Chapter 20

Of goddesses, no doubt the bath-loving Nerthus and Holda are the most nearly connected with water-worship (Holda lives in wells, pp. 268, 487); and to them must be added swan-maidens, merminnes (p. 433), water-holdes, spring-holdes (p. 268), water-muhmes and nixies. To all of them particular rivers, brooks, pools and springs can be consecrated and assigned as their abode; Oegir (p. 237) and Rân (pp. 311, 497) ruled in the sea, and the waves are called their daughters: all this gives a new stamp to the veneration of the element. Of this very natural, but not essential, combination of simple rude water-worship with a faith in higher beings, I will give a few more specimens.

As those who cross a river by ferry or by bridge have to dread the power of the dæmon that dwells in it (p. 497), so vulgar opinion in Sweden (Sup. K, 40) holds it advisable, in crossing any water in the dark, to spit three times, as a safeguard against evil influences. (32) Precautions are also taken in drawing water from a well: before drawing any, the Greeks at Mykono salute three times in honour of Teloni (fountain-sprite). (33) For a thief to throw in the water a little of what he has stolen (Sup. I, 836), means sacrificing to the water-sprite. The Vita S. Sulpicii Biturig. (died 644) relates (Acta Bened. sec. 2, p. 172): 'gurges quidam erat in Virisionensium situs agello (Vierzon, in Biturigibus) aquarum mole copiosus, utpote daemonibus consecratus; et si aliquis causa qualibet ingrederetur eundem, repente funibus daemoniacis circumplexus amittebat crudeliter vitam.' A more decisive testimony to the worship of water itself is what Gregory of Tours tells of a lake on Mt. Helanus (De gloria confess., cap. 2): 'Mons erat in Gabalitano territorio (Gevaudan) cognomento Helanus, lacum habens magnum. Ad quem certo tempore multitudo rusticorum, quasi libamina lacui illi exhibens, linteamina projiciebat ac pannos qui ad usum vestimenti virilis praebentur: nonnulli lanae vellera, plurimi etiam formas casei (34) ac cerae vel panis, diversasque species unusquisque juxta vires suas, quae dinumerare perlongum puto. Veniebant autem cum plaustris potum cibumque deferentes, mactantes animalia et per triduum epulantes. Quarta autem die cum discedere deberent, anticipabat eos tempestas cum tonitruo et coruscatione valida; et in tantum imber ingens cum lapidum violentia descendebat, ut vix se quisquam eorum putaret evadere. Sic fiebat per singulos annos, et involvebatur insipiens populus in errore.'---No god or spirit shows his face here, the yearly sacrifice is offered to the lake itself, and te feast winds up with the coming tempest. Gervase of Tilbury (in Leibnitz 1, 982) tells of a lake on Mt. Cavagum in Catalonia: 'in cujus summitate lacus est aquam continens subnigram et in fundo imperscrutabilem. Illic mansio fertur esse daemonum ad modum palatii dilatata et janua clausa; facies tamen ipsius mansionis sicut ipsorum daemonum vulgaribus est incognita ac invisibilis. In lacum si quis aliquam lapideam aut aliam solidam projecerit materiam, statim tanquam offensis daemonibus tempestas erumpit.' (35) Then comes the story of a girl who is carried off by the watersprites, and kept in the lake seven years.

Lakes cannot endure to have their depths gauged. On the Mummelsee, when the sounders had let down all the cord out of nine nets with a plummet without finding a bottom, suddenly the raft they were on began to sink, and they had to seek safety in a rapid flight to land (Simplic. 5, 10). A man went in a boat to the middle of the Titisee, and payed out no end of line after the plummet, when there came out of the waves a terrible cry: 'Measure me, and I'll eat you up!' In a great fright the man desisted from his enterprise, and since then no one has dared to sound the depth of the lake (Mone's Anz. 8, 536). There is a similar story in Thiele 3, 73, about Huntsöe, that some people tried to fathom its depth with a ploughshare tied to the line, and from below came the sound of a spirit-voice: 'i maale vore vägge, vi skal maale jeres lägge!' Full of terror they hauled up the line, but instead of the share they found an old horse's skull fastened to it. (36)

