Untitled - Centrostudirpinia.it

ELVES. 443
elf, elves, the Swed. elf, pi. masc. elfvar (fern, elfvor), the Dan.
elv, pi. elve, are quite in rule ; the Dan. compounds ellefolk, elle-
~koner, 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 pi. elbe or elben. 1 H. Sachs uses :
dip
< du ! dip du ! dolp (i. 5, 525 b
), and olperisch (iv. 3, 95 C
) ; conf.
olpern and olpetriltscJi, alberdriitsch, drelpetriitsch (Schm. 1, 48) ;
elpentrotsch and tolpentrotsch, trilpentrisch (Schmidts Swab. diet.
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 elbisclt, Fundgr. 365. In Gloss. Jun.
340 we read elvesce wehte, elvish wights.
On the nature of Elves I resort for advice to the ON. authori
ties, before all others. It has been remarked already (p. 25),
that the Elder Edda several times couples cesir and dlfar together,
as though they were a compendium of all higher beings, and
that the AS. es 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 (Saem.
83 b
), a race distinct from the sesir, but admitted to certain
relations with them by marriage and by covenants. The Hrafna-
galdr opens with the words : Alfoftr orkar (works), dlfar skilja,
vanir vita," Seem. 88 a
; Allfather, i.e. the as, has power, alfar
have skill (understanding), and vanir knowledge. The Alvismal
enumerates the dissimilar names given to heavenly bodies,
elements and plants by various languages (supra, p. 332) ; in
doing so, it mentions cesir, dlfar, vanir, and in addition also
go&} menn, ginregin, iotnar, dvergar and denizens of liel (hades).
Here the most remarkable point for us is, that dlfar and dvergar
(dwarfs) are two different things. The same distinction is made
between dlfar and dvergar, Saem. 8 b
; between dvergar and
dbckdlfar, Saem. 92b ; between three kinds of norns, the as-kungar,
alf-kungar and doetr Dvalins, Saem. 188% namely, those descended
from ases, from elves and from dwarf s ; and our MHGr. poets,
as we see by Wikram s Albrecht, 6, 9, continued to separate elbe
1 Besold. sub v. cl je ; Ettner a Hebamme, p. 910, alpen
or elben.