger 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.
 
 BKTDGE. HELL-SHOE. 835 
 
 river of the underworld appears to lie ia their walking tlie bridge 
 that spans the river. The bridge-keeper's words to (the living) 
 HermoSr are remarkable : ' 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 ivhole 
 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 their pit-a-pat, as though a flock of sheep were going over 
 (Dent, sagen no. 152-3). The bridge-toll brings to mind Vae 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- bridsre 
 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-sho, given them for setting out on their 
 journey, and tied on their feet. The Gisla Surssonarsaga says : 
 ' J>at er ti^ska at binda monnum helsko, sem menn skulo a ganga 
 til Valhallar, ok mun ek Vesteini ]'at giora' (conf. Miiller's 
 Sagabibl. 1, 171). Sir W. Scott in Minstr. 2, 357 quotes a 
 Yorkshire superstition : ' 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 fall of thornes and furzen, except by the mei'yte 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. 
 
 liatli slioclde them, dismissetli them to go through thick and thin, 
 without scratch or scalle.' The land to be traversed by the soul 
 is also called ivJiinny moor, i.e. furzy bog (Thorns 89). In Henne- 
 berg, and perhaps other places, the last honours paid to the dead 
 are still named todtenschuh (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 
 imguentum quoddam, quasi illo unguento post mortem vulnus 
 sanari possit, et sic cum unguento sepeliunt.^ For a similar 
 purpose, slaves, Jwrses, 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 bui'ied 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 Gheruhim : 
 ' vor dem tievel nam der sele war der erzengel Keruhin' he saw 
 the soul first, Wh. 49, 10. 
 
 Laza laza tengeln ! 
 
 da wart von den engeln 
 
 ^ The Lithuanians bury or burn with the dead the claws of a lynx or hear, in 
 the behef 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 
 imburdened with property, unless their sius 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 cjora (glass mountain) by the Poles, who 
 tliink the lost souls must climb it as a punishment, and when they have set foot on 
 the summit, they sHde off and tumble down. This r/lass moxintain 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 iinlock it at last, may be looked upon as seeking her lost brothers in 
 the underworld (Kinderm. no. 25).
 
 SCEAMBLE 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 lier und widere, 
 
 d^ 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 vroeliche 
 
 inz sclioene himelriche. 
 
 Geo. 6082, conf. Diut. 1, 470. In the Brandan (Bruns p. 192-3) 
 we read: ' de duvele streden umme de sele mit sunte MicJiaele' ; 
 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*-^, 
 where three troops are introduced, the black, ivliite and pale : 
 ' den strit mahtu gerne schouwen, dens ttmb die sele suln 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), 
 s6 quirait ein heri (comes one host) fona himilzungalon, 
 daz andar fona pehhe (pitch, hell) ; dar pdgant siu umpi. 
 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/ 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 OSinn, 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. Gerdraut, 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 MichaeP 
 may fairly be translated back into ' Frowa and Wuotan (or 
 Donar)'. So at p. 198 a 'mons 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. 
 
 1 The passage is supposed to be founded on a lost book named ' 'Avd^aais 
 Moyses', couf. Grotius ad S. Judae ep. 9, and Fabricii Cod. pseudepigr. V. T. p. 839.
 
 CHAPTER XXVII. 
 DEATH. 
 
 To tlae 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 leddoji ine an Abrahames barm^ ; ^ and it completes 
 the picture of the rich man's fate by adding the counterpart 
 (103, 9) : Mefcha wihti bisenkidun is seola an thene suartou 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 
 bote (messenger) unsers 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 bote (general messenger), der 
 nieman ledic lat (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. Haija, 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 howm, 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 di/ing as departing to Wuotan. to Wish (p. 
 145). 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 wrere,' the 
 Lord's peace 52. So, to bo buried is to fall into the mother's bosom (p. 642) ; mother 
 and father take their children into their keeping again. 
 
 TOL. II. «39 jj jj
 
 840 DEATH. 
 
 neither comes to fetch the souls fallen due to her/ 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 valkyrs to take up all heroes that have fallen in 
 fight, and conduct them to his heaven (p. 418) : wish-maidens 
 fetch his wish-sons, ' j^aar hlosa feig^ a menn,' 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- 
 angels 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, •\|ri;^a7&>709, -v^u^^oTro/iTro?, ve/cpoTro/^TTo?. These 
 maids are Odin'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 Charun (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 u^uram denuuciat. 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 hlach (hke Hel, p. 313) or hlacJc-ivinged (atris 
 ahs) : Tov Se ireaovra el\e fxiXa<i 6dvaro<i, '>^v)(ri S' e/c a(a/xaTO<i 
 eTTTTj (Batrach. 207)^, and dXevaro Kripa fxeXaivav (ibid. 85). 
 But usually the departing dead is represented riding a liorse, 
 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 
 express the removal of the soul.^ The Eoman genius of death 
 seems to announce his approach or the hour of parting by hnock- 
 ing at the door ; ^ 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 fi-om the gender 
 of mors, and originally the people can scarcely have conceived it 
 otherwise ; the Slavic snirt, smert (the same word) is invariably 
 fem., the Lith. smertis is of either gender, the Lett, nahive fem. 
 alone. And the Slav. Morena, Marana (Morena, 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 fem., MHG. smerze masc, but never personified. 
 Nahive answers to the Goth. masc. ncius, pi. naveis, funus (couf. 
 ON. ndr, ndinn p. 453), as Odvaro^ too can mean a corpse.^ But 
 this Grk. word has the same root as the Goth, ddufius, OHG. tod 
 
 ' One woukl suj^pose 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 
 
 '-* 0. Miiller's Archaol., ed. 2, pp. CO-i. 696. For the horse's head, conf. 
 Boeckh's Corp. inscr. no. 800. Marm. Oxon. p. 2, no. 63-7. R. Rochette's 
 Monum. incd. 1, 126. Pausan. vii. 25, 7. Gerhard's Antike bildw. p. 407. 
 
 •^ Hor. Od. i. 4, 13 : pallida iiwrs aequo pulsat pede pauperum tabernas regum- 
 que turres. 
 
 ■• Constant use will soften down the meaning of the harshest terms ; we had 
 an instance in the Fr. gene, p. 800n. 
 
 * Goth, leik (corpus, caro), our leiche, leichnaTn,'EnQ. lich (cadaver) ; the OHG. 
 hreo, AS. hrccw, MHG. re (cadaver, funusj, and Goth, hrdiu (whence hraiva-dubo, 
 mourner-dove) are the Lat. corpus.
 
 842 DEATH. 
 
 (orig. todu) masc, OS. clod, dod', AS, dea&, ON. dauffl, all masc, 
 the M. Nethl. dot having alone preserved the fem. gender, which 
 is however compatible with the Gothic form. The verb in Gothic 
 is diva, dau (morior), standing in the same relation to Ov-qaKO), 
 eOavov, Odvarof as the Gothic Tiv to the Slavic dan (day, p. 195). 
 The ON. dau'Si I find used only of the condition, not of the 
 person, while the Goth, ddupus 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 ndliet der Tot manigem 
 manne/ Roth. 277^ ' daz in ndhet der Tot,' Nib. 2106, 4. ^do 
 ndhte im der Tot ' 2002, 3. ' Mors praesens,' Walthar. 191. ' der 
 Tot get dir vaste zuo,' Karl 69^^. He lurks in the background 
 as it were, waiting for call or beck (Freidank 177, 17. '^ 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 
 hragen,' Kolocz. 174. ' stet vor der tilr,' 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 spam ! ' 61, 12. ' wd nu 
 Tot, du nim mich hin ! ' Ecke 145.^ ' 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, 89'^. ' 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 seehing Death,^ 
 sending for Death, having him fetched : ' ja weenet des der degen, 
 
 ^ Supra p. 325. Eeinhart p. liii. cxxx. ; like Night, Winter, and the Judgment- 
 day, Death ' breaks in.' 
 
 ^ So beasts of prey are invited, Er. 5832 : ' loa ml hungerigiu tier, bede wolf 
 und ber, iwer einez (one of you) knme 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 hahe gesant ndch Tode (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, 478". ' werst gut nach dem Tod zu schicken' 
 iv. 3, 43*^. Fischart geschichtkl. 84*. ' du ar god att skicka 
 efter Doden/ Hallman p. 94. ' bon a aller chercher la mort/ 
 Pluquet contes p. 2. In Boh. : Ho dobre gest pro Smrt posjlati/ 
 Jungmann 4, 193^. Can this lazy servant be connected with 
 Gdnglati and Gdnglot, the man and maid servant of the ancient 
 Hel? Sn. 33. 
 
 Death takes the soul and carries it away : ' hlna fuartanan 
 Tod/ O. i. 21, 1. 'do quam der Tot und nam in hin,' 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 hiises tilr entlochen 
 (unlocked)/ Bit. 12053. 'der Tot weiz manige saze (trick), swa 
 er wil dem menschen schaden und in lieim ze kits laden (entice),' 
 Tiirh. Wh. 2281. 'do in der Tot heun nam in sin gezimmer 
 (building),' ' braht lieim in sin gemiiire (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.^ 
 
 To Death is ascribed a Idghway, levelled smooth and kept in 
 repair, on which the dead travel with him : ' des Todes jyfat wart 
 g'ebenet,' Turl. Wh. 22\ 23'\ ' da moht erbouiven der T6t sin 
 straze,' Bit. 10651. ' nu seht, wie der Tot umbe sich mit kreften 
 
 1 In Danse Macabre p. m. 55, trois verges are wielded by Death.
 
 844 DEATH. 
 
 hat gehouwen/ Kl. 829. Like a shifty active servant, lie greases 
 the hoots 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 
 Siippl.). 
 