It is the custom in Esthonia for a newly married wife to drop a present into the well of the house; it is a nationality that seems particularly given to worshipping water. There is a detailed account of the holy Wöhhanda, a rivulet of Livonia. It rises near Ilmegerve, a village of Odenpä district in Esthonia, and after its junction with the Medda, falls into L. Peipus. The source is in a sacred grove, within whose bounds no one dares to cut a tree or break a twig: whoever does it is sure to die that year. Both brook and fountain are kept clean, and are put to rights once a year; if anything is thrown into the spring or the little lake through which it flows, the weather turns to storm (see Suppl.).

Now in 1641 Hans Ohm of Sommerpahl, a large landowner who had come into the country in the wake of the Swedes, built a mill on the brook, and when bad harvests followed for several years, the Ehsts laid it all to the desecration of the holy stream, who allowed no obstructions in his path; they fell upon the mill, burnt it down, and destroyed the piles in the water. Ohm went to the law, and obtained a verdict against the peasants; but to rid himself of new and grievous persecutions, he induced pastor Gutslaff, another German, to write a treatise (37) specially combating this superstition. Doubtless we learn from it only the odious features of the heathenish cult. To the question, how good or bad weather could depend on springs, brooks and lakes, the Ehsts replied: 'it is our ancient faith, the men of old have so taught us (p. 25, 258); mills have been burnt down on the brook before now (p. 278), he will stand no crowding.' The Esth. name is 'pöha yögge,' the Lettic 'shvèti ubbe,' i.e. holy brook. By means of it they could regulate the weather, and when they wanted rain, they had only to throw something in (p. 25). Once, when three oxen were drowned in the lake, there followed snow and frost (p. 26). At times there came up out of the brook a carl with blue and yellow stockings: evidently the spirit of the brook.

Another Esthonian story is about L. Eim changing his bed. On his banks lived wild and wicked men, who never mowed the meadows that he watered, nor sowed the fields he fertilized, but robbed and murdered, so that his bright wave was befouled with the blood of the slain. And the lake mourned; and one evening he called his fish together, and mounted with them into the air. The brigands hearing a din cried: 'the Eim has left his bed, let us collect his fish and hidden treasure.' But the fish were gone, and nothing was found at the bottom but snakes, toads and salamanders, which came creeping out and lodged with the ruffian brood. But the Eim rose higher and higher, and swept like a white cloud through the air; said the hunters in the woods: 'what is this murky weather passing over us?' and the herdsmen: 'what white swan is flying in the sky?' All night he hung among the stars, at morn the reapers spied him, how that he was sinking, and the white swan became as a white ship, and the ship as a dark drifting cloud. And out of the waters came a voice: 'get thee hence with thy harvest, I come to dwell with thee.' Then they bade him welcome, if he would bedew their fields and meadows, and he sank down and stretched himself in his new couch. They set his bed in order, built dikes, and planted young trees to cool his face. Their fields he made fertile, their meadows green; and they danced around him, so that old men grew young for joy. (38)

The Greeks and Romans personified their rivers into male beings; a bearded old man pours the flowing spring out of his urn (pp. 585. 593). Homer finely pictures the elemental strife between water and fire in the battle of the Skamander with Hephæstus: the river is a god, and is called anax, Od. 5, 445. 451. The Indian Ganges too is an august deity. Smaller streams and fountains had nymphs set over them. (39) In our language, most of the rivers' names are feminine (Gramm. 3, 384-6), there must therefore have been female watersprites. Twelve or eighteen streams are specified by name in Sæm. 43b. Sn. 4. I single out Leiptr, by whose clear water, as by Styx or Acheron, oaths were sworn. Sæm. 165ª: 'at eno liosa Leiptrar vatni.' A dæmon of the Rhine is nowhere named in our native traditions, but the Edda calls the Rîn (fem.) svinn, âskunna (prudens, a diis oriunda, Sæm. 248ª). And in the bosom of the Rhine lie treasure and gold. The Goths buried their beloved king Alaric in the bed of a river near Consentia (Cosenza), which they first dug out of its course, and then led back over the corpse (Jornandes, cap. 30); the Franks, when crossing a river, offered sacrifice to it (p. 45).

