the heathen imagination, like the promise of the Messiah to the Jews.1 The world's destruction and its renewal succeed each other in rotation; and the interpenetration of the notions of time and space, world and creation, with which I started, has been proved. Further, as the time-phenomena of the day and the year were conceived of as persons, so were the space-phenomena of the world and its end (Halja, Hades, Surtr). 6 1 Martin Hammerich om Ragnaroks-mythen, Copenh. 1836, argues plausibly that the twilight of the gods and the new kingdom of heaven are the expression of a spiritual monotheism opposed, though as yet imperfectly, to the prevailing Odinic paganism. But then there are renovated gods brought on the scene â gimli' too, though fewer than in Asgard, and there is nothing to shew their subordination to the mighty One. Still less do I think the author entitled to name this new god fimbultŷr, a term that in the whole of the Edda occurs but once (Sæm. 9b), and then seems to refer to Oðinn. Others have ventured to identify the word fimbul- (which like the prefix irman-, heightens the meaning of a word, as in fimbulfambi, fimbulþulr, fimbulvetr, fimbullioð, as well as fimbultŷr) with the AS. fifel (p. 239); to this also I cannot assent, as fifill itself occurs in ON., and is cited by Biörn as the name of a plant. CHAPTER XXVI. SOULS. Languages treat the living life-giving soul as a delicate feminine essence: Goth. sáivala, akin to sáivs the sea, an undulating fluid force, OHG. sêola, sêla, MHG. séle, NHG. seele, AS. sáwl, ON. sâl, Swed. Dan. själ, and hence Finn. sielu; Gr. Yvxý; Lat. Ital. anima, Fr. âme, O. Fr. sometimes arme, Span. alma; Russ. Serv. dusha, Slov. duzha, Boh. duše, Pol. dusza, Lith. duszia, Lett. dwehsele. They all distinguish it from the masc. breath and spirit, äveμos, which goes in and out more palpably; often the two names are next door to each other, as Lat. animus and anima, Slav. dukh and dusha.1 And this intimate connexion may be recognised in the myths too. The soul freed from the fetters of the body is made to resemble those airy spirit forms of chap. XVII (conf. pp. 439. 630). It hovers with the same buoyancy, appears and vanishes, often it assumes some definite shape in which it is condemned to linger for a time (see Suppl.). It is a graceful fancy which makes the departing soul either break into blossom as a flower, or fly up as a bird. Both these notions are connected with metamorphosis into plants and animals in general, and are founded on the doctrine of metempsychosis so prevalent in early antiquity. Immortality was admitted in this sense, that the soul still existed, but had to put up with a new body. Its passing into a flower I can only infer. A child carries home a bud, which the angel had given him in the wood; when the rose blooms, the child is dead (Kinder-leg. no. 3). In Rhesas dainos p. 307, a rosebud is the soul of the dead youth. The Lay of Runzifal makes a blackthorn shoot up out of the bodies of slain heathens, a white flower by the heads of fallen christians, Karl Where soul stands for life, vitality, a neuter word is used, OHG. ferah, MHG. verch, AS. feorh, ON. fiör; but we saw (p. 793), how from vita and Bios there arose the sum total of all that lives, the world, Goth, faírhvus. 118. When the innocent are put to death, white lilies grow out of their graves, three lilies on that of a maiden (Uhland's Volksl. 241), which no one but her lover may pluck; from the mounds of buried lovers flowering shrubs spring up, whose branches intertwine. In Swedish songs lilies and limes grow out of graves, Sv. vis. 1, 101. 118. In the ballad of 'fair Margaret and sweet William': Out of her brest there sprang a rose, And out of his a briar ; They grew till they grew unto the church-top, In Tristan and Isote I believe it to be a later alteration, that the rose and vine, which twine together, over their graves, have first to be planted. In a Servian folksong there grows out of the youth's body a green fir (zelén bor, m.), out of the maiden's a red rose (rumena ruzhitsa, f.), Vuk 1, no. 137, so that the sex is kept up even in the plants: 2 the rose twines round the fir, as the silk round the nosegay. All these examples treat the flower as a mere symbol, or as an after-product of the dead man's intrinsic character: the rose coming up resembles the ascending spirit of the child; the body must first lie buried, before the earth sends up a new growth as out of a seed, conf. chap. XXXVII. But originally there might lie at the bottom of this the idea of an immediate instantaneous passage of the soul into the shape of a flower, for out of mere drops of blood, containing but a small part of the life, a flower is made to spring: the soul has her seat in the blood, and as that ebbs away, she escapes with it. Greek fables tell us how the bodies of the persecuted and slain, especially women, assumed forthwith the figure of a flower, a bush, a tree (p. 653), without leaving any matter behind to decay or be burnt; nay, life and even speech may last while the transformation is taking place. Thus Daphne and Syrinx, when they cannot elude the pursuit of Apollo or Pan, change themselves into a laurel and a reed; the nymph undergoing transformation speaks on so long as the encrusting bark has not crept up to 1 Percy 3, 123; variant in Rob. Jamieson 1, 33-4. 