Untitled - Centrostudirpinia.it

SCBAT (PILOSUS).
481
People in Europe began very early to think of daemonic beings
as pilosi. The Vulgate has et pilosi saltabunt ibi/ Isaiah 13,
21, where the LXX. had Satpovia creel op^o-orrat, conf.
34, 14. 1
Isidore s Etym. 8, cap. ult. (and from it Gl. Jun.
399) :
pilosi qui graece panitae, latine incubi nominantur,
hos daemones Galli dusios
2
nuncupant. Quern autem vulgo
inciibonem vocant, hunc Komani faunum dicunt/ Burcard of
Worms (App. Superst. C) is speaking of the superstitious custom
of putting playthings, shoes, bows and arrows, in cellar or
barn for the home-sprites, 3 and these genii again are called
satyri vel pilosi. The monk of St. Gall, in the Life of Charles
the Great (Pertz 2,741), tells of a pilosus who visited the house
of a smith, amused himself at night with hammer and anvil,
and filled the empty bottle out of a rich man s cellar (conf. Ir.
elfenm. cxi. cxii.). Evidently a frolicking, dancing, whimsical
homesprite, rough and hairy to look at, eislich getan/ as the
Heidelberg fable says, and rigged out in the red little cap
of a
dwarf, loving to follow his bent in kitchens and cellars. A figure
quite in the foreground in Cod. palat. 324 seems to be his very
portrait.
Only I conceive that in earlier times a statelier, larger figure
was allowed to the schrai, or wood-schrat, then afterwards the
merrier, smaller one to the schrettel. This seems to follow from
the ON. meaning of skratti gigas, giant. These ivoodsprites must
have been, as late as the 6- 7th cent., objects of a special worship :
there were trees and temples dedicated to them. Quotations in
proof have already been given, pp.
58. 68 :
f
arbores daemoni
dedicatae/ and among the Warasken, a race akin to the Bavarian,
f
agrestium fana, quos vulgus faanos vocat/
Some remarkable statements are found in Eckehart s Walt-
harius. Eckevrid of Saxony accosts him with the bitter taunt
(761) :
1 Luther translates feldteufel ; the Heb. sagnir denotes a shaggy, goat-like
being. Badevicus t rising. 2, 13, imitates the whole passage in the prophet : ululae,
upupae, bubones toto anno in ectis funebria personantes lugubri voce aures om
nium repleverunt. Pilosi quos satyros vocant in domibus plerunque auditi. Again
2, 24: in aedibus tuis lugubri voce respondeant ululae, salient pilosi.
2 Daemones quos duscios Galli nuncupant. Augustine, Civ. Dei, c. 23. The
name duz still lives in Bretagne, dimin. duzik (Villemarque 1, 42).
3 In the same way the judel (I suppose giietel, the same as guote holde) has
toys placed for him, Superst. I, no. 62 ;
conf. infra, the homesprites.