A less pleasing vision of the Three Sisters is narrated by Wulfstan of Winchester, a poet of the tenth century, who has left us a Latin poem of the Miracles of St. Swithun. In it he tells how, coming back one evening towards Winchester, he was met by two hideous females, who commanded him to stop, but he ran away in terror; he was then met and stopped by a third, who struck him a blow from which he suffered for the remainder of his life; but the three women plunged into the river and disappeared.
The same three appear in Macbeth as the Weird Sisters; and it is probably from this connexion that weird has become an adjective for all that savours of heathenism.
A frequent word for battle and carnage is wæl, and the root idea of this word is choice, which may be illustrated from the German wählen—to choose. The heathen idea was that Woden chose those who should fall in battle to dwell with him in Walhalla, the Hall of the chosen. In the exercise of this choice, Woden acted by female messengers, called in the Norse mythology valkyrja, pl. valkyrjor.[49]
All superior works in metal, as swords, coats of mail, jewels, are the productions of Weland, the smith. His father is called Wudga, and his son is called Wada; and with this child on his shoulder Weland strides through water nine yards deep. This was matter of popular song down to Chaucer’s time:—
He songe, she playede, he told a tale of Wade.
“Troylus and Crescyde,” iii., 615.
He had by Beadohild another son, in German named Witeche, who inherited his father’s skill and renown. For his violence to Beadohild, Weland was lamed; but he made for himself a winged garment, wherewith he took his flight through the air. He is at once the Daidalos and the Hephaistos of the Greeks. The translator of the Boethian Metres has taken occasion to bring in this heathen god, whose cult (it seems) was still too active. In Metre ii., 7, where Boethius has the line—
Ubi nunc fidelis ossa Fabricii manent?
under colour of faber = smith, which the name Fabricius suggests, Weland is made a fruitful text:—
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Hwær sind nu thæs wisan Welandes ban, thæs goldsmithes the wæs gio mærost? Forthy ic cwæth thæs wisan Welandes ban, forthy ængum ne mæg eorthbuendra, se craft losian the him Crist onlænth. Ne mæg mon æfre thy eth ænne wræccan his craftes beniman the mon oncerran mæg sunnan on swifan and thisne swiftan rodor of his riht ryne rinca ænig. Hwa wat nu thæs wisan Welandes ban, on hwelcum hi hlæwa hrusan theccen? |
Where now are the bones of Weland the wise, that goldsmith so glorious of yore? Why name I the bones of Weland the wise, but to tell you the truth that none upon earth can e’er lose the craft that is lent him by Christ? Vain were it to try, e’en a vagabond man of his craft to bereave; as vain as to turn the sun in his course and the swift wheeling sky from his stated career— it cannot be done. Who now wots of the bones of Weland the wise, or which is the barrow that banks them? |