Chapter 16

Of such stories there are plenty; but nowhere in Romance or German folk-tales do we meet, as far as I know, the the Norse conception of twining and fastening the cord, or the Greek one of spinning and cutting the thread of life. Only one poet of the Mid. Ages, Marner, has it 2, 173b:

zwô schepfer flâhten mir ein seil,

dâ bi diu dritte saz (the third sat by);

diu zerbrachz (broke it): daz was mîn unheil. (26)

But this seems borrowed from the Roman view of breaking off the thread (rumpat, p. 406, note). Ottokar makes the schepfeu (creating) impart all succes in good or evil. The 'banun festan' in Hild. lied is hardly to be explained by the fastening of a thread of death.

If we compare the Norse mythus with the Greek, each has taken shape in its own independent way. In Homer it is the personified Aisa (27) that spins the thread for the newborn:

assa oi Aisa geinomenw epenhse ginw, ote min teke mhthr. Il. 20, 127; 'what things Aisa span for him at birth with her thread'. But in Od. 7, 197 other spinners (two) are associated with her:

assa oi Aisa Kataklwqej te bareiai geinomenw nhsanto linw, ote min teke mhthr 'what Aisa and the Kataklothes unkind span'. Hesiod (asp. 258) makes three goddesses stand beside the combatants, Klwqw, Lacesij, Atropoj, the last small of stature, but eldest and most exalted of all. But in Theog. 218 he names them as

Klwqw te Lacesin te kai Atropon, aite brotoisin geinomenoisi didousin ecein argaqon te kakon te
       'who give to mortals at birth to have both good and ill;' and in almost the same words at 905. The most detailed description is given by Plato (De republ. 617 Steph. 508 Bekk.): The three moirai are daughters of Anagkh (necessity), on whose knees the spindle (atraktoj) turns; they sit clothed in white and garlanded, singing the destiny, Lachesis ta gegonota, Klotho ta onta, Atropos ta mellonta: just the same relation to past, present and future as the norns have, though the Greek proper names do not themselves express it. Klwqw (formed like Auxw, Qallw, Lhtw, Mormw, Gorgw), spins (from klwdw spin, twine), Lachesis allots (from lacein), Atropoj, the unturnable, cuts the thread. It must not be overlooked, that Hesoid sets up the last, Atropos, as the mightiest, while with us Wurt the eldest produces the most powerful impression. Latin writers distribute the offices of the parcae somewhat differently, as Apuleius (De mundo p. 280): Clotho praesentis temporis habet curam, quia quod torquetur in digits, momenti praesentis indicat spatia; Atropos praeteriti fatum est, quia quod in fuso perfectum est, praeteriti temporis habet speciem; Lachesis futuri, quod etiam illis quae futura sunt finem suum deus dederit (see Suppl.). Isidore's opinion was quoted on p. 405. (28) The Nornagestssaga bears a striking resemblance to that of Meleager, at whose birth three moirai tell his future: Atropos destines him to live only till the billet then burning on the hearth be burnt out; his mother Althaea plucks it out of the fire. (29) Our modern tales here exchange the norns or fates for death, Kinderm. no. 44. Another tale, that of the three spinners (no. 14), depicts them as ugly old women, who come to help, but no longer to predict; they desire to be bidden to the marriage and to be called cousins. Elsewhere three old women foretold, but do not spin. (30) A folk-tale (Deutsche sagen no. 9) introduces two maidens spinning in a cave of the mountain, and under their table is the Evil one (I suppose the third norn) chained up; again we are told of the roof-beam on which a spinning wife sits at midnight. (31) We must not forget the AS. term which describes a norn as weaving, 'Wyrd gewâf' (p. 406); and when it is said in Beow. 1386: 'ac him Dryhten forgeaf wîgspêda gewiofu' (ei Dominus largitus est successuum bellicorum texturas), this is quite heathen phraseology, only putting God in the place of Wyrd. Gottfried (Trist. 4698), in describing Blicker of Steinach's purity of mind, expresses himself thus:

iche wæne, daz in feinen

ze wunder haben gespunnen

und haben in in ir brunnen

geliutert und gereinet;

'I ween that fays spun him as a wonder, and cleansed him in their fountain'.