 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. ^ 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 gob 
 over a serious illness will say : ' jeg gav JDoden en shiaiJpe 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 Kadegast (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, 545^. 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 Hell^ 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 
 
 ' ' The moon shines bright, the dead ride fast,' Biirger's life p. 37. Wh. 2, 
 20. ' t maantje schijnt zo bel, mijn paardtjes lope zo snel,' Kinderm. 3, 77. 
 ' nianan skiner, dodman rider,' Sv. vis. 1, liii. and even in the Edda : ' rida menu 
 dajid'ir,' Sfem. 166''. 167". Norw. 'manen skjine, d/iman grine.varte du ikkje riid'?' 
 Conf. the Mod. Grk. song in Wh. Miiller 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^ tlie 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 lilecle (loaded his sumpter 
 at all) ? ja er was unmiiezec gar (high busy)/ Lohengr. 71. ' daz 
 ich des Todes vuoder mit in liled und vazzei ! ' Ottocar 448". 
 The Mod. Greeks have converted old ferryman Xdpwv into a 
 death^s-messenger Xapa ; 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.^ The Liibeck Dance of Death makes him 
 ride on a lion, and he is so represented in a picture also, Douce 
 p. 160. 'Mortis ha.benae,' 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 hound} ' ei, waz nu 
 dem Tode geschicket wart an sin seil (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 81'*. 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. 
 Ah'eady 0. v. 23, 260 imputes to him cVafty besuichan (decipere), 
 and Conrad strik (meshes) and netzegarn, Troj. 12178, which 
 reminds of the goddess Ran with her net (pp. 311. 840). We 
 think of him still under the familiar fisfure 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 Az 
 ir libe (the life out of her body),' Wigal. 8033.^ But he uses 
 
 ^ Td TpiKpepa TraiSbwovXa 's Tr]u <re\X' d.^paOiaa/j.^va, Fauriel 2, 228. Wh. Miiller 
 2, 8 ; conf. Kind 18i9, p. 14. 
 
 " Bopp's Siindflut, pp. 37. 50. In Buhez santez Nonn p. 205, Death says 
 ' j'attire tout dans mes liens k mon gite.' 
 
 * Life-stealer, man-slayer, names for Death.
 
 846 DEATH. 
 
 open violence too, he routs out, pursues and 2^lunde)-s, Nib. 2161, 
 8. 2163, 1; he ' hifalta sie/ felled them, 0. iii. 18, 34; ^ mich 
 hat der Tot gevangen/ clutched, Greg. 50 ; he jaget, hunts, E,oth. 
 2750, helirellet (claws?), Fundgr. 196, 20; and the Bible has the 
 same thins: : 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 Eenn. 24508 : ''wirtdem des Todes sper gesandt;' 
 and Freid. 177, 24 : ' der Tot gat her, der widerseit uns an dem 
 sper,' defies us at point of lance ; a reading which I prefer to the 
 accepted one ' ane sper,' without spear. OSinn has a spear 
 Gungnir (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 _^^/*i and ivrestle with man, whom 
 he overpowers and brings to the ground : ' mit dem Tode veliten,' 
 fence with D., MS. 2, 82'\ * der Tot wil mit mir ringen (wrestle),* 
 Stoufenb. 1126. ^ do ranc er mit dem Tode,' Nib. 939, 2. 'also 
 der Tot hie mit ime rani:,' 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 tvrestles 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 black 
 swalloiv, and shoots his arrow into a maiden's heart.^ 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 o? jidnboganfyremim sceoteS;' conf. the Serv. 
 Icrvnik, 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 bet si gar versniten,' 
 cut them up, Tit. 3770. ' wa 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.).- 
 
 1 Wh. iluller 2, 4. 6 ; conf. Tommaseo's Canti poiDolari 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 Tot einen graven beclagen und mit gewalte 
 twiiigen ze notigen dingen,' accuse a count and drive him to straits, Iw. 5625 seq.
 
 HIS WEAPONS. HIS AEMY. 847 
 
 In sucli 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 7r\eov€<i the majority, and e? irXeovcov iKeaOai meant the same 
 as €9 "AiSou Ik., 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, G. Though taking 
 no part in the fight, the dead seem to hear a badge (flag or 
 lance), which, so to speak, he fastens on the dying, with which 
 he touches them, enrolls them in his band,^ 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 ivdfen 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 
 tdcnung' ; even Zio's or Tiwes tctcen p. 200, and OSin's spear 
 p. 147 are worth considering (see Suppl.).- 
 
 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 lebeu.' So Iw. 7161 speaks of having to ' f/elten (pay) vur 
 des Todes schelten ' ; and the same perhaps is meant by ' der Tot hat uf si pesworn,' 
 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 beidon ! ' MS. 1, 17. Observe too ' mit des Todes haiitve>:h- iiher- 
 sigelet; sealed witJi D.'s sign manual, Wh. 391, 27. The Indian god of death, 
 Yama, is a lord of law. 
 
 • Conf. ' eiuem 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 (jive 
 thee the signs,' to mark thee for my own. Death, orig. a messenger himself, sends 
 out under-messengers. Conf. Kinderm. no. 177. Even the 0. Fr. Chanson des 
 .gaxons 2, 134 has : ' la Morz le semoiU 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 reilten (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 ; ^ and it accords with the 
 resemblance of departed spirits to elves, who also love music and 
 dancing (p. 470). Yet our poets of the 13th cent, never once 
 allude to the Dance of Death, which from the 15-16tli 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. 286. 345. 359) seems to mean, not 
 catching hold for the purpose of dancing, but of leading away 
 (like ' dod 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, sicJcle, 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, 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 (0. 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. 23**. Conversely 
 Death, like the devil, is called a sower, who disseminates weeds 
 among men ; ' do der Tot sinen samen under si geseete,' Wh. 
 361, 16. 'er ier durch in des Todes fiirch/ 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. 
 
 > Virg. Aen. 6, C44 : pars pedibus plaudunt choreas et carmina dicunt. TibuU. 
 . 3, 59 : hie choreae cantusque vigeut.
 
 HIS DANCE. A SKELETON. 849 
 
 Very commonly be is called ' der grimme,' furious, Roth. 2750. 
 Nib. 1360, 4. 1553, 3. Mar. 218. Flore 1931. Troj. 2317-25. 
 10885. Ls. 3, 124 ; i— ' der ferchgrimme,' Morolt 4059, a febcit- 
 ous compound, as Death has designs upon the life or soul (ferch) ; 
 —der ^nmm>,' Eoth. 517. Reinh. 3G0. 1248. Berthold 303 ; 
 — ^der hittere' {irLKpo^ 6dvaro<i) and ' amara Mors,"* ^ Rudl. 1, 
 110. Unibos 117, 4. Diut. 3, 89. Mar. 206. Alex. (Lampr.) 
 820. 1097. 3999. 4782. Gr. Ruod. C 15. Wh. 253, 28. Wigal. 
 1113; — der hitterliche, Troj. 3521. 22637; — Mer silre/ sour, 
 Parz. 643, 24; — der scharfe' : ein scharpher bote, Freid. 21, 6; — 
 ' der irre,' Amgb. 29* 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 a,tra, 
 pallida.' Otto II was called ' iMllida 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 
 ' lieher Tot ! ' dear D. (Hagen's Mus. 2, 187), and H. Sachs i. 5, 
 528*^ speaks oE 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 ' o^se^ nt dominiis Blicero,' by 
 which nothing but Death can have been meant, whether the word 
 signify the pale (bleich), or the grinning (bleckend), or be, as I 
 rather think, the proper name Blidger, Blicker with a mere sug- 
 gestion of those meanings. A homj horse's head is here handed 
 in mockery to the Avolf as a skilful player (joculandi guarus) by 
 way of fiddle, ' bony as a skeleton.' And now that unexplained 
 caput cahallinnm at p. 661n. may be interpreted as in fact a sym- 
 
 ' Der grimme tot, the name of a knifo (Wolfd. 1313), is remarkable, as HeTs 
 knife was called sidtr (p. 313) from svelta esurire, which in the Goth, sviltait takes 
 the meaning of mori. 
 
 - Isidore even says, ' mors dicta quod sit amara.'
 
 850 DEATH. 
 
 bol of Death (p. 844) and tlie 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.^ 
 
 In any case dominus BUcero proves that in the middle of the 
 12 th cent, it was the practice to represent Death as a sheleton. 
 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.- 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 : ^ the notion itself may be of much higher 
 antiquity ; it is closely related to the story of three live and three 
 dead kings.* 
 
 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, Eommel 5, 375. Eemigius demonol. 
 145 says, at witches' gatlierings tliey 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. 
 
 2 0. Miiller's Ai-chaol. 696-7. Lessing 8, 251-2. 
 
 3 The poem was printed before the Wigalois. 
 
 •* Staphorst i. 4, 263. Bragur 1, 369. 0. Fr. ' les trois mors et les trois vis,' 
 Eoquefort 2, 780. Catal. de la Valliere p. 285-6 ; couf. 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/ 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 Machahaeoi-um, Fr. la danse Macahre? 
 
 Another name of Death, much later seemingly than Blicker, 
 but now universally known, is Freuncl Hein or Hain ; I cannot 
 even trace it up to the middle of last century.^ 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, Eeinchen (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 hiinen- 
 Jcleed, which brings us to ' heun, hilne,' giant (p. 523) ; and 
 Hein itself might be explained as Heimo (p. 387), or Hagano 
 (p. 371). A Voigtland story of the god Hai7i (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 mortuarium, 
 ' hainrecht,' * coming as it probably does from heimrecht, i.e. 
 heimfall, lapse of property. 
 
 1 As the beasts in a fable ape those of men. 
 
 ^ Latest writings on the Dance of Death : Peignot, ' Recherches sur les danses 
 des morta' (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 tliat ; 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). 
 
 ' It is used by Musaus (Volksm. 1, 16), Claudius and Gotten J. R. Schellen- 
 berg in Pref. to Freund Heins erscheinungcn (Wintortlnir 1785) thinks Claudius in 
 his Asmus (after 1775) invented the name, which I very much doubt ; he has given 
 it currency. 
 
 * Mittermaier's Privatrecht § 77, no. 27.
 
 852 DEATH. 
 
 Kaisersberg calls Death liolz-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. US'*: 'So is death called a village-mower ov 
 ivood-mower, 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.'^ 
 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 Strechefuss or Strechehein (leg-stretcher), 
 as Gryphius too (Kirchhofsged. 36) names him StrecTifuss, because 
 he stretches out the limbs of the dying, loosens them {\v(TLixekr]<i) ; 
 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 
 Strechehein and Bleckezahn, bleak {i.e. bared) teeth ; and else- 
 where JDiirrhein, Klapperbein, names for a skeleton. The allusion 
 in hupferhichel (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, 102*^), speaking of Death's arrival, says he twitches 
 ov 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 
 Mown 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.^ The living principle was linked 
 
 1 The earlier editions in Latin (151-1, 115*<=, and 1519, 105'^'=) have in paren- 
 theses ' der dorfmeyger ' and ' der holzmeyger.' 
 
 2 Wh. 416, 14 : ' bi liehter sunnen da verlasch (went out) manegem Sarrazin 
 sin lieht.' Lohengr. 133 : ' er sluoc in, daz im 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 loivers 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.^ 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 - 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.^ 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.* 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.^ 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 
 
 ' In the child's game ' If the fox dies I get the skin ' (Kinderm. 2, xviii.), a 
 piece of burning wood is passed round, and its extinction decides. 
 
