Chapter 34

In Hessian witch-trials of the 16^th cent., the usual, nay the only term for bewitching is derren, prop. nocere; as even OHG. tarôn acquired, beside nocere, the meanings fraudare, officere, illudere (see Suppl.).

A part of the diviner's craft consisted in casting and interpreting lots. Like the Lat. sortilegium and sortilegus (M. Lat. sortiarius, whence Fr. sorcier), our old German words hliozan (Graff 4, 1122), MHG. liezen (augurari, Diut. 3, 107-8. Er. 8123), and hliozari, liezœre (augur, divinator) are applicable to sorcery. Then from the customary phrase 'mittere, jactare sortem' seems to have been borrowed the expression zouber werfen, to throw a spell, Wolfd. 515. 520. 533, jeter un sort, 'maleficium super jactare,' Lex. Sal. 22, 4; zouber legen, to lay a spell, Walth. 115, 32. 116, 23-5. The Swed. tjusa to conjure is, I think, for kjusa, ON. kiôsa, choose, spy (Gramm. 4, 848), pick, eligere sortem; but also the 'vala,' the wise woman and enchantress, is one that 'wales' or chooses, a valkyrja.

One species of divination was performed with the drinking-cup (Genesis 44, 5). From the Lat. caucus (for scyphus) are supposed to have sprung cauculator, Capitul. an. 789, §63 capit. 1, 62. 6, 373, and coclearius, ib. §18 capit. 5, 69, and from these the OHG. coucalari scenicus, magicus, Gl. Mons. 377, gougulari, O. iv. 16, 33, koukelari, Georgsl. 25, goucaltuom magia, Gl. Mons. 375, goukel praestigium, N. ps. 65, 3; MHG. gougel gougelœre, Walth. 37, 34, our gaukel, juggle; ON. kukl praestigium, kuklari magus; M. Nethl. cokelere hariolus, Diut. 2, 217a. Others derive gaukler from joculator, and one thing that seems to be in its favour is the mild meaning, of mere sleight-of-hand, which still clings to gauklerei (jugglery), i.e. harmless tricks performed by way of game and recreation; conf. gougel-bühse (-box), Walth. 38, 6. Renn. 2244. gougelstok (-stick), Martina 9a. gougel-fuore (-cart), MsH. 3, 166a. 186a. gougelspil (-play) 438a. goukel-hüetlîn (-cap), Renn. 16719, conf. Walth. 37, 34. So the Nethl. guichelen, gochelen, goghelen, guichelaar: 'gokelt onder den hoet,' Ferg. 2772; the form guichelen is very like wichelen (p. 1033), and there actually occurs an AS. hweolere, hweohlere (suggesting hweohl, kukloj, rota) as another way of spelling wigelere, so that one might really conjecture an O. Frankish chuigalari, and from it get cauculator, were not everything else against it. I will just mention also the Boh. kauzlo magic, kauzliti to conjure, Pol. gusla magic, guslarz conjurer; this g form we might be tempted to refer to the Serv. gusle, Russ. gusli, psaltery, as the bewitching instrument, but that the Pol. gesle, Boh. hausle, does not agree (see Suppl.).

The various ways of naming magic have led us to the notions of doing, sacrificing, (14) spying, soothsaying, singing, sign-making (secret writing), bewildering, dazzling, cooking, healing, casting lots.

They show that it was practised by men as well as women. Yet even our earliest antiquities impute it preeminently to women. More influential, more expert than the zouparari, wigelere, spâmaðr, galdramaðr, appears the zoupararâ, wicce, wikkerske, kalstararâ, galdrakona, spâkona; and to these must be added some appellations hardly applicable to any but female witchery.

