Chapter 16

meyjar fýstoz â myrkvan við,

they could resist no longer, and returned to the sombre wood. Almost all swan-maidens are met with in the forest. The seven years agree with those of the Swedish story on p. 427. (63)

As Sigrûn, Sigrdrîfa, Sigrlinn are names of valkyrs, and our epic still calls one of the wise-women Sigelint, I believe that the OHG. siguwîp, AS. sigewîf, ON. sigrvîf [[battle-wife, battle-woman]], was a general designation of all wise-women, for which I can produce an AS. spell communicated to me by Kemble:

sitte ge sigewîf, sîgað tô eorðan!

næfre ge wilde (l. wille) tô uruda fleogan!

beo ge swâ gemyndige mînes gôdes,

swâ bîð manna-gehwylc metes and êðeles. (64)

Like norns, they are invited to the house with the promise of gifts.

On this point we will consider a passage in Saxo, where he is unmistakably speaking of valkyrs, though, as his manner is, he avoids the vernacular term. In his account of Hother and Balder, which altogether differs so much from that of the Edda, he says, p. 39: Hotherus inter venandum errore nebulae perductus in quoddam silvestrium virginum conclave incidit, a quibus proprio nomine salutatus, 'quaenam essent' perquirit. Illae suis ductibus auspiciisque maxime bellorum fortunam gubernari testantur: saepe enim se nemini conspicuas proeliis interesse, clandestinisque subsidiis optatos amicis praebere successus: quippe conciliare prospera, adversa infligere posse pro libitu memorabant. After bestowing their advice on him, the maidens with their house (aedes, conclave) vanish before Hother's eyes (see Suppl.). Further on, p. 42: At Hotherus extrema locorum devia pervagatus, insuetumque mortalibus nemus emensus, ignotis forte virginibus habitatum reperit specum: easdem esse constabat, quae eum insecabili veste quondam donaverant. They now give him more counsel, and are called nymphae. (65)

This seems no modern distorted view, to imagine the maids of war, that dwelt in Oðin's heavenly company, that traversed air and flood, as likewise haunting the woodland cave; therefore Saxo was right to call them silvestres, and to place their chamber, their cave, in the forest.

The older stages of our language supply some similar expressions, in which I recognise the idea of wise wood-wives, not of mere elvish wood-sprites. They are called wildiu wîp, and the Trad. fuld., p. 544, speak of a place 'ad domum wildero wîbo'. Burcard of Worms, p. 198d, mentions 'agrestes feminas quas silvaticas vocant, et quando voluerint ostendunt se suis amatoribus, et cum eis dicunt se oblectasse, et item quando volurint abscondunt se et evanescunt'. This 'quando voluerint' seems to express the notion of wish-life. Meister Alexander, a poet of the 13^th century, sings (str. 139, p. 143b): 'nû gênt si vür in (go they before him) über gras in wilder wîbe wæte (weeds)'. So: 'von einem wilden wîbe ist Wate arzet,' is (i.e., has learnt to be) physician, Gudr. 2117; 'das wilde fröuwelîn,' Ecke 189. In the Gl. monst. 335, wildaz wîp stands for lamia, and 333 wildiu wîp for ululae, funereal birds, death-boding wives, still called in later times klagefrauen, klagemütter, and resembling the prophetic Berhta (p. 280). In groves, on trees, there appeared dominae, matronae, puellae clothed in white (pp. 287-8), distinguishable from the more elvish tree-wife or dryad, whose life is bound up with that of the tree. The Vicentina Germans worship a wood-wife, chiefly between Christmas and Twelfthday: the women spin flax from the distaff, and throw it in the fire to propitiate her: (66) she is every bit like Holda and Berhta. As three branches of corn are left standing at harvest-time for Wuotan and frau Gaue, so to this day in the Frankenwald they leave three handfuls of flax lying on the field for the holzweibel (wood-wives, Jul. Schmidt's Reichenfels, p. 147), a remnant of older higher worship. Between Leidhecken and Dauernheim in the Wetterau stands the high mountain, and on it a stone, der welle fra gestoil (the wild woman's chairs); there is an impression on the rock, as of the limbs of human sitters. The people say the wild folk lived there 'wei di schtan noch mell warn,' while the stones were still soft; afterwards, being persecuted, the man ran away, the wife and child remained in custody at Dauernheim until they died. Folk-songs make the huntsman in the wood start a dark-brown maid, and hail her: 'whither away, wild beast?' (Wunderhorn 2, 154), but his mother did not take to the bride, just as in the tale of the swan-children. We find a more pleasing description in the Spanish ballad De la infantina (Silva p. 259): a huntsman stands under a lofty oak:

En una rama mas alta viera estar una infantina,

cabellos de su cabeza todo aquel roble cobrian:

'siete fadas (7 fays) me fadaron en brazos de una ama mia,

que andasse los siete anos sola en esta montina'.