 ' God-sib expresses the kinship of god-parents to each other or to the parents. 
 — Trans. 
 
 •* So the bird charadrius, by looking at or away from you, decides your life or 
 death, Freid. introd. Ixxxvi., where a couplet in Titurel 515i-5 and the O.Fr. Bes- 
 tiaire (Koquef. sub v. caladrio) are left unnoticed. 
 
 ■• 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. 202 means /ratris mors. 
 
 * 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.-^ 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.).^ 
 
 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. Ouce 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 oflace it was to receive souls (Morolt 
 
 1 Ettner's Unwiird. doctor p. 290. 
 
 ^ Conf. p. 14 on the affinity between god and gode.
 
 A GOD. 855 
 
 2660. 2715), canf. 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 Lachmann in- 
 terprets it, desired them for his band (conf. p. 84-8). 
 
 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 unrelated 
 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 
 ' maa,' earth ; the other the kingdom of the dead,, as Tiion [ddv- 
 aTo<;) 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. ir. K E
 
 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 
 chap. 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} 
 
 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. 659), and can do nothing 
 against a higher constitution of the world, which exempts neither 
 him nor victory-lending Zeus ^ from a general destruction (pp. 
 316-8). Some things turn out contrary to his will : OSiun 
 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 
 
 » 0HG./ei.7i, MHG. veige ; OS./e//i, Hel. 72,4; AS. fcege, Beow. 5946; ON. 
 felgr. Tlie old meaniug of the word has been preserved longest in Lower Saxony 
 [and Scotland] : ' dar is en veege in'u Luse ' ; 'en rtfe(7minsclie, dat balde sterveu 
 werd (will die soon) ' ; per contra, ' be is nau nig veegc (not fey yet) ' of a man 
 who comes in when you are talking of him. Also Nethl. ' een vceg 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 Tpdieaai jSovXeraL vU-qv (II. 7, 21. 16, 121), as /3ouX?7 will, counsel, is usually 
 attributed to Zeus (i]pj.v ^ovXerai 17, 331) ; and sometimes voos (17, 176) or vo-rj/xa, 
 purpose (17, 409). His great power is illustrated by the gold chain (aeipi, II. H, 
 19—28), but passages presently to be cited shew that he had to leave destiny to be 
 decided by the balance. 
 
 8^0
 
 DESTINY. 857 
 
 noun, ON. scop, OS. giscapu, AS. gesceapu ; I have uofc fouud 
 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. skajmad'r, 
 and the Dan. sJciehne (ON. skepna = forma, indoles). The OS. 
 intensifies its giscapu by prefixes : ivurdigiscapu, Hel. 103, 7. 
 reganogiscapu (supra p. 2C), decreta fati, superorum, where the 
 old heathen notions of wurd and regiti plainly assert themselves. 
 In ON. the neut. pi. log (statuta) is never used of destiny, except 
 when joined to the particle or (tor or), drluij, which in all the 
 other dialects becomes a sing., OHG. udac (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, ^irleili, 
 AS. ovdcel, from being the award of a judge, came to mean that 
 of battle. The OS. compound aJdarlagu (vitae decretum), Hel. 
 125, 15 retains the old plural form. Now aldr, aldar is strictly 
 aevum (p. 792), and hveila, OHG. India tempus, but also vitae 
 tempus; hence these words also run into the sense of fatum, 
 conf. AS. gesceap-hwU, orleg-hwil, Beow. 52. 4849. 5817, OS. 
 odag-hilUa, Hel. 103, 8, and OHG. Jndlsdlida} Then there is 
 an ON. aud'na, Swed. ode, destiny, and ' auSinn ' fato concessus : 
 ' au&iia rffiSr hvors manns lifi,' rules every man's life, Fornald. 
 sog. 1, 95. Our modern words, not introduced till late, schiclcsal 
 (fr. schicken aptare, conf. geschickt aptus), verhdngnis, fugiing, 
 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): 'ist tha kindee shpen (is it shaped for the child)' says 
 the 0. Fris. Law 49, 10. But we also meet with an ON. oitla 
 (destinare, to intend for some one), OHG. ahtoii and perhaps 
 ahtilou, MHG. ahten, and beslahten, as ahte and slahte are akin 
 to one another (see Suppl.). 
 
 > WUscilda ffortuna), N. Cap. 20-3-5. 53. 77. MHG. tcihalde, Kaiserclir. 1757. 
 Massmaim 3, GG'J. Geo. Ol''. ' tUu ivilc iniu und icli miiez Got bevollien sin,' must 
 be coaimitted to God, Bit. '6^,
 
 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 bestoived, have 
 shaped. ^ 
 
 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 mei'ely to make known his 
 mandates. The future lies on the lap of the gods, 6ewv iv ^ovvaai 
 Kelrat, 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 Grautrekssaga tells us (Fornald. sog. 3, 32), that at mid- 
 night Hrosshdysgraid" awoke his foster-son Starka'Sr, 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 hitn as OSinn. And OSinu said, the 
 demsters should deem the doom of Starkat^r (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 
 
 ^ We still say : ' born in hnppij hour.' OHG. ' mit lieilu er giboran ward,' 0. 
 Sal. 44. Freq. in theO. Span. Cid : ' el que en buen ora uascio, el que en biien pimto 
 nascio.' From this notion of a good hour of beginning (a la bonne heure) has 
 sprung the Fr. word bouheur (masc.) for good hap in general. Similarly, about 
 receiving knighthood, the 0. Span, has ' el que en buen ora einxo espada.' 
 
 - That is, Graui, SiSgrani, the bearded, a by-name of OSinn (p. 147).
 
 DESTINY. 859 
 
 daughter, but be the last of his race. OSinn said : I sliape him, 
 that he live three men^s lifetimes (conf. Saxo Gram. p. 103). 
 Thorr : in each lifetime he shall do a ' niSings-verk.^ OSimi : 
 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 Starka'Sr 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 Grreek 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 AchaBans, of Achilles and 
 Hector : 
 
 Kal Tore 8r] ')(^pv(Teia 7raT7]p ciriTaLve rdXavra' 
 
 ev S' irtdei Suo KTjpe ravrfk.e'yeo'i Oavdroio, 
 
 TpMcov O' iTnroSdficov Kal 'A'^aiayv 'y^aXKO^^cTcovcov. 
 
 eXKe Se /xeaaa Xa/Scov peTre S' aiaifiov rj/xap !A')(^accov. 
 
 II. 8, 69. 22, 209; conf. 16, b58. 19, 223. The same of 
 Aeneas and Turnus, Aen. 12, 723 : 
 
 Jupiter ipse, duas aequato examine lances 
 
 sustinet, et fata imponit diversa duorum, 
 
 quera 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 outcome^ (see Suppl.). Tiie application of a balance to 
 actions, to sins, is very natural; the (apocryphal) 2 Esdras 3, 31- 
 
 1 Conf. Deut. S. no. 479; a coll. of authorities iu Zapp2rt's Vita Acotauti 
 (Vienna 1839), pp. 79, 88. ,
 
 860 DESTINY AND WELL-BEING. 
 
 has: 'nunc ergo pondera in statera nostras iniquitates/ and 4, 
 86 : ' qnoniam in statera ponderavit seculum/^ The Jomsvikinga- 
 saga cap. 42 (Fornm. sog. 11, 128-9) describes the magical luck- 
 scales or wishing-scales of Hakon iarl : ' SiSan tekr iarl skdlir 
 go&ar ]7ser er hann atti, ]>ddv voro gervar af brendu silfri ok gylldar 
 allar, en J7ar fylg^o 2 ^Jie^, annat af gulli en annab af silfri; a 
 hvarotveggja metino var gert sem vaeri iikneskja, ok heto ];at 
 hlotai', en ]?at voro reyndar hlutir, sem raonnum var titt at hafa, 
 ok fylgSi ]?esso nattura mikil, ok til j^ess alls, er iarli j^otti skipta, 
 Jja liaf'Si hann j^essa hluti. Iarl var jjvi vanr at leggja hluti |>essa 
 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, ];a var sa 
 okyrr hlutrinn i skalinni, er ]>at merkSi at hann vildi at yr'Si, ok 
 breysti sa hlutrinn nokkot sva i skalinni, at glam vai'S 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. 4P) : Cavete, fratres, ab eis qui mentiuntur, quod quando 
 quisque nascitur, stella sua secimi nascitvr, qua fatum ejus con- 
 sfituitur, 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.^ 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).^ The people believed in a predetermining of fates, as 
 they did in the certainty of death. 
 
 ' 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.— Tkans. 
 
 2 Not unfrequently 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. 
 
 ^ It is worthy of remark, that, ace. to the ON. view, not all the gods, but only 
 tlie highest ones possessed a knojvledge of destiny; so to the Greeks, none but Zeus 
 and those whom he made his conlidants knew of it. Of Frigg it is said, Saem. 
 65'': 'at oil orlog viti, j^ptt bun sialfgi segi,' all fates she knows, but tells not. And
 
 FATALISM. 861 
 
 The Old Norse fatalism is proved by the following passages: 
 ' Jagt er alt for/ predestined is all ; and ' era me^ lostom logcf 
 £efi ]?er/ Seem. 175''. ' sia mun gipt lagiff a, grams asfi/ and 
 * munat skopom vinna/ 179^. ^ eino doegri mer var aldr um 
 sJcapaffr oc allt lif um lagit,' 83'*. ' var ]?er ]7ar sicapat,' 164". ' J>at 
 verSr hverr at vinna, er cetlat ev' -, ' ]?at man verSa fram atkoma, 
 sem cetlat er'; ^ecki man mer |)at sto'Sa, ef mer er dauff'inn 
 (etladr' ; ' koma man til min feig&'ui, hvar sem ek em staddr, ef 
 mer ver'Sr ]7ess aiiffit', 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. \, 
 193. 
 
