Untitled - Centrostudirpinia.it

632
ELEMENTS.
water, wind and fire (p. 217) ; and_Lopr (aereus) is another name
for Loki (p. 246). A phrase in Caedm. 181, 13 seems worthy of
notice : lyft-helme be)?eaht/ galea aerea tectus (see Suppl.).
When in our language we still call one kind of tempest (OHG.
wiwinty Graff 1, 624), the windsbraut (wind s bride), and it was
called the same in our older speech, OHG. wintes brut, 0. v. 19,
27. windis prut, Gl. Hrab. 975 b . Jun. 230. Diut. 2, 182. Gl.
florent. 982 a -3 b -4 b
; MHG. windes Irut (Grainm. 2, 606), Tit. 3733.
swinder (swifter) danne windes Irut, Ms. 2, 131 a . lief spilnde
als ein w.b. durch daz gras, Fragm. 19 a . alsam in rore diu w. b.,
Reinfried 159 b . varn mit hurt als ein w. prut, Frauend. 92, 13 \
it is only the proper names that seem to be lost. 1 The corrupt
forms wintsprout, -praut (Suchenw. 41, 804), windbrauss (in later
writers, as Matthesius), windsprauch (Schm. 4, 110), have arisen
out of the endeavour to substitute some new meaning for the
no longer intelligible mythic notion. it They say is a woman
snatching up a napkin from the bleaching ground and falling
down with it, Moneys Anz. 8, 278. So in the Netherlands the
whirlwind is called barende frauw, Wolf nos. 518-520 (see Suppl.).
This windVbride is a whirlwind, at which our mythology
brings the highest gods into play. Even Wuotan s furious host/
what is it but an explanation of the stormwind howling through
the air ? The OHG. ziu, turbines, we have traced to Zio, pp. 203.
285; and the storm-cloud was called maganwetar (p. 332 last 1.).
But the whirlwind appears to be associated with Phol also (pp.
229. 285), and with an opprobrious name for the devil (schweinezagel,
sauzagel, sustert, sow s tail), to whom the raising of the
whirl was ascribed (Superst. I, 522) 2 as well as to witches (ibid.
554). It was quite natural therefore to look upon some female
personages also as prime movers of the whirlwind, the gyrating
dancing Herodias, and/raw Hilde, frau Holde (p. 285). In Kilian
693 it is a fahrendes weib ; in Celtic it is legend stirred up by fays,
1
Orithyia carried off by Boreas (Ov. Met. 6, 710)^ could with perfect justice
be named windesbrut by Albreclit.
2 Two Pol. tales in Woycicki 1, 81 and 89 : When the whirlwind (vikher) sweeps
up the loose sand, it is the evil spirit dancing throw a ; sharp new knife into the
middle of it, and you wound him. A magician plunged such a knife into his
threshold, and condemned his man, with whom he was angry, for seven years to ride
round the world on the swift stormwind. Then the whirlwind lifted the man, who
was making haycocks in a meadow, and bore him away into the air. This knife-
throwing is also known to Germ, superstition everywhere (I, 554).