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Fairy Tales Fairies Light Novels Blog About![]() Norse-Franko-German Fairies . Notes on Norse and German Water Fairies From: Jacob Grimm’s “Teutonic Mythology” The
people prayed on the river’s bank; at the fountain’s brink
they lighted candles and laid down sacrificial gifts… Above all
was the place honored, where the wondrous element leaps up from lap of
earth; a spring is in our older speech ursprinc, and also prunno. Often
enough the first appearing of a spring is ascribed to divine agency or
a miracle: Wuontan, Balder, Charles the Great, each made the reviving
fountain flow out of earth for his fainting host. Other springs are
charmed out of the rock when struck by a staff or a horse’s hoof;
a saint plants a bough in the ground and the water bubbles up. But
there are two theories even more generally received: that the water of
sacred brooks and rivers is in the first instance poured by gods and
superior beings or of urns; and that springs and wells are guarded by
snakes or dragons lying near them. Water
drawn at a holy season at midnight, before sunrise and in solemn
silence, bore till a recent time the name of heilawc, heilwac,
heilwage… Curious
customs show us in what manner young girls in the Pyrenees country tell
their own fortunes in spring water on May-day morning. Water Sprites Water-sprites exhibit the same double aspect. Wise-women, calkyrs, appear on the waves as swans, they merge
into prophetic merwomen and merminnes. Even Nerthus and dame Holla
bathe in lake or pool, and the way to Holla’s about is through
the well. Water
sprites have many things in common with mountain sprite, but also some
peculiar to themselves. The males, like those of the schrat kind, come
up singly rather than in companies. The water man is commonly
represented as oldish and with a long beard, like the Roman demigod out
of whose urn the river spouts; often he is many headed… In
Danish folk-song the nokke lifts his beard aloft, he wears a green hat,
and when he grins you see his green teeth. He has at times the figure
of a wild boy with shaggy hair or else with yellow curls and a red cap
on his head. The nakki of the fins is said to have iron teeth. The nixe
(fem), like the Romance fay and our own wise-women, is to be seen
sitting in the sun, combing her long hair, or emerging from the waves
the upper half of her body, which is exceedingly beautiful. The lower
part, as with the sirens, is said to consist of a fish-like tail; but
this feature is not essential and mostly likely not truly Teutonic, for
we never hear of a tailed nix, and even the nixe, when she come on
shore among men, is shaped and attired like the daughters of men, being
recognized only by the wet skirt of her dress, and the wet tips of her
apron… Dancing,
song and music are the delight of all water sprites, as they are of
elves. Like the sirens, the nixe by her song draws listening youth to
herself , and then inot the deep. So Hylas was drawn into the water by
nymphs. At evening up come the damsels from the lake to take part in
the human dance, and to visit their lovers. In Sweden they tell of the
stomkarl’s, alluring enchanting strain” the stromkarls-lag
is said to have eleven variations, but to only ten of them may you
dance the eleventh belongs to the night spirit and his band; begin to
play that, and tables and benches, cup and can, gray-beards and
grandmothers, blind and lame, even babes in the cradle would begin to
dance. This melodious stromkarl loves to linger by mills and
waterfalls. Hence his Norwegion name fossegrim…. As a remnant of
heathen sacrifices, that to this demonic being people offered a black
lamb, and were taught music by him in return. The fossegrim too on calm
dark evenings entices men by his music, and instructs the fiddle or
other stringed interment any one who will on a Thursday evening, his
head turned away, offer him a little white he-goat and throw it into a
‘forse’ that falls northwards. If the victim is lean, the
pupil gets no father than the turning of the fiddle; if fat, the
fossegrim clutches hold of the player’s right hand, and guides it
up and down til blood starts out of all his finger-tips, then the pupil
is perfict in his art, and can play so that the trees shall dance and
torrents in their fall stand still. Although
Christianity forbids such offerings, and pronounces the old water
sprites diabolic beings, yet the common people retain a certain awe and
reverence and have not quite given up all faith in their power and influence… But
beside the freewill offering for instruction in his art, the nix also
exacted cruel and compulsory sacrifices, of which the memory is
preserved in nearly all popular tradition. To this day, when people are
drowned in a river, it is common to say: ‘ the river-sprite
demands his yearly victim,’ which is usually ‘an innocent
child.’ This points to actual human sacrfices offered to the
nichus in far-off heathen times. To the nix of the Diemel they throw
bread and fruit once a year. On
the whole there runs through the stories of water sprites a vein of
cruelty and bloodthirstiness, which is not easily found among daemons
of the mountains, woods and homes. The nix not only kills human beings
who fall into his clutches, but wreaks a blody vengeance on his own
folk who have come on shore, mingled with men, and than gone
back…. Notes on German Forest Fairies From Jacob Grimm’s Teutonic Mythology Forests and Sacred Groves Temple…
means also wood. What we figure to ourselves as a built and walled
house, resolves itself, the father back we go into a holy place
untouched by human hand, embowered and shut in by the self-grown trees.