 The same with our MHG. poets: 'swaz sich 9,o\ filegen, wer 
 mac daz understen (what is to happen, who can hinder) ?' Nib. 
 1618, 1. 'swaz gescliehen 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 
 IfBgen doch da heime tot,' would lie dead though at home, 
 VVigal. 10201. 'di veigen fielen dar nider/ Lampr. 2031. 'hin- 
 nerstirbet niman wan di veigen' Pf. Chuonr. 8403. 'then veigen 
 mac nieman behuoteu, thiu erthe ne mag in niht uf gehaven 
 (hold up), scol er tha wei'then gestagen, er sturve (would die) 
 thoh thaheime,' Fr. belli 42''. ' swie ringe er ist, der veige man, 
 in mac ros noch enkan niht viirbaz getragen/ the fey man, how- 
 ever light, no horse can carry farther, Karl 72''. Rol. 207, 24. 
 ' die veigen muosen ligen tot,' Livl. chron. 59''. * der veigen mac 
 keiner genesen,' none recover, ib. 78". 'ich ensterbe niht yor 
 minem tac (day),' Herb. 53'^ '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 gescliehen sol,' Troj. 
 58''. ' daz muose wesen (what had to be), daz geschach,' Orl. 
 11167. 'swaz gescliehen sol, daz geschiht.' Freid. 132''. MS. 1, 
 (W. 71". 'daz salt eht sin, nu ist ez geschehen,' MS. 74*. 80*. 
 ' ez geschiht in'lit wan daz sol geschehen,' Lanz. 6934. * ez 
 
 O'Sinn says ffi'2''), tliat Gefjon knows tlie world's destiny (aUlar cirlog) equally with 
 himself. Ainou^ men, jmrticuliir henx'S and priests spy out the secrets of the 
 future, preeminently Gripir (p. 94) ; to women, to priestesses, belonged the gift of 
 divination.
 
 862 DESTINY AND WELL-BEING. 
 
 ergat doch nilit, wan ah ez sol/ Trist. 6776. ' tot aveura qan- 
 que doit avenir/ Ogier 7805. ' bin ich 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 eiu 
 har,^ MS. 2, 129''. ' ez muose sin, und ez was mir heschaffen,' it 
 was to be, was shaped for me (13J^''). ' diu maget was iu heschaf- 
 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, 434*^. 'nu mir daz was in teile,' 
 well, that was in my lot (portion), En. 11231. ' ez was enteile uns 
 getdv,' Herb. 18418. 'ez ist mich OAigehorn,' I was born to it. 
 Herb. 6*^. — The words geschaffen, heschaffen and heslaht are identi- 
 cal with the ON. skapat and cetlat, 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 
 lanto me {hescheert, my shai-e)"; ego autem addo ''allotting and 
 deserving run alway side by side.'" Sermones disc, de tempore, 
 sermo 21. 'was hescheert ist, entlauft nicht,' Schweinichen 3, 
 249 (see Suppl.) .^ 
 
 Now, in themselves, the gifts of destiny would include eveiy 
 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 fxolpa and fatum, held by an independent Tv)(7] and 
 Fortitna. 
 
 Mixllenhoff 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, Sa^lde. But instead of 
 his interpretation Welauaha, I should prefer Welan-owa, which 
 is supported by the more modern Welnau, a place that stood on 
 
 ' The same belief is held by the Lithuanians and Lettons, fate they ca.lllikkimas 
 liJiteni, from lik-t to lay down, arrange : ' tai buwo jo likkims,' ' tas jau bija wiu- 
 nam liktz ,' that was destined for him.
 
 WEAL. S^LDE. 863 
 
 tlie right bank of the Elbe near Itzehoej the river Stor having 
 apparently formed the 'aue, ea'; Welan-owa Avould then be 
 uniform with Wunschesouwa and Pholesouwa (p. GOO). 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 
 5) 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, Csedm. 42, 2. 27, 19. But the 'gold ivelan bewunden' 
 forms a contrast to the ' gold galdre bewunden,' a holy divine 
 power is imagined confronting that of sorcery; and this ivela 
 does seem to lead up to Wela, as the kindred notion of ivunsch 
 to Wunsch. 
 
 The ON. distinguishes its fem. heill (felicitas) from a neut. heil 
 (omen), so does the AS. its htelu f, (salus) from hsel 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. 683^ which gives out as a common pro- 
 verb : ' chum hail hauenstain ! ' In MS. 2, 130'* : ' waz ob iuwer 
 lieil 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 
 huiUdlida (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 : ' sid wacJieta alien maunon thiu Sdlida in 
 then undon.' Waking presupposes life. The personification 
 comes out still more clearly in poets four centuries after him : 
 ' unser Scelde ivacJiet,' Parz. 550, 10. ' min sorge slufet, so din 
 Scelde wachet; Tit. 31, 3. 'z'aller zit des S. wachet/ MS. 1, 1&\
 
 864 DESTINY AND WELL-BEING. 
 
 ^nnser S. diu wil wachen' Trisfc. 9430. ' des noch sm 5^. wachet/ 
 Ernst. 5114. 'ir S. wacliet,' Amgb. 35*. 'daz mir 8. ivache,' 
 ib. 43*. ' ich waen sin 8. sldfe/ ib. 44*'. ' 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. 5*. 27*. 'iuwer 
 8. wirt erwecket,' Lohengr, 19. Observe in these MHG. quota- 
 tions the frequent poss. pron.^ or gen. case : the Saslde dedicates 
 herself to certain men, protects and prospers them, ivahes 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. 47*. ' ir milte wachet,' ib. 12^. ' ir 
 genade (kindness) mir muoz wachen,' MS. 1, 33*. 'ich waene an 
 ir ist genade entslafen (asleep), daz ich ir leider niht erwecken 
 kan,' MS. 1, 48*. ' du (minne) bist gegen mir hart entslafen,' 
 MS. 1, 60*. 'min schade wachet,' Ben. 121. 'din kraft mifc 
 ellen do niht slief,' Parz. 85, 24. We still say, ' treason sleeps 
 not'; and some phrases of this sort can have a personal sense. 
 The heathen colouring of Saelde's waking and being ivaked 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,' S^m. 46*, 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, fri'S oc seelu), allowing them but scanty rest at 
 night : they luake to grind prosperity for him, and afterwards 
 misfortune (salt) for My^singr, Sn. 146-7 (see Suppl.). 
 
 And this is far from being the only way personification is 
 applied to her. Sselde is called /rart, she appears, meets, bends 
 her fiice 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,- turns her back upon ; she has a door and a 
 
 ' So : ' cTes si viin S. gein in bote,' Parz. 416, 4. ' des sol min S. pfant siu,' be 
 pledge thereof, Frauend. 23. ' lat dir'z din S. wol gezemen,' MS. 2, 252'. 
 
 - This escaping is the same thing as the ON. hverfa (evauescere) : heillir
 
 S^LDE. 865 
 
 road. Here again old Otfrid leads the way (ii. 7, 20) : ' thin 
 Salida in thar gaganta' (eis occurrit). Walther sings 55, 35 : 
 'fro Scelde teilet umbe sich (scatters gifts around), uud heret mir 
 den rilgge ziio (turns her back), sie stet ungerne gegen mir, si n^ 
 ruochet (recks) mich nilit an gesehen' ; and 43, 5: 'xmnfrou S., 
 wie si min vergaz ! ' ' vrS S. ha,t iu an sich genomen, wil din 
 pflegen (cherish),^ Ecke 10, 160. ' ob vrmivje S. mines heiles 
 welle ruochen,' Ben. 425. ' die wile es min S. ruochte,' Parz. 
 689, 20. 'haete mir din S. ir ore haz geneiget/ inclined her ear, 
 MS. 2, 220^ ' d6 was mir 8. entrimnen,' Parz. 689, 8. ' 8. was 
 sin geleite,' conductress, Wigal. 8389. 'froii 8. ir was hereit,' 
 ready to help, Er. 3459; and perhaps we ought to add what 
 follows : ' din Gotes hovescheit ob miner frowen sivehfe,' God^s 
 kindness over ray lady hovered; for so hover the valkyrs over 
 the heroes they befinend. 'Got wise mich der 8celden ivege,' 
 guide me on Fortune's way, Parz. 8, 1 6. ' den vuoz (foot) setzen 
 in der 8. 'pfat,' Ben. 306. 'frowe 8. muoz in uf ir strdze wisen/ 
 Tit. 5218. 'der 8celden sUc,' path, Karl 19^ 'iiber fr6 8. stec 
 gan,' Fragm. 46"'. ' tuo mir uf (open) der 8. tiir ! ' MS. 1, 36\ 
 'der 8. porte,' A. Heinr. 243, 33. 'der 8. tiir besliezen,' shut, 
 MsH. 3, 336\ 'setzen zuo der 8. tiir,' Zauberb. 1150. 'den 
 begiuzet 8. vluot/ flood, MsH. 3, 205^. ' 8(elde und ir gesinde 
 (household) wait ir,' MS. 1, 88^'. ' diu 8dlde folget sinen vanen,' 
 follows his banners, Lampr. 2089. ' mir enwil diu 8. ninder 
 folgen einen fuoz/ Ben. 367. ' mir ist diu 8. gram,' unfriendly, 
 Gregor 2390. 'diu 8. was ime gram; Dint. 1,10. Athis D. 84. 
 ' diu 8. vUiihet (flees) von mir,' Greg. 1526. ' diu 8. hat mich 
 verJdn,' Karl 95^*. ' diu 8. hat si hesezzen,' possessed her, Wigal. 
 884. ' diu 8. het ir gesivorn' 941. ' diu 8. het zuo im gcsivorn 
 zeira staeten ingesinde,' to be his steadfast follower, Lanz. 1561. 
 ' der 8celden spil,' game, Wigal. 8761. 9271. 9386. ' diu gespil 
 der 8.,' playmate 10532. ' swes diu 8. ze gesellen gert,' desires 
 as companion 945. 'ira gab diu 8. ir hantgift,' Silv. 534. ' diu 
 8. vloz im in den munt' 1024. ' ez rise (drop) uf dich der 8. 
 tuft' 1389. 'so griienet diner 8. ris,' spray, MsH. 2, 258\ 
 ' frouwe 8. lachet mir,' laughs, Ernst 4334. ' daz dir/;v> 8. lache, 
 und al din heil hewache,' Silv. 2565. ' Fortune wolt im do niht 
 
 horfnar (felicitates evanitae), Ssem. 93*. ' swi ime di Sjilden volgen, werdent si irae 
 verbolgen, si ne kcren zuinliche icidcr,' once offended, they come not back, Al. C189.
 
