Chapter 21

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 drakwn comes from derkein to look, illumine, flash out, faoj dedorke 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 griffens must be included, as they are winged monsters like the dragons.

In O. Slavic zmiy m., and zmiya f., signify snake, the one more a dragon, the other an adder. The Boh. zmek is the fiery dragon guarding money, zmiye the adder; Serv. zmay dragon, zmiya adder. Mica, which the zmay shakes off him, is named otresine zmayeve (dragon's offshake), Vuk p. 534. Once more, everything leads to glitter, gold and fire. The Lith. smakas seems borrowed from Slavic; whether connected with AS. snaca, is a question. Jungmann says, zmek is not only a dragon, but a spirit who appears in the shape of a wet bird, (82) usually a chicken, and brings people money; Sup. I, 143 says you must not hurt earth-chicks or house-adders; Schm. 1, 104 explains erdhünlein (earth-chicken) as a bright round lustre, in the middle of which lies something dark; conf. geuhuon, Helbl. 8, 858.

Renvall thus describes the Finn. mammelainen: 'femina maligna, matrix serpentis, divitiarum subterranearum custos.' Have 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. (83) But she can do 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 ascribe to it a benign and gracious character.

Insects.-----Some traces of beetle-worship I am able to disclose.

We have two old and pretty general terms: OHG. chevor, cheviro, MHG. kever, kevere, NHG. käfer, N. Neth. kever, AS. ceafor, Engl. chafer. We have no business to bring in the Lat. caper (which is AS. hæfer, ON. hafr [[he-goat, buck]]); the root seems to be the AS. ceaf, caf = alacer, for the chafter is a brisk lively creature, and in Swabia they still say käfermässig for agilis, vivax (Gramm. 2, 571. 1013). The AS. has ceafortûn, cafertûn, for atrium, vestibulum; 'scarabaeorum oppidum' as it were, because chafers chirp in it? (84) The second term, OHG. wibil, webil, MHG. wibel, NHG. webel, wiebel, AS. wifel, wefel, Engl. weevil, agrees with Lith. wabalas, wabalis, Lett. wabbols, and I trace it to weben (weave, wave) in the sense of our 'leben und weben,' vigere, moveri; we say, 'kriebeln und wiebeln' of the swarming of beetles. (85)

To the Egyptians the beetle (scarabaeus, kanqaroj, karaboj ) was a sacred being, an emblem of inmost life and mysterious self-generation. They believed that he proceeded out of matter which he rolled into globules and buried in manure (see Suppl.).

ON. literature deals in no prose terms, but at once comes out with the poetic name iötunox, iötunoxi (giant-ox); as that giant maiden took the ploughman with his oxen and plough for crawling beetles (p. 540, Finn. sontiainen, sondiainen, dung-beetle from sonda, fimus), so conversely the real beetle might awaken the notion of a iötunox. To liken the small animal to the large was natural.

Our biggest beetle, the stately antlered stag-beetle, the Romans called lucanus, Nigid. in Pliny 11, 28 (34), with which I suppose is connected the well-known luca bos, lucanus or lucana bos, a name which got shifted from the horned beast to a tusked one, the elephant (Varro 7, 39. 40. O. Müll. p. 135). But we call the beetle hirsch (stag, Fr. cerf volant), and even ox and goat, all of them horned beasts, Pol. ielonek, O. Slav. elenetz (both stagling), Boh. rohac (corniger), Austr. hörnler, Swed. horntroll. Again, a Lat. name for scarabaeus terrester was taurus, Plin. 30, 5 (12), which keeps my lucanus bos or cervus, in countenance. To the female the Bohemians give the further name of babka (granny).