There dwells the deity, veiling his form in rustling foliage of the
boughs; there is the spot where the hunter has to present him the game
he has killed, and the herdsmen his horses and oxen and rams….. I
am not maintaining that this forest-worship exhausts all the
conceptions our ancestors had formed of deity and its dwelling place;
it was only the principle one. Here
and there a god may haunt a mountain-top, a cave of the rock, a river;
but the grand general worship of the people has its seat in the
grove… At
a time when rude beginnings were all there was of the builders art, the
human mind must have been roused to higher devotion by the sight of the
lofty trees under and open sky, than it could feel inside the stunted
structures reared by unskillful hands. When long afterwards the
architecture peculiar to the Teutons reached its perfection, did it not
in its boldest creations still aim at the reproduction of the soaring
trees of the forest? Would not the abortion of miserably carved or
chiseled images lag far behind the form of the god which the youthful
imagination of antiquity pictured to itself, throned on the bowery
summit of the sacred tree? In the sweep and under the shade of primeval
forests the soul of man found itself filled with the nearness of Sovran
deities. The mighty influence that a forest life had from the first on
the whole of our nation, is attested by the
‘march-fellowships’, the word from which they took their
name denoted first a forest, and afterwards a boundary…. Gods
dwell in these groves; no images are mentioned by name as being set up,
no temple walls are reared. But sacred vessels and altars stand in the
forest, heads of animals hang on the boughs of trees. There divine
worship is performed and sacrifice offered, there is the folk-mote and
the assize, everywhere a sacred awe and reminiscence of
antiquity…. Several
districts of lower Saxony and Westphalia have until quite recent times
preserved the vestiges of holy oaks, to which the people paid a half
heathen half Christian homage. Thus in the principality of Minden, on
Easter Sunday, the young people of both sexes used with loud cries of
joy to dance a reigen (rig. circular dance) round an old oak. In a
thicket near the village of Wormeln, Paderborn, stands a holy oak, to
which the inhabitants of Wormeln and Calenberg still make a solemn
procession every year. I see a fruit hanging, That it has hair or bristles; In any holy forest Of Thuringia or of Saxony There could not grow Better fruit on bough (This) assultion is surely to sacrificed animals, or first fruits of the chase, hung up on the trees of a sacred wood?.... And in other poems of the Mid. Ages the sacredness of the ancient forests still exerts an after-influence….. We
have inklings now and again, if not of sacrifices offered to sacred
trees, yet of a lasting indestructible awe, and the fancy that ghostly
beings haunt particular trees. Thus, misfortune like a demon, sat on a
tree It is said of a hollow tree: There are saints in there, That hear all the peoples prayers. To the Old Prussians, Romove was the most sacred spot in the land, and a seat of the gods; there stood their images on a holy oak hung with clothes. No unconsecrated person was allowed to set foot in the forest, no tree to be felled, not a bough to be ignored, not a beast to be slain. There were many such sacred groves in other parts of Prussia and Lithuania Trees There can be no doubt that for some time after the conversion the people continued to light candles and offer small sacrifices under particular holy trees, as even to this day they hang wreaths upon them, and lead the ring dance under them… The Ossetes and Circassians hung the hides of animals on poles in honour of divine beings, the Goths of Jornandes truncis suspendebant exuvias to Mars, that as a gernal thing animals were hung
on sacrificial trees; most likely this tree was also sacred to some god
through sacrifices, i.e. offerings of individuals, hence the whole
place was named ‘ad votum.’ And now only were those trees
held sacred, under which men sacrificed, and on which they hung the
head or hide of the slaughtered beast, but saplings that grew up on the
top of sacrificed animals. A willow slip set over a dead foal or calf
is not to be damaged… Of
the hallowed trees (which are commonly addressed as frau, dame, in the
later mid. Ages) the oak stands at the head: an oak or beech is the
arbor frugifera in casting lots. Next to the oak, the ash was holy, as
we may see by the myth of the creation of man… (Men were created or born from Ash Tree’s in much of European Mythology) A
man in Sudermania was on the point of cutting down a find shady
juniper, when a voice cried out, ‘hew not the juniper’ He
disregarded the warning, and was about to begin again when it cried out
