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478
WIGHTS AND ELVES.
guardian goddess of spindle and seedfield. Fro upon his boar
must have ridden through the plains, and made them productive,
nay, even the picture of Siegfried riding through the corn I
incline to refer to the circuit made by a god ; and now for the
first time I think I understand why the Wetterau peasant to this
day, when the corn-ears wave in the wind, says
the boar walks in
the corn. It is said of the god who causes the crops to thrive.
Thus, by our study of elves, with whom the people have kept up
acquaintance longer, we are led up to gods that once were. The
connexion of elves with Holla and Berhta is further remarkable,
because all these beings, .unknown to the religion of the Edda,
reveal an independent development or application of the heathen
faith in continental Germany (see Suppl.). 1
What comes nearest the hairy shaggy elves, or bilwisses, is a
spirit named scrat or scrato in OHG. documents, and pilosus in
contemporary Latin ones. The Gl. mons. 333 have scratun
the Sumerlat.
(pilosi) ; the Gl. herrad. 200b waltschrate (satyrus) ;
10, 66 srate (lares mali) ; so in MHG. scrdz ; Reinh. 597 (of the
f
old fragment), ein wilder waltschrat; Barl. 251, 11. Aw. 3,
226. Ulr. Lanz. 437 has von dem schraze = dwarf ; sie ist
villihte ein schrat, ein geist von helle ; Albr. Titur. 1, 190
(Hahn 180). That a small elvish spirit was meant, is plain
from the dimin. schretel, used synonymously with wihtel in that
pretty fable, from which our Irish elf-tales gave an extract, but
which has since been printed entire in Moneys treatise on heroic
legend, and is now capped by the original Norwegian story in
Asbiornsen and Moe, No. 26 (one of the most striking examples
1 The Slavs too have &field-spirit who paces through the corn. Boxhorn s Resp.
"
Moscov., pars 1, p. ... : JDaemonem meridianum Moscovitae metuunt et
quoque
colunt. Ille enim, dum jam maturae resecantur fruges, habitu viduae lugentis ruri
obambulat, operariisque uni vel pluribus, nisi protinus viso spectro in terram proni
concidant, brachia frangit et crura. Neque tamen contra hanc plagam remedio
destituuntur. Habent enim in vicina silva arbores religione patrum cultas : harum
cortice vulneri superimposito, ilium non tantum sanant, sed et dolorem loripedi
eximunt." Among the Wends this corn-wife is named pshipolnitza [prop, prepoln.,
from polno, full, i.e. full noon] , at the hour of noon she creeps about as a veiled
woman. If a Wend, conversing with her by the hour on flax and flax-dressing, can
manage to contradict everything she says, or keep saying the Lord s prayer back
wards without stumbling, he is safe (Lausitz. monatsschr. 1797, p. 744). The Bohe
mians call her baba (old woman), or polednice, poludnice (meridiana), the Poles
dziewanna, dzieivice (maiden), of whom we shall have to speak more than once, conf.
chap. XXXVI. Here also there are plainly gods mixed up with the spirits and
goblins.