For the reason of this I look to all the circumstances external and internal. To woman, not to man, was assigned the culling and concocting of powerful remedies, as well as the cooking of food. Her lithe soft hand could best prepare the salve, weave the lint and dress the wound; the art of writing and reading is in the Mid. Ages ascribed chiefly to women. The restless lives of men were filled up with war, hunting, agriculture and handicrafts; to women experience and convenient leisure lent every qualification for secret sorcery. Woman's imagination is warmer and more susceptible, and at all times an inner sacred power of divination was revered in her (pp. 95. 397). Wmen were priestesses, prophetesses (56n. 94-8), their names and fame are embalmed alike in Old-German and Norse tradition; and the faculty of somnambulism still shows itself most of all in women. Then again, looked at from one side, the art of magic must have been chiefly monopolized by old women, who, dead to love and labour, fixed all their thoughts and endeavours on hidden science. (15) Snorri in his curious account of the origin of magic (Yngl. s. cap. 7) says, that to males (karlmönnum) it seemed undignified to dabble in a doubtful art, so they taught it the goddesses or priestesses, for gyðjur can mean either. According to differences of national sentiment, the norns and völvas (p. 403), the valkyrs and swan-maids approximate to divine beings or sorceresses. On all this put together, on a mixture of natural, legendary and imagined facts, rest the medieval notions about witchcraft. Fancy, tradition, knowledge of drugs, poverty and idleness turned women into witches, and the last three causes also shepherds into wizards (see Suppl.).

To the Latin words saga, (16) strix, striga, (17) venefica, lamia, furia answers our hexe, by which is meant sometimes an old, sometimes a young woman, and a beauty can be complimented by being called a perfect witch. The OHG. form of the word is hazus (pron. hatsus), hazusa, hazasa, Graff 4, 1091; hazzuso (eumenidum), Diut. 2, 350a, is gen. pl. of hazus, hazes 2, 346a; hezesusun (furiis) 2, 337b apparently a corruption of hegezusun? The Gl. Flor. 21 give hegezisse, and that the genuine form in full was hagazus or hagazusa (p. 1045n.) we are assured by the AS. hœgtesse, M. Nethl. hagetisse, Diut. 2, 229b, haghedisse, Hor. Belg. 1, 119: the contraction of the first two syll. (as in tâlanc for taga-lank) speaks for its age and frequent use; we must therefore prefer the spelling hâzus with long a, and in N. Cap. 105 it does seem to be hâzessa, Wackern. lb. 153, 36 in spite of Graff's hazessa. Rarely do we find a MHG. hegxse, hexse, Martina 90c. 106b, hecse, Oberl. bîhteb. 46; the Swiss say hagsch haagsch, Stald. 2, 10; at Ulm, says Schmid's schwäb. id. 156, they call a stingy old woman hekkäs, only another way of writing hexe. But as the AS., beside hœgtesse, has also hœgesse, Engl. hag, MHG. hächel, Ls. 2, 638, Swiss häggele (conf. sträggele), the suffixed letters seem to have added little to the simple root hag. The ON. adj. hagr means dexter, artificiosus, and might have had the full sense of sagus: our hexe is a deep sly woman. Still the ON. never does use a masc. noun hagr or a fem. hög in such a way; and the Swed. hexa, Dan. hex, in their very spelling betray their Mod. German extraction. For hexen, to bewitch, Up. German dialects furnish hechsnen, which agrees with an O. Fris. verb hexna (Richth. 159, 25, one MS. has hoxna); the Dalecarlian is hågsa, hugsa (hoax, hocus?). Down to the 16-17^th cent., instead of the rare MHG. forms given above, the preference was given to unholde (which properly means she-devil, p. 266), as diu unholde in Martina 170c. 172c, occasionally backed by a masc. unholdœre; in Keisersberg and Sachs unholde is still the usual word, not till the 17-18^th cent. did hexe become general instead of it. Here and there the people use a masc. hex for conjurer; in Swabia der hengst (Schmid 273), in Switz. haagg, hagg, hak for cheat, juggler; even the OHG. hâzus strio (masc. to stria? hardly for histrio?) might mean a male. Many have been caught by the obvious resemblance of the Gr. Hecate, Ekath, but the letters agree too closely, contrary to the laws of change, and the Mid. Ages would surely have had an unaspirated Ecate handed down to them; no Ecate or Hecate appears in M. Lat. or Romance writings in the sense of witch, and how should the word have spread through all German lands? About the M. Nethl. haghedisse, strix, there is this to be said, that the Mod. Nethl. eghdisse, egdisse, haagdisse is lacerta, our eidechse, OHG. egidehsa, AS. âðexe: the lizard does seem to have played a part in magic, and witch-trials actually speak of witches giving birth to a lizard instead of the traditional elf, Märk. forsch. 1, 260 (see Suppl.). In the Span. hechicero, -ra I see again only an accidental likeness (p. 1032 n.); the Span. bruxa, South Fr. bruesche, means a baneful nightbird, but, like strix, it has passed into the sense of witch. Drut, drude is often found as an equivalent for witch, though strictly it denotes the tormenting oppressive nightmare; out of what heathen being this drut arose, was shown on p. 423, it was so easy for elvish sprites of the olden time to be afterwards mixt up with human sorceresses; in the same way bilwiz, belewitte (p. 473) will now and then occur in witch-affairs.

