Cox, George - Aryan Mythology Vol 2.pdf

18 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS.
BOOK
II.
The Teutonic
Norns.
and thus we come to the Teutonic Norns. The Hellenic
Moirai, as knowing what was to befall each man, had neces-
sarily the power of prediction, a characteristic which is the
most prominent attribute of the fatal sisters of the North.
These in the German myths are Vurdh, Yerdhandi, and
Skuld, names purely arbitrary and artificial, denoting simply
that which has been, that which is in process of becoming or
is in being, and that which shall be hereafter. 1 Of these
names the two last Lave dropped out of English usage, while
Vurdh has supplied the name by which the sisters were
known to Shakespeare ; and thus we have the weird sisters
whom Macbeth encounters on the desolate heath, the weird
elves of Warner's Albion, the Weird Lady of the Woods of
the Percy Ballads, 2 the Fatal Sustrin of Chaucer.
These Norns, gifted with the wisdom of the Thriai, 3 lead
us through all the bounds of space. They are the guardians
of the great ash-tree Yggdrasil, whose branches embrace the
whole world. Under each of its three roots is a marvellous
fountain, the one in heaven, the abode of the Asas, being
the fountain of Vurdh, that of Jotunheim being called by the
name of the wise Mimir, while the third in Mflheim, or
Hades, is the Hvergelmir, or boiling cauldron. At the first
the Asas and Norns hold their court ; at the second Mimir
keeps his ceaseless watch, a being whose name has apparently
a meaning closely akin to that of the Latin Minerva, 4 and
1 Vurdh represents the past tense of
the word werden. Verdhandi is the
present participle, werdend, while Skuld
is the older form of Schuld, the obliga-
tion to atone for the shedding of blood.
Skuld thus represents really the past tense
skal, which means ' I have killed, and
therefore am bound to make compensation
for it.' The difference between our
' shall ' and ' will ' is thus at once explained.
Max Muller, Chips, ii. 62;
Grimm, D. Myth, 377.
- Grimm, 1). M. 378. Max Muller,
Lectures on Language, second series,
563. The Norns are the Three Spinsters
of the German story in Grimm's
collection, who perform the tasks which
are too hard for the delicate hands of
the Dawn-maiden. In the Norse Tales
(Dasent) they reappear as the Three
Aunts, or the three one-eyed hags, who
help Shortshanks, as the three sisters in
the tale of Farmer Weathersky, and the
three loathly heads in the' story of
Bushy Bride.
3 Their wisdom is inherited by the
bards whose name, Skalds, has been
traced by Professor Kuhn to the same
root with the Sanskrit Xhandas, metre
and Zhandas Professor Max Muller regards
as identical with the term Zend.
For the evidence of this see Chips, §c.
i. 84, note.
4 Grimm, who traces the word through
its many changes, notes also the relation
of the Latin mcmor with the Greek
lAituEOfxai—the mimic being the man who
remembers what is done by another;
and thus 'mummery' is but another
form of ' memory.' D. Myth. 353.
Mimir is thus the Kentaur Mimas ; and
the wisdom of the Kentaur, it may be