Chapter 17

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. mons. 333 have scratun (pilosi); the Gl. herrad. 200b waltschrate (satyrus); the Sumerlat. 10, 66 srate (lares mali); so in MHG. scrâz; Reinh. 597 (of the old fragment), 'ein wilder waltschrat;' Barl. 251, 11. Aw. 3, 226. Ulr. Lanz. 437 has 'von dem schraze' = dwarf; 'sie is villîhte ein schrat, 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 wich has since been printed entire in Mone's treatise on heroic legend, and is now capped by the original Norwegian story in Asbiörnsen and Moe, No. 26 (one of the most striking examples of the tough persistence of such materials in popular tradition); both the schretel and the word wazzerbern answer perfectly to the trold and the hvidbiörn. Vintler thinks of the schrättlin as a spirit light as wind, and of the size of a child. The Vocab. of 1482 has schretlin (penates); Dasypodius nachtschrettele (ephialtes); later ones spell it schrättele, schrättel, schrettele, schrötle, conf. Stald. 2, 350. Schmid's Schwäb. wörtb. 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), (76) ON. skratti [[wicked sorcerer]] (malus genius, gigas); a rock on the sea is called skrattasker (geniorum scopulus), Fornm. sög. 2, 142. Comparing these forms with the OHG. ones above, we miss the usual consonant-change: the truth is, other OHG. forms do show a z in place of the t: scraz, Gl. fuld. 14; screza (larvae, lares mali), Gl. lindenbr. 996b; 'srezze vel strate' (not: screzzol scraito), Sumerlat. 10, 66; 'unreiner schrâz,' Altd. w. 3, 170 (rhymes vrâz). (77) And Upper Germ. dictionaries of the 16^th cent. couple schretzel with alp; Höfer 3, 114, has 'der schretz,' and Schm. 3, 552, 'der schretzel, das schretzlein.' According to Mich. Beham 8. 9 (Mone's Anz. 4, 450-1), every house has its schrezlein; if fostered, he brings you goods and honour, he rides or drives the cattle, prepares his table on Brecht-night, etc. (78)

The agreement of Slavic words is of weight. O. Boh. scret (daemon), Hanka's Zbirka 6b; screti, scretti (penates intimi et secretales), ibid. 16b; Boh. skret, skrjtek (penas, idolum); Pol. skrzot, skrzitek; Sloven. zhkrát, zhkrátiz, zhkrátelj (hill-mannikin). To the Serv. and Russ. dialects the word seems unknown.

I can find no satisfactory root for the German form. (79) In Slavic skrýti (celare, occulere) is worth considering. [A compound of krýti, to cover, root krý, krov, kruptw. If Slav. skrý, why not AS. scrûd, shroud?].

Going by the sense, schrat appears to be a wild, rough, shaggy wood-spirit, very like the Lat. faun and the Gr. satyr, also the Roman silvanus (Livy 2, 7); its dimin. schrätlein, 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 (numfai oreskqoi) and dryads (druadej, Englished wuduœlfenne 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 Katzenveit, with whom they frighten children: 'Hush, the Katzenveit will come!' Similar beings, full of dwarf and goblin-like humours, we may recognise in the Gübich of the Harz, in the Rübezal of Riesengebirge. This last, however, seems to be of Slav origin, Boh. Rybecal, Rybrcol. (80) In Moravia runs the story of the seehirt, sea-herd, a mischief-loving sprite, who, in the shape of a herdsman, whip in hand, entices travellers into a bog (see Suppl.). (81)

The gloss in Hanka 7b. 11ª has 'vilcodlac faunus, vilcodlaci faunificarii, incubi, dusii', in New Boh. it would be wlkodlak, wolf-haired; the Serv. vukodlac 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 skrjtek is in Bohemia; (82) in some parts of Germnay schrötleinzopf.

People in Europe began very early to think of dæmonic beings as pilosi. The Vulgate has 'et pilosi saltabunt ibi,' Isaiah 13, 21, where the LXX. had daimonia ekei orchsontai, conf. 34, 14. (83) Isidore's Etym. 8, cap. ult. (and from it Gl. Jun. 399): 'pilosi qui graece panitae, latine incubi nominantur,---hos daemones Galli dusios nuncupant. (84) Quem autem vulgo incubonem vocant, hunc Romani 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, (85) and these genii again are called 'satyri vel pilosi.' The monk of St. Gall, in the Life of Charles the Great (Pertz 2, 741), tells of a pilosus 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 homsesprite, rough and hairy to look at, 'eislich getân,' 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 skratti 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, 'agrestium fana, quos vulgus faunos vocat.'

