Chapter 13

Can the name under which the Suevi worshipped that goddess whom the Romans identified with Isis---may not at least one of her secondary names----have been Holda? The name has a purely Teutonic meaning, and is firmly grounded in the living traditions of our people to this day.

Holdâ is the kind, benignant, merciful goddes or lady, from hold (propitius), Goth. hulþs (Luke 18, 13; root, hilþan halþ hulþan, to bend, bow), ON. hollr [[faithful, loyal]]; the Gothic form of it would be Hulþô. For the opposite notion of a malignant diabolic being, Ulphilas employs both the fem. unhulþô and the masc. unhulþa, from which I infer a hulþa by the side of hulþô: one more confirmation of the double sex running through the idea of these divinities. It is true, such a by-name could be shared by several gods or spirits. Notker in the Capella 81 renders verus genius by 'mîn wâre holdo'. And in MHG. parlance, holde (fem. and masc.) must have been known and commonly used for ghostly beings. Albrecht of Halberstadt, in translating Ovid's Metamorphoses, uses wazzerholde (gen. -en) for nymph; rhyme has protected the exact words from corruption in Wikram's poetic paraphrase. (29) In the largely expanded Low German version of the Ship of Fools (Narragonia, Rostock 1519; 96ª) we find the following passage which is wanting in the HG. text: 'Mannich narre lövet (believeth) an vogelgeschrei, und der guden hollen (bonorum geniorum) gunst'. Of more frequent occurence is the MHG. unholde (fem.), our modern unhold (masc.), in the sense of a dark, malign, yet mighty being.

The earliest example of the more restricted use of the name Holda is furnished by Burchard, bp. of Worms, p. 194ª: (30) Credidisti ut aliqua femina sit, quae hoc facere possit, quod quaedam a diabolo deceptae se affirmant necessario et ex praecepto facere debere, id est cum daemonum turba in similitudinem mulierum transformata, quam vulgaris stultitia Holdam (al. unholdam) vocat, certis noctibus equitare debere super quasdam bestias, et in eorum se consortio annumeratam esse. The remarkable varia lectio 'unholda' is taken from the Cod. vindob. univ. 633. Burchard has here put the German word in the place of the more usual 'Diana paganorum dea,' who in other passages is named in a like sense and in the same connexion. [A still earlier notice of Holda is found in Walafrid Strabo, see Suppl.]

In popular legends and nursery-tales, frau Holda (Hulda, Holle, (31) Hulle, frau Holl) appears as a superior being, who manifests a kind and helpful disposition towards men, and is never cross except when she notices disorder in household affairs. None of the German races appear to have cherished these oral traditions so extensively as the Hessians and Thuringians (that Worms bishop was a native of Hesse). At the same time, dame Holle is found as far as the Voigtland, (32) past the Rhön mts in northern Franconia, (33) in the Wetterau up to the Westerwald, (34) and from Thuringia she crosses the frontier of Lower Saxony. Swabia, Switzerland, Bavaria, Austria, North Saxony and Friesland do not know her by that name.

From what traditions has still preserved for us, (35) we gather the following characteristics. Frau Holle is represented as a being of the sky, begirdling the earth: when it snows, she is making her bed, and the feathers of it fly. (36) She stirs up snow, as Donar does rain: the Greeks ascribe the production of snow and rain to their Zeus: Dioj omboj, Il. 5, 91. 11, 493 as well as nifadej Dioj, Il. 19, 357; so that Holda comes before us a goddess of no mean rank. (37) The comparison of snowflakes to feathers is very old; the Scythians pronounced the regions north of them inaccessible, because they were filled with feathers (Herod. 4, 7. conf. 31). Holda then must be able to move through the air, like dame Herke.

She loves to haunt the lake and fountain; at the hour of noon she may be seen, a fair white lady, bathing in the flood and disappearing; a trait in which she resembles Nerthus. Mortals, to reach her dwelling, pass through the well; conf. the name wazzerholde. (38)

Another point of resemblance is, that she drives about in a waggon. She has a linchpin put in it by a peasant whom she met; when he picked up the chips, they were gold. (39) Her annual progress, which like those of Herke and Berhta, is made to fall between Christmas and Twelfth-day, when the supernatural has sway, (40) and wild beasts like the wolf are not mentioned by their names, brings fertility to the land. Not otherwise does 'Derk with the boar,' that Freyr of the Netherlands (p. 214), appear to go his rounds and look after the ploughs. At the same time Holda, like Wuotan, can also ride on the winds, clothed in terror, and she, like the god, belongs to the 'wutende heer.' From this arose the fancy, that witches ride in Holla's company (ch. XXXIV, snowwives); it was already known to Burchard, and now in Upper Hesse and the Westerwald, Holle-riding, to ride with Holle, is equivalent to a witches' ride. (41) Into the same 'furious host,' according to a wide-spread popular belief, were adopted the souls of infants dying unbaptized; not having been christain'd, they remained heathen, and fell to heathen gods, to Wuotan or to Hulda.