But where the sacred water of a river sweeps round a piece of meadow land, and forms an ea (aue), such a spot is specially marked out for the residence of gods; witness Wunsches ouwe (p. 140), Pholes ouwa (p. 225). (40) Equally venerable were islands washed by the pure sea wave, Fosetesland (p. 230), and the island of Nerthus (p. 251).

In the sea itself dwelt Oegir (p. 237) and Rân (p. 311), and the waves are their daughters: the Edda speaks of nine waves, and gives their names (Sn. 124, conf. the riddles in the Hervararsaga, pp. 478-9); this reminds me of the nona unda in the Waltharius 1343, and the 'fluctus decumanus' [every tenth wave being the biggest, Festus, and Ov. Trist. i. 2, 50]. There must also have been another god of the sea, Geban (p. 239, conf. p. 311). Then, according to the Edda, there lies in the deep sea an enormous 'worm', miðgarðs-ormr, biting his own tail and begirding the whole earth. The immensity of ocean (Goth. marisáins) is expressed in the OHG. names endilmeri and wendilmeri (Graff 2, 829); conf. enteo and wenteo (p. 564), entil and wentil (p. 375). An AS. term gârsecg I have tried to explain in Zeitschr. für d. a. 1, 578. As the running stream will suffer no evil-doer in it, so is 'daz mer so reine, daz ez keine bôsheit mac gelîden,' so clean that it no wickedness can bear, Wiener merfart 392 (see Suppl.).




ENDNOTES:

32. Zellweger's Gesch. von Appenzell, Trogen 1830. 1, 63; who observes, that with the ashes of the fire so engendered they strew the fields, as a protection against vermin. [Back]

33. OHG. pihniutit (excutit), Gl. ker. 251. hnotôt (quassat) 229. hnutten (vibrare) 282; N. has fnotôn (quassare), Ps. 109, 6. Bth. 230; conf. nieten, to bump. ON. still has hnioða [[to rivet, to clench]] in hnoð [[clew]] (tudes, malleus), hnoða [[?]] (depsere), hnuðla [[?]] (subigere). It might be spelt hnôtfiur or hnotfiur (hnutfiur), acc. as the sing. or pl. vowel-form was used. Perhaps we need not even insist on a lost h, but turn to the OHG. niuwan, ON. nûa [[to rub]] (terere, fricare), from which a subst. nôt might be derived by suffix. Nay, we might go the length of supposing that nôt, náuþs, nauðr, need, contained from the first the notion of stress and pressure (conf. Graff 2, 1032. 4, 1125). [Back]

34. Ihre's De superstit. p. 98, and Glossary sub. v. wredeld. Finn. Magn., Tidskr. for nord. oldk. 2, 294, following Westerdahl. Conf. bjäraan, a magic utensil, Chap. XXXIV. [Back]

35. I borrow the description of the process from James Logan's 'The Scottish Gaël, or Celtic manners as preserved among the Highlanders,' Lond. 1831. 2, 64; though here he copies almost verbally from Jamieson's Supplem. to the Scot. Dict. sub v. neidfyre. [Back]

36. Descr. of the Western Islands, p. 113. [Back]

37. From tin, Ir. teine (fire), and egin, Ir. eigin, eigean (vis, violentia); which seems to favour the old etymology of nothfeuer, unless it be simply a translation of the Engl. needfire [which itself may stand for kneadfire]. [Back]

38. Fr. Majer's Mythol. taschenb. 1811, p. 110. [Back]

39. Nec tu aliud Vestam quam vivam intellige flammam, Ov. Fast. 6, 295. [Back]

40. Acc. to the Finnish myth, the fire created by the gods falls on the sea in balls, it is swallowed by a salmon, and men afterwards find it inside the fish when caught. Runes pp. 6-22. [Back]