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808 TIME AND WORLD.
natives alone can exist in it, hence human beings from our world
never pass into it, as into the cold one of the north. It is guarded
by a god (?) named Surtr, bearer of the blazing sword.
In the word Muspell we find another striking proof of the
prevalence of ON. conceptions all over Teutondom. Not only
has the Saxon Heliand a mudspelli 79, 24, mutspelli 133, 4, but
a High German poem, probably composed in Bavaria, has at line
62 muspilli (dat. muspille). Besides, what a welcome support
to the age and real basis of the Ed da, coming from Saxon and
Bavarian manuscripts of the 9th cent, and the 8th ! Every
where else the term is extinct : neither Icelanders nor other
Scandinavians understand it, in Anglo-Saxon writings it has
never shewn itself yet, and later specimens of German, High
and Low, have lost all knowledge of it. Assuredly a primitive,
a heathenish word. 1
On its general meaning I have already pronounced, p. 601 :
it can scarcely be other than fire, flame. The Heliand passages
tell us : mudspelles megin obar man ferid/ the force of fire
fareth over men ; mutspelli cumit an thiustrea naht,
al so thiof
ferid darno mid is dadiun/ fire cometh in dark night, as thief
fareth secret and sudden with his deeds (Matth. 24, 43. 2 Pet.
3, 10) ; and the OHG. poet says: ( dar ni mac denne mak andremo
helfan vora demo muspille, denna daz preita wasal (Graff
1, 1063) allaz varprennit, 2 enti viur enti luft allaz arfurpit/ then
no friend can help another for the fire, when the broad shower
of glowing embers (?) burns up all, and fire and air purge
(furbish) everything.
It must be a compound, whose latter half spilli, spelli, spell
we might connect with the ON. spioll (corruptio), spilla (corrumpere),
AS. spillan (perdere), Engl. spill, OHG. spildan, OS.
3
spildian (perdere) ; ON. mannspioll is clades hominum, laespioll
(Nialss. c. 158) perhaps bellum. But we are left to guess what
there lies above this heaven a second, named Andlangr, and above that a third
named Vi&bldinn, and there it is that light elves alone live now, says Snorri 22.
1 In Nemnich, among the many names given for the bittern (OHG. horotumbil,
onocrotalus, ardea stellaris), there is also muspel, which probably has to do with
moss and moor, not with our word.
2 So I read (trans.) for varprinnit (intrans.), as wasal cannot otherwise be
explained.
3 OHG. Zd = ON. II ; conf. wildi, kold with villr, gull. But then why is it
not muspildi in the OHG. and OS. poems ?