Untitled - Centrostudirpinia.it

WIND. STOEM. 635
Notker translates uberfloug die vettacha dero windo ; and
Martina 7 C
has, in allusion to the biblical phrase, der uf der
winde vedern saz/ The expression used by Herbort 17091, der
wint liez ouch dare gan/ shews that the poet imagined it either
flying or riding (see Suppl.).
The Finns call the eagle Icokko (kotka) ; but a poem descriptive
of the northstorm : begins Came the eagle on from Turja, down
from Lappmark sinks a bird/ and ends : Neath his wing a
hundred men, thousands on his taiPs tip, ten in every quill there
be/ ] And in a Mod. Greek folk-song the sparrowhawk (as in
Horapollo) calls upon the winds to hush : a-rrb ra rpifcop^a ftovva
* XaXta
lepdfci ecrvpe
Trai/rer, ae/36?, Tra-vjrere ajro^re K aXXr/v fjuav
/3/oaSm. 2 The winds are under the bird s command, and obey
him. In another song the mother sets three to watch her son
while he sleeps, in the mountains the sun, in the plain the eagle
(aero?), on the sea the brisk lord Boreas : the sun sets, the eagle
goes to sleep, and Boreas goes home to his mother 3
; from, the
whole context here we must understand by the eagle the sweet
soft wind, and by Boreas the cool northwind.
Hrcesvelgr (OHG. Hreosuolah ?) means swallower of corpses,
flesh-eater, Sansk. kraviyada, and is used of birds of prey that
feed on carrion, but may also be applied to winds and storms
which purify the air : they destroy the effluvia from bodies that
lie unburied.
Is that the foundation of the fancy, that when a man Jiangs
himself, a tempest springs up, and the roar of the wind pro
claims the suicide ? 4
Is it the greedy carrion-fowl that comes
on in haste to seize ,
the dead, his lawful prey, who swings un
buried on the tree ? Or does the air resent the self-murderer s
polluting presence in it ? A New-year s storm is thought to
announce pestilence (Sup. I, 330. 910), spreading an odour of
death in
anticipation.
Tempest (like fire) the common people picture to themselves as
a voracious hungry being (of course a giant, according to the root
1 Finnish runes, Ups. 1819, pp. 58-60.
2 Fauriel 2, 236. Wh. Miiller 2, 100.
3 Fauriel 2, 432. Wh. Mtiller 2, 120.
4
Sup. I, 343. 1013. Kirchhofer s Schweiz. spr. 327. Cl. Brentano s Libussa
p. 432. Sartori s Eeise in Kiirnten 2, 164. Leoprechting 102.