TEUTONIC MYTHOLOGY. - Centrostudirpinia.it

KORNI. 409
land volvur* who are called spdkonur who foretold to men their
fate, spaSu monnum aldr or orlog . People
invited them to
One day they came
their houses, gave them good cheer and gifts.
to Nornagest s father, the babe lay in the cradle, and two tapers were
burning over him. When the first two women had gifted him, and
assured him of happiness beyond all others of his race, the third
or youngest norn, hin yngsta nornin who in the crowd had been
pushed off her seat and fallen to the ground, rose up in anger, and
cried I cause that the child shall only live till the lighted taper beside
him has burnt out . The eldest volva quickly seized the taper, put
it out, and gave it to the mother with the warning not to kindle it
again till the last day of her son s life, who received from this the
name of Norns-guest. Here volva, spdkona and norn are perfectly
synonymous ; as we saw before (p. 403) that the vohir passed
through the land and knocked at the houses?- the nornir do the very
same. A kind disposition is attributed to the first two norns, an
evil one to the third. This third, consequently jflculd, is called
the youngest, they were of different ages therefore, Urffr being con
sidered the oldest. Such tales of travelling gifting sorceresses
were much in vogue all through the Mid. Ages (see Suppl.). 2
1 I have -elsewhere shown in detail, that the journeying house-visiting Muse
dame Aventiure is an inspiring and prophetic norn, and agrees to a feature
with the ancient conception ; see my Kleine schriften 1, 102.
2
Nigellus Wirekere, in his Speculum stultorum (comp. about 1200), relates
a fable (exemplum) :
.Ibant tres hominum curas relevare sorores,
quas nos fatales dicimus esse deas.
They travel through the land, to remedy the oversights of nature. Two of the
sisters, soft-hearted and impulsive, want to rush in and help at the first ap
pearance of distress, but are restrained by the third and more intelligent one.
whom they address as domina, and revere as a higher power. First they fall
in .with a beautiful noble maiden, who has all
good things at her command, and
yet complains she ; is not helped, for she can help herself. Then they find in
the forest a modest maid laid up in bed, because sore feet and hips hinder her
from walking ; she too obtains no help from the goddesses ; excellently
endowed in mind and body, she must ,bear .her misfortune patiently. At last
in the neighbourhood of a town the sisters , come upon a poor rough peasant
Exiit in bivium ventrem purgare puella
rustica, nil reverens inverecunda deaf-,
vestibus elatis retro nimiumque rejectis,
poplite dejiexo ci;ure resedit humi,
una manus foenum, panis tenet altera frustum ;
this one, at the suggestion of the third sister, when the first two have turned
away, is heaped with the gifts .of fortune by the goddesses :
Haec mea multotiens genitrix narrare solebat,
cujus.me certe non meminisse pudet.