elves); and these Snorri evidently takes to be the same as dvergar, for his dvergar dwell in Svartålfaheim, (Sn. 34. 130. 136). This is, for one thing, at variance with the separation of âlfar and dvergar in the lays, and more particularly with the difference implied between döckálfar and dvergar in Sæm. 92b 188. That language of poetry, which everywhere else imparts such precise information about the old faith, I am not inclined to set aside here as vague and general. Nor, in connexion with this, ought we to overlook the nâir, the deadly pale or dead ghosts named by the side of the dvergar, Sæm. 926, though again among the dvergar themselves occur the proper names Nâr and Nâinn.

Some have seen, in this antithesis of light and black elves, the same Dualism that other mythologies set up between spirits good and bad, friendly and hostile, heavenly and hellish, between angels of light and of darkness. But ought we not rather to assume three kinds of Norse genii, liosálfar, döckâlfar, svartâlfar? No doubt I am thereby pronouncing Snorri's statement fallacious: 'döckâlfar eru svartari en bik (pitch).' Döckr 2 seems to me not so much downright black, as dim, dingy; not niger, but obscurus, fuscus, aquilus. In ON. the adj. iarpr, AS. eorp, fuscus, seems to be used of dwarfs, Haupt's Zeitschr. 3, 152; and the female name Irpa (p. 98) is akin to it. In that case the identity of dwarfs and black elves would hold good, and at the same time the Old Eddic distinction between dwarfs and dark elves be justified.

Such a Trilogy still wants decisive proof; but some facts can be brought in support of it. Pomeranian legend, to begin with, seems positively to divide subterraneans into white, brown, and black; 3 s elsewhere popular belief contents itself with picturing dwarfs in gray clothing, in gray or brown cap-of-darkness; Scotch tradition in particular has its brownies, spirits of brown hue, i.e. döckâlfar rather than svartâlfar (see Suppl.). But here I have yet another name to bring in, which, as applied to such spirits, is not in extensive use. I have not met with it outside

1 Thorlac. spec. 7, p. 160, gives the liosâlfar another name hvîtâlfar (white elves); I have not found the word in the old writings.

2 Conf. OHG. tunchal, MHG. tunkel (our dunkel), Nethl. donker.

3 E. M. Arndt's Märchen und Jugenderinnerungen, Berl. 1818, p. 159. In Phil. von Steinau's Volkssagen, Zeitz 1838, pp. 291-3, the same traditions are given, but only white and black (not brown) dwarfs are distinguished.

of the Vogtland and a part of East Thuringia. There the small elvish beings that travel especially in the train of Berchta, are called the heimchen (supra, p. 276); and the name is considered finer and nobler than querx or erdmännchen (Börner p. 52). It is hardly to be explained by any resemblance to chirping crickets, which are also called heimchen, OHG. heimili (Graff 4, 953); still less by heim (domus), for these wights are not home-sprites (domestici); besides, the correct spelling seems to be heinchen (Variscia 2, 101), so that one may connect it with Friend Hein,' the name for death, and the Low Sax. heinenkleed (winding-sheet, Strodtmann p. 84).1 This notion of departed spirits, who appear in the 'furious host' in the retinue of former gods, and continue to lead a life of their own, may go to support those nair of the Edda; the pale hue may belong to them, and the gray, brown, black to the coarser but otherwise similar dwarfs. Such is my conjecture. In a hero-lay founded on thoroughly German legend, that of Morolt, there appear precisely three troops of spirits, who take charge of the fallen in battle and of their souls: a white, a pale, and a black troop (p. 28), which is explained to mean 'angels, kinsmen of the combatants coming up from hades, and devils.' No such warlike part is ever played by the Norse âlfar, not they, but the valkyrs have to do with battles; but the traditions may long have become tangled together, and the offices confounded. The liosâlfar and svartâlfar are in themselves sufficiently like the christian angels and devils; the pale troop uz der helle' are the döckálfar that dwell niðri î iörðu,' nay, the very same that in the Alvîsmâl are not expressly named, but designated by the words 'î heljo.' Or I can put it in this way: liosâlfar live in heaven, döckâlfar (and nâir?) in hel, the heathen hades, svartâlfar in Svartalfaheim, which is never used in the same sense as hel (see Suppl.). The dusky elves are souls of dead men, as the younger poet supposed, or are we to separate döckâlfar and nâir? Both have their abode in the realms of hades, as the light ones have in those of heaven. Of no other elves has the Edda so much to tell as of the black,

1 'Heinenkleed is not conn. with Friend Hein, but means a hünenkleed (ch. XVIII.); conf. also the hünnerskes, and perhaps the haunken, or aunken in the Westph. sgönaunken.'-Extr. from SUPPL.

