Chapter 16

nôtt var î b, nornir qvâmo,

þr er öðlîngi aldr um skôpo:

þann bâðo fylki frgstan verða,

ok Buðlûnga beztan þyckja.

snero þr af afli örlögþâtto,

þâ er borgir braut î Brâlundi:

þr um greiddo gullinsîmo,

ok und mânasal miðjan festo.

þr austr ok vestr enda fâlo,

þar âtti lofðûngr land â milli:

brâ nipt Nera â norðrvega

einni festi. ey bað hon halda.

This important passage tells us, that norns entering the castle at night spun for the hero the threads of his fate, and stretched the golden cord (þâttr = dâht, docht, = sîmi) in the midst of heaven; one norn hid an end of the thread eastward, another westward, a third fastened it northward; this third one is called 'sister of Neri'. (17) Their number, though not expressly stated, is to be gathered from the threefold action. All the region between the eastern and western ends of the line was to fall to the young hero's lot; did the third norn diminish this gift, when she flung a band northward, and bade it hold for aye? (see Suppl.).

It seems the regular thing in tales of norns and fays, for the advantages promised in preceding benefactions to be partly neutralized by a succeeding one.

The Nornagestssaga cap. 11 says: There travelled about in the land 'völvur,' who are called 'spâkonur,' who foretold to men their fate, 'spâðu mönnum aldr' or 'örlög'. People invited them to their houses, gave them good cheer and gifts. One day the came to Nornagest's father, the babe lay in the cradle, and two tapers were burning over him. When the first two women had gifted him, and assured him of happiness beyond all others of his race, the third or youngest norn, 'hin yngsta nornin,' who in the crowd had been pushed off her seat and fallen to the ground, rose up in anger, and cried 'I cause that the child shall only live till the lighted taper beside him has burnt out'. The eldest völva quickly seized the taper, put it out, and gave it to the mother with the warning not to kindle it again till the last day of her son's life, who received from this the name of Norn's-guest. Here völva, spâkona and norn are perfectly synonymous; as we saw before (p. 403) that the völur passed through the land and knocked at the houses, (18) the nornir do the very same. A kind disposition is attributed to the first two norns, an evil one to the third. This third, consequently Skuld, is called 'the youngest,' they were of different ages therefore, Urðr being considered the oldest. Such tales of travelling gifting sorceresses were much in vogue all through the Mid. Ages (see Suppl.). (19)

The Edda expressly teaches that there are good and bad norns (gôðar ok illar, grimmar, liotar), and though it names only three, that there are more of them: some are descended from gods, others from elves, others from dwarfs, Sn. 18. 19. Sæm. 187-8. Why should the norns be furnished with dogs? grey norna, Sæm. 272ª.

We see, throughout this Eddic description, things and persons are kept clearly apart. Destiny itself is called örlög, or else nauðr (necessitas), aldr (aevum); the norns have to manage it, espy it, decree it, pronounce it (see Suppl.). And the other dialects too had possessed the same term: OHG. urlac, AS. orlg, MHG. ulouc (Gramm. 2, 7. 87. 789. 790), OS. orlag, orlegi, aldarlagu (Hel. 103, 8. 113, 11. 135, 15); (20) it was only when the heathen goddesses had been cast off, that the meanings of the words came to be confounded, and the old flesh-and-blood wurt, wurð, wyrd to pale into a mere impersonal urlac.

