Chapter 36

Of the Lithuanian Giltine, plague or death-goddess, I should like to know fuller accounts. She massacres without mercy: 'kad tawe Giltine pasmaugtu (plague choke thee)!' is a familiar imprecation (Mielcke sub v. Donaleitis 141). The plague is also named Magila (Sl. mogíla, a grave), or simply diewe (goddess), and they say in cursing 'imma ji Magilos, imma ji diewai!' From Polish Lithuania, Adam Mickiewicz (32) reports as follows on the morowa dziewica, plague-maiden: -------

Kiedy zaraza Litwe ma uderzyc,

jéj przyjscie wieszcza odgadnie zrzenica;

bo jesli sljuszna waidelotom wierzyc,

nieraz na pustych smetarzach i bljoniach

staje widomie morowa dziewica

w bieliznie, z wiankiem agnistym na skroniach,

czoljem przenosi bialjowieskie drzewa

a w reku chustka skrwawiona powiéwa.

Dziewica stapa kroki zljowieszczemi

na siolja, zamki i bogate miasta;

a ile razy krwawe chustka skinie,

tyle palaców zmienia sie w pustynie;

gdzie noga stapi, swiezy grób wyrasta. (33)
Woycicki, 1, 51, calls her Powietrze, which properly means air, vapour (p. 1183), but also plague. Clothed in white, she stalks along on stilts, tells her name to a man she meets, and wants to be carried on his shoulders through all the Russians: amidst the dead and dying he shall go unhurt. Well, he carries her through thorp and town: where she waves her kerchief, everybody dies, and all men flee before them. Arrived at the Pruth, he thought to drown her, and jumped into the river, but up she floated light as a feather, and flew to the woodland, while he sank to the bottom.

In another story 1, 127 she is called Dzuma (Russ. Serv. chuma): while she prevails, the villages stand deserted, the cocks are hoarse and cannot crow, the dogs no longer bark, yet they scent the Plague from afar (p. 666) and growl. A peasant saw her, in white garb and waving hair, clear a high fence and run up a ladder, to escape the howling dogs: he hurries up to the ladder and pushes it over, so that the Plague fell among the dogs; then she disappeared, still threatening vengeance.

Sometimes the Dzuma rides through the wood in a waggon, attended by owls and uhus (great horned owl): this ghostly procession is named Homen, Woyc. 1, 130-3. 159-163. But the Plague could only last till New-year's day; then those who have fled troop back to their homes, taking care however not to walk in through the door, but to climb in at the window.

A tale narrated by a Wendish peasant, Joh. Parum Schulze, (34) falls somewhere in the middle of the 17^th century: So it came to pass, that a man, as I have always heard tell, that was Niebuhr by name, where now Kuffalen dwell, that was afterward Luchau, as he rideth home from town, there comes a man alongside, and begs that he may ride a little in the cart, for that he was right weary. This Hans Niebuhr asks him in Wendish, as that tongue was then commonly used, 'whence, and whither away?' and takes him up on the cart. At first he will not declare himself, but this Niebuhr, being somewhat drunken, begins to question more sharply. Then he declared himself, saying, 'I will to thy village with thee, where I have not yet been; for I am der Pest (m.)' Then did Niebuhr intreat for his life, and the Plague gave him this lesson, that he should leave him in the cart outside the village, and strip naked and having no clothing at all on his body, but (going home,) take his pot-hook, and coming out before his house, run all round his homestead with the sun, and then bury it under the doorstep: 'if one but carry me not in' quoth the Pest, 'in the smell that hangs about the clothes.' Now this Niebuhr leaves him in the cart a good piece from the village, for it was night; takes the pot-hanger, runs naked out of the village and all round it, then sticks the iron under the bridge, which iron I myself saw in the year 1690 when the bridge was mended, but nigh eaten away with rust. When this Niebuhr came back for his horse and cart, quoth the Plague: 'had I known this, I had not declared myself to thee, this device whereby thou hast locked me out of the whole village.' When they were come up to the village, Niebuhr takes his horses out of the cart, and leaves him sitting thereon. Neither was any sickness from pestilence perceived in that village; but in all the villages around the plague did mightily rage.