once more ‘I tell the, hew not down the tree!’ and he ran away in fright. The
Greek drayads and hamadrayads have their life linked to a tree, and as
this withers and dies, they themselves fall away and cease to be; any
injury to bough or twig is felt as a wound and a wholesale hewing down
puts and end to them at once. A cry of anguish escapes them when the
cruel axe comes near. When
the alder is hew, it bleeds, weeps, and begins to speak. An Austrian
Marchen tells of a stately fir, in which there sits a fay waited on by
dwarfs, rewarding innocent and plaguing the guilty. Wood-Wives Wish-wives
appear on pools and lakes in the depth of the forest: it is because
they are likewise wood-wives, and under this character they suggest
further reflection. The old sacred forest seems their favorite abode:
as the gods sat throned in the groves, on the trees, the wise-women of
their train and escort would seek the same haunts. Did not the Gothic
aliorunas well in the woodland among the wood-sprites? Was not
Velda’s tower placed on a rock, that is, in the woods? The
Volundarqvioa opens with the words: Meyjar flugo sunnan Myrkvio igognom, Maids
flew from the south through murky wood to the seashore, there they
tarried seven years, till they grew homesick… They could resist
no longer, and returned to the somber wood. Almost all swan-maidens are
met with in the forest. Like norns and valkyrs, they are invited to the house with promise of gifts. On
this point we will consider a passage in Saxo, where he is
un-mistakably speaking of valkyrs, though, as his manner is, he avoids
the vernacular term. In his account of Hother and Balder which
altogether differs so much from that of the Edda… After bestowing their advice on him, the maidens with their house vanish before Hothers eyes…. This
seems no modern distorted view, to imagine the maids of war, that dewlt
in Odin’s heavenly company, that traversed air and flood, as
likewise haunting the woodland cave; therefore Saxo was right to call
them silvestress, and to place their chamber, their cave, in the
forest. The
older stages of our language supply some similar expressions, in which
I recognize the idea of wise wood-wives, not of mere elvish
wood-sprites. They are called wildiu, wip, and the Trad. Fuld,…. In
groves on trees their appeard dominae, matronae, puellae, clothes in
white, distinguishable from the more elvish tree wife or drayad, whos
life is bound up with that of the tree. The Vicentina Germans worship a
wood-wife, chiefly between Christmas and the Twefthday: the women spin
flax from the distaff, and throw it in the fire to propitiate her: she
is every bit like Holda and Berhta. As
three bunches of corn are left standing at harvest-time for Wuotan and
frau Gaue, so to this day in the Frankenwald they leave three handfuls
of flax lying on the field for holzueible (wood-wives) The
little wood-wives come up to wood-cutters and beg for something to eat,
or to take it themselves out of their pots; but whatever they have
taken or borrowed they make it good in some way, not seldom by good
advice. At times they help people with their kitchen work and at
washing but always express great fear of the wild huntsman that pursues
them. ON the Sale they tell you of a bush-grandmother and moss-maidens;
this sounds like a queen of elves, if not the weird lady of the woods.
The little wood-wives are glad to come when people are baking, and ask
them, while they are about it, to bake them a loaf too, as big as half
a millstone and it must be left for them at a specified place; they pay
for it afterwards, or perhaps bring some of their own baking, and lay
it in the furrow for the ploughmen or the plough, being mightily
offended if you refuse it. At other times the wood-wife makes her
appearance with a broken wheelbarrow, and begs you to mend the wheel;
then like Berhta she pays you with fallen chips, which turn into gold;
or if you are knitting, she gives you a ball of thread which you will
never have done unwinding. Every time a man twists the stem of a young
tree till the bark flys off, a wood-wife has to die. When a peasant
women, out of pity gave the breast to a crying wood-child the mother
came and made her a present of the bark in which the child was cradled;
the women broak a splinter off threw it in her load of wood, but when
she got home she found it was of gold. Wood-wives like dwarfs are by no means satisfied with the ways of the modern world… Their maxim (is); No tree ever shell, No dream ever tell, Bake in thy bread no cumin seed, And God will help thee in all they need. A
wood-wife, after tasting some newly-baked bread, ran off to the forest,
screaming loud, They’ve baked me caraway-bread, it will bring
that house great trouble…. Some
wood-mannikins, who had long done good service at a mill, were scared
away by the miller’s men leaving out clothes and shoes for them.