In the same relation as norn to örlög, stands parca to fatum (from fari, like qviðr from qveða qvað, quoth), and also aisa, moira to anagkh (nauðr) or eimarmenh. But when once the parcae had vanished from the people's imagination, the Romance language (by a process the reverse of that just noticed amongst us) formed out of the abstract noun a new and personal one, out of fatum an Ital. fata, Span. hada, Prov. fada (Rayn. sub v.), Fr. féc. (21) I do not know if this was prompted by a faint remembrance of some female beings in the Celtic faith, or the influence of the Germanic norns. But these fays, so called at first from their announcing destiny, soon came to be ghostly wives in general, altogether the same as our idisî and völur. (22) How very early the name was current in Italy, is proved by Ausonius, who in his Gryphus ternarii numeri brings forward the 'tres Charites, tria Fata,' and by Procopius, who mentions (De bello Goth. 1, 25, ed. Bonn. 2, 122) a building in the Roman Forum called ta tria fata (supra p. 405, note) with the remark: outw gar Rwmaioi taj moiraj vevomikasi kalein. (23) At that time therefore still neuter; but everywhere the number three, in norns, moirai, parcae and fays (see Suppl.). (24)

About the Romance fays there is a multitude of stories, and they coincide with the popular beliefs of Germany. Folquet de Romans sings:

Aissim fadero tres serors

en aquella ora qu'ieu sui natz,

que totz temps fos enamoratz.

Guilhdei. Poitou:

Assi fuy de nueitz fadatz sobr'un puegau.

(so was I gifted by night on a mount).

Marcabrus:

Gentil fada

vos adastret, quan fas nada

d'una beutat esmerada.

Tre fate go past, laughing, and give good gifts, Pentam. 1, 10. 4, 4; the first fate bestow blessings, the last one curses 2, 8; Pervonto builds a bower for three sleeping fate, and is then gifted 1, 3; tre fate live down in a rocky hollow, and dower the children who descend 2, 3. 3, 10; fate appear at the birth of children, and lay them on their breast 5, 5; Cervantes names 'los siete castillos de las siete fadas,' Don Quix. 4, 50; 'siete fadas me fadaron en brazos de una ama mia,' Rom. de la infantina; there are seven fays in the land, they are asked to stand godmothers, and seats of honour are prepared at the table: six take their places, but the seventh was forgotten, she now appears, and while the others endow with good things, she murmurs her malison (La belle au bois dormant); in the German kindermärchen (Dornröschen) it is twelve wise women, the thirteenth had been overlooked. So in the famed forest of Brezeliande, by the fontaine de Barendon, dames faées in white apparel show themselves, and begift a child, but one is spiteful and bestows calamity (San Marte, Leg. of Arthur p. 157-8. 160). At Olger's birth six wise women appear, and endow; the last is named Morgue. In the Children of Limburg (Mones anzeiger 1835, 169), when three wayfaring wives approach, and foretell the future. The OFr. romance of Guillaume au court nez describes how Renoart falls asleep in a boat, and three fays come and carry him off. In Burchard of Worms they are still spoken of as three sisters or parcae, for whom the people of the house spread the table with three plates and three knives; conf. the 'praeparare mensas cum lapidus vel epulis in domo'. In the watches of the night the fatuae come to children, wash them and lay them down by the fire (see Suppl.). In most of the tales there appear three fays, as well as three norns and three parcae; occasionally seven and thirteen; but they also come singly, like that 'weirdlady of the wood,' and with proper names of their own. (25) French tradition brings to light a close connexion between fays and our giant-maidens: the fays carry enormous blocks of stone on their heads or in their aprons, while the free hand plies the spindle; when the fay who was doing the building part had finished her task, she called out to her sisters not to bring any more, and these, though two miles off, heard the cry and dropped their stones, which buried themselves deep in the ground; when the fays were not spinning, they carried four stones at once. They were good-natured, and took special care of the children whose fates they foretold. They went in and out of the neighbours' houses by the chimney, so that one day the most careless one among them burnt herself, and uttered a loud wail, at which all the fays of the neighbourhood came running up. You never could deceive them: once, when a man put his wife's clothes on and nursed the baby, the fay walked in and said directly: 'non, tu n'es point la belle d'hier au soir, tu ne files, ni ne vogues, ni ton fuseau n'enveloppes'. [[No you are not the beauty of yesterday night, you do not spin, nor you sail (?), nor you wrap your spindle]] To punish him, she contented herself with making the apples that were baking on the hearth shrink into peas.  



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