Saxo Gram. p. 102 uses the Latin words parca, nympha, but unmistakably he is describing norns: 'Mos erat antiquis, super futuris liberorum eventibus parcarum oracula consultare. Quo ritu Fridlevus Olavi filii fortunam exploraturus, nuncupatis solenniter votis, deorum aedes precabundus accedit, ubi introspecto sacello (32) ternas sedes totidem nymphis occupari cognoscit. Quarum prima indulgentioris animi liberalem puero formam, uberemque humani favoris copiam erogabat. Eidem secunda beneficii loco liberalitatis excellantiam condonavit. Tertia vero, protervioris ingenii invidentiorisque studii femina, sororum indulgentiorem aspernata consensum, ideoque earum donis officere cupiens, futuris pueri moribus parsimoniae crimen affixit.' Here they are called sisters, which I have found nowhere else in ON. authorities; and the third nymph is again the illnatured one, who lessens the boons of the first two. The only difference is, that the norns do not come to the infant, but the father seeks out their dwelling, their temple (see Suppl.). (33)

The weaving of the norns and the spindle of the fays give us to recognise domestic motherly divinities; and we have already remarked, that their appearing suddenly, their haunting of wells and springs accord with the notions of antiquity about frau Holda, Berhta and the like goddessses, who devote themselves to spinning, and bestow boons on babes and children. (34) Among Celts especially, the fatae seem apt to run into that sense of matres and matronae, (35) which among the Teutons we find attaching more to divine than to semi-divine beings. In this respect the fays have something higher in them than our idises and norns, who in lieu of it stand out more warlike.

Yet, as the fatae are closely bound up with fatum---the pronouncing of destiny, vaticination---the kinship of the fays to the norns asserts itself all the same. Now there was no sort of destiny that stirred the spirit of antiquity more strongly than the issue of battles and wars: it is significant, that the same urlac, urlouc expresses both fatum and bellum also (Graff 2, 96. Gramm. 2, 790), and the idisî forward or hinder the fight. This their office we have to look into more narrowly.

From Caesar (De B. Gall. 1, 50) we already learn the practice of the Germani, 'ut matresfamilias eorum sortibus et vaticinationibus declararent, utrum proelium committi ex usu esset, necne'. Mistresses of families practised augury, perhaps women selected for the purpose, of superior and godlike repute like Veleda.

Let us bear in mind, which gods chiefly concerned themselves with the event of a battle: Oðinn and Freyja draw to themselves all those who fall in fight, and Oðinn admits them to his heavenly abode (pp. 133, 305). This hope, of becoming after death members of the divine community, pervades the religion of the heathen. Now the ON. valr [[the slain]], AS. wl, OHG. wal, denotes the carnage of the battle-field, the sum of the slain: to take possession of this val, to gather it in, was denominated kiosa, kiesen, to choose; this verb seems a general technical term for the acceptance of any sacrifice made to a higher being. (36) But Oðinn, who has the siges kür (choosing of victory, p. 133, note), is served in Valhöll by maidens, and then he sends out into every beattle, to choose the slain, Sn. 39; 'kiosa er liðnir ero,' Sæm. 164b; vildi þik kiosa, Sæm. 254ª.

Hence such a maiden, half divine, is called valkyrja; and it is another most welcome coincidence, that the AS. language has retained the very same term wlcyrie (wælcyrge, wælcyrre) to English such Latin words as bellona, erinnys, Alecto, Tisiphone, and employs it even for parca and venefica. The Cott. MS. Vitell. A. 15 has a gloss 'wælcyrigean eágan, gorgoneus': this is translating the Greek idea into an AS. one; did the eyes of the wælcyrigean instil horror like the Gorgons' heads? I am quite safe in assuming an OHG. walachuriâ (walachurrâ); valakusjô would be the Gothic form. At the end of the Langobardian genealogy we find a man's name Walcausus. (37)




ENDNOTES:

the third cuts oaten straw.

bhüet mer Gott mis chindli au!

God keep my childie too!

Schnätzeln is, I suppose, to wind? [snast = wick? snood? In the märchen of the Goose-

maid, schnatzen is apparently to comb]. The seventh line sometimes runs: di dritte

schneidt den faden (cuts the thread). Conf. Vonbun p. 66. Firmenich 2, 665b.

Mannhardt pp. 388. 392. The nursery-song in the Wunderhorn p. 70-1 has three spinning

tocken, i.e., nymphs, fays. (back)

35. Lersch in the Bonn Annual 1843, pp. 124-7.  (back)

36. Chief passage, Sæm. 141ª. Conf. Gramm. 4, 608, and AS. wîg curon, Cædm. 193, 9; MHG. sige kiesen, Iw. 7969, sig erkiesen, Wh. 355, 15. So, den tôt kiesen.  (back)

37. Of valr, wal itself we might seek the root in velja, valjan (eligere), so that it should from the first have contained the notion of choosing, but being applied to strages, and its sense getting blurred, it had to be helped out by a second verb of the same meaning. Our Tit. 105, 4 has a striking juxtaposition: 'Sigûn din sigehaft ûf dem wal, da man welt magede kiusche und ir süeze'. It is only in Dietr. 91b and Rab. 536. 635. 811. 850. 923 that welrecke occurs; can it have any relationship to walküre?  (back)