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HELL. NIFL-HEIM. 801
that as late as Widekind of Corvei (1, 23) Saxon poets, chanting
a victory of Saxons over Franks, used this very word hello, for
the dwelling-place of the dead : ut a mimis declamaretur, ubi
tantus ille infernus esset, qui tantam multitudinem caesorum capere
posset ? 3 1 A Latin poem on Bp. Heriger of Mentz, of perhaps
the 10th 2
cent., describes how one that had been spirited away
to the underworld declared {
totum esse infernum accinctum densis
ndique silvis/ meaning evidently the abode of the dead, not the
place of punishment. Even in a poem of the 12th cent. (Dint. 3,
104) Jacob : says so muoz ich iemer cholen, unze ich so vare ze
der
3
lielle, until I fare to hell, i.e. die. The 13th cent, saw the
present meaning of helle already established, the abode of the
damned ; e.g. in Iw. 1472 : God bar thee out of helle ! take
thee to heaven, not guard thee from death, for the words are
addressed to a dead man (see SuppL).
Hell is represented as a lodging, an inn, as Valholl, where those
who die put up the same evening (p. 145) :
l
ver skulum a Valholl
% apian O&in
gista I qveld, Fornald. munum sog. 1, 106 ; vr<5
gista 3
1, 423; singularly Abbo 1,555 (Pertz 2, 789), f
inimica Deo pransura Plutonis in urna.
plebs
3 No doubt, people used
to say : we shall put up at Nobis-haus to-night ! The
Saviour s
words, arjfjiepov per e /zoO eay eV rw TrapaSelo-a), Luke 23, 43 have
f
this day/ but not (
to-night (see Suppl.).
Here and there in country districts, among the common people,
helle has retained its old meaning. In Westphalia there are
still plenty of common carriage-roads that go by the name of
hellweg, now meaning highway, but originally death-way, the
broad road travelled by the corpse. My oldest example I draw
from a Record of 890, Ritz 1, 19 : helvius sive strata publica/
Later instances occur in Weisth. 3, 87. 106, in Tross s Rec. of
the feme p. 61, and in John of Soest (Fichard s
3
Arch. 1, 89).
1 Trad. Corbeiens. pp. 465. 604 makes a regular hexameter of it : tantus ubi
infernus, caesos qui devoret omnes ? This overcrowding of Hades with the dead
reminds one of Calderon s fanatic fear, lest heaven stand empty, with all the world
running to the other house after Luther :
Que vive Dios, que ha de tener en cielo
si considero
pocos que aposentar,
que estan ya aposentado con Lutero.
(Sitio de Breda, jorn. primera).
2 Lat. gedichte des X. XL jh. p. 335, conf. 344.
3 Also in Lower Hesse : hellweg by Wettesingen and Oberlistingen (Wochenbl.
for 1833, 952. 984. 1023. 1138), holteweg by Calden (951. 982. 1022), hollepfad by
Nothfelden (923).