Untitled - Centrostudirpinia.it

NEED-FIRE. 607
But Tobler 252 b
says, what boys call de tiifel hdla is spinning a
pointed stick, with a string coiled round it, rapidly in a wooden
socket, till it takes fire. The name may be one of those innu
merable allusions to Loki, the devil and fire-god (p. 242). Nic.
Gryse, in a passage to be quoted later, speaks of sawing fire out
of wood, as we read elsewhere of symbolically sawing the old
woman in two. The Practica of Berthol. Carrichter, phys. in
ord. to Maximilian II., gives a description (which I borrow from
Wolfg. Hildebrand on Sorcery, Leipz. 1631. p. 226) of a magic
bath, which is not to be heated with common flint-and-steel fire :
Go to an appletree which the lightning hath stricken, let a saw
be made thee of his wood, therewith shalt thou saw upon a
wooden threshold that much people passeth over, till it be kindled.
Then make firewood of birch-fungus, and kindle it at this fire,
with which thou shalt heat the bath, and on thy life see it go not
out }
(see Suppl.).
Notfiur can be derived from not (need, necessitas), whether
because the fire is forced to shew itself or the cattle to tread the
hot coal, or because the operation takes place in a time of need,
of pestilence. Nevertheless I will attempt another explanation :
notfiur, nodfiur may stand for an older hnotfiur, hnodfiur, from
the root hniudan, OHG. hniotan, ON. hniofta (quassare, terere,
l
tundere) and would mean a fire elicited ;
by thumping, rubbing,
shaking.
And in Sweden it is actually called both vrideld and gnideld :
the one from vrida (torquere, circumagere), AS. wrrSan, OHG.
ridan, MHG. riden; the other from gnida (fricare), OHG. knitan,
AS. cnidan (conterere, fricare, depsere).
It was produced in Sweden as with us, by violently rubbing
two pieces of wood together, in some districts even near the
end of last century ; sometimes they used boughs of nine sorts
of wood? The smoke rising from gnideld was deemed salutary,
1 OHG. pihniutit (excutit) Gl. ker. 251. hnotot , (quassat) 229. hnutten (vibrare)
282 N. has fnoton ; (quassare), Ps. 109, 6. Btb. 230 oonf. ; nieten, to bump. ON.
still has hniofta in hno S (tudes, malleus), hnofta (depsere), hnuftla (subigere).
It
might be spelt hnotfiur or hnotfiur (hnutfiur), ace. as the sing, or pi. vowel-form
was used. Perhaps we need not even insist on a lost h, but turn to the OHG.
niuwan, ON. nua (terere, fricare), from which a subst. not might be derived by
suffix. Nay, we might go the length of supposing that not, nau>s, nauftr, need,
contained from the first the notion of stress and pressure (conf. Graff 2, 1032. 4,
1125). 2 Ihre s De superstit. p. 98, and Glossary sub. v. wredeld. Finn. Magn.,