TEUTONIC MYTHOLOGY. - Centrostudirpinia.it

wives) ;
HOLD A, HOLLE. 269
it was already known to Burchard, and now in Upper
Hesse and the Westerwald, Holle-riding, to ride with Holle, is
equivalent to a witches ride.1 Into the same furious host,
according to a wide-spread popular belief, were adopted the souls
of infants dying uribaptized ; not having been christian d, they
remained heathen, and fell to heathen gods, to "VVuotan or to
Hulda.
The next step is, that Hulda, instead of her divine shape,
assumes the appearance of an ugly old woman, long-nosed, big-
toothed, with bristling and thick-matted hair. He s had a jaunt
with Holle/ they say of a man whose hair sticks up in tangled
so children are frightened with her or her equally hideous
disorder ;
2
train :
hush, there s Hulle-letz (-bruin), Hulle-popel (-bogie)
coming/ Holle-peter, as well as Hersche, Harsche, Hescheklas,
Euprecht, Eupper (ch. XVII, house-sprites^, is among the names
given to the muffled servitor who goes about in Holle s train at the
time of the winter solstice. In a nursery-tale (Marchen no. 24)
she is depicted as an old witch with long teeth ; according to the
difference of story, her kind and gracious aspect is exchanged for a
dark and dreadful one.
Again, Holla is set before us as a spinning-wife ;
the cultivation
of flax is assigned to her. Industrious maids she presents with
spindles, and spins their reels full for them over night ;
a slothful
spinner s distaff she sets on fire, or soils it.3 The girl whose spindle
dropt into her fountain, she rewarded bountifully. When she
1 Ester s oberh. idiot., sub v.
kamen auch zu cliesem heer Viel weiber
2 Erasm. Alberus, fable 16 : Es
die sich forchten sehr (were sore afraid), Und trugen sicheln in der hand, Fraw
Hulda hat sie ausgesandt. Luther s Expos, of the Epistles, Basel 1522 fol.
69a : Here cometh up dame Hulde with the snout (potznase, botch-nose), to
wit, nature, and goeth about to gainsay her God and give him the lie, hangetli
her old ragfair about her, the straw-harness (stroharnss) ; then falls to work,
He compares nature rebelling against God
and scrapes it featly on her fiddle.
to the heathenish Hulda with the frightful nose (Oberlin, sub v. potzmannchen),
as she enters, muffled up in straw and frippery, to the fiddle s playing.
3
Bruckner, Contrib. to the Henneberg idioticon, p. 9, mentions a popular
belief in that part of Franconia : On the high day comes the Hollefrau
(Hollefra, Hullefra), and throws in reels ; whoever does not spin them full, she
breaks their necks, (conf. infra Berhta and Berhtolt and the Devil). On the
Death out in
high day she is burnt, which reminds one of Carrying
Teutonic and Slav countries, and Sawing the old woman in Italy and
Spain. By the addition of -frau after the name (conf. gaue fru, p. 253)
we perceive its originally adjective character. Cod. pal. 355 b : ich wen,
kain sckusel in kaim rocken wart nie als hesslich als du bist, I ween no scare
crow on a distaff was ever as ugly as thou.