Of Mumblings and Carvings: How magical is the Old High German Word rûna (‘rune’) and its Derivations?

Of Mumblings and Carvings: How magical is the Old High German Word rûna (‘rune’) and its Derivations?

By Dr Aletta Leipold, Saxon Academy of Science and Humanities

The modern German noun Rune, which means ‘character of the Germanic or Old Norse runic alphabet’, has formal equivalents in all Old Germanic languages but on a semantic level, they are far from uniform. The familiar modern German meaning ‘runic character’ finds a direct equivalent only in Old Norse and Old English. Divergent meanings such as ‘whispering’, ‘susurration’ or ‘secret’, are evidenced in Gothic, Old High German, Old Norse, and Old English. Previous hypotheses characterised runic script as magically charged secret knowledge to bridge between the two disparate meanings and fill the semantic gap. This suggestion has been doubted by Wilhelm Grimm, the father of German philology. In fact, more recent etymological analyses promote two separate Indo-European roots as the origins of the word’s two meanings.

In Old High German, the earliest stage of the German language (approx. 8^th-11^th c.), the word rûna does not denote a character or letter as one might expect due to the modern German word Rune. As can be inferred from the Lautgestalt, the phonetic quality, of the word Rune, the word’s transmission must have been disrupted. Had it been transmitted uninterruptedly it would have developed into *Raune. The modern German word Rune, therefore, cannot be viewed as inherited but as reintroduced as an adopted relic (including its archaic phonology) during the New High German period. The Germanic word meaning ‘runic character’ has likely been lost around the time of Christianisation, and was only preserved in extant Old High German texts, such as the Isruna Tract.

Looking at the nuanced semantic structure of the word and its derivations, we may ask: How much magic does it contain? Words related to the Old High German female noun rûna, the verb rûnên, and their various derivates primarily appear in contexts where the quality of oral speech can be described as a whisper or as susurration. The derived meanings ‘sorcery’, ‘conjuring’ (‘a murmured incantation’), and ‘secret’ (‘that which one whispers to someone quietly’) appear to have developed from these original meanings. In this secondary sense, the word rûnên developed into the Modern High German form raunen, a stylistically sophisticated verb meaning ‘to whisper’, ‘to speak with a quiet, restrained voice’. Modulating the voice could be motivated by different factors: a more general sense of secrecy or a specific magical context in which murmuring is performed.

In the extant corpus of Old High German transmission, the verb rûnên is primarily found in glosses, marginal or interlinear annotations translating Latin words. The gloss rûnên is mostly found in ancient Latin or biblical texts and it generally means ‘whisper’. There are, however, two cases in which the word is used in the context of magical murmuring that is part of an incantatory practice or a ritual.

The first instance denotes magical susurrations into the ear (susurrus magicus) as a complementary action to a spell. Whispering as part of sorcery evokes a sense of secrecy. It was considered to be effective, because the invisible breath expelled from the inside was thought to be especially potent and powerful. Another element in the category of complementary actions concerning the performance of a spell is the stepping-on-the-foot, as the following example illustrates.

In a Historiola, a prosaic introduction frequently preceding medieval spells, a healing spell against founder is supplemented by a narrative about a man. He is leading his horse by the reins as he is unable to ride it due to an inflammation of the dermis of the hoof. When the man encounters the Lord (i.e. Christ) who asks why he could not ride his horse, the man explains the situation. The Christian God then explains a pagan healing practice to him: ‘Take the horse to your side, murmur in its ear, step on its right hoof, then it will improve’. After following these instructions, the man must say the Lord’s Prayer. A Latin instruction (‘rub feet and thighs’) is further provided as well as the incantatio, the actual spell itself (MS Paris, Bibl. Nationale, MS Nouv. Acq. Lat. 229, 10r; 12^th c.). The particular power of the speaker’s breath while performing, as evidenced in this ritual, can be traced through various spells even into early modern times.

The second example is taken from a short spell known as ‘Stag and Hind’ (‘Hirsch und Hinde’; Brussels, Royal Lib., ms. 8860-67, 15v, 10^th c.).

‘Stag and Hind’ (‘Hirsch und Hinde’; Brussels, Royal Lib., ms. 8860-67, 15v, 10th c.)

This erotic spell may be read as a ritualistic speech act in a singing or mating game associated with a deer cult: hirez runeta hintun in daz ora ‚uuildu noh, hinta …‘? A person, probably masked as a deer, murmurs the question ‘Do you still want to, hind?’ into the ear of his presumably also human hind.

The compound helli-rûnâri also pertains to a magical context. In a ninth-century manuscript of the Third Book of Moses, a list of birds not to be eaten by the Israelites includes noctua, ‘night-owl’ or ‘screech-owl’, glossed as hellirûnâri ‘hell-whisperer’ (gloss to Lev. 11,16.17; MS Vat. Pal. Lat. 135, 9^th c.): hellirunari pithonicus nicromanticus. This is probably motivated by the conceptualisation of this bird as harbinger of death: when a screech-owl calls, a person dies – a superstition that has in parts survived until today.

Magically charged whispers are close to sorcerous incantations. In three compounds with rûn(a) as a second element, the original sense ‘murmuring’ or ‘conjuring’ goes beyond magical whispering and indicates sorcery. The compounds hellirûn or hellirûna, transmitted as glosses, were always used to translate the word necromantia. The ninth- or tenth-century Old High German glosses to Aldhelm’s poem Carmen de virginitate offer some interesting context in this respect.

