1. I would like to express my gratitude to the colleagues on ANSAX-L,
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MEDFEM, and CELTIC-L who have graciously suggested
resource material in our discussions of seiðr and other forms of Norse and Welsh
magic, especially Jeffrey Cohen, Kathryn Klar, Ifan Morris, Will Sayers, and Paul Beekman
Taylor. Translations are my own unless otherwise note.
2. "Math uab Mathonwy," in Pedeir Keinc Y Mabinogi, ed. Ifor Williams
(Caerdydd, 1951), pp. 67-92, hereafter referred to as PKM. This is the standard edition in Middle
Welsh. For an up-to-date translation, see "Math Son of Mathonwy," in The Mabinogi and
Other Medieval Welsh Tales, ed. and trans. Patrick K. Ford (Berkeley, 1977), pp. 89-109.
3. Carol Clover, "Regardless of Sex: Men, Women, and Power in Early Northern
Europe," Speculum 68.2 (1993), 363-88.
4. Folke Ström, Nið, Ergi and Old Norse Moral Attitudes, The Dorothea Coke
Memorial Lecture in Northern Studies (London, 1974). See also Preben Meulengracht
Sørensen, The Unmanly Man: Concepts of Sexual Defamation in Early Northern
Society, trans. Joan Turville-Petre (Odense, 1983) for a discussion of nið ("slander") and
medieval Norwegian and Swedish law. The legalities and penalties concerning niað are also
examined by B. Almqvist, in "Nid mot furstar," Chapter I of his Norroun nidiktning:
Traditionshistoriska studeir i versmagi, vol. 1 (Uppsala, 1965).
5. Roberto Zapperi, The Pregnant Man, Fourth Edition, trans. Brian
Williams, 4th ed. (New York, London, Chur, 1991), p. 67.
6. The prefix sann denotes "provability." A man who is
sannsorðinn is unquestionably and publically disgraced.
7. Ström, Nið, p. 4.
8. Ström, Nið, p. 7.
9. Snorri Sturluson, "Gylfaginning," 42, in Edda: Prologue and
Gylfaginning, ed. Anthony Faulkes (Oxford, 1982), pp. 34-35. For a translation, see The
Prose Edda, ed. Arthur Gilchrist Brodeur (London, 1916), pp. 53-55.
10. Sæmundar-Edda, ed. Finnur Jónsson (Reykjav¡k, 1905), pp.
120-136.
11. Patricia Terry, Poems of the Elder Edda (Philadelphia, 1990), p. 76.
12. Terry, Poems, p. 76.
13. Sørensen, The Unmanly Man, pp. 10-11, p. 55 (see note 4). The
definitive text on seiðr and its connections with ergi is by Dag Strömbauck,
Sejd: Textstudier i nordisk religionshistorie, Nordiska texter och undersouknengar 5
(Lund, 1935), p. 29.
14. Sørensen, Unmanly Man, pp. 63-64.
15. Snorri Sturluson, Ynglingasaga, ed. Elias Wessean
(Norstedts/Stockholm, 1964), pp. 10-11: " ðinn kunni þá
íþrótt, er mestr máttr fyldði, ok framði siálfr, er
seiðr heitir, en af ví mátti hann vita orlog manna ok óorðna hluti,
svá ok at gera monnum bana eða óhamingiu eða vanheilendi, svá
ok at taka frá monnum vit eða afl ok gefa oðrum." (Oðinn knew, and
himself practiced, that art to
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which the greatest power
pertains, and which is called seiðr; therefore he knew much about men's destiny and
the future; likewise how to bring death to men or bad luck or illness; likewise how to take wit or
power from one man and give it to another.)
16. Sturluson, Ynglingasaga, p. 11: En þessi fjolkyngi, er framit
er, fylgir svaa mikil ergi, at eigi þótti karlmonnum skammlaust við at
fara, ok var gyðiunum kend sú íþrott.
17. PKM, p. 75: A'r hwnn a uu garw o honawch yrllyned, bit garnen eleni.
18. Saunders Lewis, Braslun o Hanes Llenyddiaeth Gymraeg, 1 (Caerdydd,
1932), p. 37.
19.Tri meib Giluaethwy enwir, / Tri chenryssedat kywir, / Bleidwn, Hydwn,
Hychdwn Hir. (PKM, pp. 76-77)
(Three sons of evil Gilfaethwy, / Three loyal champions: / Wolfcub, Little Buck, Tall Piglet.)
20.The Book of Taliesin, Facsimile Edition, ed. J. Gwenogvryn Evans,
privately published (Llanbedrog, 1910), ff. 23.9-27.12. Hereafter BT. For a translation, see
Ford, "Appendix," The Mabinogi, pp. 183-87.
21. Edited by Patrick Ford (Cardiff, 1992).
22.Nyt ovam athat
pan ymdigonat.
Am creu am creat.
o naw rith llafanat.
o ffrwyth offrwytheu.
offrwyth deu dechreu.
o vriallu ablodeu bre.
o vlawt gwydeu agodeu.
oprid pridret
y pan yndigonet.
o vlawt danat
odwfyr ton nawvet.