 866 DESTINY AND WELL-BEING. 
 
 me gensedeclichen (graciously) lacJien,' Troj. 5754. * so decket 
 uns der 8. huot,' hood, hat, Winsbekin 45, 7 : a wishing-cap. 
 ^ daz iuch frouwe S. miieze heliilllen' (fovere), Lohengr. 101: 
 behullen prob. in its literal sense, to wrap, to clothe, as Walther 
 43, 1 and 7 makes fro Sselde hleiden (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; Miat den nuwen noch 
 gegen mir endecket ; enblecket gen mir sinen zan (bared its 
 teeth, gnashed) ; het zer rechten hende griffen ' 3, 539. ' do 
 kerte von im undo vloch geliicke,' Troj. 5750. We say *my 
 fortune blooms, grows,' as though it were attached to a tree 
 or herb: '^ mein gUicke das bliihete mir,' Schweinichen 1, 170. 
 'geliicke wahset mit genuht,' Troj. 5686. 'uns ist niht wol 
 erschozen geliicke' 12438. 'Got wil uns sselde lazen wahsen,' 
 Lohengr. Q6. The proverb ' das gliick kommt von ungefiihr wol 
 iiber neunzig stauden her,' Simplic. 2, 158, well expresses the 
 suddenness and surprise, the windfall nature of luck, to which 
 are owing the very names of TV'x^rj (from Tv-)(^elv, rv^-x^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-workei', Etzels hofh. 208), 
 makes /7'a?t 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 lulieel (/cuXtz^Spo?),^ 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. 
 
 ' A different thing therefore from the wheel that Krodo and Yishnu carry in 
 the hand (p. 248-9).
 
 foetune's wheel. 867 
 
 23. ' assumptus in amplissimum Fortunae fastigium, versahiles 
 ejus motus expertus ost^ qui ludunt mortalitatem^ nuac eveUentes 
 quosdam in sidera, nunc ad Cocyti profunda mergentes/ Amm. 
 Marc. 14, 11 : 'Fortunae volucris rota adversa prosperis semper 
 alternans ' 31, 1. 'Fortunae te regendum dedisti, dominae 
 moribus oportet obtemperes, tu vero voloentis rotae impetum 
 refcinere conaris ? Si manere incipit, Fors esse desistit/ Boeth. de 
 consol. ii. pr. 1. Notker cap. 25. ' rotam voluhili orhe versamus 
 (says Fortuna of herself), infima summis, surama infimis mutare 
 gaudemus. ascende si placet, sed ea lege uti ne, cum ludicri raei 
 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,- 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 scJdbe (disc, 
 orb) of Fortune, of luck, of S aside : ' orhita Fortunae ducit 
 utroque rotam (a better reading: utramque viam),' Reinh. 1, 
 1494. ' volubilis Fortunae rota,' Rodulfus chron. Trudonis, p. 
 381. '' ro^tt i^orhtnae,^ Radevicus 1,40. ' swaz ie geschiht, daz 
 stat an glilckes rade,' whatever happens rests on fortune^s wheel, 
 Freid. 110, 17. 'daz im der ncelekeit rat mit willen urabe lief,^ 
 Troj. 9471 ; 'ja walzet ir geliiches rat vil stasteclich ilf uud nider, 
 her und hin, dan und wider loufet ez,' her (i.e. Saelde^s) wheel of 
 luck rolls right steadfastly,^ etc. 2349. ' im dienet daz geliickes 
 rat, daz im nach eren umbe lief 7229. ' geluckes rat louft uns 
 die sumer und die winder,' Lohengr. 119. ' min scMhe gat ze 
 wunsche,' Ben. 353 ; ' dem get sin schthe enzelt,' 360. ' wol gie 
 (or, gie fiir sich) ir scldhe,' Lohengr. 146. 189. 'si vuoren (they 
 rode) uf geluckes rade,' Flore 844. ' Scelde diu ist sinewel (sphe- 
 
 • Pentam. 5, 9 lias also a ' vecchia seduta ncoppa na rota ' as Fortuua. 
 
 " The mere turaiug 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, ttwj 
 ret KOLTU} dvia yivovTaL, koL to, dvcj Kano (Cedreuus, ed. Paris, 142). 
 
 3 This is contrary to James I. of Scotl.'s idea : ' the sinhlen sweltering of that 
 ilk wheel .... so toiler whilom did she it to-wry (twist about).' But it seems the 
 l^revailing one here, unless ' sin schibe get cn-ze.lt ' (3 lines lower) mean ' goes 
 tolter,' tolutans, ambling, as zelter is an ambler. Further on, ' mich hin verdi'ucke,' 
 push me off, need not imply a waddling movement. — Tbans.
 
 868 DESTINY AND WELL-BEING. 
 
 rical), und walzet umb als ein rat,^ Uebel wip 241. ' der Scehlen 
 scUben trihen/ Amis 20bS. ' entscMben,' Ulr. Trist. 708. Yet 
 that ascending and descending is often mentioned too : ' so stige 
 ich uf, und ninder abe/ never down, Parz. 9, 22. ' gelilcke ist 
 rehte als ein hal, swer stiget der sol vilrhten val/ who climbs 
 must fear a fall^ Freid. 115, 27. 'so hangen ich an dem radcs 
 teile (limb), da maueger hanget ane trost (without hope),^ Ben. 
 88 ; ' e daz der Scelden schibe mich hin verdrucke gar zuo der 
 verzalten schar^91. 'si waren hohe gar gestigen (mounted 
 high) uf des . . . geliickes rat, nu railezens leider von der stat aber 
 nider riicken (move down again)/ Flore 6148. ' swer hiute sitzet 
 uf dem rade, der siget morgen drunder (sinks under it to-morrow),' 
 Troj. 18395. ' er ist komen iif geliickes rat, daz muoz im immer 
 stille Stan,' Geo. 193. ' geliicJies rat, wenne sol ich mine stat \\i 
 dir vinden ? ' Ben. 306. 'svvebe oben an der Scelichkeit rade,' 
 Zauberb. 1860. ' 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 
 uu ride in lif die hoehe/ turn (writhe) him up aloft, Tit. 5218; 
 ' gelilcke, din rat nu ride ! ' 5275. ' FortHna diu ist so getan, ir 
 schibe lazet si umbe gau, umbe loufet ir rat, dicke vellet der da 
 vaste saz/ oft falleth he that sat there fast, Lampr. Alex. 3066.^ 
 This notion candied 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, 22 P; and 
 "Wigal. p. 41 tells us of one who had in his house such a lolteel 
 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 au (molten 
 images thereon), iegelichez geschatfen als ein man. hie sigen diu 
 (sank these) mit dem rade nider, so stigen (mounted) diu ander 
 uf wider, daz was des geliickes rat.' ~ 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 
 
 ^ Conf. the passage on la roe de la Fortune in the Jeu d'Adan (Theatre fran- 
 (.-ais au moyen age p. 82). 
 
 - From this wheel, which Wigalois wore on his helmet (1862—6), came the 
 iianie of Eitter mit dem rad (ah-eady in Gildas of Banchor ' miles quadrigae '), not 
 irom the adventure he had to brook with a brazen wheel (i^p. 252 — 4 of the jDoem).
 
 CHILD OF LUCK. 869 
 
 Johanneses on fortune's wJieel, Daub. sao:. nos. 209. 337. Our 
 Sselde is never painted blind or blindfolded ^ (see Suppl.). 
 
 What seems to me to be far more sio-nificant 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 cldldren, owning her favourites for 
 her sous : 'ich bin ouch in fro SaMen sclioz geleit,' laid in her 
 lap. Fragm. 45'\ To be a darling of fortune, a child of luck, 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 Scelden ham,' Barl. 37, 36. 191, 38. Engelh. 5070. 
 
 * Artus der 8. hint,' Zauberb. 1433. ' S. Hid hat S. stift ' 1038. 
 ' Maria der S. hint,' Wartb. kr. jen. 56. ' \v sit gezelt geliicke ze 
 ingesinde (as inmate), dem heile ze liehem hinde,' AVarnung 2596. 
 
 * Si ist S. sundertriutel (fondling), in der wiirzegarten kan si 
 brechen ir rosen,^ MS. 1, SS'^. Now, as Wuotan can take the place 
 of the gifting norn (p. 858), so he can that of Saelde; he is himself 
 the bestower of all bliss, he takes up children to his bosom. 
 Altogether identical therefore with Saslden barn must be Mes 
 Wunsches ham, an dem der Wtmscli was voile varn,' on whom 
 Wish had perfectly succeeded, Orl. 3767. A child of luck has 
 ' des Wiinsclies segen,' Lanz. 5504. For more references, see pp. 
 138 — 144." 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, 10'' and infra ch. XXXII.) appears in a forest of 
 Bretagne, and gives a fairy purse : and who also wins iheivishing- 
 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 ireTaaa or winged cap of 
 Hermes the giver of all good, of all sselde. And ' Sa3lde's hat' 
 is expressly mentioned : ' so dechet uns der Scelden huot, daz uns 
 dehein weter selvven mac,' no weather can befoul us, MsH. 3, 
 466'^. The never empty purse I connect with the goddess's horn 
 of plenty : ' raundanam cornucopiam Fortuna gestans,' Amm. 
 
 1 Nor is shfi called glesin, like tlio Lat. Fortuua vitrea ; Gotfrid of Strassburg 
 alone (MS. 2, 4r>l> ) has ' daz (jle6iii glilcke,' aud we have now the proverb ' luck and 
 crock are easy broke.' 
 
 - I find also a proper name Seldeabot = Saelde's messenger, Weisth. 3, "277-8.
 
 870 DESTINY AND WELL-BEING. 
 
 Marc. 22, 9. 'formatum Fortunae habitum cum divite cornu,' 
 Prudent, lib. 1 contra Symm. ; also with Amaltliea's horn or 
 Svantovit^s (p. 591), nay with the /cepa? crcoT7]pLa<;, Luke 1, 69. 
 Of the wishing-rod we are reminded by the synonymous expres- 
 sions : ' alles heiles ein wilnschel-ris ,' -twig, -wand^ Troj. 2216, 
 and 'des Wunsches bluome,' Barl. 274, 25. 
 