The next step is, that Hulda, instead of her divine shape, assumes the appearance of an ugly old woman, long-nosed, big-toothed, with bristling and thick-matted hair. 'He's had a jaunt with Holle,' they say of a man whose hair sticks up in tangled disorder; so children frightened with her or her equally hideous train: (42) 'hush, there's Hulle-betz (-bruin), Hulle-popel (-bogie) coming.' Holle-peter, as well as Hersche, Harsche, Hescheklas, Ruprecht, Rupper (ch. XVII, house-sprites) is among the names given to the muffled servitor who goes about in Holle's train at the time of the winter solstice. In a nursery-tale (Märchen no. 24) she is depicted as an old witch with long teeth; according to the difference of story, her kind and gracious aspect is exchanged for a dark and dreadful one.

Again, Holla is set before us as a spinning-wife; the cultivation of flax is assigned to her. Industrious maids she presents with spindles, and spins with reels full for them over night; a slothful spinner's distaff she sets on fire, or soils it. (43) The girl whose spindle dropt into her fountain, she rewarded bountifully. When she enters the land at Christmas, all the distaffs are well stocked, and left standing for her; by Carnival, when she turns homeward, all spinning must be finished off, and the staffs are now kept out of her sight (Superst. 683); if she finds everything as it should be, she pronounces her blessing, and contrariwise her curse; the formulas 'so many hairs, so many good years!' and 'so many hairs, so many bad years!' have an oldworld sound. Apparently two things have been run into one, when we are also told, that during the 'twelve-nights' no flax must be left in the diesse , or dame Holla will come. (44) The concealment of the implements shows at the same time the sacredness of her holiday, which ought to be a time of rest. (45) In the Rhön mts, they do no farm-work on Hulla's Saturday, neither hoe, nor manure, nor 'drive the team afield'. In the North too, from Yule-day to New-year's day, neither wheel nor windlass must go round (see Superst., Danish, 134; Suppl.).

This superintendence of agriculture and of strict order in the household marks exactly the office of a motherly deity, such as we got acquainted with in Nerthus and Isis. Then her special care of flax and spinning (the main business of German housewives, who are named after spindle and distaff, (46) as men are after sword and spear), leads us directly to the ON. Frigg, Oðin's wife, whose being melts into the notion of an earth-goddess, and after whom a constellation in the sky, Orion's belt, is called Friggjar rockr, Friggae colus. Though Icelandic writings do not contain this name, it has remained in use among the Swedish country-folk (Ihre, sub v. Friggerock). The constellation is however called Mariärock, Dan. Marirock (Magnusen, gloss. 361. 376), the christians having passed the same old idea on to Mary the heavenly mother. The Greeks put spindle and distaff in the hands of several goddesses, especially Artemis (crusnlakatoj, Il. 20, 70) and her mother Leto, but also Athene, Amphitrite and the Nereids. All this fits in with Holda, who is a goddess of the chase (the wild host), and of water-springs.

One might be tempted to derive dame Holda from a character in the Old Testament. In 2 Kings 22, 14 and 2 Chron. 34, 22 we read of a prophetess hdlh Huleddah, Huldah, for which Luther puts Hulda; the Septuagint has Olda, the Vulgate Olda, but the Lat. Bible Viteb. 1529 (and probably others since) Hulda, following Luther, who, with the German Holda in his mind, thus domesticated the Jewish prophetess among his countrymen. Several times in his writings he brings up the old heathen life; we had an instance a page or two back. (47) I do not know if any one before him had put the two names together; but certainly the whole conception of a dame Holda was not first drawn from the 'Olda' of the Vulgate, which stands there without any special significance; this is proved by the deep-rootedness of the name in our language, by its general application [as adj. and com. noun] to several kinds of spirits, and by the very ancient negative unholda.



ENDNOTES:

29. Frankf. 1631; 4, 171ª von einer wazzerholden, rh. solden; 176ª wazzerholde, rh. solde. Back

30. If, in the inscription 'deae Hludanae' quoted p. 257, we might by a slight transposition substitute Huldanae, this would be even more welcome than the analogy to ON. Hlôðyn, it would be the most ancient evidence for Hulda, supported as she already is by the Goth. unhulþô and the OHG. female name Holda, a rare one, yet forthcoming in Schannat, trad. fuld. no. 445; alsoHoldasind in Graff 4, 915. Schütze's treatise De dea Hludana first appeared Lips. 1741; and when Wolf (in Wodana, p. 50) mentions a Dutch one De dea Huldea, Trajecti 1746, if that be really the title, this can be no other than a very tempting conjecture by Cannegieter found on our 'Hulda' which occurs in Escard. A Latin dative Huldanae would mean our weak form, OHG. Holdûn, AS. Holdan, just as Berta, Hildegarda are in Latin docs. inflected Bertanae, Hildegardanae; though there may also have sprung up a nom. Bertana, Huldana. So the dat. Tanfanae too would lead us to at all events a German nom. Tanfa, and cut short all the attempts to make out of -fana a Celtic word or the Latin fanum. Tanfa suggests an ON. man's name Danpr, or the OHG root damph; granted a change of F into CH or TH [f has become ch in sachte, nichte, achter, ruchtbar, &c.], there would arise yet further possibilities, e.g. a female name Tancha (grata) would correspond to the OHG. masc. Dancho (gratus) Graff 5, 169; conf. Dankrât = Gibicho, Haupt's zeitschr. 1, 573.----I am not convinced of Huldana, and confess that Hludana may also maintain itself, and be explained as Hlûda (clara, praeclara); the weight of other arguments must turn the scale. Among these however, the use of gute holden and hollar vættir (Sæm. 240b) for spirits, and of holl regin (Sæm. 60ª) for gods, is especially worthy of notice. In ON. the adj. hollr [[faithful, loyal]] had undergone assimilation (Goth. hulþs, OHG. hold), while the proper name Huldr retained the old form; for to me the explanation huldr = occultus, celatus, looks very dubious. Back

