TEUTONIC MYTHOLOGY. - Centrostudirpinia.it

HERODIAS, DIANA, ABUNDIA, 285
till first cockcrow she sits on oaks and hazel-trees, the rest of her
time she floats through the empty air. She was inflamed by love
when his head is brought in on
for John, which he did not return ;
a charger, she would fain have covered it with tears and kisses, but
it draws back, and begins to blow hard at her ; the hapless maid is
whirled into empty space, and there she hangs for ever. 1
Why she
was afterwards (in the twelfth century) called Pharaildis, is not
explained by the life of a saint of that name in Flanders (Acta
sanct. 4 Jan.) ; nor does anything that the church tells of John the
Baptist and Herodias (Acta sanct. 24 Jun.)
at all resemble the
contents of the above story : Herodias is Herod s wife, and the
daughter is named Salome. Pharaildis on the contrary, M. Dutch
Verelde, 2 leads us to ver Elde = frau Hilde or frau Hulde, as in a
doc. of 1213 (Bodmanns Bheing. alterth. p. 94) there occurs a
miles dictus Verhildebwrgj and in a Frisian doc, of the 14th
century a Ferliildema, evidently referring to the mythic Hildburg.
Still more remarkable seems a M. Dutch name for the milky way,
Vroneldenstraet = frauen Hilde or Hulde strasse (street, highway),
So that the poet of the Eeinardus is entirely in the right, when
Herodias sets him thinking of Pharaildis, and she again of the
milky way,
the sidus in his first line.
There is no doubt whatever, that quite early in the Mid. Ages
the Christian mythus of Herodias got mixed up with our native
heathen fables : those notions about dame Holda and the furious
host and the nightly jaunts of sorceresses were grafted on it, the
Jewish king s daughter had the part of a heathen goddess assigned
her (Ratherius says expressly : imo dea), and her worship found
numerous adherents. In the same circle moves Diana, the lunar
deity of night, the wild huntress ; Diana, Herodias and Holda
1 This reference to the turbo (the whirlwind of his blast), looks mythical
and of high antiquity. Not only did Ziu or Zio, once a deity, become with the
Christians a name for the whirlwind, p. 203 (and Pulloineken too may have to
do with Pkol, p. 229) ; but to this day such a wind is accounted for in Lower
Saxony (about Celle) by the dancing Herodias whirling about in the air. Else
where the raising of it is ascribed to the devil, and offensive epithets are
hurled at him, as in the Saalfeld : country Schweinezahl fahret, there goes
*
swine-tail (Praetorius, Riibezahl 3, 120), and on the Rhon ints. :
Sauzagel,
sow- tail (Schm. 4, 110), to shew contempt for the demon, and abate his fury
(see Suppl.). I shall bring in some other stories, when treating of the wind-
sprites.
2 Canneart, strafrecht 153-5. Balg. mus. 6, 319. Conf. Vergode for frau
Gaude.