 The belief in fairi/ things [wiinscheldinge, 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 ivish ; 
 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 hack into his hand. Freyr had a sword of similar 
 nature, that swung itself {er sialft vegiz), Saem. 82*. Sn. 40; its 
 name is unrecorded. The ' cudgel jump out o' your sack ! ' in 
 our fairy-tale is the same story vulgarized; in CEgi's hall the 
 pitchers or beakers of ale hronght themselves (sialft barsc ]?ar ol), 
 Saem. 48 ; Wolfdieterich (Cod. dresd. 296-7) fell in with god- 
 desses, to whose table the wheaten loaf came loalking, and the 
 wine poured itself out : such gear the Greeks called auro/xarov 
 (self-taught), II. 18, 376. CEgis-hialinr must originally have 
 been (Eo-i's own (and QEs^ir is at times undistino^uishable 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, tarn-hapjpe, 
 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 tyaa? 
 of Venus and Juno, awakened longing (i/iepo?), 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. Shi&hla&nir is described,
 
 WISHING-GEAR. 871 
 
 now as a ship, now as a hat, both of which coukl 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. folk v. 1, 142-3. 
 Not unlike this are our ivinged sandals and league hoots. 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 wishing -purse, and the wishing-rod, which 
 unlocks the hoard, but apparently feeds it as well (ch. XXXI) ; 
 also the wnnderblume 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). 
 Fro'Si's ivishing-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. Kun's apples restore youth, as apples 
 in Volsiingasaga 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 [ageridd, D. vis. 1, 265. 300. dkerull, 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 wishing- 
 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 coiu, out of whose ear 
 yarn is spun, she is then killed and buried, and miracles are 
 wrought on her grave. A wishing-cow Kdniadiih or Kdmadhenu 
 is mentioned in Indian myth (Pott 2, 121. Somadeva 1, 198) ; 
 
 . VOL. II. F F
 
 872 DESTINY' AND WELL-BEING. 
 
 a wit<hing-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 
 vriksha (tree of wishes) or Manoratha-dayaJca (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 Jiorn of plenty (p. 870). The goat Amaltheia's 
 Jiorn supplied the nymphs who had nursed Zeus with all they 
 wished for ; another legend makes the nymph Amaltheia possess 
 a bulFs 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 yohlet 
 (p. 457) ; that the swan left in Loherangi-in's family a sword, 
 horn and Jingerling (ring, Parz. 826. 19). Oberon^s horn, and 
 he is of elf kind, was a wishing-liorn, 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 hread 
 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 yarn 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. sxii), 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 Bivyaratna (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 Eound Table than Sanipo 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 OShroerir, 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 O^inn), and overtook the fugitives on the open sea. 
 While 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, 3G1) 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. Saem. S^). 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 sanihu (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 — epear, 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, Sasm. 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. Fi-igg 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 gaetslu) of such foster-sons against all dan- 
 gers ; this personified Tutela was named HUn (p. 884) , as if the 
 couch, k\lvi], OHG. hlina (recubitus, Gl. Ker. 273) on which one 
 leans (root hleina hlain, Gr. kXIvoo, Lat. clino) . We find ' harmr 
 Hlinar,' Sasm. 9^, and there went a proverb ' sa er for'Saz 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, reciinatorium. 
 
 Those who are born with a caul about their head are popularly 
 believed to be luchj children. Such a membrane is called gliicks- 
 loauhe, iveJinrntter-hduhlein, and is carefully treasured up, or sewed 
 into a band and put round the babe.^ Fischart in Garg. 229"^ calls 
 it Jcinderpelglin (balg, bag), while the Icelanders give it the name 
 of fylgj a L, and imagine that m ii 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. Ssem. Hafniens. 2, 653. This 
 guardian-spirit is variously named Jylgjct' (who follows man), 
 sometimes forynja (who goes before him, F. Magn. lex. 379), 
 oftener hamtngja (felicitas) from hamr induviae, nay, this hamr 
 of itself seems to stand for the same thing : ' hamr Atla,' genius 
 
 1 Kinderm. no. 29, conf. 3, 39. Ettner's Hebamme p. 534. Journal v. u. f. D. 
 1788. 1, 574. Ital. ' uascer vestito ' =a,went\xra,to ; Fr. ne coiffe; Pol. w czepku 
 urodzil, Haupt's Zeitschr. 1, 137. The Servians name the caul koshiilitsa, 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 hatn (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. maguo 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 ptZeo insignari natnrali, quod obstetrices rapiunt et advocatis credulis ven- 
 dunt, siquideni cairsidici hoc juvari dicuntur.' [AS. heafela, hafela. MHG. hilete- 
 lin, batwdt, kindbalgel, westerliufe, iv eater liuot ; conf. the ivesienvdt preserved in 
 churches, and the names Gliickshelm, Barnhelm. ' Membranulae ad modum retis 
 dispositae, in quibus quandoque nascuntur pueri et vocantur in vulgari (Bohemico) 
 wodiejiic. de his membranis famant vetulae: si recipiantur IX vel ad minus V et 
 habeantur cumfilo aiireo et sericeo in ecclesia per novem dies illo tempore quo horae 
 cauonicae dicuntur per nonam, et ferantur per aliquem ad judicem vel ad judicium, 
 ille obtinet causam suam.' Jungmann sub v. odenj. Lith. namai kndikio, child's 
 
 house. ON. Hlo'Sr born with lielmet and sword. Exlr. from Suppl., vol. iii. 
 
 Ijlot a word about it as a charm against drowning."]
 
 child's caul, guardian angel. 875 
 
 Atlii, Sffim. 253^. According to Hire (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. Regula Benedicti cap. 7 : 'ab angelis nobis depntatis 
 cotidie die noctuque Domino Factori nostro opera nostra nun- 
 tiantur/ Berthold preaches (p. 209) : ' als daz kint lebende 
 wirt an siner muoter Itbe, 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 urgere tentatio et tribulatio vehemens imminere, invoca 
 custodeni tiium, doctorem tuum, adjutorera tuum. in opportuni- 
 tatibus, in tribulatione, in quovis diversorio, 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 Jiihtdre 
 (pflichter, 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 
 genifis 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 angehis 
 heizen.' ^ 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 had 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 goneralis omnium praesul, et speeialis singulis 
 mortalibus genius admovetur, quem etiam 2'raestitem, quod prao.sit geruuilis 
 omnibus, vocaverunt. nam et populi genio, quum generalis poscitur, supplicant, et 
 unusquisque gubernatori proprio dependit obsequium. idooque genius dicitur, 
 (juouiam quum quis liomiiium neiiitus fucrit, vinx cidcm copulatur. hie tutelator 
 tidissimusque germauus animos omnium mentesque custodit. et quoniam cogi- 
 tationum arcana Superae anuuntiat Potestati, etiain augelus poterit nuucupari.' 
 Conf. Porphyry's Vita Plotini p. 14. Plutarch's Vita Antouini 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 luiser (wizer, white ?) engel hi dlr gat, der dinen tiuvel 
 so von dir gescheiden hat ' 47 : ' telle din pater noster mite 
 dinem engel' 23 ; ^ ein engel, der din hat gepflegen (tended) ' 62. 
 ^ ich wil gelouben, daz den list dm engel jinde,' 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 ivas geweten ein engel, daz im niht geschach,' Geo. 3205. 
 ' als im sin engel gab die lere,' Kolocz. 148 ; ' daz inch min engel 
 griieze ! ^ greet you 102; and elsewhere 'daz iuwer min engel 
 walte ! ^ Graceful equivalents for ' I from my inmost soul.^ ^ 
 (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 Gunuars. 
 
 One who is near death sees his angel first : ' ]>u. mant vera 
 feigr maSr, oc munt |?u se^ hafa fylgju J^ina,' 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,' Saem. 14*. 147*. 
 When a man sees his fylgja, she is giving him up, quitting him. 
 In Norway the vulgar opinion is, that the folgie likes to shew 
 herself in the shape of some aiiimal 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 : Tnjnfijlgjor, 
 mttarfylgjor ; and this is important, as teaching the affinity of 
 
 > Conf. H. Sachs's poem ' die engels hut,' and ' der lockige knabe,' in Hebel's 
 Earhinkel. [Not only men, but even some animals, have an angel of their own, 
 Keisersp. brosaml. 19'=. The Pass. .337, 46 agrees with Caes. heist. : ' zwene engel, 
 eiuen guoten, einen leiden ' ; yet ' sin engel ' 41 means only the good one, and so 
 it is generally. Conf. Menander's protest (abridged) : ' a fiood.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 wseren 
 zivene engele (masc), des enweiz ich niht,' Frib. Trist. The guardian-angels of two 
 friends are also friends, Reun. 18902. — Estr. 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. 
 
 Hamingjor, occurring as early as Saem. 37''. 93'', 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 j conf. Laxd. saga p. 441. 'Hamingjor 
 horfnar, heillir horfnar ' in Ssem. 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 landss^n), lest the gaping 
 jaws affright the landvcettir : ' sigla eigi at landi me"S gapandi 
 hofSum ne ginandi trionu, sva at landvcettir fgeldist vi^ ' ^ (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 
 sretia [from s-retiti to meet], the Slovens srezlia, and they 
 personify them too : dohra Sretia (bona Fortuna, Vuk 3, 444) 
 is their a^aOr] Tuxn, their fro Sselde.- The Lettish Laima (p. 
 416) comes nearer the parca or moira : she is called mahmina, i.e. 
 mother, goddess. Then again the fostermother Dehkla (ibid.) by 
 the boon of her milk bestows luck and aptitude : ' ka Dehkla 
 noleek, ta noteek,^ as D. disposes, so it happens. ^ In Lith. also 
 Laima = AaL/iiQ), Lat. Lamia (see Suppl.). 
 
 ' Fornm. sog. 3, 105. Isl. sog. 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 ; Gunuar's fylgja too is a biarndyr. 
 GlQmr, having dreamt of a woman higher than the hills coming towards him, 
 concludes that Vigfiis is dead, and this is /u's hamingja coming to look for a new 
 place. ' It follows, that fyhjja and haminfija are one. Similar is the Engl, fetch 
 (Scot. /ye) or double, N. Hiding ivajf,iciff, Scot, wraith, Cnmhl. sioarth (all in Hone's 
 Daybk). Ir. taise, etc. — Extr. from Suppl.] 
 
 - 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 Forti's Viaggio in Dalmaz.ia (Venice 1771) ; the Ital. text, 1, 74 
 has qiiite 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. 6, 144.
 
 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 Seelde. ' Unscelde hat 
 uf mich gesworn/ Gregor 2394 (so of Tot, p. 847n.). ' Unscelde 
 hat mich bedaht,' Troj. 17105. 'der JJnscelden kiut,' Iw. 4449. 
 ' din heil sin ungeliicke 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. 38'\ ' der Unscelden vart varn,^ go the way of, 
 Doc. misc. 2, 163. 'so wirt unheil von mir gejaget,' chased 
 away, Herm. Dam. 42. 't0igeliicke,vfa,z 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 eiuem hunde,^ 
 Hartm. erstes biichl. 1671. 'wen nach geliicke groz unlieil 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 separate stories 
 
 deserve quoting at greater length : A poor knight sits in 
 the forest, consuming a scanty meal; he looks up and ^pies 
 in the tree overhead a monstrous being, who cries to him ' I am 
 thy ungeliicke.' 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, 72*^: 
 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, 134*^ : 
 
 Ez was ein gar unsEelic 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).
 
