Chapter CCIV: Section XIII: Elberich

The elf king Elberich here brings in his own fairy kindred. In the _Nibelung_, he is watching over the fatal treasure when Siegfried comes to claim it, and, dwarf as he is, does such fierce battle over it that Siegfried was ‘in bitter jeopardy;’ but he is at length overcome sworn to Siegfried’s service, and brought by him to Wurms, where he has no more to do but to lament when Haghen makes away with the treasure.

He is called very ancient, and well he may be, for he had appeared in the _Book of Heroes_ long before the time of even Hughdietrich, when King Otnit of Lombardy had set forth to win the daughter of the king of Syria, and Elberich showed himself under a linden tree in the guise of a beautiful child. Otnit was about to pick him up, but received from him a tremendous blow, and after a sharp fight came to terms, and thenceforth he assisted him in his enterprise, gave him magic armour, and assisted him to gain the lady. Much of this story is repeated in the French romance of _Huon de Bourdeaux_, where Auberon, as he is there called, gives the knight an ivory horn wherewith to summon him to his aid in an emergency, and thus arose the English Oberon, the elf-rik or king, the graceful but petulant fairy whom Drayton marries to the Irish Mab, and Shakespeare to the Greek Titania. He had his human namesakes, too; Alberich was in fashion as a Frank name, as Ælfric was as a Saxon; and the Domesday Book shows that while we had plenty of the latter native form, Edward the Confessor had already imported two specimens of ‘Albericus comes,’ and these or their sons contracted into Aubrey, which was known to fame as almost hereditary among the De Veres, earls of Oxford. France, too, had her Aubri; and Alberico was used in Lombardy, where likewise the notable and terrible monarch Alboin, whose name as Alboino is still common among the peasantry, bore the name that Anglo-Saxons called Ælfwine, or elf-friend, perhaps likewise an allusion to the aid and friendship of ‘Oberon the faëry,’ whose first protégé was a Lombard. Alwine is the feminine used in Germany, and _perhaps_ may be our Albinia.

The elf of England and Germany, the _alfr_ of the North, was a being dear to the imagination of the people. His name means the _white_, the same word already mentioned as forming the Latin _albus_, and designating the Elbe and the Alps, as well as appearing in the Elphin of Cymric legend. The elves, or white spirits, were supposed to be beautiful shadowy gifted beings, often strangely influencing the life of mortals, so that in old Germany the Alfr were the genii of man’s life, like the Disir of the North; and Elberich probably originally attended Otnit in this capacity. Christianity did not destroy the faith in the elf-world, but the existence of these beings was accounted for by supposing them children of Eve, whom she had hidden from the face of her Maker, and He had therefore condemned to be hidden from the face of man. They were thought to mourn for their exclusion from Redemption, and to seek baptism for their infants; but in process of time their higher attributes dropped off from them, and they were mixed up with the malicious black dwarfs. They took to stealing young maidens, as the Scottish Burd Ellen, and to exchanging infants in the cradle; and Scotland created an Elfinland, which was a striking element of worldly vanity. In England, the traditions of the Keltic spirits, pucks and pixies, were mixed up with them, and our Elizabethan poets treated them as the males of the French fairies; and what comes to us so recommended, surely we must accept.

These elves, in their more dignified days, played a considerable part in our native nomenclature; nay, the most honoured of all our English sovereigns wrote himself upon his jewel Ælfred, _i.e._, Elf in council, wise as a supernatural being. Some have tried to read the word Alfried, all peace; but there is no doubt that the Elf is the right prefix. The English loved to continue his name, but it was Latinized as Aluredus, and thus Alured is the form in which it is borne by many persons recorded in Domesday, and is still kept up and regarded as a separate name, though Alfred has been within the last century resumed in England; it is much used about the good king’s birth-place at Wantage in Berkshire, and has of late been adopted in France and Germany.

Ælfhæg was as high as an elf; whether given to a very small infant, or supposed to refer to a being of unearthly stature, does not appear. It was the very inappropriate name of the archbishop who, under Ethelred the Unready, was pelted to death at a Danish banquet because he would not oppress his flock to obtain a ransom. The offence given by Lanfranc in refusing to regard him as a true martyr may be judged by the large numbers called after him in Domesday. In Sussex they are set down as Ælfech; in Hants as Ælfec; in Nottingham as Ælfag; and thanks to the Latinism of Alphegius, our calendar calls him Alphege.

Ælfgifu, or the elf gift, was the unfortunate Elgiva of history, a not unsuitable name for one whose beauty was like a fatal fairy gift, bringing ruin on her and on her husband; but it was also used to translate into Saxon that of the Norman Emma, which was regarded as too foreign for the Saxons. Knut’s first wife, Ælfwine (elf darling), the daughter of Ælfhelm, Earl of Southampton, is recorded by Dugdale as Ailive; and Aileve, Ælveva, or Alveva, is very common in Domesday. Aileve indeed continued in use for many years.

In fact, it was England that made by far the most use of elf names. The North was perhaps the next in the use of them, having an immense number of instances of Alfr in the _Landnama-bok_, but there the elf at the end of a word has such an unfortunate tendency to transform himself into a wolf, that it is impossible to tell which was the original, the same person being sometimes written Thoralf, and sometimes Thorulf. There are few instances preserved from the other Teutonic branches, except as we have seen the two Lombardic names, that seem direct from Elberich.

English names in Æthel often contract into El, and when followed by an _f_, appear to be _elves_; but they must be pursued to their original form before being so rendered.

┌─────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│ Nor. Alfdis—Household fairy │
│ Nor. Alfgejr; Eng. Ælfgar—Elf spear │
│ Nor. Alfgerdur—Elf woman │
│ Nor. Alfheidur, Alfeidur—Elf cheerfulness │
│ Eng. Ælfhelm—Elf helmet │
│ Nor. Alfhild—Elf battle maid │
│ Nor. Alfliotr—Elf terror │
│ Eng. Ælfric—Elf king │
│ Eng. Ælfthryth, Elfrida—Threatening elf │
│ Eng. Ælfwold—Elf power │
└─────────────────────────────────────────────────┘

Alvaro and Elvira are the Spanish forms of these elf names.

A bishop of Lichfield, whose name was Ælfwine, was always called Ælla, and thus there is reason to suppose that _elves_ named both the Ælle of Deira, whose name caused Gregory the Great to say that Alleluja should be sung in those regions, and also the later Ælla, who put Ragnar Lodbrog to death. Otherwise these would be referred to the word in Gothic, _aljan_, meaning battle, found in the Old German Ellanheri and Ellanperaht.

Some of our commencing _els_ are no doubt from the fairy source; but there are others very difficult to account for, beginning in Anglo-Saxon with _ealh_, which is either a hall, or without the final _h_, the adjective _all_, by which in fact they are generally translated. The most noted of them is Ealhwine, the tutor of Charlemagne’s sons, generally called Alcuin, though his name has remained at home as Aylwin. Some Aylwins, are, however, certainly from Ægilwine, or awful friend; Ealhfrith, Ealhmund, and Ealhred, are also found, and one of these must have formed the modern Eldred. Among ladies are Ealhfled, and Ealhswyth, or Alswitha. On the whole it seems to us that the _hall_ is the more probable derivation; the _h_ so carefully used in the Saxon Chronicle is unlike a contraction.[138]

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Footnote 138:

Munch; Weber and Jamieson; St. Pelaye, _Huon de Bourdeaux_; Grimm;
Keightley; Lappenburg; _Landnama-bok_; _Domesday_; Scott, _Minstrelsy
of Scottish Border_; Sharon Turner; Kemble, _Names of the
Anglo-Saxons_.