Untitled - Centrostudirpinia.it

440 WIGHTS AND ELVES.
it. The Gothic vaihts, gen. vaihtdis, is feminine, and Ulphilas
hardly ever uses it in a concrete sense ; in Luke 1, 1 he translates
by it Trpay/jia, and much oftener, when combined with a negative,
ovSev (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
OLTTO TravTos etSov? Trovrjpov aTre^ecrOe is rendered : af allamma
vaihte ubilaizo afhabai)? izvis, where the Vulg. has : ab omni
specie mala abstinete vos ; the use of the pi. vaihteis ubilos 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 ; but in all of them it retains its personal meaning
too. The OHG. writers waver between the neut. and masc. ; the
Gothic fern, is unknown to them. Otfried has a neut. wiht, with
the collective pi. wihtir,* and likewise a neut. pi. 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 wihan facere, creare)
seems altogether synonymous with being, creature, person, and
can be used of men or spirits : in demo mere sint wunderlichiu
wihtir, diu heizent sireri&e/ Hoffm. Fundgr. 19, 17. In MHG.
sometimes neut. : unreinez wiht, Diut. 1, 13 ; Athis H. 28 ;
triigehaftez wiht, Barl. 367, 11; vil tumbez wiht, 11, 21; some
times masc.: bceser wiht, Barl. 220, 15; unrehter loesewiht, MS.
2, 147% Geo. 3508; kleiner wiht, Altd. bl. 1, 254; der wiht,
Geo. 3513-36; der tumbe wiht, Fragm. 42 a
; and often of in
determinable gender: boese 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:
f
elender wicht, bosewicht (villain)/
If the diminutive form be added, which intensifies the notion of
littleness, it can only be used of spirits : wichtlein, wichtelmann ;
1
Aught = a-wiht, any wight or whit ; naught = n a-wiht, no wight, no whit.
-LRANS.
So : thin diufilir, iii. 14, 53, by the side of ther diufal, iii. 14, 108.
In Hesse wichtelmanner is the expression in vogue except on the Diemel in
Saxon Hesse, where they say gute holden.
3