Chapter 16

But we have now to make out a new aspect of the valkyrs. We are told that they travel through air and water, 'rîða lopt ok lög,' Sæm. 142b 159b; theirs is the power to fly and to swim, in other words, they can assume the body of a swan, they love to linger on the sea-shore; and the swan was considered a bird of augury. (54) The Völundarqviða relates: Three women sat on the shore, spinning flax, and had their âlptarhamir (swan-shifts) by them, so that any moment they could fly away again as swans: 'meyjar flugo,' and 'settuz at hvîlaz â sævarströnd'; one of them has even the surname of svanhvît (swanwhite), and wears a swan's feathers (svanfiaðrar drô). In the Hrômundarsaga (Fornald. sög. 2, 375-6), the same Kâra, who the Edda says was a second birth of Svava, appears as an enchantress in swan-shift, (fiölkýngiskona î âlftarham), and hovers above the hero, singing. (55) By her assistance elgi had always conquered, but it happened in one fight, that he swung his sword too high in the air, and hewed off his lover's foot, she fell to the ground, and his luck was spent. In Saxo Gram., p. 100, Fridlevus hears up in the air at night 'sonum trium olorum superne clangentium,' who prophesy to him, and drop a girdle with runes on it. Brynhildr is 'like the swan on the wave' (Fornald. sög. 1, 186): the simile betrays at the same time, that she had really the power of changing into the bird. Many tales of swan-wives still live among the Norse people. A young man saw three swans alight on the shore, lay their white bird-shifts in the grass, turn into beautiful maidens, and bathe in the water, then take their shifts again, and fly away in the shape of swans. He lay in wait for them another time, and abstracted the garment of the youngest; she fell on her knees before him, and begged for it, but he took her home with him, and married her. When seven years were gone by, he showed her the shift he had kept concealed; she no sooner had it in her hand, than she flew out as a swan through the open window, and the sorrowing husband died soon after. Afzelius 2, 143-5. On the other hand, the swan-hero forsakes his wife the moment she asks the forbidden question. A peasant had a field, in which whatever he set was trampled down every year on St. John's night. Two years in succession he set his two eldest sons to watch in the field; at midnight they heard a hurtling in the air, which sent them into a deep sleep. The next year the third son watched, and he saw three maidens come flying, who laid their wings aside, and then danced up and down the field. He jumped up, fetched the wings away, and laid them under the stone on which he sat. When the maidens had danced till they were tired, they came up to him, and asked for their wings; he declared, if one of them would stay and be his wife, the other two should have their wings back. From this point the story takes a turn, which is less within the province of the swan-wife myth; but it is worth noting, that one of the maidens offers her lover a drink of water out of a golden pitcher, exactly as elfins and wish-wives do elsewhere (pp. 420, 326). Molbech no. 49.

These lovely swan-maidens must have been long known to German tradition. When they bathe in the cooling flood, they lay down on the bank the swan-ring, the swan-shift; who takes it from them, has them in his power. (56) Though we are not expressly told so, yet the three prophetic merwomen whose garments Hagene took away, are precisely such; it is said (Nib. 1476, 1) by way of simile again:

sie swebten sam die vogele ûf der fluot.

It is true, our epic names only two of them (the Danish story only one), the wîsiu wîp, Hadburc and Sigelint, (57) but one of them begins to prophesy, and their garments are described as 'wunderlich,' 1478, 3. The myth of Völundr we meet with again in an OHG. poem, which puts doves in the place of swans: three doves fly to a fountain, but when they touch the ground they turn into maidens, Wielant removes their clothes, and will not give them up till one of them consents to take him for her husband. In other tales as widely diffused, young men throw the shift, ring or chain over them, which turns them into swans. (58) When the resumption of human shape cannot be effected completely, the hero retains a swan-wing; evidence of the high antiquity of this detail lies in its connextion with the heroic legend of Scoup or Sceáf (p. 370); and it has found its way into modern pedigrees. (59) Especially important, as placing in a clear light the exact relation of these swan-wives to the walküren, is a statement about them in Altd. bl. 1, 128: A nobleman hunting in a wild forest saw a maiden bathing in the river, he crept up and took away the gold chain on her hand, then she could not escape. There was peculiar virtue in this chain: 'dor ümme (on account of it) werden sülche frowen wünschelwybere genant'. He married her, and she had seven children at a birth, they all had gold rings about their necks, i.e., like their mother, the power of assuming swan-shape. Swan children then are wish-children. In Gudrun, the prophetic angel comes over the sea-wave in the shape of a wild bird singing, i.e., of a swan, and in Lohengrin a talking swan escorts the hero in his ship; in AS. poetry swanrâd (-road) passed current for the sea itself, and alpiz, ælfet, âlpt (oygnus) is akin to the name of the ghostly alp, ælf (see Suppl.).

We hear tell of a swan that swims on the lake in a hollow mountain, holding a ring in his bill: if he lets it fall, the earth comes to an end. (60) On the Ur'arbrunnr itself two swans are maintained (Sn. 20); another story of a soothsaying swan is communicated by Kuhn, p. 67, from the Mittelmark. A young man metamorphosed into a swan is implied in the familiar Westphalian nursery-rhyme:

swane, swane, pek up de nesen,

wannehr bistu krieger wesen (was a warrior)?

Another, of Achen, says:

krune krane, wisse schwane,

we wel met noh Engeland fahre?

And the name Sæfugel in the AS. genealogies seems to indicate a swan-hero.

The spinner Berhta, the goose-footed (61) queen, may fairly suggest swan-maidens (p. 280). (62) If those prophetic 'gallicenae' were able to assume what animal shapes they pleased, why, then the Celts too seem to have known about swan-metamorphosis in very early times, so that in French fay-legends we may supply the omissions; e.g., in Méon 3, 412:

en la fontaine se baignoient [[in the fountain were bathing]]
       trois puceles preuz et senées,

[[three virgins wise and (I read: sensées) with good sense]]
       qui de biaute sembloient fées: [[who for the beauty seem to be fays]]
       lor robes a tout lor chemises [[their dresses and all their garments]]
       orent desoz une arbre mises [[have under a tree laid]]
       du bout de la fontaine en haut. [[at the end of the fountain, above]]
puceles senées [[virgins with good sense]] 3, 419. bien eurées [[of good omen]] 418. la plus mestre [[the most important]] 413-5. The shifts were stolen, and the maidens detained. In the Lai du Desiré the knight espies in the forest a swan-maiden without her wimple (sans guimple). The wimple of the white-robed fay answers to the swan-shift.

We have seen that the wish-wives appear on pools and lakes in the depth of the forest: it is because they are likewise wood-wives, and under this character they suggest further reflections. The old sacred forest seems their favourite abode: as the gods sat throned in the groves, on the trees, the wise-women of their train and escort would seek the same haunts. Did not the Gothic aliorunas dwell in the woodland among the wood-sprites? Was not Veleda's tower placed on a rock, that is, in the woods? The Völundarqviða opens with the words:

meyjar flugo sunnan Myrkvið igögnom,

maids flew from south through murky wood to the seashore, there they tarried seven years, till they grew homesick:  
 



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