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CHAPTER XVII.

WIGHTS AND ELVES.

Apart from deified and semi-divine natures there stands a whole order of other beings distinguished mainly by the fact that, while those have issued from men or seek human fellowship, these form a separate community, one might say a kingdom of their own, and are only induced by accident or stress of circumstances to have dealings with men. They have in them some admixture of the superhuman, which approximates them to gods; they have power to hurt man and to help him, at the same time they stand in awe of him, being no match for him in bodily strength. Their figure is much below the stature of man, or else mis-shapen. They almost all have the faculty of making themselves invisible. And here again the females are of a broader and nobler cast, with attributes resembling those of goddesses and wise-women; the male spirits are more distinctly marked off, both from gods and from heroes.2

The two most general designations for them form the title of this chapter; they are what we should call spirits nowadays. But the word spirit (geist, ghost), like the Greek Saíuwv, is too comprehensive; it would include, for instance, the halfgoddesses discussed in the preceding chapter. The Lat. genius would more nearly hit the mark (see Suppl.).

The term wiht seems remarkable in more than one respect, for its variable gender and for the abstract meanings developed from

1 But so have the gods (p. 325), goddesses (p. 268) and wise-women (p. 419). 2 Celtic tradition, which runs particularly rich on this subject, I draw from the following works: Fairy Legends and Traditions of the South of Ireland, by Crofton Croker, Lond. 1825; 2nd ed., parts 1, 2, 3, Lond. 1828. The Fairy Mythology, by Th. Keightley, vols. 1, 2, Lond. 1828. Barzas-Breiz, chants populaires de la Bretagne, par Th. de la Villemarqué, 2e éd., 2 vol., Paris 1840.

3 OHG. keist, AS. gâst, OS. gêst (see root in Gramm. 2, 46); Goth. ahma, OHG. âtum for ahadum, conn. with Goth. aha (mens), ahjan (meminisse, cogitare), as man (homo), manniska, and manni, minni belong to munan, minnen (pp. 59. 344. 433).

VOL. II.

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it. The Gothic vaihts, gen. vaihtáis, is feminine, and Ulphilas hardly ever uses it in a concrete sense; in Luke 1, 1 he translates by it πpâyμa, and much oftener, when combined with a negative, ovdév (Gramm. 3, 8. 734). This, however, does not exclude the possibility of vaihts having at other times denoted to the Goths a spirit regarded as female; and in 1 Thess. 5, 22 the sentence ἀπὸ παντὸς εἴδους πονηροῦ ἀπέχεσθε is rendered: af allamma vaíhtê ubiláizô afhabáiþ izvis, where the Vulg. has: ab omni specie mala abstinete vos; the use of the pl. vaíhteis ubilôs' of itself suggests the notion of spirits. The other Teutonic tongues equally use the word to intensify and make a substantive of the negative, and even let it swallow up at last the proper particle of negation;1 but in all of them it retains its personal meaning too. The OHG. writers waver between the neut. and masc.; the Gothic fem. is unknown to them. Otfried has a neut. wiht, with the collective pl. wihtir, and likewise a neut. pl. wihti, which implies a sing. wihti; thus, armu wihtir, iv. 6, 23; armu wihti, ii. 16, 117; krumbu wihti, iii. 9, 5; meaning 'poor, crooked creatures,' so that wiht (derivable from wîhan facere, creare) seems altogether synonymous with being, creature, person, and can be used of men or spirits: 'in demo mere sint wunderlîchiu wihtir, diu heizent sirenae,' Hoffm. Fundgr. 19, 17. In MHG. sometimes neut.: unreinez wiht, Diut. 1, 13; Athis H. 28; trügehaftez wiht, Barl. 367, 11; vil tumbez wiht, 11, 21; sometimes masc.: boser wiht, Barl. 220, 15; unrehter bosewiht, MS. 2, 147, Geo. 3508; kleiner wiht, Altd. bl. 1, 254; der wiht, Geo. 3513-36; der tumbe wiht, Fragm. 42; and often of indeterminable gender: bose wiht, Trist. 8417; helle wiht, Geo. 3531; but either way as much applicable to men as to spirits. Ghostly wights are the minuti dii' of the Romans (Plaut. Casina, ii. 5, 24). In Mod. Germ. we make wicht masc., and use it slightingly of a pitiful hapless being, fellow, often with a qualifying epithet: 'elender wicht, bösewicht (villain).' If the diminutive form be added, which intensifies the notion of littleness, it can only be used of spirits: wichtlein, wichtelmann; s