It is as though by accepting clothes, the spirits were afraid of
suddenly breaking off the relation that subsisted between themselves
and mankind. We shall see presently that the home-sprites proper acted on different principles, and even bargained for clothes. In
the Romance fairy-tales an old Roman god has assumed altogether the
nature of a wood-sprite an old Roman god; out of Orcus has been made an
Italian orco, Meapol. Huorco, Fr. Ogre: is is pictured as black, hairy,
bristly, but of great stature rather than small, almost gigantic;
children losing their way in the woods come upon his dwelling, and he
sometimes shews himself good natured and bestows gifts oftener his wife
(orca, ogresse) protects and saves. German House Fairies From: Jacob Grimm’s “Teutonic Mythology” Home-Sprites We
have now considered genii of mountains, of woods and of rivers; it
remains to review the large and variously named group of the friendly
familiar Home sprites. They of all sprites stand nearest to man,
because they come and seek his fellowship, they take their abode under
his very roof or on his premises. Again,
it is a feature to be marked in home sprites, that they are purely
male, never female; there appears a certain absence of sex in their
very idea, and if any female beings approach this goblin kind, it is
former goddesses who have come down in the world…. It
seems they used to carve little home sprites of boxwood and set them up
in the room for fun, as even now wooden nutcrackers and other mere
playthings are cut in the shap of a dwarf or idol; yet the practice may
have to dow with the old heathen worship of small lares, to whom a
place was assigned in the innermost part of the dwelling; in time the
earnest would turn inot sport and even Christian sentiment tolerate the
retention of an old custom. They must also have tied rags and shreds
into dolls, and set them up. The dumb wooden kobold is kept in
countenance by the ‘wooden bishiop’ mentioned immediately
after by the Misnaere…. In the writers of the 17th
century I find the remarkable phrase ‘to laugh like a
kobold,’… you laugh as though you’d empty yourself,
like a kobot,’ This mus either mean to laugh with mouth agape,
like a carved kobold, who may have been so represented, or simply to
laugh loud and heartily. Again, to laugh likes a hampelmann. The
puss-in-boots of the fairy-tale plays exactly the part of a
good-natured helpful kobold; another one is called stiefel, because he
wears a large book; by the boot, I suppose, they are indicated the
gefeite schuhe (fairy shoes) of older legend, with which one could
travel faster on the ground, and perhaps through the air; such are the league boots of fairy tales and the winged shoes of Hermes…. In
stature, appearance and apparel they come very near to elves and
dwarfs; legend loves to give them red hair or a red beard, and the
pointed red hat is rarely missing. The Norwegion Nissen is imagined
small like a child, but strong, clothed in grey, with a read peaky cap,
and carrying a blue light at night. So they can make themselves visible
or invisible to men as they please. Their
fairy shoes or boots have been notices, with these they can go over the
most difficult roads with the greatest speed: it was just over
mountains and forests that Hutchen’s rennpfad extended…
With his walking apparatus and this swiftness there is associated now
and then some animal’s form and name: Heinze Heinzelmann,
polterkater, katermann, boot-cat, squirrel’ there shuffling and
bustling about the house is paralleled by the nightly turbulence of
obstreperous cats. They like to live in the stable barn or cellar of
the person whose society they have chosen, sometimes even in a tree
that stands neat the house. You must not break a bouth off such a tree,
or the offended goblin will make his escape, and all the luck of the
house go with him; moreover, he cannot abide any chopping in the yard
or spinning on a Thursday evening. In household occupations they shew
themselves friendly and furthersome, particularly in the kitchen and
stable. The dwarf king GOldemar is said to live on intemante terms with
Neveling of Hardenberg at the Hardenstein and often shard his bed. He
played charmingly on the harp, and god rid of much money at dice; he
called Neveling brother in law, and often admonished him, he spoke to
every boddy, and made the clergy blush by discovering their secret
sins. His hands were lean like those of a frog, cold and soft to the
grasp; he would allow himself to be felt, but never to be seen. After a
stay of three years he made off without injuring any one…. A
place at the table had to be kept for him, and one in the stable for
his horse; meats, oats and hay were consumed, but of horse or men you
saw nothing but the shadow. Once an inquisitive man having sprinkled
ashes and peas to make him fall and to get sight of his footprints, he
spring upon him as he was lighting the fire, and chopped him up into
pieces, which he stuck on a spirt and roasted, but the head and legs he