On p. 183 we came across a more significant name, donnerguegi, donnerpuppe, in obvious allusion to Donar, whose holy tree the beetle loves to dwell in; and with this, apparently, agrees a general term for beetles which extends through Scandinavia, viz. Westergötl. torbagge, Swed. tortyfvel, Norweg. tordivel, Jutl. torr, torre. True, there is no Icelandic form, let alone ON., in which Thôrr can be detected; yet this 'tor' may have the same force it has in torsdag (p. 126) and tordön (p. 166); 'bagge,' says Ihre p. 122, denotes juvenis, puer, hence servant of the god, which was afterwards exchanged for dyfvel = diefvul, devil. Afzelius (Sagohäfder 1, 12. 13) assures us, that the torbagge was sacred to Thor, that in Norrland his larva is called mulloxe (earth-ox, our Swiss donnerpuppe? conf. iötunoxi), and that he who finds a dung-beetle lying on his back (ofvältes) unable to help himself, and sets him on his legs again, is believed by the Norrlanders to have atoned for seven sins thereby.

This sounds antique enough, and 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 torfdifill, as if turf-devil, from torf, gleba. There is also the N. Neth. tor, torre beetle, and drektorre dungbeetle [or devil's coach-horse; also Engl. dumbledorr dungbeetle], 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 (Maikäfer) (86) used to be escorted in from the woods with much ceremony; we have it on good authority, that this continued to be done by the spinning girls in parts of Schleswig as late as the 17^th century. (87)

Folk-tales of Up. Germany inform us: Some girls, not grown up, went one Sunday to a deserted tower on a hill, found the stairs strewn with sand, and came to a beautiful room they had never seen before, in which there stood a bed with curtains. When they drew these aside, the bed was swarming with gold-beetles, and jumping up and down of itself. Filled with amazement, 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 (Mone's 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 horsebeetles (roskäfer). 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 (skalkräk) 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 märker mig brudhandskar,' she marks (foreshows) 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.




ENDNOTES:

82. Zmokly is drenched, zmoknuti to wet; 'mokrý gako zmok,' dripping like an earth-sprite. [Back]

83. Here again the female being has the advantage over the male. [Back]

84. Helbling, speaking of an ill-shaped garment, starts the query (1, 177), where might be the back and belly of one that was hidden away in such a cheverpeunt? He calls the ample cloak a chafer-pound or yard, in whose recesses you catch beetles. This keverpiunt answers to the AS. ceafortûn. [Back]

85. Slavic names are, Boh. chraust, Pol. chraszcz; Boh. brauk, bruk, prob. from bruchus, broukoj. [Russ. zhuk; the 'gueg' of S. Germany?] [Back]

86. Maikäfer (like maiblume) sounds too general, and not a people's word. And there is no Lat. name preserved either. The Greek mhlolonqh designates our maikäfer or our goldkäfer; boys tied a string to it and played with it (Aristoph. Nub. 763), as our boys do. The It. scarafaggio is formed from scarafone (scarabaeus); the Fr. hanneton a dim. of the obsolete hanne horse, which may have been the term for the stagbeetle (still petzgaul, Bruin's horse, in the Wetterau), Fr. cerf volant, Dan. eeghiort, Swed. ekhjort, i.e. oak-hart. The Mecklenb. eksäwer, oak-chafer, as well as the simple säver, sever, sebber [Schütze's Holst. idiot. 4, 91) is applied to the maikäfer; in other parts of L. Saxony they say maisävel, maisäbel. This säver, zäver (Brem. wtb. 4, 592. 5, 310) is surely no other than käfer with change of k into z, s; Chytræus's Nomencl. saxon. has 'zever, and goldzever = goldkäfer.' Or does the HG. ziefer belong here, contrary to the etymol. proposed on p. 40? In the Westerwald pöwitz, köwitz is maikäfer, and in Ravensberg povömmel dungbeetle (Kuhn's Westfal. sagen 2, 188), almost agreeing with Esthon. poua chafer, beetle. Like the various names for the stagbeetle, maybeetle, dungbeetle, goldbeetle, the traces of ancient beetle-worship seem also to meet, first in one, then in another of them. A scarafone who brings succour occurs in Pentamer. 3, 5 (see Suppl.). [Back]

87. An old description of the maygrave feast by Ulr. Petersen (in Falck's New staatsb. mag., Vol. 2, 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 maykäfer with green boughs, whereat the town-hall of this place was decked out with greenery.' The feast was still held in 1630-40. [Back]