In an old German dictionary, the feast Theophania is translated “Giperahta naht” (the brightened night), a curious accordance with its Greek title. Indeed, before the relic-worship of the Three Kings of Cologne had stifled the recollection of the real signification of the day of the Manifestation, the festival was commonly termed Perchten tac, Perchten naht (bright day, or bright night). Then went on in Germany much what had befallen Beffana in Italy. By the analogy of saints' days, Perahta, or Bertha, was erected into an individual character, called in an Alsatian poem, the mild Berchte; in whose honour all the young farming men in the Salzburg mountains go dancing about, ringing cattle bells, and blowing whistles all night. Sometimes she is a gentle white lady, who steals softly to neglected cradles, and rocks them in the absence of careless nurses; but she is also the terror of naughty children, who are threatened with Frau Precht with the long nose; and she is likewise the avenger of the idle spinners, working woe to those who have not spun off their hank on the last day of the year. Can this have anything to do with distaff day—the English name for the 7th of January, when work was resumed after the holidays? Herrings and oat-bread are put outside the door for her on her festival—a token of its Christian origin; but there is something of heathenism connected with her, for if the bread and fish are not duly put out for her, terrible vengeance is inflicted, with a plough-share, or an iron chain.
That Frau Bertha is an impersonation of the Epiphany there seems little doubt, but it appears that there was an original mythical Bertha, who absorbed the brightened night, or if the bright night gave a new title to the old mythical Holda, Holla, Hulla, Huldr (the faithful, or the muffled), a white spinning lady, who is making her feather-bed when it snows. She, too, brings presents at the year’s end; rewards good spinners, punishes idle ones, has a long nose, wears a blue gown and white veil, and drives through the fields in a car with golden wheels. Scandinavia calls her Hulla, or Huldr the propitious; Northern Germany, Holda, probably by adaptation to hold (mild). Franconia and Thuringia recognized both Holda and Berchta; in Alsatia, Swabia, Switzerland, Bavaria, and Austria, Berchta alone prevails.
Some have even tried to identify Holda with Huldah, the prophetess, in the Old Testament, but this is manifestly a blunder. And, on the other hand, Bertha is supposed to be a name of the goddess Freya, the wife of Odin; but it appears that though Huldr may possibly have been originally a beneficent form of this goddess, yet that there is no evidence of Bertha’s prevailing in heathen times, and therefore the most probable conclusion is that she is really the impersonation of the Epiphany, with the attributes of Holda.
Tradition made her into an ancestress, and she must have absorbed some of the legends of the swan maidens, for she is goose-footed in some of her legends; and she is sometimes, as in Franconia and Swabia, called Hildaberta or Bildaberta, either from the Valkyr, or as a union of both Hilda and Bertha. The goose-foot has been almost softened away by the time she appears as Berthe aux grands pieds (wife of Pepin, and mother of Charlemagne); and the connection with the distaff is again traceable in the story of Charlemagne’s sister Bertha, mother of Orlando, who, when cast off on account of her marriage, and left a widow, maintained herself by spinning, till her son, in his parti-coloured raiment, won his uncle’s notice by his bold demeanour.
Proverbs of a golden age when Bertha spun, are current both in France and Italy, and in Switzerland they are connected with the real Queen Bertha.
Be it observed that Bertha is altogether a Frank notion, not prevailing among the Saxons, either English or Continental, nor among the Northern races. It is therefore quite a mistake to use Bertha, as is often done, as a name for an English lady, before the Conquest. One only historical person so called was Bertha, daughter of Chilperic, King of Paris, and wife of Ethelbert, of Kent, the same who smoothed the way for St. Augustine’s mission. She was probably called after the imaginary spinning ancestress, the visitor of Christmas night, but though bright was a common Saxon commencement or conclusion, we had no more Berthas till the Norman conquest brought an influx of Frank names.
The name was, indeed, very common in France and Germany; and in Dante’s time it was so frequent at Florence, that he places Monna Berta with Ser Martino, as the chief of the gossips. Since those days it has died away, but has been revived of late years in the taste for old names; and perhaps, likewise, because Southey mentioned it as one of the most euphonious of female appellations. One of the early German princesses, called Bertha, marrying a Greek emperor, was translated into Eudoxia, little thinking that she ought to have been Theophano.[[91]]
[91]. Church Festivals and Household Words; Maury-Essaisin; Les Légendes Picuses du Moyen Age; Die Stern du Weisen; Routh; Reliquia Sacra; Grimm; Brand; Stanhope, Belisarius.