thought proper to boil. The dishes, when ready, were carried to
Vollmar’s chamber , and one could hear them being consumed with
cries of joy. After this, no more was heard of king Vollmar; but over
his chamber-door it was found written, that from that time the house
would be as unlucky as it had been prosperous til then, and the
scattered estates would never come together again until their were
three Hardenbergs of Hardenstein living at once. Both spit and gridiron
were long preserved, til in 1651 they disappeard during the Lorrain
war, but the pot is stil there, let into the kitchen wall. The
home-sprites parting prophecy sounds particularly ancient, and the grim
savagery of his wrath is heathen all over. The
goblin then is an obliging hardworking sprite, who takes a pleasure in
waiting on the men and maids at their housework, and secretly
dispatching some of it himself. He curries the hourses, combes out
their manes, lays fodder before the cattle, draws water form the well
and brings it them, and cleans out the stable. For the maids he makes
of fire, rinses out the dishes, cleaves and carries wood, sweeps and
scrubs. His presence brings prosperity to the house, his departure
removes it. He is like the helpful eath manikins who lend a hand in
field labors. At the same time he oversees the management of the house,
that everything be done orderly; lazy and careless workers get into
trouble with him, he pulls the voerleta off the beds of sluggards,
blows their light out, turns the best cow’s neck awry, kicks the
dawdling milkmaid’s pail over and mocks her with insulting
laughter; his good nature turns to worrying love of mischief, eh
becomes a ‘tormenting spirit…. Servants, to keep on good terms with him, save a little potful of their food on purpose for him, which is surely a vestige
of little sacrifices that were offered him of old. That is probably why
one Swiss goblin bears the name Napfhans, Potjack. But in many cases it
is only done on holidays, or once a week. The sprite is easily
satisfied, he puts up with a saucerful of porridge, a piece of cake, a
glass of beer, which are left out for him accordingly; on those
evenings he does not like any noisy work to be going on, either in or
out of doors…. The
Nissen loves the moonlight, and in wintertime you see him merrily
skipping across the farmyard, or skating. He is a good hand at daincing
and music, and much the same is told of him as of the Swedish
stromkarl, that for a grey sheep he teaches people to play the fiddle. The
home-sprite is contented with a trifling wage: a new hat, a red cap, a
parti-coloured coat with tinkling bells he will make shift with. The
hat and cap he has in common with dwarfs, and therefore also the power
to make himself invisible. He
loves to play merry pranks, and when he has accomplished one, he is
fain to laugh himself double for delight: hence that goblin laugher and
chuckling. But also when he sulks and means mischief to those who have
brought him into trouble and difficulty, he utters a scornful laugh at
the top of his voice. As
henchman true, he abides by his master he once takes up with come weal
or woe. But his attatchment is often found irksome, and one cannot be
rid of him again. A farmer set fire to his barn, to burn the goblin
that haunted it; when it is all ablaze, there sites the sprite at the
back of the cart in which they were removing the contents. In
mone’s Anzeiger we read of a little
black man that was bought with a chest, and when this was opened, he
hopped out and slipped behind the oven, whnce all efforts to rout him
out were fruitless; but he lived on excellent terms with the household,
and occasionallty shewed himself to them though never to strangers. There
are also goblins who, like nix and watersprite, are engaged in no
man’s service, but live independently; when such a wone is
caught, he will offer you gifts or or tell your fortune, to be set at
liberty again. The
unfriendly, racketing and tormenting spirits who take possetion of a
house, are distinguished from the friendly and good natured by their
commonly forming a whole gang… Spectres The
Roman expression for peaceful happy spirits of the dead was manes, for
uncanny disquieting apparitions lemurs or larvae; though the
termsfluctuate, for manes can denote spectral beings too and lemres can
have a general meaning. Larva betrays its affinity to lar and the good
kindly lares were often held to be manes or souls of departed
ancestors. So in or German superstition we find instances of souls
becoming home sprites or kobolds, and still oftener there a connexion
between unquiet spirits and specters. Another
class of specters will prove more fruitful for our investigation: they
, like the ingues fatui, include unchristened babes, but instead of
straggling singly on the earth as fires they sweep through the forest
and air in whole companies with a horrible din. This is the widely
spread legend of the furious host, the furious hunt, which is of high
antiquity, and interweaves itself, now with gods, and now tih heros,. |