TEUTONIC MYTHOLOGY. - Centrostudirpinia.it

414 WISE WOMEN.
(creating) impart all success in good or evil. The banun festan
in Hild. lied is
hardly to be explained by the fastening of a thread
of death.
If we compare the Norse my thus with the Greek, each has
taken shape in its own independent way. In Homer it is the
personified Alaa 1 that spins the thread for the newborn :
dcro-a ol Alaa
yetvofievep eirewja-e \lvw, ore piv rerce fi^rrjp. II. 20, 127 ;
what things Aisa span for him at birth with her thread . But in
Od. 7, 197 other spinners (two) are associated with her :
da-era ol Alaa KaraK\&6es re
ryeivofjievto vrjcravro XtW, ore uiv reice
what Aisa and the Kataklothes unkind span . Hesiod (am. 258)
makes three goddesses stand beside the combatants, KXwtfw,
Ad^ea-is, "ArpoTros, the last small of stature, but eldest and most
exalted of all. But in Theog. 218 he names them as
K\w6o) re Ad%ecriv re KOI "Arporrov, atre ftporolcriv
<yeivo[jLvoicn &I&OIKTIV e^etv dyaOov re KCLKOV re
who give to mortals at birth to have both good and ill ; and in
almost the same words at 905. The most detailed description is
given by Plato (De republ. 617 Steph. 508 Bekk.) : The three
polpai are daughters of AvdjKrj (necessity),
on whose knees the
spindle (drpa/cros) turns ; they sit clothed in white and garlanded,
singing the destiny, Lachesis rd yeyovora, Klotho rd ovra, Atropos
rd : i*,e\\ovra just the same relation to past, present and future as
the norns have, though the Greek proper names do not themselves
express it. K\w0co (formed like Av%a) } Oa\\co, Arjrw, Mop/ia,
spins (from /cXw&o spin, twine), Lachesis allots (from
, "ArpoTros, the unturnable, cuts the thread. It must not be
overlooked, that Hesiod sets up the last, Atropos, as the mightiest,
while with us Wurt the eldest produces the most powerful impres
sion. Latin writers distribute the offices of the parcae somewhat
differently, as Apuleius (De mundo p. 280) : Clotho praesentis
temporis habet curam, quia quod torquetur in digitis, moment!
1
^I think aio-a is the OHG. era, our elire, for which we should expect a
Gothic a"iza, aisa (as aistan is aestimare) : era = honor, decus, dignitas, what
is fair and fitting, what is any one s due ; nar alo-av, ex dignitate, to each his
meed. If this etymology holds, we understand why frau Ere was personified
(see Suppl.).