The verses of Aldhelm’s poem recount the battle of Pope Silvester with the Jewish sorcerer Zambrius who deceived people through necromancy and killed a bull by using magical ear-whispering. Silvester freed the bull from the bounds of this spell and revived it. The word necromantia is glossed as hellirûna (‘hell-spell’) and likely signifies a whispered incantation intended to kill. In an eleventh-century manuscript from Munich, the same passage is glossed with the synonymous noun tôdrûna which also means ‘spell’ or ‘incantation used as a means to kill’.

Munich, Bavarian State Library, clm 23486, 25r

The potent mandrake (modern German Alraune), the root of the mandrake plant, also belongs to the realm of sorcery, as manifested in several Old High German examples. The noun is transmitted in masculine and feminine form – alrûn and alrûna – which reflects the distinction between male and female root in popular belief. The plant’s sap served as an anaesthetic. In his paraphrase of the Song of Songs, Williram, a writer of the late Old High German period, used the sedating effect of the plant as an allegory of God’s curative power. Apart from one instance – in which the German word is added: also daz pomum mandragore (œpfel alrunun) … machet die slafelosen slafen (‘thus the mandrake…makes the sleepless sleep’) – most of Williram’s manuscripts transmit the Latin term mandragora. The vernacular German name of the plant is itself linked to sorcery (al-rûna > Al-raune, ‘all-encompassing spell’) and it substantiates the magical implication of the word rûna.

Besides susurrium (‘whispering’), the rarely transmitted word rûna is also used to translate mysterium (‘secret’). Nevertheless, the common translation of ‘secret’ was the now extinct noun girûni. Both words are solely transmitted in Christian contexts and concern the mysteries of the new religion, especially that of the birth of Christ and the Holy Trinity. The early ninth-century Exhortatio ad plebem christianam, a text containing the most important items of instructional Christian literature, provides a description of the Creed: the (new) creed consists of only a few words but holds great secrets/mysteries (mihiliu caruni dar inne sint pifangan). In the Physiologus, an early Christian allegorical interpretation of nature, the unicorn symbolises the mystery of God’s birth: also demo einhurnin niman geuolgen nemag, so nemag ouh nehein man uernemin daz gerune unsiris trotinis … êr er uon der magede libe mennesgen lihhamin finc. (‘As no one can follow the unicorn, no person can grasp the mystery of our Lord before He assumed human form through the body of the Virgin’).

Similar instances of girûni appear frequently in the Old High German translation of Isidore of Seville’s De fide catholica. Taking into consideration the fact that the lexemes of the rûna/rûnên-family were still linked to pagan, cultish notions of the old faith, the addition of the adjective heilag in order to clearly lift the words out of the sphere of paganism hardly comes as a surprise. Heilag often serves as an attribute of girûni, for instance in: ih … dhiu chiborgonun hort dhir ghibu, endi ih uuillu dhazs dhu firstandes heilac chiruni (‘I … give you the concealed treasure, and I want you to understand the holy secret’).

One example from an eighth-century manuscript is especially remarkable regarding form and content. The deeper mystery behind a biblical allegory is in this case also translated as girûni. The gloss is double mysterious. The glossator did not write with ink, but carved the character into the parchment with a stylus. Furthermore, he did not use the Latin alphabet but runes. Transliterating into the runic alphabet is a known method of encryption during the medieval period. Runes thus found their way into medieval codices and continued to live between the lines of texts for some time.

Tracing of the scratched gloss geruni of MS St. Gallen 11, p. 144, cf. A. Nievergelt, Runenschrift, p. 41 (used with permission from A. Nievergelt)

This last meaning of the formerly pagan word rûna indicates its transition into the sphere of Christianity. In the extant corpus of the transmissions of the Old High German language, we find traces of ancient rituals, incorporated in spells and charms, alongside Christian teachings and prayers. This indicates a shift towards the new religion that characterises the Old High German era and its literary legacy.

Learn more about the magic of the word runa in ‘Gerauntes und Geritztes: die Wortfamilie um rûna im Althochdeutschen’ (2020) by Aletta Leipold.

References

Althochdeutsches Wörterbuch. Auf Grund der von Elias von Steinmeyer hinterlassenen

Sammlungen im Auftrag der Sächsischen Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Leipzig. Vol. 1: A–B (ed. by Elisabeth Karg-Gasterstädt/Theodor Frings 1952–1968, Reprint 2007), Vol. 2: C–D (ed. by Rudolf Große 1970–1997, Reprint 2007), Vol. 3: E–F (ed. by Rudolf Große 1971–1985, Reprint 2007), Vol. 4: G–J (ed. by Rudolf Große 1986–2002, Reprint 2007), Vol. 5: K–L (ed. by Gotthard Lerchner/Hans Ulrich Schmid 2002–2009), Vol. 6: M–N (ed. by Hans Ulrich Schmid 2013–2015), Vol. 7 ff.: O, P (ed. by Hans Ulrich Schmid 2015 ff.). Berlin: Akademie (until 2013), Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter (since 2014).

Althochdeutsches Wörterbuch online: http://awb.saw-leipzig.de/cgi/WBNetz/wbgui_py?sigle=AWB

Leipold, Aletta, ‘Gerauntes und Geritztes:

die Wortfamilie um rûna im Althochdeutschen’, In vriuntschaft als es was gedâht. Freundschaftsschrift für Hans-Joachim Solms, ed. by J. Ammer, G. Meiser, H. Link, (Berlin: Erich Schmidt, 2020), 117-145.

Nievergelt, Andreas, Althochdeutsch in Runenschrift. Geheimschriftliche volkssprachige Griffelglossen, (Stuttgart: Hirzel, 2019).