Am swynwys i vath.
kyn bum diaeret.
Am swynwys i wytyon
mawnut o brython.
o eurwys o euron.
o euron o vodron
o pymp pumhwnt kelvydon.
Arthawon eil math
pan ymdygeyaed.
Am swynwys i wledic.
pan vei let loscedic.
Am swynwys sywyt
sywydon kyn byt. (BT 23:151-76)
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(Not from a mother and father was I made. As to creation, I was created from nine kinds of
elements, from fruit, from fruits, from the fruit of God in the beginning, from primroses and
blossoms of the hill, from flowers of the woods and trees, from the soil of earth was I made.
From the flowers of nettles, from the water of the ninth wave. Math fashioned [charmed?] me
before I was gifted. Gwydion fashioned me, great magic from a magic staff. From Eurys, from
Euron, from Euron, from Modron, from five times fifty artificers, teachers [athrawon?] like Math,
was I nursed [?], brought up [?] The king [Lord?] fashioned me when he was almost [half]
burning [??], [when death was burning???]. The enchanter of enchanters fashioned me before the
world.)
23. BT: 48.18-20.
24.yg kylchet ym perued / rwg deulin teyrned. BT 23:182-86.
25. From Hanes Taliesin to the Kalevala, seers and poets regularly
emerge from the bellies of deities, giants, and witches, one of the most notable examples being
that of Kavya Usanas, the seer who devours his disciple and gives birth to him from his thigh,
enriching him with his wisdom in the process (from The Mahabharata, Book I, trans.
J.AB. van Buitenan [Chicago, 1973-1978], pp. 177-78]). Poetic production is naturally
associated with procreation, and it provides the male poet a way of parturating: both poet and
visionary are "impregnated" by inspiration: what they have taken in they later emit in the form of
utterances that have a life of their own. For the best examples of the studies made of this
widespread metaphor, see the following: Susan Stanford Friedman, "Creativity and the Childbirth
Metaphor: Gender and Difference in Literary Discourse," Feminist Studies 13 (1987),
47-81; "A Womb of His Own: Male Renaissance Poets in the Female Body," in Sexuality and
Gender in Early Modern Europe, ed. James G. Turner (Cambridge, England, 1993).
26. As in Ystol Gwiddon, "Witch's Stool," a craig in Wales "where a witch
is said to have `planted herself to weave the woof of human destiny. . . .'" T. Gwynn Jones,
Welsh Folklore and Folk-custom (Cambridge, England, 1979), p. 126.
27. Jones, Welsh Folklore, p. 126.
28. For readers of modern Welsh, a good source is Eirlys Gruffydd, "Yr Wrach a'r
Dyn Hysbys" ("The Witch and the Dyn Hysbys"), in Gwrachod Cymru ("Witches of
Wales") (Caernarvon, 1980), pp. 88-103. Also: Kate Bosse Griffiths, Byd y Dyn Hysbys:
Swyngyfaredd yng Nghymru ("The World of the Dyn Hysbus": Sorcery in Wales")
(Talybont, 1977).
29. Ford, Ystoria, p. 65.
30. Patrick Ford, "Celtic Women: The Opposing Sex," Viator 19 (1988),
417-33.
31. Nancy Huston, "The Matrix of War: Mothers and Heroes," in The Female
Body in Western Culture, ed. Susan Rubin Suleiman (Cambridge, Mass., and London, 1985),
pp. 119-38.
32. Maire Bhreathnach, "The Sovereignty Goddess as Goddess of Death?"
Zeitschrift fr Celtische Philologie, 39 (1982), 243-60.
page 149
33. Jenny Jochens, "Old Norse Magic and Gender: þaattr þorvalds ens
Viaðforla," Scandinavian Studies 63.3 (1991), 305-17.
34. See Geoffrey of Vinsauf's model of an effictio in his Poetria
Nova, trans. Margaret F. Nims (Toronto, 1967), pp. 36-38, wherein he puts together the
portrait of a woman through rhetorical technique. Bertran de Born's "Domna Soisseubuda"
describes how a lover concocts the ideal woman for himself, drawn from the features of women
he admires. See A. H. Schutz, "Ronsard's 'Amours' XXXII and the Tradition of the Synthetic
Lady," Romance Philology 1 (1947/48), 125-35.
35. Book III, Canto viii, vv. 5-7.
36. Angelique Gulermovich, "Miscarriages and Miraculous Births in Indo-European
Tradition," Journal of Indo-European Studies 22.1-2 (1994).
37. Paracelsus, "Concerning the Generation of Natural Things," The Hermetic
and Alchemical Writings, ed. and trans. Arthur Edward Waite (New York, 1967), 1:120-27.
38.The Hermetic, trans. Waite, p. 120.
39.The Hermetic, trans. Waite, p. 121.
40.The Hermetic, trans. Waite, p. 124.
41.The Hermetic, trans. Waite, p. 124.
42. Henricus Institoris (Henrik Kraemer and Jakob Sprenger), Malleus
Maleficarum, trans. Montague Summers (Bungay, Suffolk, 1928), p. 66.
43. Institoris, Malleus, p. 54.
