TEUTONIC MYTHOLOGY. - Centrostudirpinia.it

268 GODDESSES.
1
bed, and the feathers of it
fly.
She stirs up snow, as Donar does
rain : the Greeks ascribed the production of snow and rain to their
Zeus : Jto? II.
o/x/3/>o?, 5, 91. 11, 493 as well as vnpaSes Ai6s, II. 19,
357 so that Holda conies before us as a ;
goddess of no mean rank. 2
The comparison of snowflakes to feathers is very old ;
the Scythians
pronounced the regions north of them inaccessible, because they
were filled with feathers (Herod. 4, 7. conf. 31). Holda then must
be able to move through the air, like dame Herke.
She loves to haunt the lake and fountain ; at the hour of noon
she may be seen, a fair white lady, bathing in the flood and
disappearing; a trait in which she resembles Kerthus. Mortals,
to reach her dwelling, pass through the well ; conf. the name
wazzerlwlde?
Another point of resemblance is, that she drives about in a
waggon. She had a linchpin put in it by a peasant whom she
met ; when he picked up the chips, they were gold. 4 Her annual
progress, which, like those of Herke and Berhta, is made to fall
between Christmas and Twelfth-day, when the supernatural has
sway, 5 and wild beasts like the wolf are not mentioned by their
names, brings fertility to the land. Not otherwise does Derk with
the boar, that Freyrof the Netherlands (p. 214), appear to go his
rounds and look after the ploughs. At the same time Holda, like
Wuotan, can also ride on the winds, clothed in terror, and she, like
the god, belongs to the wiitende heer . From this arose the
fancy, that witches ride in Holla s company (ch. XXXIV, snow-
1 Dame Holle shakes her bed, Modejourn. 1816, p. 283. They say in
men o the East are pyking their
Scotland, when the first flakes fall : The
geese, and sending their feathers here awa there awa . In Prussian Samland,
when it snows : The angels shake their little bed the flakes are the down-
;
feathers, but many drop past, and get down to our earth.
2 As other attributes of Holda have passed to Mary, we may here also
bring into comparison the Maria ad nives, notre dame aux neiges, whose feast was
held on Aug. 5 on that ; day the lace-makers of Brussels pray to her, that their
work may keep as white as snow. In a folk-song of : Bretagne Notre dame
Marie, sur votre trone de ! neige (Barzas breiz 1, 27). May not the otherwise
unintelligible Hildesheim legend of Hillesnee (DS. no. 456) have arisen out of
a Holde sue ?
3 If the name brunnenhold in the Marchenbuch of Alb. Ludw. Grimm 1,
221 is a genuine piece of tradition, it signifies a fountain-sprite. [Newborn
babes are fetched by the nurse out of dame Hollas pond ; Suppl.]
4 A similar legend in Jul. Schmidt s Reichenfels p. 152.
5 This must be a purely heathen view. I suppose the Christian sentiment
was that expressed by Marcel! us in Hamlet i. 1 : no spirit dares stir abroad,
the nights are wholesome, &c. . TRANS.