it. The Gothic vaihts, gen. vaíhtáis, 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 afhabáip izvis, where the Vulg. has ab omni specie mala abstinete vos; the use of the pl. vaihteis 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,2 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.: bæser wiht, Barl. 220, 15; unrehter bosewiht, MS. 2, 147a, 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 ; 3 1 Aught = â-wiht, any wight or whit; naught = n'â-wiht, no wight, no whit.— TRANS. 2 So: thiu diufilir, iii. 14, 53, by the side of ther diufal, iii. 14, 108. In Hesse wichtelmänner is the expression in vogue, except on the Diemel in Saxon Hesse, where they say 'gute holden.' MHG. diu wihtel,1 MS. 1, 157a; bosez wihtel, Elfenm. cxviii. ; kleinez wihtelin, Ls. 1, 378, 380, Wolfdietr. 788, 799; OHG. wihtelin 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. 145a): 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, 2 1 Swer weiz und doch niht wizzen wil, Whoso knows, yet will not know, 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 wihtelîn 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. Thiele 3, 98. The Swedish tongue, in addition to vätt (genius) and a synonymous neut. vättr, has a wikt formed after the German, Ihre, p. 1075. Neither is the abstract sense wanting in any of these dialects. This transition of the meaning of wight into that of thing on the one hand, and of devil on the other, agrees with some other phenomena of language. We also address little children as 'thing,' and the child in the märchen (No. 105) cries to the lizard: 'ding, eat the crumbs too!' Wicht, ding, wint, teufel, vâlant (Gramm. 3, 734. 736) all help to clinch a denial. O. French males choses, mali genii, Ren. 30085. Mid. Latin bonæ res = boni genii, Vinc. Bellov. iii. 3, 27 (see Suppl.). We at once perceive a more decided colouring in the OHG. and MHG. alp (genius), AS. œlf, ON. álfr ; a Goth. albs may safely be conjectured. Together with this masc., the OHG. may also have had a neut. alp, pl. elpir, as we know the MHG. had a pl. elber; and from the MHG. dat. fem. elbe (MS. 1, 50b) we must certainly infer a nom. diu elbe, OHG. alpia, elpia, Goth. albi, gen. albjôs, for otherwise such a derivative could not occur. Formed by a still commoner suffix, there was no doubt an OHG. elpinna, MHG. elbinne, the form selected by Albrecht of Halberstadt, and still appearing in his poem as remodelled by Wikram;1 AS. elfen, gen. elfenne. Of the nom. pl. masc. I can only feel sure in the ON., where it is álfar, and would imply a Goth. albôs, OHG. alpâ, MHG. albe, AS. ælfas; on the other hand an OHG. elpi (Goth. albeis) is suggested by the MHG. pl. elbe (Amgb. 2b, unless this comes from the fem. elbe above) and by the AS. pl. ylfe, gen. pl. ylfa (Beow. 223). The Engl. forms 1 Wikram 1, 9. 6,9 (ed. 1631, p. 11a 199b). The first passage, in all the editions I have compared (ed. 1545, p. 3a), has a faulty reading: auch viel ewinnen und freyen,' rhyming with 'zweyen.' Albrecht surely wrote vil elbinnen und feien.' I can make nothing of freien' but at best a very daring allusion to Frigg and Frea (p. 301); and 'froie' fräulein, as the weasel is called in Reinh. clxxii., can have nothing to say here. = 6 2 Taking AS. y [as a modified a, a, ea,] as in yldra, ylfet, yrfe, OHG. eldiro, elpiz, erpi. At the same time, as y can also be a modified o (orf, yrfe pecus), or a modified u (wulf, wylfen), I will not pass over a MHG. ulf, pl. ülve, which seems to mean much the same as alp, and may be akin to an AS. ylf: von den ülven entbunden werden,' MS. 1, 81a; ülfheit ein suht ob allen sühten,' MS. 2, 135a; der sich ülfet in der jugent,' Helbl. 2, 426; and conf. the ölp quoted from H. Sachs. Shakspeare occasionally couples elves and goblins with similar beings called ouphes (Nares sub v.). It speaks for the identity of the two forms, that one Swedish folk-song (Arwidsson 2, 278) has Ulfver where another (2, 276) has Elfver. elf, elves, the Swed. elf, pl. masc. elfvar (fem. elfvor), the Dan. elv, pl. elve, are quite in rule; the Dan. compounds ellefolk, ellekoner, elleskudt, ellevild have undergone assimilation. With us the word alp still survives in the sense of night-hag, night-mare, in addition to which our writers of the last century introduced the Engl. elf, a form untrue to our dialect; before that, we find everywhere the correct pl. elbe or elben.1 H. Sachs uses ölp: 'du ölp! du dölp!' (i. 5, 5253), and ölperisch (iv. 3, 95o); conf. ölpern and ölpetrütsch, alberdrütsch, drelpetrütsch (Schm. 1, 48); elpentrötsch and tölpentrötsch, trilpentrisch (Schmid's Swab. dict. 162); and in Hersfeld, hilpentrisch. The words mean an awkward silly fellow, one whom the elves have been at, and the same thing is expressed by the simple elbisch, Fundgr. 