Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 1, 1890.djvu/30



There the sorcerer was born, there the fortune-teller was bred

Upon a bed of pine-boughs, upon a pillow made of stone.

The word noita, here translated wizard, sorcerer, is the equivalent of the Lapp noaidde, with the same meaning. It is a native word, and probably of the same origin as the Votyak nodes, nodo, “wise”, for nodes murt, “wise man”, is the word used in their translation of St. Matthew, just as noaidde is used in the Lapp version as the equivalent of magus, wise man, magician. Among the epithets applied to the noida are “fire-throated”, “vehement”, “oblique-eyed, and “Laplander”. Another common word for “wizard, wise man”, but with a less bad connotation, is tietäjä, a derivative from tietää, to know, to understand, literally ‘the knower, he that understands how to do something”. The arpoja is the man who makes use of an arpa, “lot, instrument of divination”, to divine by. It is a question whether this word is not a loan-word from the Scandinavian varp, “casting”. A third, common word for “witch sorcerer” is velho, from the Russian volkhvo, “a magus, magician”.

III.—.

(a.)

Where was “broadforehead” born, was “honey-paws” produced?

There was “broadforehead” born, was “honey-paws” produced,

Close to the moon, beside the sun, upon the Great Bear’s shoulders,

From there was he let down to earth—to a honeyed wood’s interior,

Into a verdant thicket’s edge, into a liver-coloured cleft.

Sinisirkku, forest maiden, rocked and swayed him to and fro

In a golden cradle, in silver straps,

Under a fir with branching crown, under a bushy pine.