From: "Harald Beyer-Arnesen" <haraldba-AT-online.no>
Subject: Re: pedants' corner (was Re: AUT: Re: The fictitious capital debate)
Date: Mon, 16 Jun 2003 09:17:03 +0200



----- Original Message -----
From: "Paul Bowman" <paulbowman-AT-totalise.co.uk>
To: <haraldba-AT-online.no>
Sent: 15. juni 2003 21.32
Subject: Re: pedants' corner (was Re: AUT: Re: The fictitious capital
debate)

Paul sent me this question as a private e-mail. But as my reply
got rather long, and the last part contains some good old
popular enlightment (you cannot say that in English, can you?),
I thought I send it along to the list anyway. Maybe there are
others than me, Paul and Steve that finds this just a
bit fascinating. Whether it will bring as nearer the end of
class rule may be doubtful, but there are some old advice
against the suffocating weight of the Alp in what follows,
so who knows?


> Harald,
>
> Is this meaning of Alp originally distinct from the "hanging valley" sense
> etymologically? Or are they different associations to the same original
root
> and, if so, which came first.

"Der Alp" as in Alpdruck (alp-pressure) and Alptraumen
(alp-dream) certainly is much older. The reference to "ghosts"
in my last post was somewhat misleading. Alp is etymologically
the same word as "elf" in English. Though in the last half
of the 19th century the form "Elf" entered into German as
English loan word. This Elf however was nice and friendly.
More suitable I suspect for national-romantic purposes.
In old norse the name was alf. The "alf" later reappered
here as "hulder", whom some people in the mountain valleys
still feared when I grew up.  The history of the alp/alf/elf
and so on, is old, rather complex, the geographical range
wide, and my knowledge of it, lacks a lot.  And of course
they've changed over the years. The Grimm brothers have
pretty much covered their tracks, but I have not read this
extremly detailed text, nor do I know if has ever been
translated into English. Past of their earlier history can be
found in the norse sagas. You find them in quite a
range of combines designating illnesses in Scandinavian
dialects.


As far as I understand "die Alp" (Swtizerland), die Alpe
(Austria) die Alm (Germany) -- as opposed to our
nightmare friend, "der Alp"--  and as used in the plural
form die Alpen as the name of the mountain range, the
Alps in English, refers foremost to the summer mountain
pasture, and has a somewhat distinct etymology. It
Switzerland and Austria the word also exists as a verb,
"alpen". But I am very far from an expert. Nor are my
German language skills much to brag about.  It is
Duden dictionary that is helping me out here.

"Alp" might also be translated into "incubus". But still,
Night-Mare is what it seems to be about.


I finally find a useful website for Alp in English. (There
are plenty in German.)
http://www.pitt.edu/~dash/nightmare.html

Yioy will find some useful parts in this context reproduced
below. Though there are more on the webpage, and some
letters in what follows probably will not survive on e-mail.
So look it up the the website if words get distorted.

----

Definitions

The mare in nightmare is not a female horse, but a mara, an Anglo-Saxon and
Old Norse term for a demon that sat on sleepers' chests, causing them to
have bad dreams.

Dialect variants, as explained below, include the forms mara, mahr, mahrt,
mårt, and others.

In High German, the demon who causes bad dreams is most often called an Alp,
a word that is etymologically related to elf.

A mare-induced bad dream is called a nightmare in English, martröð
(mare-ride) in Anglo-Saxon and Icelandic,  mareridt (mare-ride) in Danish,
mareritt (mare-ride) in Norwegian, and Alpdruck (alp-pressure) or Alptraum
(alp- dream) in German.

----

The Alp

Germany

Even though windows and doors may be tightly closed and locked to keep out
the alps, they can still get in through the smallest holes, which they seek
out with special pleasure. In the still of the night one can hear the sound
that they make in the wall while getting in. If one gets up quickly and
plugs up the hole, then they must stay in the room and cannot escape, even
after the doors have been opened. Then, before setting them free, one must
make them promise to never disturb the place again. On such occasions they
have complained pitifully that they have little children at home who will
perish if they do not leave.

A trud or an alp often travels a great distance to make his nighttime
visits. Once some herdsmen were out in the field in the middle of the night.
They were watching their herds not far from a body of water. An alp came by,
climbed into a boat, untied it from the bank, rowed it with an oar that he
himself had brought along, climbed out, tied up the boat on the other side,
and continued on his way. After a while he returned and rowed back.

The herdsmen, however, after observing this for several nights, and allowing
it to happen, decided to take the boat away. When the alp returned, he began
to complain bitterly, and threatened the herdsmen that they would have to
bring the boat back immediately if they wanted to have peace, and that is
what they did.

