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844 DEATH.
hat gebouwen, Kl. 829. Like a shifty active servant, he greases
the boots of the man he comes to fetch, in preparation for the
great journey; in Burgundy his arrival is phrase: quan
expressed in the
la Mor venre graisse no bote, quand la Mort
viendra graisser nos bottes; Noei Borguignon p. 249 (see
Suppl.).
A thoroughly heathen feature it is, to my thinking,
that he
appears mounted., like the valkyrs ; on horseback he fetches away,
he sets the dead on his own horse. In a folksong of wide cir
culation the lover, dead and buried far away, comes at midnight
and rides off with his bride. 1
Possibly that horse s head at p.
841 stands more for Death s horse than for the dead man s. Both
Hel and her messenger, like other gods, had doubtless a horse
at their service ; this is confirmed by certain phrases and fancies
that linger here and there among the people.
over a serious illness will say :
One who has got
f
jeg gav Doden en skidppe havre
(Thiele 1, 138), he has appeased Death by sacrificing
to him a
bushel of oats for his horse. So the heathen fed the horse of
Wuotan (p. 154), of dame Gaue (p. 252) ; the Slavs did the same
for their Svantevit and Radegast (p. 661). Of one who blunders
in noisily they say, in Denmark as above : han gaaer som en
helhest, he goes like a hel-horse, Dansk ordb. 2, 545 a . There
are more things told of this hel-hest : he goes round the church
yard on his three legs, he fetches Death. One folktale has it,
that in every churchyard, before it receives human bodies, a live
horse is buried, and this is what becomes the walking dead-horse
(Thiele 1, 137); originally
it was no other than the Death-
goddess riding round. Arnkiel quotes 1, 55 the Schleswig
superstition, that in time of plague die Hell 2 rides about on a
three-legged horse ) destroying men ; if at such a time the dogs
bark and howl in the night (for dogs are spirit- seers), they say
Hell is at the dogs ; when the plague ceases, ( Hell is driven
away ; if a man on the brink of death recovers, he has come
1 * The moon shines bright, the dead ride fast, Burger s life p. 37. Wh. 2,
20. t maantje schijnt zo hel, mijn paardtjes lope zo snel, Kinderm. 3, 77.
manan skiner, dodman rider, Sv. vis. 1, liii. and even in the Edda : rida menn
dauffir, Sam. 166 b . 167 a . Norw. manen skjine, doman grine, varte du ikkje rad?
Conf. the Mod. Grk. song in Wh. Miiller 2, 64, and Vuk 1, no. 404.
2 He writes der Hell, masc. ; but the Plattdeutsch, when they attempt H.
Germ , often misuse the article, e.g. der Pest for die Pest.