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446 WIGHTS AND ELVES.
of the Yogtland and a part of East Thuringia. There the small
elvish beings that travel especially in the train of Berchta, are
called the heimchen (supra, p. 276) ; and the name is considered
finer and nobler than querx or erdmannchen (Borner p. 52).
is hardly to be explained by any resemblance to chirping crickets,
which are also called heimchen, OHG. heimili (Graff 4, 953) ;
still less by heim (domus), for these wights are not home-sprites
(domestici) ; besides, the correct spelling seems to be h&inchen
(Variscia 2, 101), so that one Hein/ the name for
may connect
death, and the Low
it with Friend
Sax. lieinenkleed.
(winding-sheet, Strodtmann p. 84) -
1 This notion of departed
spirits, who appear in the furious host in the retinue of former
gods, and continue to lead a life of their own, may go to support
those ndir of the Edda; the pale hue may belong to them,
and the gray, brown, black to the coarser but otherwise similar
dwarfs. Such is my conjecture. In a hero-lay founded on
thoroughly German legend, that of Morolt, there appear precisely
three troops of spirits, who take charge of the fallen in battle
and of their souls : a white, a pale, and a "black troop (p. 28 b
),
which is explained to mean angels, kinsmen of the combatants
coming up from hades, and devils/ No such warlike part is ever
played by the Norse alfar, not they, but the valkyrs have to do
with battles ; but the traditions may long have become tangled
together, and the offices confounded. 2 The liosdlfar and svartalfar
are in themselves sufficiently like the Christian angels and devils ;
the pale troop uz der helle are the dockalfar that dwell niffri
i iorffu, nay, the very same that in the Alvismal are not expressly
named, but designated by the words i heljo. Or I can pat it in
this way :
liosalfar live in heaven, dockalfar (and nair ?) in hel,
the heathen hades, svartalfar in Suartdlfaheim, which is never
used in the same sense as hel (see Suppl.). The dusky elves
are souls of dead men, as the younger poet supposed, or are we
to separate dockalfar and nair ? Both have their abode in the
realms of hades, as the light ones have in those of heaven. Of
no other elves has the Edda so much to tell as of the black,
1 Hcinerikleed is not conn, with Friend Hein, but means a hunenkleed
(ch. XVIII.) ; coiif. also the hiinnerskes, and perhaps the haunken, or aunken in
the Westph. sgonaunken. Extr. from SUPPL.
2 The different races of elves contending for a corpse (Ir. Elfemn. 68).
It