Some people have laid a hackle [an iron-toothed comb for the preparation of
flax] on their bodies in order to keep alps away, but an alp often turns it
over, pressing the points into the sleeper's body.

A better precaution is to turn one's shoes around at the side of the bed, so
that the hooks and the laces are next to you.

When an alp is pressing against you, you can put your thumb in your hand,
and he will have to retreat.

Alps often ride your horses during the night, and the next morning you can
see how exhausted they are.

They can also be repelled with horse heads.

If you don't move your chair before going to sleep, the mare will ride it
during the night. They like to give people hair-snarls (called whole-grain
braids or mare braids), by sucking on their hair then braiding it.

When a nurse diapers a child, she must make the sign of the cross and open
up a corner, otherwise the alp will re- diaper the child.

If you say to an alp that is pressing upon you, "Trud, come tomorrow, and I
will lend you something!" then he will immediately retreat and come the next
day in the form of a human, in order to borrow something.

Or you can call out to him, "Come tomorrow and drink with me," then the
person who sent him will have to come.

According to Prätorius, such a person's eyebrows grow together along one
line. Others claim that such a person's eyebrows grow together on their
forehead. There are others who can send an alp to those they hate or are
angry with merely with their thoughts. He comes out of their eyebrows, looks
like a small white butterfly, and sits on the breast of a sleeping person.


Source: Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, Der Alp, Deutsche Sagen (1816/1818), no.
81.


----

The Alp

Germany

The alp is a demonic being which presses upon sleeping people so that they
cannot utter a sound. These attacks are called Alpdrücke (nightmares).

A girl told how the alp came to her through a keyhole. She was not able to
call for help. Later, she therefore asked her sister to call out her name in
the night, and then the alp would go back out through the keyhole.

In Zwickau they claim that the alp will go away if one invites him for
coffee the following morning.

It is also believed that the alp crushes animals to death. For example, if
young geese, are placed in a pig pen and then die it is said that the alp
crushed them to death. If rabbits die, and it appears that they have been
crushed, a broom is placed in their pen, which protects them against the
alp.


Source: Joh. Aug. Ernst Köhler, Sagenbuch des Erzgebirges (Schneeberg and
Schwarzenberg: Verlag und Druck von Carl Moritz Gärtner, 1886), no. 200, pp.
154-155.

----

An Alp Is Captured

Germany

A cabinetmaker in Bühl slept in a bed in his workshop. Several nights in a
row something laid itself onto his chest and pressed against him until he
could hardly breathe. After talking the matter over with a friend, the next
night he lay awake in bed. At the strike of twelve a cat slipped in through
a hole. The cabinetmaker quickly stopped up the hole, caught the cat, and
nailed down one of its paws. Then he went to sleep.

The next morning he found a beautiful naked woman in the cat's place. One of
her hands was nailed down. She pleased him so much that he married her.

One day, after she had borne him three children, she was with him in his
workshop, when he said to her, "Look, that is where you came in!" and he
opened the hole that had been stopped up until now.

The woman suddenly turned into a cat, ran out through the opening, and she
was never seen again.


Source: Bernhard Baader, "Alp," Volkssagen aus dem Lande Baden und den
angrenzenden Gegenden (Karlsruhe: Verlag der Herder'schen Buchhandlung,
1851), no. 136, p. 126.
Bühl is a town in southwest Germany. The closest larger city is Baden-Baden

----

The Alp

Poland/Germany

The alp, or as it is most often called, the "märt," is frequently
encountered in Pomerania. A märt rides on sleeping people at night, pressing
against them until at last they can no longer breathe. A märt is usually a
girl who has a bad foot. Once in the village of Bork near Stargard there was
a smith who had a daughter with a bad foot, and at that time an unusually
large number of people complained that they were being ridden by a märt.


Source: J. D. H. Temme, Die Volkssagen von Pommern und Rügen (Berlin: In der
Nikolaischen Buchhandlung, 1840), p. 341.
Pomerania (Polish Pomorze, German Pommern) is a historic region lying mostly
in today's northwest Poland, but partly in northeast Germany.
Stargard is the German name for the Szczecin, a Polish city on the Ina
River.


----

A Charm to Control the Night-Mare

England

S. George, S. George, our ladies knight,
He walkt by daie, so did he by night.
Untill such time as he her found,
He hir beat and he hir bound,
Untill hir troth she to him plight,
She would not come to him that night.





     --- from list aut-op-sy-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---