2 Therefore der rebe (vine) belongs to Tristan's grave, diu rôse to Isote's, as in Eilhart and the chap-book; Ulrich and Heinrich made the plants change places. her mouth. Vintler tells us, the wege-warte (OHG. wegawartâ, wegapreitâ), plantago, was once a woman, who by the wayside waited (wartete) for her lover; he suggests no reason for the transformation, conf. Kinderm. no. 160 (see Suppl.). In the same way popular imagination, childlike, pictures the soul as a bird, which comes flying out of the dying person's mouth. That is why old tombstones often have doves carved on them, and these the christian faith brings into still closer proximity to spirit.1 A ship founders: the people on shore observe the souls of those who have sunk ascending from the wave toward heaven in the shape of white doves. The Romance legend of the tortured Eulalia says: 'in figure de colomb volat a ciel.' As a bird the little brother, when killed, flies out of the juniper-tree (machandelbom, Kinderm. 47). To the enigma of the green tree and the dry, each with a little bird sitting on it, the interpretation is added: 'ir séle zen vogelen sî gezalt!' their (the christians') soul be numbered among birds, MS. 2, 248. In the underworld there fly scorched birds who were souls (sviðnir fuglar er sâlir voro), like swarms of flies, Sæm. 127. The heathen Bohemians thought the soul came out of the dying lips as a bird, and hovered among the trees, not knowing where to go till the body was buried; then it found rest. Finns and Lithuanians call the Milkyway the path of birds (p. 357n.), i.e. of souls. The Arabs till the time of Mahomet believed that the blood of a murdered man turns into an accusing bird, that flits about the grave till vengeance be taken for the dead. According to a Polish folk-tale every member of the Herburt family turns into an eagle as soon as he dies. The first-born daughters of the house of Pileck were changed into doves if they died unmarried, but the married ones into owls, and to each member of the family they foretold his death by their bite (Woycicki's Klechdy 1, 16). When the robber Madej was confessing under an appletree, and getting quit of his sins, apple after apple flew up into the air, converted into a white dove: they were the souls of those he had murdered. One apple still remained, the 1 Servati Lupi vita S. Wigberhti, cap. 11: Verum hora exitus ejus circumstantibus fratribus, visa est avis quaedam specie pulcherrima supra ejus corpusculum ter advolasse, nusquamque postea comparuisse. Not so much the soul itself, as a spirit who escorts it. 2 Maerlant 2, 217, from a Latin source. THE SOUL A BIRD. MEADOW. 829 soul of his father, whose murder he had suppressed; when at length he owned that heinous crime, the last apple changed into a gray dove, and flew after the rest (ibid. 1, 180). This agrees with the unresting birds of the Boh. legend. In a Podolian folksong, on the grave-mound there shoots up a little oak, and on it sits a snow-white dove (ibid. 1, 209).1 Instances of transformation into birds were given above, (pp. 673-6. 680), under woodpecker and cuckoo. Greek mythology has plenty of others (see Suppl.). The popular opinion of Greece also regarded the soul as a winged being (ψυχὴ πνεῦμα καὶ ζωύφιον πτηνόν says Hesychius), not bird, but butterfly, which is even more apt, for the insect is developed out of the chrysalis, as the soul is out of the body; hence vxý is also the word for butterfly. A Roman epitaph found in Spain has the words: M. Porcius M. haeredibus mando etiam cinere ut meo volitet ebrius papilio.3 In Basque, 'arima' is soul (couf. arme, alma, p. 826), and 'astoaren arima' (ass's soul) butterfly. We shall come across these butterflies again as will o' the wisps (ziebold, vezha), and in the Chap. on Witches as elvish beings (see Suppl.). When men are in a trance, or asleep, the soul runs out of them in the shape of a snake, weasel or mouse (chap. XXXIV and Suppl.). Of will o' the wisps a subsequent chapter will treat; synonymous with them I find wiesenhüpfer, wiesenhüpferin, meadowhopper, e.g. in the Mägdelob (printed 1688) p. 46; its explanation, from their dancing on marshy meadows, is right enough, but perhaps too limited. Hans Sachs is not thinking of ignes fatui, when he more than once employs the set phrase: ́mit im schirmen, dass die seel in dem gras umbhupfen,' fence with him till their souls hop about in the grass iii. 3, 13a. iv. 3, 28a. ́und schmitz ihn in ein fiderling, dass sein seel muss im gras umbhupfen' iv. 3, 51; he simply means that the soul flies out of him, he dies. Therefore the same superstition again, that the soul of the dying flutters (as bird or butterfly) in the meadow, i.e. the 1 Na téj mogile wyrósł ci dąbeczek, 2 ψυχὴ δ ̓ ἐκ σώματος ἔπτη, few out of the body, Batrach. 207. ψυχὴ δὲ μελέων ἐξέπτη 211. ἐκ μελέων θυμὸς πτάτο, ΙΙ. 23, 880. 3 First in Ambr. de Morales's Antiguidades de las ciudades de España, Alcala 1575, fol. 31b; thence in Gruter, and in Spon's Miscell. erud. antiq. p. 8. |