TEUTONIC MYTHOLOGY. - Centrostudirpinia.it

142 WODAN.
sie hat des Wunsches pewalt. Amgb. 31 b
er was so gar des Wunsches kint,
daz alle man gein (against, before) siner schoene waren blint,
und doch menlich gestalt bi clarem velle (complexion) ;
der Wunsch im niht gebrechen liez (let nought be lacking)
da von man s Wunsches hint den stolzen hiez (should call the
stately one). Lohengr. ed. Eiickert str. 625.
The following is outside the bounds of MHG. :
an yr yst Wensches vlyt geleit. Haupts zeitschr. 3, 221.
Mid. Dutch poems have no personification Wensch ; nor is there a
Wunsch in the Nibelungen or Gudrun ; but in Wolfdietrich 970 :
des Wunsches ein amie ! There must be many more instances ;
but the earliest one I know of is found in the Entekrist from the
12th century (Hoffm. fundgr. 2, 107) :
mit Wunschis gewalta
With Wish s might
segniti sie der alte. The old man blessed her.
We see Wish provided with hands, power, looks, diligence, art,
blossom, fruit ; he creates, shapes, produces master-pieces, thinks,
bows, swears, curses, is glad and angry, adopts as child, handmaid,
friend : all such pretty- well stock phrases would scarcely have
sprung up and lived in a poetry, in a language, if they did not
unconsciously relate to a higher being, of whom earlier times had a
livelier image; on such a basis indeed nearly all the personifications
made use of by MHG. poets seem to me to rest. In the majority
of our examples we might fairly put the name of God in the place
of Wish, or that of Wish in the phrases quoted on pp. 17-8, which
describe the joyous or the angry God : freudenvoll hat sie Got
gegozzen, MS. 1, 226 b ; der Wunsch maz ir bilde, as mezzen is said
of God, p. 23; and gebieten, to command, is just as technically
applied to the one as to the other, p. 24. The gramr er y5r OSinn/
p. 137, might be rendered in MHG. der Wunsch ziirnet iu, fluochet
iu/ meaning, the world is sick of you. At times the poet seems to
be in doubt, whether to say God or Wish: in the first passage from
Gregor, Wish is subordinated, as a being of the second rank, so to
speak, as a servant or messenger, to the superior god; the latter has
to give him leave to assume his creative function, which in other
cases he does of his own might. Again, when body, figure, hair are
said to be like Wish/ it exactly
reminds us of Homer s