365. In Gloss. Jun. 340 we read elvesce wehte, elvish wights. On the nature of Elves I resort for advice to the ON. authorities, before all others. It has been remarked already (p. 25), that the Elder Edda several times couples æsir and álfar together, as though they were a compendium of all higher beings, and that the AS. és and ylfe stand together in exactly the same way. This apparently concedes more of divinity to elves than to men. Sometimes there come in, as a third member, the vanir (Sæm. 83), a race distinct from the æsir, but admitted to certain relations with them by marriage and by covenants. The Hrafnagaldr opens with the words: Alföðr orkar (works), âlfar skilja, vanir vita," Sæm. 88a; Allfather, i.e. the âs, has power, âlfar have skill (understanding), and vanir knowledge. The Alvîsmâl enumerates the dissimilar names given to heavenly bodies, elements and plants by various languages (supra, p. 332); in doing so, it mentions æsir, âlfar, vanir, and in addition also goð, menn, ginregin, iötnar, dvergar and denizens of hel (hades). Here the most remarkable point for us is, that âlfar and dvergar (dwarfs) are two different things. The same distinction is made between álfar and dvergar, Sæm. 8b; between dvergar and döckâlfar, Sæm. 92b; between three kinds of norns, the âs-kungar, âlf-kungar and dætr Dvalins, Sæm. 188a, namely, those descended from âses, from elves and from dwarfs; and our MHG. poets, as we see by Wikram's Albrecht, 6, 9, continued to separate elbe 1 Besold. sub v. elbe; Ettner's Hebamme, p. 910, alpen or elben. from getwerc. Some kinship however seems to exist between them, if only because among proper names of dwarfs we find an Alfr and a Vindálfr, Sæm. 2. 3. Loki, elsewhere called an âs, and reckoned among âses, but really of iötun origin, is nevertheless addressed as álfr, Sæm. 110b; nay, Völundr, a godlike hero, is called 'álfa lioði,' alforum socius, and 'vîsi álfa,' alforum princeps, Sæm. 135a, b. I explain this not historically (by a Finnish descent), but mythically: German legend likewise makes Wielant king Elberich's companion and fellow smith in Mount Gloggensachsen (otherwise Göugelsahs, Caucasus ?). Thus we see the word álfr shrink and stretch by turns. Now what is the true meaning of the word albs, alp = genius? One is tempted indeed to compare the Lat. albus, which according to Festus the Sabines called alpus; aλpós (vitiligo, leprosy) agrees still better with the law of consonant-change. Probably then albs meant first of all a light-coloured, white, good spirit, so that, when álfar and dvergar are contrasted, the one signifies the white spirits, the other the black. This exactly agrees with the great beauty and brightness of âlfar. But the two classes of creatures getting, as we shall see, a good deal mixed up and confounded, recourse was had to composition, and the elves proper were named liosálfar.3 The above-named döckâlfur (genii obscuri) require a counterpart, which is not found in the Eddic songs, but it is in Snorri's prose. He says, p. 21: 'In Alfheim dwells the nation of the liosálfar (light elves), down in the earth dwell the döckálfar (dark elves), the two unlike one another in their look and their powers, liosálfar brighter than the sun, döckálfar blacker than pitch.' The liosálfar occupy the third space of heaven, Sn. 22. Another name which never occurs in the lays, and which at first sight seems synonymous with döckâlfar, is svartálfar (black elv . 1 In Norway popular belief keeps alfer and dverge apart, Faye p. 49. 2 The word appears in the name of the snowclad mountains (alpes, see Suppl.), and that of the clear river (Albis, Elbe), while the ON. elf elfa, Swed. elf, Dan. fluvius, is still merely appellative; the ghostly elvish swan (OHG. alpiz, MHG. elbez, AS. ælfet, ON. alpt, p. 429) can be explained both by its colour and its watery abode; likewise the Slav. labud, lebed, from Labe. = 3 Vanir also may contain the notion of white, bright; consider the ON. vænn (pulcher), the Ir. ban (albus), ben, bean (femina), Lat. Venus, Goth. qinô, AS. cwen. To this add, that the Ir. banshi, ban-sighe denotes an elvish being usually regarded as female, a fay. The same is expressed by sia, sighe alone, which is said to mean properly the twilight, the hour of spirits (see Suppl.). |