Another set of names, presented to us in the ON. remains, merits particular attention: here we see the notion of magic women stand next door to that of giantesses. Tröll is the general term including at once beings of the elf or giant brood and those of magic kind (p. 526), yet so that at first the giant character predominates, and afterwards the diabolic. Tröllahâls, tröllaskögr, tröllatûnga occur in the Landnâmabôk; tröllskapr may be taken to mean, first first the iötunmôðr p. 530, secondly our witchcraft and magic. But while scarcely any mention is made of a tröllmaðr, there is plenty about the tröllkona, and names for a giantess like flagð, skass, skessa (p. 526) are applied without scruple to witches. Snorri 210 gives a long string of names, some hard to interpret, which will be a task to the student for some time to come. Others, archaic and poetically conceived, are told by one who is a tröllkona to Bragi, who meets her at eventide, Sn. 175. The copiousness of this nomenclature implies the great antiquity of magic in the North, and its deep-rooted oneness with the systems of magic all over Europe: the most significant of these names I shall take up and explain in the course of discussion.

On such etymological groundwork, of the more general terms that come under question, may now follow an examination of the subject itself.

And this time I will commence with Scandinavian sorcery, whose more antiquated and to my thinking unadulterated character proves above all things that the leading part in it was taken by women, not men.

It is true the Edda classifies magicians as völur, vitkar and seiðberendr, Sæm. 118a, of whom only the first are female, the other two male; nay, all three are traced up to Viðôlfr, Vilmeiðr and Svarthöfði, alleged inventors of magic, about whom there is nothing conclusive to be said. Svart-höfði, Blackhead, may come of the black art, and black as the fiendish colour in general (p. 993). Vilmeiðr, compounded of vil (favor, beneplacitum) and meiðr (arbor), ought rather to claim kinship with the pleasing art of poesy (p. 901). Viðôlfr would seem to be the 'Vitolfus medendi peritus' mentioned in Saxo Gram. 122. To me however the frist named, the völur, seem to throw the rest into the shade: that poetic dialogue with Bragi gives the witch a vilsinn völu (better perh. vilsinni, acc. vilsinna), i.e. a friend and comrade of the vala. Vitkar, vîtkar, are the OHG. wîzagon, soothsayers, vates, which supports my interpretation of Vilmeiðr. Seiðr has no right to be monopolized by men: we saw above (p. 1036), and shall soon make out more exactly, that it pertains to women too, that seiðkonor show themselves no less than seiðberendr. Both must have been forthcoming in great numbers in some districts: in Harald hârf. saga cap. 36, king Eirîkr causes his brother Rögnvald and 80 seiðmenn to be burnt. The vala or völva is a prophetess, priestess, norn, a most holy being of the olden time (pp. 97. 