Page:The Mythology of the Aryan Nations.djvu/299

Rh CHAP. 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 Klotho rules over the present, Atropos over the past, and Lachesis over the future.^ 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.^ 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,^ the Fatal Sustrin of Chaucer.

These Norns, gifted with the wisdom of the Thriai,* lead us The Teu- through all the bounds of space. They are the guardians of the ^"|.^3 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 ^sir, being the fountain of Vurdh, that of Jotunheim being called by the name of the wise Mimir, while the

• Clotho prsesentis temporis habet at once explained. — Max Miiller, C/«?^j, curam, quia quod torquetur in digitis, ii. 62 ; Grimm. £>. ]Iyth. 377. momenti prnesentisindicat spatia ; Alio- ^ Grimm, Z>. AI. 378; Max Miiller, pos prseteriti fatum est, quia quod in Lecha-es on Language, second series, fuso perfectum est, prasterili temporis 563. The Norns are the Three Spin- habet speciem ; Lachesis futuri, quod sters of the German story in Grimm's etiam illis, quoe futura sunt, finem suum collection, who perform the tasks which

Deus dedcrit.- — Apuleius, de Miiinlo, are too haid for the delicate hands of p. 280 j Grimm, Deutsche Alyth. 3S6. the Dawn-maiden. In the Norse Tales The Hesiodic poet, in his usual didactic (Dasent) they reappear as the Three vein, makes the Moirai strictly moral Aunts, or the three one-eyed hags, who beings who punish the wrong-doing, or help Shortshanks, as the three sisters in transgressions, whether of gods or men. the tale of Farmer Weathersky, and the Thtog. 220. three loathly heads in the story of
 * Vurdh represents the past tense of Bushy Bride.

the word wcrden. Verdhandi is the '' Their wisdom is inherited by the present participle, weidend, while Skuld bards whose name, Skalds, has been is the older form of .Schuld, the obliga- traced by Professor Kuhn to the same tion to atone for the shedding of blood. root with the Sanskrit A'handas, metre ; Skuld thus represents really the past and /v'handas Professor Max Miiller xq- tense .f-f'<7/, which means " I have killed, gards as identical with the term Zend. and therefore am bound to make com- For the evidence of this see ChiJ>s, tSr-v., pensation for it." The difference l)e- i. 84, note, tween our "shall" and " will" is thus