TEUTONIC MYTHOLOGY BY JACOB GRIMM. TRANSLATED FROM THE FOURTH EDITION. WITH NOTES AND APPENDIX BY JAMES STEVEN STALLYBRASS. VOL. II. LONDON: GEORGE BELL & SONS, YORK STREET, COVENT GARDEN. 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.1 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. 439 B |