408), and at the same time a seiðkona. Even of the Eddic vala it is said: 'seið hon kunni,' Sæm. 4b. Such magic women are Heiðr, Hamglöm, Skuld, etc., all originally air-riding valkyrs (p. 421); in Sæm. 154b völvu, skass, valkyrja stand side by side. Weighty evidence shall be brought by and by of their wanderings in the wood at even and by night. They roam through the country with their retinue (með sitt lið), are reverently invited in by men, entertained, and called upon to say sooth. This they do, sitting on a four-legged stool, the seiðhiallr. The performance is called efla seið (fixing, instituting magic), Fornald. sög. 2, 72. 3, 318; setja seið 1, 97; 'seiðrinn verðr erfiðr,' is wrought 1, 12; fœra â hiallinn is to conduct to the stool 2, 72. The later sagas evidently throw in contemptible features. In the company of Skuld, says Fornald. sög. 1, 97, might be seen elves, norns and other such fry (âlfar ok nornir ok annat ill-þýði). Heiðr may still come riding with 15 youths and 15 maids (2, 165. 506), but Oddr sets little store by her, addresses her as 'allra kellînga örmust,' poorest (wretchedest) of old women 168. 508. So when the Fornm. 3, 212 mentions these vagrants, who tell people's fortunes, the same word is used 214: 'völvan arma,' miserable witch, like 'usle havfrue' in the Dan. folksong (DV. 1, 110). (18) King Frôði wished to get a prophecy out of the völva Heiðr, Fornald. sög. 1, 10: 'giörði hann þâ gilda veizlu î môti henni, ok setti hana â seiðhiall einn hâan ............... ok svara mer sem skiotast, seiðkona!' When she falters, and will not say all, he threatens to use force: 'þik skal pîna til sagna' (11. 12). (19) It is worth noting, that the seiðr is performed at night, when men are asleep, by the völvas, who sally out with their company: 'menn fôru at sofa, en völva fôr til nâttfars seiðs með sitt lið' 2, 166; and the parallel passage 2, 507 says: 'gekk hun þâ ût með liði sînu, er aðrir gengu til svefns, ok efldi seið.' Ketill was roused at night by a great uproar in the wood, he ran out and saw a sorceress with streaming hair (sâ tröllkonu, ok fêll fax â herðar henni); being questioned, she begged him not to balk her, she was bound for a magic mote, to which were coming Skelking king of sprites from Dumbshaf, Ofôti (unfoot) from Ofôtansfirð, Thorgerðr Hörgatröll and other mighty ghosts from the northland (ek skal till tröllaþîngs, þar kemr Skelkîngr, norðan or Dumbshafi, konûngr trölla, ok Ofôti ur Ofôtansfirði, Thôrgerðr Hörgatröll ok aðrar stôr-vættir norðan ur landi), Fornm. sög. 1, 131, conf. 3, 222. The riding out by night to do magic was called sitja ûti (Biörn 2, 251a explains it: sub dio nocturnis incantationibus operam dare); the Norw. Laws name these jaunts ûti-setor to wake up the magic-working sprites: 'spâfarar allar oc ûtisetor at vekja tröll upp, oc fremja með þvî heidni,' Gulath. p. 137. Of the objects of Scand. sorcery I will give a specimen or two. Fees were given to sorceresses, to raise up storms: 'sendu eptir seiðkonum, tveimr, Heiði ok Hamglöm, ok gâfu þaim fê til, at þœr sendi veðr .............. þær efldu seiðinn, ok fœrðust â hiallinn með göldrum ok giörnîngum,' Fornald. sög. 2, 72. Magic made men proof against weapons, invulnerable: 'var seidt at Haraldi, at hann skyldi eigi bîta iarn,' iron should not bite him 1, 374. 'þeir lêtu seiða at Ögmundi, svâ at hann skyldi engi iarn bîta atkvæðalaus' 2, 241.




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