Untitled - Centrostudirpinia.it

TBEES.
653
bo-trad, in Dan. boe-tra (p. 509). Under the lime-tree in the
Hero-book dwarfs love to haunt, and heroes fall into enchanted
sleep : the sweet breath of its blossoms causes stupefaction, D.
Heldenb. 1871, 3, 14-5. 135 (see Suppl.). But elves in particular
have not only single trees but whole orchards and groves assigned
them, which they take pleasure in cultivating, witness Laurin s
Rosegarden enclosed by a silken thread. In Sweden they call
these gardens elftrdd-gdrdar.
The Greek dryads x and hamadryads have their life linked to a
tree, and as this withers and dies, they themselves fall away and
cease to be ; any injury to bough or twig is felt as a wound, and
a wholesale hewing down puts an end to them at once. 3 A cry
of anguish escapes them when the cruel axe comes near. Ovid in
Met. 8, 742 seq., tells a beautiful story of Erisichthon s impious
attack on the grove of Ceres :
Ille etiam Cereale nemus violasse securi
dicitur, et lucos ferro temerasse vetustos.
Stabat in his ingens annoso robore quercus,
saepe sub hac dryades
festas duxere choreas . . .
Gontrenrait, gemitumque dedit Deoia quercus,
et pariter frondes, pariter pallescere glandes
coepere, ac longi pallorem ducere rami.
When the alder (erle)
is hewn, it bleeds, weeps, and begins to
speak (Meinert s Kuhlandch. 122). An Austrian marchen (Ziska
38-42) tells of the stately fir, in which there sits a fay waited on
by dwarfs, rewarding the innocent and plaguing the guilty ; and
a Servian song of the maiden in the pine (fichte) whose bark the
boy splits with a gold and silver horn. Magic spells
banish the
ague into /rait Fichte (see Suppl.).
This belief in spirit-haunted trees was no less indigenous among
Celts. Sulpicius Severus (beg. of 5th cent.) reports
in his life of
St. Martin, ed. Amst. 1665, p. 457 : Dam in vico quodara ternplum
antiquissimum diruisset, et arborem pinum, quae fano erat
proxima, esset aggressus excidere, turn vero antistes illius luci
ceteraque gentilium turba coepit obsistere ; et cum iidem illi, dum
templum evertitur, imperante domino quievissent,
succidi arborem
1 AS. gloss, wudu-elfenne, wood-elfins, fern. pi.
2 Non sine hamadryadis fato cadit arborea trabs. Ausonius.