Some remarkable statements are found in Eckehart's Waltharius. Eckevrid of Saxony accosts him with the bitter taunt (761):

Die, ait, an corpus vegetet tractabile temet,

sive per aërias fallas, maledicte, figuras?

saltibus assuetus faunus mihi quippe videris.

Walthari replies in mockery (765):

Celtica lingua probat te ex illa gente creatum,

cui natura dedit reliquas ludendo praeire;

at si to propius venientem dextera nostra

attingat, post Saxonibus memorare valebis,

te nunc in Vosago fauni 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 vain, Walthari cries:

Haec tibi silvanus transponit munera faunus.

Herewith the 'wood-schrat' returns you the favour. (86)

Here the faun is called fantasma, phantom; OHG. giscîn, T. 81 (Matt. xiv. 26), otherwise scînleih (monstrum), Gl. hrab. 969b. Jun. 214; AS. scînlâc (portentum); or gitroc, p. 464. Phantasma vagabundum (Vita Lebuini, Pertz 2, 361); 'fantasma vult nos pessundare' (Hroswitha in Dulcicius); 'fantasia quod in libris gentilium faunus solet appellari,' Mabillon, Analect. 3, 352. A 'municipium,' or 'oppidum mons 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' Méon 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 mountain: '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 demigods 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 Völundr, as the aliorunes did with fauns. The wild women, wood-minne (pp. 432-4), and the wilde man (Wigamur 203) come together. Wigal. 6286 has wildes wîp, and 6602 it is said of the dwarf Karriôz:




ENDNOTES:

76. Already in Sachsensp. 1, 4 altvile and dverge side by side; conf. RA. 410. Back

77. A contraction of schrawaz? Gudr. 448, schrawaz und merwunder; Albr. Titur. 27, 299 has schrabaz together with pilwiht; schrawatzen und merwunder, Casp. von der Rön's Wolfdieterich 195. Wolfd. und Saben 496. ['Probably of different origins' says Suppl.] Back

78. Muchar, Römisches Noricum 2, 37, and Gastein 147, mentions a capricious mountain-spirit, schranel. Back

79. The ON. skratti [[wicked sorcerer]] is said to mean terror also. The Swed. skratta, Dan. skratte, is to laugh loud. Does the AS. form scritta allow us to compare the Gr. skirtoj, a hopping, a leaping goblin or satyr (from skirtaw, I bound)? Lobeck's Aglaoph., 1311. Back

80. In Slav. ryba is fish, but cal, or col (I think) has no meaning. The oldest Germ. docs. have Rube-zagil, -zagel, -zagl (-tail); Rube may be short for the ghostly 'knecht Ruprecht,' or Robert. Is Rubezagel our bobtail, of which I have seen no decent etymology?---Trans. Back

81. Sagen aus der vorzeit Mährens (Brünn, 1817), pp. 136-171. Back

82. The plica is also called koltun, and again koltki are Polish and Russian home-sprites. Back

83. Luther translates feldteufel; the Heb. sagnir denotes a shaggy, goat-like being. Radevicus frising. 2, 13, imitates the whole passage in the prophet: 'ululae, upupae, bubones toto anno in ectis funebria personantes lugubri voce aures omnium repleverunt. Pilosi quos satyros vocant in domibus plerunque auditi.' Again 2, 24: 'in aedibus tuis lugubri voce respondeant ululae, saltent pilosi.' Back

84. 'Daemones quos duscios Galli nuncupant.' Augustine, Civ. Dei, c. 23. The name duz still lives in Bretagne, dimin. duzik (Villemarqué 1, 42). Back

85. In the same way the jüdel (I suppose güetel, the same as guote holde) has toys placed for him, Superst. I, no. 62; conf. infra, the homesprites. Back

86. The dialogue is obscure, and in the printed edition, p. 86, I have endeavoured to justify the above interpretation. Back