 UNSiELDE. 879 
 
 TJnscelde wart sin geverte, diu huob sich mit im uf die vart ; 
 er lief gegen einem walde, er wande er wsere Uns^lden woi'- 
 
 den vri (he weened he was free of U.). 
 er sprach : ' TJnscelde, nu bin ich dir entrunnen (escaped)/ 
 ' nein ' sprach TJnscelde, ' ich han den sig (victory) gewunnen ; 
 sioaz clu geliefe, daz selbe ich rande (I ran as fast as thou), 
 uf dinem halse (neck) was mhi gemach (I took my ease.)^^ 
 der man da zuo im selbe sprach (to himself spake) : 
 'sd 'st niht so guot, ich enliSre wider ze lande ! ' (best to turn 
 
 back) . 
 
 Exactly the story of the homesprite, who flits with you, and 
 you cannot shake him oif (p. 513) : Misfortune personified is 
 here substituted for the more living kobold. Unseelde occurs 
 in the plural too : ' ganc z'allen onselden hin ! Mn a Lower Rhine 
 poem by Wilhelm (F, A. Reuss p. 13). It i-eminds me of 'zuo 
 zallen marsen varn' (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 (ei? oiira, 7rpo<? oyrra), for which 
 we once possessed the pretty word augen, OHG. ougan, Goth, 
 augjan, to come in sight, appear (hence sich er-eignen, Gramm. 
 
 1, 226). The form and shape of this appearance was called 
 in Goth, sums, ON, syii, OHG. gisiuni, which come from 
 sailiva (I see), as species from specio, visus from video, etSo? 
 from the lost etSto, and signify the seen, the present ; ^ while 
 vaihts, which Ulphilas uses also for etSo9 (p. 440), is derived 
 from veiha (facio, p. 68). More commonly still we find combina- 
 tions : Goth, anddugi, anduairpi, OHG. antwerti, Goth, andavleizn, 
 AS. andwlite, OHG. anasiuni, anasiht, gislht ; all of which, 
 formed like the Gr. irpocroiirov, 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 origin ^ may seem, agrees with the 
 above in its use, except that siuns and 7rp6(T(07rov 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 
 
 ^ MHG. scMn used in the same way : disen ritter oder sinen schln, Parz. 18, 13. 
 sante Martins gewer oder sin sehiu, Fragm. 28''. wip, man oder tieres schin, Diut. 
 
 2, 94. sin wesen und sin schin (schein), Er. 10047-9. der menschUch schin, Ls. 
 
 3, 263. 
 
 * Hardly from irpia-wirov, like Proserpina from Ilep(T£(p6i'7], 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 Romance ' par son', p. 745), and also 
 changes of short vowels into long (persona) ; Trpotrwrrov itself happens to be an 
 example of both (6t^ voice and eye, 6-^ls visio, dji// eye, face, liirri look) ; the forma- 
 tion of persona would be as in Perenna, Pertunda, Pervinca. 
 
 8bO
 
 PERSONIFICATION. 881 
 
 come and gOj 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, 296). But language and an open brow distin- 
 guish him from beasts, who have only voice and irpoToixrj, not a 
 real irpoawirov 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 sight 
 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 {^vrprj, plvrj), of days and seasons 
 [kopTrj, vcnepr], '^(^eifjicop, eap), even of mere emotions, as love, 
 shame (epo)?, ala')(yvri). 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 
 ' herr ' or ' frau ' (3, 346) ; as animals are invested with gossip- 
 hood and brotherhood (Reiuh. p. xxvii), the Edda makes air (the 
 awl) brother to knifr, Su. 133. Under this head too I bring 
 the pi-actice 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, wliich 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 ivoma (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 Biflindi (p. 149). The hm^ricane 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, O^inn 
 '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 O^inn. Zio, and perhaps 
 Fhol, as whirlwinds (turbines), must be regarded in the same
 
 AIR. FIRE. WATER. EARTB:. 883 
 
 light (p. 632). Of goddesses, we have to reckon whoever may 
 
 staud for the ' wind's bride ' and 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 25 P that 
 a ' frau luft ' first occurs, as H. Sachs makes aer, ignis, aqua all 
 ' friiulein.'' Whenever dwarfs, giants and giantesses raise wind, 
 weather and storm (pp. 631-6-7), they act as servants of the 
 highest god. Kctri also represented air. 
 
 Loki and Logi (p. 241) are gods of fire, and so was probably 
 aiihns, ovan, which to us denotes the mere element itself (p. 
 629). The 'dea Kludana' (p. 257) might stand beside him. 
 Donar, like the Slavic Perun, hurls the lightning flash, yet the 
 Slavs make Grom, thunder, a youth, and Munija, lightning, a 
 maiden (p. 178 n.). Fire, the godlike, is spoken to, and called 
 ' bani viSar,' 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 star a (p. 291). Mist was taken for a valkyr (p. 
 421). 
 
 EUr (p. 240) and Oegir (pp. 137. 311) are gods of the wave, 
 and Ban a goddess (p. 311); Qehan, 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 
 OSinn 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 (Yugl. 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; lUnda is a goddess too, and Nerthus (p. 251), though she 
 and the masc. Nior^r play into one another. Out of the Goth, 
 fairguni's neutrality unfolded themselves both a male Fiorgynn 
 (p. 172) and a female Fiorgyii (p. 256) ; the former answers to 
 Perhunas (Fairguneis) 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 tlie popu- 
 lar mind even in recent times treated ' frau Hasel, frau ElJiorn, 
 f ran Wacholder, frau Fichte ' as living creatures. Hlin and Gnci, 
 handmaids of Frigg, are named in Sn. 38 among asynjor, and 
 Hloch 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 procui*atrix. 
 
 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 Day 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.^ Ic 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 7]\to<;, 
 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 Lumis by the side of Luna. In the same way 
 the Goth, stairno, ON. stiarna, is fem. like stella, but the OHG. 
 sterno, OS. sterro, AS. steorra, masc. like aarrip ; 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. p^et/xciv m., and 
 the Slav, zima f. Excepting Hrede 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.
 
 HRATA. 885 
 
 (Gramm. 3, 441), as it was often apostrophized (Klage 847. 
 Wi^al. 6514), and like Norse heroes, or like fire, was called bani 
 (occisor, e.g. Hialmars 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, 'Api]<; 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 sword ^ 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 rliedo 
 dicunt,' it becomes a question, whether a totally difi'erent 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 ; ^ the root might be the same as in the OHG. hi'at, 
 A.S. hrged, ON. hra'Sr (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- 
 
 ' And with it a Jwrse and ship, the most precious of movable goods in antiquity. 
 ' Mearas ami ma'Smas ' are coupled together iu AS. poems ; out of maSm was 
 developed the notion of the Goth, mai^ms, a costly gift, while the MH(j. 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, 4(5 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 Hamur and Ileru as weapons of the highest gods, and 
 their counterpart the feminine spindle and necklace, support each other (couf. 
 p. 204). The hammer was left to grow diabolic (ch. XXXUI) and superstitious 
 (XXX VII), but the men would not allow their sword to be dishonoured. The In- 
 dians personified and apostrophized the sacrificial knife (Giittiug. anz. 1831, 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 * iarSar men' 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 hnossir ; ' hnossir 
 velja,' Saem. 233'', means to select jewelry for a present. Hnoss 
 may either be derived from hno^a, glomus, nodus Cas hlass from 
 hla'Sa, 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. 
 263^*. Ducange 3, 513), bat 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 Hreda, 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 Spange 103, vor
 
 HNOSS. GERSIMI. SPANGE. HASHART. 887 
 
 Spange 115, like ver Hilde, ver Gaue)/ 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. 246) occurs at least as an OHG. proper name in Irmino 187*; 
 compare the personal relation attributed to air and knifr (p. 881). 
 Hlock we have explained (p. 401, conf. 421-2) as hlancha, catena 
 (see SuppL). 
 
 Latin, Romance 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. 160* 
 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. 97'' 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, O. Fr. dez, Prov. 
 dat, datz. It. Sp. dado ^ Lat. datus,-^ because in playing ' dare ' 
 was used for edere, jacere. The same Munich codex fol. 95'' 
 furnishes another remarkable phrase : ' nil hie expavescimus preter 
 Hashardi minas,' the threatenings of the die ; yet ' hasehart,' 
 which is known to MHG. poets also,^ 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 Dvcipara, 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. 
 
 > Ettmiiller's text has an erroneous unmeaning Pange. 
 
 - Conf. 16, lez, It. lato, Sp. lado, Lat. latus ; n6, nez, It. nato, Sp. nado, Lat. 
 natns ; pre, prez, Prov. pratz, It. j^rato, Sp. prado, Lat. pratum. 
 
 ■^ Examples coll. in Z. f. d. a. 1, 577 ; to which may be added : ' spil geteilet 
 M bret aid an hasehart,' Gute frau 1093. ' den hasehart werfen,' Tauler's Sermons 
 in Cod. Argent. A, 89. 
 
 VOL. II. « a
 
 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) J Aija to the Lapps, Ukko to the Finns, are grandfather 
 as well as thunder. Wimsch, Oski, a name of Wuotan (p. 143) 
 signifies much the same as the female figures Salida, Fruma,Xa/3t9 ; 
 and the Gr. tto^o? (wish, longing) occasionally occurs as ZIo^o?. 
 If I am right in my interpretations of Gibika (p. 137), Gduts (pp. 
 23. 867 — 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.^ 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, 
 DaiiJ^us (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, Eng. starve], like Xt/io? hunger, \oL^6<i pesti- 
 lence ; and personifications start up on every side : hungr is 
 HeFs 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 woi^ld : ' ferid unmet grot Himgar hetigrim obar 
 helido barn,^ Hel. 132, 8. ' der Hunger gie liberal, breite sich 
 in die werlt wite,' Dint. 3, 101. The Roman Fames is fem., her 
 personality comes out in Ov. Met. 8, 800. Doubt still hangs over 
 the comparison attempted on p. 374 between a MHG. BilUch 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 
 Nior'Sr 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, 538<* 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 inother stands beside the father or grandfather : 
 frau Uote, ancestress of all the heroic families (Zeitschr. f. d. a. 1, 
 21), Holda the gracious, BerJtta the bright, Frouiva, Freyja the 
 fair or happy, Sippia, Sif the kindly (p. 309). Folia, Fidla, 
 Ahundia means fulness of blessing rather than full-moon ; the 
 Romans hallowed Copia with her horn of plenty; 'aurea fruges 
 Italiae pleno defundit Gopia cornu,' Hor. Ep. i. 12, 28. 'divesque 
 meo bona Gopia 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 suotar 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 
 Tutela, 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, 
 suujons defensio (sunjo p. 310 was an error), and the suunis 
 excusatio found in our oldest laws, so that the meaning seems to 
 be defence ; Hltn, whom Frigg has set for the protection of all 
 men that are in peril, from hlina tueri, f overe.^ Even Hali, Halja 
 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,' 0. 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. gife^e (datus, concessus) is habitually used of superior 
 gifts of fortune: tir gife^e (gloria concessa), Jud. 136, 5; ead 
 
 1 Snorri, in proof of the three goddesses, quotes as many proverbs : ' kona 
 ver'Sr vor jjess er hon verSr vis,' a woman is wary of what she is aware of ; ' syn er 
 fyrir sett,' a defence is set up (when one denies his guilt, couf. Forum, sog. 9, 5 : 
 hann setti liar syn fyri, ok bau'5 skirshir) ; ' sa er fort?az hleinir,' he that is struggling 
 leans (on the tutelary goddess). From lillua to slant, kXIv^lv, inclinare, 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 PEESONIFICATIONS. 
 
 gife^e (opes concessae) .^ Like the above ' ttiu fruma uns ir- 
 reimta ^ we have 'then thiu sahda 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 heili/ And 
 salida, like fruma, comes ' in henti/ to hand. The unquestionable 
 personifications of Salida have been treated p. 864, etc. 
 