[[At a higher branch he saw a young maid,

the hair of her head all that oak covered:

'seven fays fated me at the arms of my nurse,

to wander seven years alone at this mountain'.]]

But the knight wants first to take his mother's opinion, and she refuses her consent. When Wolfdieterich sits by a fire in the forest at night, rauhe Els comes up, the shaggy woman, and carries off the hero to her own country, (67) where she is a queen and lives on a high rock: at length, bathing in the jungbrunnen, she lays aside her hairy covering, and is named Sigeminne, 'the fairest above all lands'. (68)---Synonymous with 'wildaz wîp' the glosses have holzmuoja (lamia and ulula), she who wails or moos in the wood; holzfrowe meaning the same, but suggestive of that Gothic aliorumna, AS. burgrûne, and the ON. Sigrûn (see Suppl.). (69)

One general name for such beings must from very early times have been menni, minni; it is connected with man (homo), and with the ON. man (virgo), but it occurs only in compounds: merimanni (neut.), pl. merimanniu, translates sirena or scylla (Reda umbe diu tier, in Hoffm. fundgr. 19, 18), meriminni, Gl. Doc. 225ª mons. 333. In the 13^th century poets, merminne is equivalent to merwîp, merfrouwe, yet also to wildez wîp: 'diu wîse merminne,' Diut. 1, 38. 'gottinne oder merminne, die sterben niht enmohten (could not die),' Eneit. 8860. In the Wîgamûr 112. 200. 227 seq., there appears a wildez wîp, who dwells in a hollow rock of the sea, and is indifferently termed merwîp 168. 338, merfrouwe 134, and merminne 350. AS. merewîf, Beow. 3037. M. Dutch maerminne. Those three wîsiu wîp of the Nibelungen are also called merwîp 1475, 1. 1479, 1; they fortell and forewarn; their having individual names would of itself put them on a par with the Norse valkyrs: Hadburc, Sigelint. The third, whose name the poem omits (p. 428), is addressed by Hagne as 'aller wîseste wîp!' 1483, 4. Wittich's ancestress (p. 376) is named frouwe Wâchilt, as if Wave-Hilde, she is a merminne, and says sooth to the hero, Râb. 964-974. Morolt also has an aunt a merminne who lives in mount Elsabê and rules over dwarfs; her name is not given, but that of her son is Madelgêr, and she likewise gives wise advice to Morolt; Mor. 40b 41ª. The merminne in Ulrich's Lanzelet (lines 196 seq.) is said to be wîs (5751. 6182), she has under her 10,000 unmarried women (deru keiniu bekande man noch mannes gezoc), they dwell on a mountain by the sea, in an ever-blooming land. In the Apollonius, a benevolent merminne is queen of the sea (lines 5160. 5294); here the poet had in his mind a siren in the classical sense, but the Germans must have had a merminne before they ever heard of sirens. The Danish name is maremind (Danske viser 1, 118. 125). Norse legend has preserved for us a precisely corresponding male being, the taciturn prophetic marmennill (al. marmendill, marbendill), who is fished up out of the sea, and requires to be let go into it again; Hâlfssaga c. 7 (Fornald. sög. 2, 31-33), and Isl. sög. 1, 33 (Landn. 2, 5). (70) From him coral is named marmennils smîði, he cunningly wrought it in the sea. At a later time the word merfei was used in Germany: that lover of Staufenberger, whom he found in the forest, and the Fair Melusina (possibly a tradition of ancient Gaul), are precisely the fairy being that had previously been called merimenni. (71)---But, similar to the merminne, there was also a waltminne, which word equally stands for lamia in old glosses (Diut. 3, 276). Sigeminne, whether the baptized Rauch-els, Wolfdieterich's lover (p. 433), or the wife of Hugdieterich, (72) may with perfect right be regarded as waltminne or merminne. (73) In the Vilk. saga cap. 17 I find skona used of the woman who Vilkinus found in the wood, and who bore him Vadi. Saxo Gram., p. 15, speaks of a tugurium silvestris immanisque feminae (see Suppl.).  



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