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442 WIGHTS AND ELVES.
Thiele 3, 98. The Swedish tongue, in addition to vdtt (genius)
and a synonymous neut. vdttr, has a wikt formed after the German,
Hire, 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
phenomena
on the other, agrees with some other
of language. We also address little children as
1
thing/ and the child in the marchen (No. 105)
cries to the
lizard : ding, eat the crumbs too ! Wicht, ding, wint, teufel,
valant (Gratnm. 3, 734. 736) all help to clinch a denial. 0. French
males clioses, mali genii, Ren. 30085. Mid. Latin lonce res = boni
genii, Vine. Bellov. iii. 3, 27 (see Suppl.).
We at once perceive a more decided colouring in the OHG.
and MHG. alp (genius), AS. celf, ON. dlfr ; a Goth, albs may
safely be conjectured. Together with this masc., the OHG.
may also have had a neut. alp, pi. elpir, as we know the MHG.
had a pi. elber ; and from the MHG. dat. fern, elbe (MS. 1, 50 b
)
we must certainly infer a nom. diu elbe, OHG. alpia, elpia, Goth.
alii, gen. albjos, for otherwise such a derivative could not occur.
Formed by a still commoner suffix, there was no doubt an OHG.
elpinna, MHG. ellinne, the form selected by Albrecht of Halber-
stadt, and still appearing in his poem as remodelled by Wikram; 1
AS. el fen, gen. elfenne. Of the nom. pi. masc. I can only feel
sure in the ON., where it is alfar, and would imply a Goth,
albos, OHG. alpa, MHG. albe, AS. selfas ; on the other hand an
OHG. elpi (Goth, albeis) is suggested by the MHG. pi. elbe
b
(Amgb. 2 , unless this comes from the fern, elbe above) and by
2
the AS. pi. ylfe, gen. pi. ylfa (Beow. 223). The Engl. forms
1 Wikram 1, 9. 6, 9 (ed. 1631, p. ll a 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 elbiimen und /den.
I can make nothing of freien but at best a very daring allusion to Frigg and
Frea (p. 301) and froie = ; fraulein, as the weasel is called in Keiuh. clxxii., can
have nothing to say here.
2
Taking AS. y [as a modified a, ce, 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, pi. iilve, which seems
to mean much the same as alp, and may be akin to an AS. : ylf von den iilven
entbunden werden, MS. 1, 81; iilflieit ein suht ob alien siihten, MS. 2, 135 a ;
der stc/i iilfet in der jugent, Helbl. 2, 426 and conf. the ; dip 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.