CHAP. II
given of their functions with regard to the past, the present, and the future. Commonly Klotho spins the threads, while Lachesis deals them out, and Atropos severs them at the moment of death; but sometimes Klôthô rules over the present, Atropos over the past, and Lachesis over the future.[1] If, again, they are sometimes represented in comparative youth, they sometimes appear with all the marks of old age; and thus we come to the Teutonic Norns. The Hellenic Moirai, as knowing what was to befall each man, had necessarily 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, Verdhandi, 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.[2] Of these names the two last have 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,[3] the Fatal Sustrin of Chaucer.
The Teutonic Norns. These Norns, gifted with the wisdom of the Thriai,[4] 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 Æsir, being the fountain of Vurdh, that of Jotunheim being called by the name of the wise Mimir, while the
- ↑ Clotho prsesentis temporis habet curam, quia quod torquetur in digitis, momenti prnesentisindicat spatia; Atropos prseteriti fatum est, quia quod in fuso perfectum est, prasterili temporis habet speciem ; Lachesis futuri, quod etiam illis, quæ futura sunt, finem suum Deus dedcrit.—Apuleius, de Mundo, p. 280, Grimm, Deutsche Myth. 386. The Hesiodic poet, in his usual didactic vein, makes the Moirai strictly moral beings who punish the wrong-doing, or transgressions, whether of gods or men.—Theog. 220.
- ↑ Vurdh represents the past tense the word werden. Verdhandi is the present participle, weidend, while Skuld is the older form of .Schuld, the obligation 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 Müller, Chips, ii. 62; Grimm. D. Myth. 377.
- ↑ Grimm, D. M. 378; Max Müller, 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 of Bushy Bride.
- ↑ Their wisdom is inherited by the bards whose name, Skalds, has been traced by Professor Kuhn to the same root with the Sanskrit Khandas, metre; and Khandas Professor Max Müller regards as identical with the term Zend. For the evidence of this see Chips, &c., i. 84, note,
