TEUTONIC MYTHOLOGY. - Centrostudirpinia.it

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WISE WOMEN.
and AS. poetry we are able to lay our finger on the personality of
the first norn : thiu Wurdh is at handun says the Heliand 146, !
2, just as dod is at hendi, 92, 2 : the Fate, or death, stands so i
near, that she can grasp with her hand 1 the man who is fallen due i
to her ; we should say just as concretely is at hand, is at the I
door . Again : thiu Wurth nahida thuo, drew nigh then, HeL
103, 16. Wurtli ina benam, the death-goddess took him away
66, 18. Ill, 4 Not so living is the term as used in the Hildebr.
lied 48, wewurt skihit, or perhaps separately we ! wurt skihit/
because geschehen
to happen is used more of abstract inanimate
things. An OHG. gloss
also has wurt for fatum (Graff 1, 992).
2
J??ct Wyrd
Far more vivid are the AS. phrases : me
gewfif, i
parca hoc mihi texuit, Cod. exon. 355 ; Wyrd oft nereS unfegne
eorl, ]?onne his ellen deah/ parca saepe servat virum, donee virtus
ejus viget (ellan taoc, Hildeb.), Beow. 1139 ; him waes Wyrd un-l
gemete neah, se ]?one gomelan gretan sceolde, secean sawlehord,
sundur gedselan lif wiS lice, 4836 (so, deaS ungemete neah 5453) ;
swa him Wyrd ne gescraf/ ita ei fatum non ordinavit, decrevit,
Beow. 5145. EL 1047. conf. Boeth. ed. Bawl. p. 151; ealle
Wyrd forsweop, 3 swept all away, Beow. 5624; hie seo Wyrd\
beswac, forleolc and forlserde, eos parca decepit, allexit, seduxit,
Andr. 613; us seo Wyrd sce8e(5, nos fatum laedit, Andr. 1561.
The instances in Casdmon are less concrete, yet in 61, 12 the Wyrd\
is called walgrim, bloodthirsty. Of the Wyrd then are predicated:
gretan (excitare, OHG. cruczan), scrifan (ordinare, OHG. scripan)*
wefan (texere, OHG. wepan), beswican (decipere, OHG. pisuichan),!
forlsecan (fallere, OHG. farleichan),
forlseran (seducere, male
informare), sceSan (nocere). She is painted powerful, but often
cruel and warlike (see Suppl.). We cannot in the same .way point
out a personal application of the other two names, though the
1 MHG. er hat den tot an der hant, Reinh. 1480. 1806. Nib. 1480, 4.
Morolt. 29 b . Dietr. 29 a . Pf. Chuonrat 3860. Karl 52 a .
2 With D, not Th, because the pret. of weorSan is wearS, pi. wurdon,
which supports the derivation I proposed ; so the OHG. Wurt,
because werd*
has pret. pi. wurtum.
3 So I read for the forsweof of the editions, conf. forswapen, Caedm. 25, 9.
4 Conf. note to Elene p. 161, on a similar use of the MHG. schrtben, and;
Klausen in Zeitschr. fur alterth. 1840 p. 226 on the Roman notion of the
Parcae keeping a written record. N. Cap. 50. 55 renders parca by brievara, the)
recorder. Tertullian, De aiiima cap. 39, informs us that on the last day of the!
first week of a child s life they used to pray to the fata Scribunda. FlemiM
479 calls the three Fates des verhangnis schreiberinnen .
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