TEUTONIC MYTHOLOGY. - Centrostudirpinia.it

434 WISE WOMEN.
there appears a wildez wip, who dwells in a hollow rock of the sea,
and is indifferently termed merwip 168. 338, merfrouwe 134, and
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merminne 350. AS. merewif, Beow. 3037. M. Dutch maerminne.
Those three wisiu wip of the Nibelungen are also called merwip I
1475, 1. 1470, 1 ; they foretell and forewarn ; their having indi- j
!
vidual names would of itself put them on a par with the Norse
valkyrs: Hadburc, Sigelint.
The third, whose name the poem omits !
(p. 428), is addressed by Hagne as aller wiseste wip! 1483, 4.1
Wittich s ancestress (p. 376) is named frouwe Wdchilt, as if Wave-
Hilde, she is a merminne, and says sooth to the hero, Rab. 964 974.
Morolt also has an aunt a merminne who lives in mount Elsabe and
rules over dwarfs ; her name is not given, but that of her son is
Madelger, and she likewise gives wise advice to Morolt; Mor. 40 b 41*.
The merminne in Ulrich s Lanzelet (lines 196 seq.) is said to be wis\
(5751. 6182), she has under her 10,000 unmarried women (dern
keiniu bekande man noch mannes gezoc), they dwell on a mountain
by the sea, in an ever-blooming land. In the Apollonius, a bene
volent merminne is queen of the sea (lines 5160. 5294) ; here the
poet had in his mind a siren in the classical sense, but the Germans
must have had a merminne before they ever heard of sirens. The
Danish name is maremind (Danske viser 1, 118. 125). Norse legend
has preserved for us a precisely corresponding male being, the taciturn
prophetic marmennill (al. marmendill, marbendill), who is fished
up out of the sea, and requires to be let go into it again ; Halfssaga
c. 7 (Fornald. sog. 2, 3133), and Isl.
sog. 1, 03 (Landn. 2,
1
5).
Prom him coral is named marmennils smifti, he cunningly wrought
it in the sea. At a later time the word merfei was used in Germany:
that lover of Staufenberger, whom he found in the forest, and the!
Fair Melusina (possibly even a tradition of ancient Gaul), are
precisely the fairy being that had previously been called merimennm
But, similar to the merminne, there was also a waltminne, which!
word equally stands for lamia in old glosses (Diut. 3, 276).
Sigeminne, whether the baptized Kauch-els, Wolfdieterich s lover!
(p. 433), or the wife of Hugdieterich, 3
may with perfect right be|
1 Marmennill is extremely like the Greek Proteus, who is also reluctant at
first to prophesy, Od. 4, 385 seq. There may have been Proteus-like stories
current of our Buldander and Vilander, p. 172 (see Suppl.).
2 Yet merfeine occurs already in l)iut. 1, 38; wazzerfeine (Oberl. sub v.),
and even merfein, MS. 2, 63 a .
3 Deutsche heldensage pp. 185. 200-1.