So far Schulze's homely narrative. Removing the pot-hook off the hearth seems to stand for leaving the house open: from a deserted house death has nothing to take. As the retiring house-holder symbolically 'lets down the haal on the hearth,' the new one on taking possession must 'tuck it up' again. (35) Running round the house or village resembles that carrying of the ram round the city, and the undressing agrees with the Roman custom.

Then, as the Plague is slow of foot, she gets herself driven into the village in a cart, or lugged in pickaback, like homesprites and will o' wisps that jump on men's shoulders, pp. 512-3. 916.

Swedish stories make the Plague enter a village from the south, and stand still before the first homestead, looking like a pretty little boy with a rasp or grater (rifva) in his hand, and rasping with it. When he did that, there still remained one or two alive in a house, as the grater could not take everything along with it. But when he got to the next village, there came after him the Plague-damsel (pestflicka), she swept with a broom outside the gate, then all in the village died. But she was very seldom seen, and never except at daybreak (Afzelius 4, 179).

In Vestergötland they had decreed a human sacrifice to stay the 'digerdöd,' and two beggar children having just then come in, were to be buried alive in the ground. They soon dug the pit open, gave the hungry children cake spread with lard, and made them sit down in the pit: while they ate, the people shovelled up the earth. 'Oh,' cried the younger child, when the first spadeful was thrown over it, 'here's some dirt fallen on my bread and lard.' A mound was quickly thrown up over them, and nothing more was heard of them (Afz. 4, 181). Compare the walling up of children in the foundation of a new building, p. 1142, and the offering of a young heifer in the holy fire during cattle-plague, p. 608.

In Norway the Pesta is imagined as a pale old woman who travelled about the country with a grater (rive, a toothed instrument for tearing up sods or hay and corn) and a broom (lime): when she used the grater, some few got off with their lives, but where the besom came into play, there perished every born soul. A man having rowed her over a piece of water, and demanding his fare, she said, 'you'll find your quittance on the bench at home;' and no sooner was he home, than he sickened and died. She often appears in red clothing, and whoever beholds her falls into a great fear (Faye p. 135).

The Servians say their Kuga is a real woman, who goes wrapt in a white veil: many have seen her so, and some have carried her. She came to one man in the field, or met him on the road, and said, 'I am the Kuga, carry me to such a place!' He took her up pickaback, and without any trouble carried her whither she would. The Kugas (plagues) have a country of their own by the sea, but God sends them when people do wickedly and sin much. While the plague rages they never call her kuga, but kuma (cummer, gossip), to make her friendly. And during that time they dare not leave any vessels unwashed at night, for she will pass through the kitchen, and if she spy any such, will scour and polish all the spoons and dishes (which detains her in the house); at times she even makes away with the bacon out of the loft, Wtb. sub v. Kuga; and new ed. of Serv. songs 1, 149 note.

Here again she comes out in the fashion of ancient goddesses, Holda and Berhta, who cannot abide disorder in the house, pp. 268. 274.

Among the Slovèns, cattle-plague (kuga) is a spotted calf that kills sheep and oxen by its cry (Murko p. 74).

The devil is reported to have said, there was but one cure for the kuga, that was mattock and hoe, meaning burial (Vuk sub v. metil).

A Finnic song (Schröter 60) adjures the Plague to take herself away to steely mountains in the gloomy North: saddle-horse and carriage-horse shall be given her for the journey. She is called rutto, the sudden, like our MHG. gâhe tôt.

In L. Germany they have folktales about the Heidmann (heath man) who peeps in at your window at night: any one he looks at then, must die within year and day; just so does Berhta look in at the window (p. 274), so does Death (p. 772). In Tyrol too they tell of a ghost that goes about at the time of one's death: whatever window he looks into, people die in that house, DS. no. 266.

In the Lausitz Smertnitsa in white array prowls about the villages: to whatever house she directs her step, a corpse will soon be there. In the house itself she announces her presence by thumping and turning the boards up. Convulsions in the dying are signs that Smertnitsa is getting the better of them, Laus. mon. schr. 1797. p. 756.

There cannot be the slightest doubt left, that all these various personifications of the plague are to be viewed as effluences of superior divinities of antiquity, whose might, merciful and awful, they display by turns. Veiled in white they stride along, like Berhta, and like the mother that walks in the corn at noon. Plague-maiden and fate-maiden meet and touch, morowa dziewica with Marena, Morena (p. 771), the harmful goddess with the healing pitying Eir (see Suppl.).




Notes: