Inspiratie door bijen in de droom - DWC

INSPffiATIE DOOR BIJEN IN DE DROOl\{ 27
geweest zijn in Noord-Italië, volgens Leland 1), die vertelt hoe
in de omgeving van Florence van twee oude vrouwen de ene
stervende was en de ander, die bij haar waakte, in slaap viel.
"Mter a while she was awakened by something on her chest, and
thinking it was the little dog, grasped it and cast it from her, and
slept again. And it came again, and this time ... she searched all
the room closely for it, but found nothing. And going to the bed
she found that the old woman was dead. And it was her soul which
had awakened the one sleeping."
Inhoeverre overeenkomstige voorstellingen ook in geheel Skandinavië
gevonden werden, heb ik niet kunnen vaststellen, maar wel
trof ik ze nog aan in IJsland, en wel spreekt er dan een opvallend
motief in mee, dat ons later nog zal moeten bezighouden. (Zie
slot van Excursus V). Craigie 2) vertelt nl. : "One time some men
were on a journey, and pitched their tent on a Sunday morning
on a beautiful green meadow. The weather was clear and fine,
and the travelIers lay down to sleep in their tent, all in a row.
The one who was lying next the door could not sleep, and kept
looking here and there in the tent. He then noticed a tuft of bluish
vapour above the man who lay innermost, which in a little came
towards the door and went out. The man wished to know what
this was, so he rose and followed it. It glided softly across the
meadow, and finally came to the skin and skull of a horse that
was lying there, and was full of blue ilies which made a great
humming. The vapour entered the horse-skull, and aftel' a good
while came out again. It thCll ,vent on over the meadow, until
it came to a small stream of water, àown the side of which it went,
apparently looking for a place to cross. The man had his whip
in rus hand, and laid it across the stream, and the vapour glided
along the shaft of it to the other side. Then it went on again for
a bit, till it arrived at a mound on the meadow into which it disappeared.
The man stood at a little distance, waiting for it to come
back, which it did before long, and then returned in the same
way as it had come. It crossed the stream on the man's whip as
before, made straight for the tent then, and never stopped until
it came above the innermost man in the tent, where it disappeared.
The other then lay down again and feil asleep."
Het vervolg van dit verhaal kunnen we veilig inperken. Wanneer
1) C. G. Leland, Etruscan Magic and occult Remedies 2 ) (1963) 15,1.
Hoewel dit werk in het algemeen onbetrouwbaar is (zie mijn recensie,
Gnomon 1965, 634 v.v.), zijn er passages, zoals deze, die geen wantrouwen
wekken.
2) W. A. Craigie, Scandinavian Folklore (1896) 323, naar Jón Árnason's
Islenzkar pjösögar og Aefintyri 1 (1862) 356; ook bij E. T. Kristensen,
Danske Sagn 2 (1893) g., 101.
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