1 Aught = â-wiht, any wight or whit; naught = n'â-wiht, no wight, no whit.TRANS.

So: thiu diufilir, iii. 14, 53, by the side of ther diufal, iii. 14, 108.

3 In Hesse wichtelmänner is the expression in vogue, except on the Diemel in Saxon Hesse, where they say 'gute holden.'

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MHG. diu wihtel, MS. 1, 157a; boesez wihtel, Elfenm. cxviii. ; kleinez wihtelîn, Ls. 1, 378, 380, Wolfdietr. 788, 799; OHG. wihtelîn penates; wihtelen vel helbe (i.e. elbe), lemures, dæmones, Gl. Florian. The dernea wihti, occulti genii, in Hel. 31, 20. 92,2 are deceitful demonic beings, as 'thie derno' 164, 19 means the devil himself; lêtha wihti, 76, 15; wrêda wihti 76, 1. In Lower Saxony wicht is said, quite in a good sense, of little children: in the Münster country dat wicht' holds especially of girls, about Osnabrück the sing. wicht only of girls, the pl. wichter of girls and boys; 'innocent wichte' are spoken of in Sastrow, 1, 351. The Mid. Nethl. has a neut. wicht like the H. German: quade wicht, clene wicht (child). Huyd. op St. 3, 6. 370; arem wiht, Reinh. 1027; so the Mod. Dutch wicht, pl. wichteren arm wicht, aardig wicht, in a kindly sense. : The AS. language agrees with the Gothic as to the fem. gender: wiht, gen. wihte, nom. pl. wihta; later wuht, wuhte, wuhta; seo wiht, Cod. Exon. 418, 8. 419, 3. 5. 420, 4. 10. The meaning can be either concrete: yfel wiht (phantasma), leás wiht (diabolus), Cædm. 310, 16; sæwiht (animal marinum), Beda, 1, 1; or entirely abstract = thing, affair. The Engl. wight has the sense of our wicht. The ON. vætt and vættr, which are likewise fem., have preserved in its integrity the notion of a demonic spiritual being (Sam. 145): allar vættir, genii quicunque, Sæm. 93b; hollar vættir, genii benigni, Sæm. 240b; ragvættir or meinvættir, genii noxii, landvættir, genii tutelares, Fornm. sög. 3, 105. Isl. sög. 1, 198, etc. In the Färöes they say: 'feâr tû têar til mainvittis (go to the devil)!' Lyngbye, p. 548. The Danish vette is a female spirit, a wood-nymph, meinvette an evil spirit,

1 Swer weiz und doch niht wizzen wil,
der slæt sich mit sîn selbes hant;
des wîsheit aht ich zeime spil,
daz man diu wihtel hât genannt:
er lât uns schouwen wunders vil,
der ir dâ waltet.

Whoso knows, yet will not know,
Smites himself with his own hand;
His wisdom I value no more than a play
That they call the little wights':
He lets us witness much of wonder,
Who governs them.

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The passage shows that in the 13th cent. there was a kind of puppet-show in which ghostly beings were set before the eyes of spectators. Der ir waltet,' he that wields them, means the showman who puts the figures in motion. A full confirmation in the Wachtelmäre, line 40: rihtet zu mit den snüeren (strings) die tatermanne!' Another passage on the wihtel-spil in Haupt's Zeitschr. 2, 60 : 'spilt mit dem wihtelin ûf dem tisch umb guoten wîn.'

2 Biörn supposes a masc. (fem. ?) meinvættr and a neut. meinvætti; no doubt mein is noxa, malum; nevertheless I call attention to the Zendic mainyus, dæmon, and agramainyus, dæmon malus.

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