31. Holle from Hulda, as Folle from Fulda. Back

32. Jul. Schmidt's Reichenfels p. 152. Back

33. Reinwald, Henneb. id. 1, 68. 2, 62. Schmeller 2, 174. Back

34. Schmidt's Westerwäld. idiot. 73. 341. Back

35. Kinderm. no. 24. Deutsche sagen, nos. 4-8. Falkenstein's Thur. chronica 1, 165-6 (see Suppl.). Back

36. Dame Holle shakes her bed, Modejourn. 1816, p. 283. They say in Scotland, when the first flakes fell: The men o' the East are pyking their geese, and sending their feathers here awa'. In Prussian Samland, when it snows: The angels shake their little bed; the flakes are the downfeathers, but many drop past, and get down to our earth. Back

37. As other attributes of Holda have passed to Mary, we may here also bring into comparison the Maria ad nives, notre dame aux neiges, whose feast was held on Aug. 5; on that day the lace-makers of Brussels pray to her, that their work may keep as white as snow. In a folk-song of Bretagne: Notre dame Marie, sur votre trône de neige! (Barzas breiz 1, 27). May not the otherwise unintelligible Hildesheim legend of Hillesnee (DS. no. 456) have arisen out of a Holde snê? Back

38. If the name brunnenhold in the Märchenbuch of Alb. Ludw. Grimm 1, 221 is a genuine piece of tradition, it signifies a fountain-sprite. [Newborn babes are fetched by the nurse out of dame Holle's pond; Suppl.] Back

39. A similar legend in Jul. Schmidt's Reichenfels p. 152. Back

40. This must be a purely heathen view. I suppose the christian sentiment was that expressed by Marcellus in Hamlet i. 1: 'no spirit dares stir abroad, the nights are wholesome, &c.'. ----Trans. Back

41. Estor's oberh. idiot., sub. v. Back

42. Erasm. Alberus, fable 16: 'Es kamen auch zu diesem heer Viel weiber die sich forchten sehr (were sore afraid), Und trugen sicheln in der hand, Fraw Hulda hat sie ausgesandt.' Luther's Expos. of the Epistles, Basel 1522 fol. 69ª: 'Here cometh up dame Hulde with the snout (potznase, botch-nose), to with, nature, and goeth about to gainsay her God and give him the lie, hangeth her old ragfair about her, the straw-harness (stroharnss); then fals to work, and scrapes it featly on her fiddle.' He compares nature rebelling against God to the heathenish Hulda with the frightful nose (Oberlin, sub v. potzmännchen), as she enters, muffled up in straw and frippery, to the fiddle's playing. Back

43. Brückner, Contrib. to the Henneberg idioticom, p. 9, mentions a popular belief in that part of Franconia: 'On the high day comes the Hollefrau (Hollefra, Hullefra), and throws in reels; whosoever does not spin them full, she breaks their necks,' (conf. infra Berhta and Berhtolt and the Devil). 'On the high day she is burnt,' which reminds one of 'Carrying Death out' in Teutonic and Slav countries, and 'Sawing the old woman' in Italy and Spain. By the addition of -frau after the name (conf. gaue fru, p. 253) we perceive its originaly adjective character. Cod. pal. 355b: 'ich wen, kain schusel in kaim rocken wart nie als hesslich als du bist,' I ween no scarecrow on a distaff was ever as ugly as thou. Back

44. Braunschw. anz. 1760, no. 86; the diesse is the bundle of flax on the dis-staff. Back

45. This makes one think of Gertrude. The peasants' almanacks in Carniola represent that saint by two little mice nibbling at the thread on a spindle (vretenò), as a sign that there ought to be no spinning on her day. The same holds good of the Russian piatnitsa, Friday (Kopitars rec. von Strahls gel. Russland). Back

46. RA. 163-8. 470. Women are called in AS. friðowebban, peace-weavers. Back

47. I believe Luther followed the Hebrew, merely dropping the final h, as he does in Jehova, Juda, &c. ----Trans. Back