Indo-European Poetry and Myth

the unlucky marriage of one of them to the Nart hero Axsartag. She turned them both into fishes, and so they spent a year togeth ...

depths of the waters everywhere alike, shining goddess-children’ (346–66). Elsewhere nymphs are identified as daughters of parti ...

Aeacus’ liaison with a Nereid, Psamathe, while her sister Thetis, not from choice but by Zeus’ ordinance, was joined to Peleus i ...

Germanic Writers from the sixth century on, as noted in the last chapter, testify to the Germanic reverence for rivers, springs, ...

young and attractive from the front, but seen from behind they are hollow like kneading-troughs.^33 Celtic Dedicatory inscriptio ...

Slavonic Slavonic reverence for ‘rivers and nymphs and various other heathen powers’ is already noted by Procopius (Bell. Goth. ...

cannot trust it as being an accurate typology of Baltic nymphs. But it is not to be doubted that the Balts recognized beings of ...

(7. 79. 22ff.). They are half human, half animal beings who live in the mountains and attend Kubera, the ruler of the north; the ...

as transmitted, has been emended to yield an Illyrian name for Satyrs, Deuadai.^49 It looks like a diminutive of the inherited w ...

More definitely mischievous and knavish, though in classical times no longer part of living folklore, were the Kerkopes and Koba ...

particular are not distinguished from dwarfs (Gylf. 34, Skáldsk. 35). Dwarfs are often credited with the same kinds of antisocia ...

poetic terms for the sun is álfro ̨ðull, ‘elf-halo’, could be taken to imply that elves made it. There is a long-standing theory ...

strong candidate for Indo-European status.^65 One-eyed giants also occur in Irish and Lithuanian tales.^66 Hesiod (Th. 185) asso ...

andflattens the cloak. The Narts tell him that he has killed a man, which pleases him greatly.^67 The Foawr of Manx legend are a ...

Vis ́varu ̄ pa–Azˇi Daha ̄ka and his Greek analogue Geryoneus, the many-headed Hydra, and the hundred-headed Typhoeus. The giant ...

(ancient) work of giants’.^74 A champion builder engaged by the Norse gods to build their fortifications turned out to be a gian ...

leave the castle, escorted by Útgarða-loki, who now explains that the contests were not what they seemed and that they had in fa ...

guide on the journey, a protector of flocks, a watcher of who and what goes where, one who can scamper up any slope with the eas ...

8 Hymns and Spells INVOCATORY HYMNS Something was said in the first chapter about the invocatory hymn as one of the genres in wh ...

Greek.^1 Certain early Latin texts such as the Saliar Hymn, however, may represent native Italic tradition. For the rest, the ev ...