2 The different races of elves contending for a corpse (Ir. Elfenm. 68).

who have more dealings with mankind; svartâlfar are named in abundance, liosâlfar and döckâlfar but fitfully.

One thing we must not let go: the identity of svartálfar and dvergar.

Dvergr, Goth. dvaírgs? AS. dweorg, OHG. tuerc, MHG. tverc, our zwerg,1 answer to the Lat. nanus, Gr. vávvos (dwarf, puppet), Ital. nano, Span. enano, Portug. anão, Prov. nan, nant, Fr. nain, Mid. Nethl. also naen, Ferg. 2243-46-53-82. 3146-50, and nane, 3086-97; or Gr. Tuyμaîos. Beside the masc. forms just given, OHG. and MHG. frequently use the neut. form gituerc, getwerc, Nib. 98, 1. 335, 3. MS. 2, 15. Wigal. 6080. 6591. Trist. 14242. 14515. daz wilde getwerc, Ecke 81. 82. Wh. 57, 25. Getwere is used as a masc. in Eilhart 2881-7. Altd. bl. 1, 253-6-8; der twerk in Hoffm. fundgr. 237. Can Ocoupyós (performing miraculous deeds, what the MHG. would call wunderære) have anything to do with it? As to meaning, the dwarfs resemble the Idæan Dactyls of the ancients, the Cabeiri and Táтaikot: all or most of the dvergar in the Edda are cunning smiths (Sn. 34. 48. 130. 354). This seems the simplest explanation of their black sooty appearance, like that of the cyclopes. Their forges are placed in caves and mountains: Svartalfaheimr must therefore lie in a mountainous region, not in the abyss of hell. And our German folk-tales everywhere speak of the dwarfs as forging in the mountains: 'von golde wirkent si diu spæehen were' says the Wartburg War of the getwerc Sinnels in Palakers, whereas elves and elfins have rather the business of weaving attributed to them. Thus, while dwarfs border on the smith-heroes and smithgods (Wielant, Vulcan), the functions of elves approach those of fays and good-wives (see Suppl.).o

If there be any truth in this view of the matter, one can easily conceive how it might get altered and confused in the popular belief of a later time, when the new christian notions of angel and devil had been introduced. At bottom all elves, even the light ones, have some devil-like qualities, e.g. their loving to

1 In Lausitz and E. Thuringia_querx, in Thüringerwald querlich. Jac. von Königshofen, p. 89, has querch. In Lower Saxony sometimes twârm, for twarg.

2 In Bretagne the korr, pl. korred answers to our elf, the korrigan to our elfin; and she too is described like a fay: she sits by the fountain, combing her hair, and whoever catches her doing so, must marry her at once, or die in three days (Villemarqué 1, 17). The Welsh cawr means a giant.

teaze men; but they are not therefore devils, not even the black ones, but often good-natured beings. It appears even that to these black elves in particular, i.e. mountain spirits, who in various ways came into contact with man, a distinct reverence was paid, a species of worship, traces of which lasted down to recent times. The clearest evidence of this is found in the Kormakssaga pp. 216-8. The hill of the elves, like the altar of a god, is to be reddened with the blood of a slaughtered bull, and of the animal's flesh a feast prepared for the elves: Hôll einn er heðan skamt î brott, er álfar búa í (cave that elves dwell in); grâðûng þann, er Kormakr drap (bull that K. slew), skaltû fâ, ok riôða blôð grâðûngsins â hôlinn ûtan, en gera âlfum veizlu (make the elves a feast) af slâtrinu, ok mun þer batna.' An actual alfablôt. With this I connect the superstitious custom of cooking food for angels, and setting it for them (Superst. no. 896). So there is a table covered and a pot of food placed for home-smiths and kobolds (Deut. sagen, no. 37. 38. 71); meat and drink for domina Abundia (supra, p. 286); money or bread deposited in the caves of subterraneans, in going past (Neocorus 1, 262. 560).1 There are plants named after elves as well as after gods: alpranke, alpfranke, alfsranke, alpkraut (lonicera periclymen., solanum dulcam.), otherwise called geissblatt, in Denmark troldbär, in Sweden trullbär; dweorges dwosle, pulegium (Lye), Mone's authorities spell dwostle, 322a; dvergeriis, acc. to Molbech's Dial. Lex. p. 86, the spartium scoparium. A latrina was called âlfrek, lit. genios fugans, Eyrb. saga, cap. 4 (see Suppl.).