 The OHG. name Siguhepa would suit a victory-giving valkyr, 
 as the Norse Victoria or NUrj is in like manner named Slgrdrifa 
 (p. 435) ; drifa is one that drives, and the name Drifa was also 
 fitly given to a goddess of the snowstorm, for i^ the heat of battle 
 darts and arrows fly like snowflakes,^ 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 {n"Epya 198 — 200 tells how AlSax; and Nifieaa, Shame 
 and Remorse, having wrapt them in white raiment (put the swan* 
 
 1 Eadgifu, OHG. Otikepa, a woman's name = opes largiens, might translate the 
 Lat. goddess Ops. 
 
 ^ Ac veluti Boreae sub tempore nix glomerata 
 
 spargitur, haud aliter saevas jecere sagittas. Walth. 188. 
 
 Von beidenthalben flouch daz scoz (flew the shots) 
 
 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. FROMUOT. 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 
 exillmn migravit.' Kl. 1575: 'ja enwil mtn vroive Ere belihen in 
 dem rtche, sid also jeemerliche 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. vroive 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 jied 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 Eiidiger sug- 
 gests the same kind of ' chairing.' In the second song we are 
 told that Fromuot fareth sorrowful from land to land in seai^ch 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 : fromiiete, 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 pei'souification 
 may have its reason in ancient ways of thinking.^ In a poem of 
 the early part of the 15th cent. (Z. f. d. a. 1, 421), /raw Gerechtig- 
 keit (righteousness) and her companions say : ' now am I clean 
 
 1 The emendation proposed in Altd. bl. 1, 371, ' vrou Muot,' is actually found 
 in MsH. 3, 218", in case the var. loctt. TOS** have had full justice done them. But 
 I have never met with the simple Muot as a woman's name.
 
 892 PEKSONIFICATIONS. 
 
 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, 26*^ : ' 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, 260* : ' nu sage mir ob diu Minne lebe 
 und hie bi uns uf erde si, aid oh uns in den lilften sioehe (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 Smlde und Ere, die wurden 
 sine geverten (companions), die in bit dicke ernerten von aller 
 slahte swEei'e (oft saved him from harm) ;' 611: '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 8. luste 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, 174" : ' vro Ere kumt 
 mit im gerant.' Wartb. kr. cod. jen. 112: ' ver Triuwe nam 
 (took) an sich die Scham, sam tete diu Zuht, diu Kiiische (so 
 did courtesy, chastity), Milte und Ere alsam, si jahen daz ir aller 
 vriedel wsere (they all declared their darling was) der viirste da 
 xiz 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 ^ in the manner of a heathen norn, 
 
 1 The tunica inconsutilis (giscafota sia mit filu kleinen fadumon joh ungindteii 
 red'non kleinero garno), and ace. to the OrendelUed 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, Justitia 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 Gemein- 
 muoti, 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 Walther, /7-oit 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 /row i/re were given a page or two back, and o^ fron 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 : ' als si diu Minne drj^te ir selber z'eime veder- 
 spil, dera Wunsche z'einem endezil, da fiir 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/ro?t Liebe as well as 
 frou Minne. Frou Ere is freq. in Frauenlob : ' da hat vrou Ere 
 ir wiinschelruot ^ 41, 18; ' vroun Even diener' 134, 18; ' vronn 
 Eren bote ' 194, 8 ; she excludes ' unwip ' from her castle (vesten) 
 274, 18; ' vroun Eren straze ' 384-5 (see Suppl.). 
 
 In the 14- 15th 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, 
 
 Christi non consuta.' [The author forgets the ' coat without seam,' x'T'^"' &ppa<pos, 
 John 19, 23.]
 
 894 PERSONIFICATIONS. 
 
 nearly all of one traditional pattern, whicli 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, 136'' : Ich 
 kam geriten uf ein velt viir einen griienen wait, da vant ich ein 
 vil schoen gezelt (tent), dar under saz diu Triuive, si wand ir 
 hende, si hot ir leit, si schre vil lute../ miu 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 Gonstavcy, 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 Adeltrid, Schamigunt, Zuhtliehe, Tugenthilt 
 and Mazeburc (the ancient Hiltia, Gandia, 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
 
 PEESONIFICATION, 895 
 
 journeys on to the tent of Yovng Minne, "who like lier playmate 
 Wanhelmut (fickle-mind, a fem. formed like Frumuot) 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, 437* 
 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, 273'': 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 
 ' white lady ' appears, it is the tower of Veleda, Menglo'S, Brunhild 
 (p. 96n.). 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: zoi'n (anger), hass (hate), neid 
 (envy) ; though the Lat. ira and iuvidia are fem., 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 ' 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 Scliande f. (dedecus) . 
 It would be hard to find the negatives ' unere, unmilde, unsteete ' 
 treated as persons, and we only meet with JJntriuwe in Frauen- 
 lob 253, 5. 14; /row 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 
 Unseelde (p. 878) marks the negation of a state. In the Bible 
 Guiot (Meon 2, 344) the three fair maids GharitG, Verite, 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 
 ^'Oaaa (voice, sound) was At6<i ajjeXo';, II. 2, 93 ; oaaa eK Ai6<i, 
 Od. 1. 282: 
 
 "Oaaa S' ap' ayye\o<i S)ica Kara tttoXiv (p')(^ero TvavTr], 
 
 Od. 24, 413. 
 
 Another name is ^t]fxr}, Dor. ^d/j,a, to whom, says Pausanias i. 
 17, 1, as well as to "JSA,eo9, AlSoo-i and 'Op/j.7], there was an altar 
 erected at Athens ; the word is conn, with (jirjfjii, ^ii/xa, as the 
 Lat. Fama is with fari and fameu (in efi'amen) ; I incline to x-efer 
 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
 
 MiERE (fama). 897 
 
 all liigliflown things are said to ' gntefa : ' our Gotfiied in a song 
 puts ' gnaben ' by the side of ' flying, flowing, trotting, creeping/ 
 Hofvarpnir may have been a winged horse,^ 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 volucr&in nuntium mittere ' in 
 Cic. pro Roscio 36 simply means the speediest intimation, couf. 
 Pertz 2, 578 : ' subito venit nuntius pennigero volatu.' In our 
 folksongs birds do eri'ands (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 maguitudinem 
 excresceret.' Other writers : ' daz moive (news) do vedere gewan, 
 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: ' du daz mcere 
 {if brack — uz quam — uz spranc,' En. 1903-16-97, not giving it 
 wings, though he does make it grow : ' daz mcei'e loahsen began,' 
 9185. 12575; conf. Geo. 521: 'diu moive in der stunde (ilHco) 
 wuohsen/ Most of the other poets confine themselves to the 
 image of flight : ' leidiu niumdre (ill news) diu nu fliegent in diu 
 lant,' Pf. Chuonr. 7544. ' daz moire jiuoc do witen,' Mar. 45 ; 
 * do daz woire chom. geflugen ' 214. ' do Jiugen disiu. mcere von 
 lande ze lande,' Nib. 1362, 2 ; ' do jiugen diu mmre von schare 
 baz ze schare' 1530, 1. 'ob diz mcere iht verre (far) fliige?' 
 Wh. 170, 20. ' diu mmre jiugen iiber daz velt,' Wigal. 2930. *s6 
 daz ynmre ie verrer vliuget, so man ie mer geliuget,' the farther it 
 flies, they tell more lies, Freid. 136, 3. 'mcere vliegent in diu 
 
 1 Like Pegasus; couf. the 0. Boh. gloss of Mater verb. 215 : kridlatec (alatus) 
 Pegasus equus Neptuni, qui ' lamu ' iuterpretatui'.
 
 898 PERSONIFICATIONS. 
 
 lant/ Karl 116"^.^ M. Neth. poets also make their fern, niemare 
 fly: 'niemare ghevloghen,' Floris 358; but often, like Veldeck 
 above, they make her rwn or leap like started game : ' die niemare 
 liep' 173; 'die niem,are sal lopen' 1295 ; and with this agree the 
 Dan. ' det springer nu saa vide,' DV. 1, 63, and perhaps the 
 AS. ' bleed wide sprang,' Beow. 36, if blaed (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 
 ')ncere, OHG. mdri ; the OHG. marida, Goth. merij?a (us-iddja 
 meri|7a is, e^rfkdev 77 aKorj avrov, Mark 1, 28) would have lent 
 itself more readily to that, but MHG. had no mserde in use, 
 though Latin writers undoubtedly retained /ama-, 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 Fijg-om-hy 
 (aestuans per terram, from fyge, ON. fiuka), and gives her a 
 Jiedreham, 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. 179^ 180% only 
 for fame he puts a masc. Liumet, OHG. hliumunt, our leumund 
 (Gramm. 2, 343. Grafl" 4, 1100), who together with his followers 
 is winged, and flies forth, but signifies more the listening fama ; 
 conf. Goth, hliuma^auris, and Liumending ^=Fa.vor 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 kvittr flo i byg^um,' Fornm. sog. 9, 237 
 (see Suppl.). 
 
 1 ' Die aechtesal vlouc uber al ; ' ' ir echte vlouc in die lant,' Kaiserchr. 6406-79. 
 
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