TEUTONIC MYTHOLOGY. - Centrostudirpinia.it

404 WISE WOMEN.
there met him in the land of the Cheruscans a superhuman female,
ryvvrj T<? /jLet&v 7j Kara avdpwTrov (frvcriv, who forbade his farther
advance, and foretold his approaching end (Dio Cass. 55, 1). Species
larlarae mulieris, humana amplior, victorem tendere ultra, sermone
Latino, prohibuit (Sueton. in Claudio 1
I). There may
have been
German folk-tales about this, which became known to the Eomans.
Wise-women of the fatherland, as well as heroes, rose up in their
country s need, and by their appearance terrified the foe.
Aurinia is said (p. 95) to have been famous in Germany before
Yeleda ; copyists may easily have corrupted all into au, and runa
into rinia : we should then have Aliruna, though it would be
still more if handy Tacitus had written A lioruna. But anyhow we
cannot fail to recognise the agreement (which many have noted)
with Jornandes cap. 24, who, in accounting for the origin of the
Huns, relates of the Gothic king Filimer :
4
Kepperit in populo suo
quasdam magas midieres, quas patrio sermone aliorumnas (al.
alyrumnas, aliorunas, aliuruncas) is ipse cognomiiiat, easque habens
suspectas de medio sui proturbat, longeque ab exercitu suo fugatas
in solitudine coegit errare. Quas silvestres homines, quos faunos
ficarios vocant, per eremum vagantes dum vidissent, et earum se
cornplexibus in coitu miscuissent, genus hoc ferocissimum ediderel
Many names of women are formed with -run, -runa (Gramm. 2,
517), and OHG. documents even offer, though sparingly, Alarun
Aleruna, MB. 3,416 (an. 1140); Gosprecht der Alraunyn sun/
MB. 27, 80 (an. 1309). I have never seen Elirun, the form we
should expect from ali-. 2 But it is significant, that the OK name
OlrAn, Ssem. 133-4, belongs precisely to a wise-woman ;
and alruna
(Graff 2, 523), now alraun, from its old sense of a prophetic and
diabolic spirit, has at length passed into that of the root (mandragora,
1 A similar tale about Alexander Severus : Mulier Druias eunti exclamavit
*
Gallico sermone, vadas, nee victoriam speres, nee te militi tuo credas ! Ael.
Lampridius in Alex. Sev. cap. 60. And Attila at the passage
of the Lech is
said to have "been scared away by a rune-maiden calling out three times back,
Attila ! Paul of Stetten s Erl. aus der gesch. Augsburgs, p. 25. Of still more
weight is the agreement of an ON. tradition in Saxo Gram. p. 15 : Hadingum
(our mythic Harding, Hartung) obvia femina hac voce compellat :
Seu pede rura teras, sen ponto carbasa tendas,
infestos patiere deos, totumque per orbem
propositis inimica tuis elementa videbis.
2 It throws some light on the meaning of -run, that in AS. also lurgrilna,
or burgr&nan stands for parcae and furiae (Lye sub v., and Gl. epinal. 617).