Whereas man grows but slowly, not attaining his full stature till after his fifteenth year, and then living seventy years, and a giant can be as old as the hills; the dwarf is already grown up in the third year of his life, and a greybeard in the seventh ; the Elf-king is commonly described as old and white-bearded.

2

1 The Old Pruss. and Lith. parstuk (thumbkin) also has food placed for him, conf. Lasicz 54. The Lett. behrstuhki is said to mean a child's doll, Bergm. 145. 2 Emp. Ludwig the Bavarian (1347) writes contemptuously to Markgraf Carl of Moravia: Recollige, quia nondum venit hora, ut pigmei de Judea (1. India) statura cubica evolantes fortitudine gnauica (1. gnanica, i.e. nanica) terras gygantium detrahere debeant in ruinas, et ut pigmei, id est homines bicubitales, qui in anno tercio crescunt ad perfectam quantitatem et in septimo anno senescunt et moriuntur, imperent gygantibus.' Pelzel's Carl IV. 1 urk. p. 40. Conf. Böhmer's Font. 1, 227. 2, 570. Yet this description does not look to me quite German; the more the dwarfs are regarded as elves, there is accorded to them, and especially to elfins (as to the Greek oreads), a higher and semi-divine age; conf. the stories of changelings quoted further on. Laurîn, acc. to the poems, was more than 400 years old.

Accounts of the creation of dwarfs will be presented in chap. XIX.; but they only seem to refer to the earthly form of the black elves, not of the light.

The leading features of elvish nature seem to be the following :

Man's body holds a medium between those of the giant and the elf; an elf comes as much short of human size as a giant towers above it. All elves are imagined as small and tiny, but the light ones as well-formed and symmetrical, the black as ugly and misshapen. The former are radiant with exquisite beauty, and wear shining garments: the AS. alfsciene, Cadm. 109, 23. 165, 11, sheen as an elf, bright as angels, the ON. frið sem álfkona,' fair as elfin, express the height of female loveliness. In Rudlieb xvii. 27 a dwarf, on being caught, calls his wife out of the cave, she immediately appears, 'parva, nimis pulchra, sed et auro vesteque compta.' Fornald. sög. 1, 387 has: þat er kunnigt î öllum fornum frâsögnum um þat fôlk, er álfar hêtu, at þat var miklu friðara enn önnur mankind.' The Engl. elves are slender and puny: Falstaff (1 Henry IV. i. 4) calls Prince Henry you starveling, you elfskin!' The dwarf adds to his repulsive hue an ill-shaped body, a humped back, and coarse clothing; when elves and dwarfs came to be mixed up together, the graceful figure of the one was transferred to the other, yet sometimes the dwarfs expressly retain the black or grey complexion: 'svart i synen,' p. 457; a little black mannikin,' Kinderm. no. 92; 'grey mannikin,' Büsching's Wöch. nachr. 1, 98. Their very height is occasionally specified: now they attain the stature of a four years' child, now they appear a great deal smaller, to be measured by the span or thumb: kûme drier spannen lanc, gar eislich getân,' Elfenm. cxvi.; two spans high, Deut. sag. no. 42; a little wight, 'reht als ein dûmelle lanc,' a thumb long, Altd. bl. 2, 151; 'ein kleinez weglin (l. wihtlîn)

1 In Denmark popular belief pictures the ellekone as young and captivating to look at in front, but hollow at the back like a kneading-trough (Thiele 1, 118); which reminds one of Dame Werlt in MHG. poems.

2 Whether the OHG. pusilin is said of a dwarf as Graff supposes (3, 352; conf. Swed. pyssling), or merely of a child, like the Lat. pusus, pusio, is a question. The Mid. Age gave to its angels these small dimensions of elves and dwarfs: Ein iegelich engel schînet alsô gestalter als ein kint in jâren vieren (years 4) in der jugende,' Tit. 5895 (Hahn); 'junclîche gemalet als ein kint daz dâ vünf jâr (5 year) alt ist,' Berth. 184. Laurîn is taken for the angel Michael; Elberich (Otnit, Ettm. 24) and Antilois (Ulr. Alex.) are compared to a child of four.