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496
WIGHTS AND ELVES.
agreed upon (a jet of milk, a plate with an apple),
in such a case as this.
And here is the place
to take up Grendel again,
but withheld
whom we
likened (p. 243) to the malicious god Loki, though Loki, even
apart from that, seemed related to Oegir. Grendel is cruel and
bloodthirsty : when he climbs out of his marsh at night, and
reaches the hall of the sleeping heroes, he clutches one and drinks
the blood out of another (Beow. 1478). His mother is called a
merewif (3037), brimwylf (she-wolf of the breakers, 3197), and
grundwyrgen (3036) which means the same thing (from wearg,
lupus, comes wyrgen, lupa). This pair, Grendel and mother, have
a ivater-house, which is described (3027 seq.) almost exactly as
we should imagine the Norse Oegir s dwelling, where the gods
and there
were feasted : indoors the water is excluded by walls,
1
burns a pale light (3033). Thus more than one feature leads on
to higher beings, transcending mere watersprites (see Suppl.).
The notion of the nix drawing to him those who are drowning
has its milder aspect too, and that still a heathen one. We saw
on p. 311 that drowned men go to the goddess Rein; the popular
belief of later times is that they are received into the abode of the
nix or nixe. It is not the river-sprite kills those who sink in the
element of water ; kindly and compassionately he bears them to
his dwelling, and harbours their souls. 2 The word ran seems to
have had a more comprehensive meaning at first :
masla ran ok
regin was to invoke all that is bad, all evil spirits, upon one. It
has occurred to me, whether the unexplained Swed. ra in the
compounds sjora (nix), skogsra (schrat), tomtra (homesprite), which
some believe to be ra angulus, or a contraction of radande, may
not have sprung from this ran, as the Scandinavian tongue is so
fond of dropping a final n. Dame Wdckilt too (p. 434) is a
succouring harbouring water-wife. The water man, like Hel and
Ran, keeps with him the souls of them that have perished in the
water, in pots turned upside down/ to use the naive language of
one story (no. 52) ; but a peasant visiting him tilts them up, and
in a moment the souls all mount up through the water. Of the
J Conf. the dolphin s house in Musaus s marohen of the Three Sisters.
2
Probably there were stories also of helpful succouring river-gods, such as the
Greeks and Eomans told of Thetis, of Ino-Leucothea (6d. 5, 333-353), Albunea,
Matuta.