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"The Sleep Curse" is a phenomenon that has been attracting attention and research in recent years. It refers to the growing problem of insufficient sleep and the negative consequences it has on individuals' physical and mental health. In today's fast-paced and demanding world, many people struggle to get enough sleep. With hectic lifestyles, long working hours, and the prevalence of electronic devices, sleep has become a luxury that is often compromised. The Sleep Curse has serious implications on various aspects of our lives. Lack of sleep affects our cognitive abilities, making it harder to concentrate, remember things, and make decisions.

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However, we do find a similar Latin term sacerdos civitatis , male priest of the state, used by Tacitus in Book X of his Germania, which would fit the bill. We can view pagan priests as in some way artists, who used paint either for visual representations or body painting as part of their religious practices.

Lack of sleep affects our cognitive abilities, making it harder to concentrate, remember things, and make decisions. This can have negative effects on our work productivity, academic performance, and overall quality of life. Additionally, insufficient sleep is linked to mood disorders, such as increased irritability, stress, and anxiety.

Magic Words – an etymological archeology of Anglo-Saxon witchery

Today we look at several Anglo-Saxon words relating to magic see if they can tell us anything about prechristian Germanic religion. All we know about Germanic religion comes either from Roman authors under the Empire, Christian polemics in the dark ages, or very late manuscripts from Scandinavia. Outside of the Scandinavian sources, which are of course invaluable, we know very little. Jakob Grimm, in his monumental C19th work Teutonic Mythology, tried to fill in the gaps using a combination of etymology and folklore. It is this etymological path which I wish to follow here. By using etymology to speculate what a word originally meant in pre-migration German, we may be able to learn things about pre-conversion religion in England centuries later which are invisible in textual sources written only decades after conversion.

The words I will be examining are the following:

teafor, atiefran, tifrung
burgrune, leodrune, hellerune
wicca, wicce
hægtesse

Teafor

The modern German word for sorcery and enchantment is Zauber, and a wizard is a Zauberer. Mozart’s opera die Zauberflöte (the Magic Flute) would be familiar to many non-German speakers. The link between German Zauber, magic, and its certain OE cognate teafor, paint, is intriguing. Teafor in Old English never means magic. It only occurs a few times and represents (i) red ochre and (ii) gum for making a salve. Note that its descendent ‘tiver’ was (is?) a dialectical name for sheep marking, which is paint mixed with tar to make it stick to the wool. So a connection between paint and gum is not hard to understand – we can think of teafor as sticky paint which can be smeared on. Rather like modern theatrical greasepaint, which contains zinc, ochre and lard.

What the original connection could be between paint and magic, however, is far less clear. Grimm both speculated that magic runes might have been coloured, drawing a parallel with the use of red ochre (rubric) in manuscripts. I must say I don’t find this particularly convincing as one can do so much more with paint that simply colouring letters. More generally, magic symbols may have been painted on the ground or on the walls. Idols are also very likely to have been painted. Or magicians may have painted themselves, as contemporary shamans sometimes do. In all these cases, a sorcerer would be using paint as an important part of their materials.

The meaning ‘magic’ is shared between continental West Germanic and Old Norse reflexes of the word zauber/teafor. Although we should never discount the possibility of semantic cross-pollenation, particularly at an early stage when North Germanic and West Germanic were closer and probably mutually intelligible, it is more likely that this shared meaning shows that ‘magic’ was part of the meaning at a very early stage. It is hard to see how “magic” could later come to mean “paint”, so it is most likely that the word once combined both meanings and meant something like “magic paint”.

It is possibly significant that the related words recorded in Bosworth-Toller, atiefran and tifrung, refer to figurative painting. Maybe the principal painters of images in Germanic societies were priests. Only a century after conversion, Anglo-Saxon Christian monks, who probably came from the same social classes as the former priests, were skilled artists (see the Lindisfarne and St Cuthbert Gospels ).

Australian Aboriginal Medicine Man with Body Paint

Runan

The meaning of the three “rune” words needs some teasing out. A run (no -e), as well as meaning a rune, meant a whisper, a secret, a mystery. The derived verb runian meant only to whisper, but one commonly whispers secrets. A rune (plural runan) is a wise woman, the feminine of (ge-)runa, counsellor. We find the feminine only in compounds.

Combined with hell(e), hell, we find both hell-runa (sorcerer) and helle-rune (sorceress), (cf. OHG helliruna, necromancy) with a meaning of someone expert in the mysteries of hell, i.e. a necromancer. This is very likely to be the same word as a term in Jordanes Getica, Book XXIV, haliurunnas, which refers to witches among the Goths. Grimm gives a different etymology based on the reading ‘aliorumnas’, but the reading is suspect. It matches a reading in the 3 manuscripts classified by Mommsen as class ii. Grimm gives a number of variant forms all without ‘h’, but none of them match the readings by Mommsen. Mommsen gives forms without ‘h’ in only 4 ms. Haliurunnae is the reading of 7 manuscripts, including all of Mommsen’s class i and most of his class iii, which comes from a separate source. The readings without the ‘h’ all come from the class ii manuscripts which Mommsen says come from the same source as class i, and which he regards as inferior. So the reading with ‘h’ is as good as it is possible to get, given the state of the manuscripts. The first element matches the Gothic word for hell, halja. The second element (runnae) looks very like runan, although the duplication of ‘n’ has caused some doubts. Nevertheless, the chances of a random connection between West Germanic original hellerune and this Gothic word is small and it is most likely that the word is cognate with OE hellerune.

The story in Jordanes is worth repeating:

Filimer, king of the Goths, … found among his people certain witches, whom he called in his native tongue Haliurunnae. Suspecting these women, he expelled them from the midst of his race and compelled them to wander in solitary exile afar from his army. There the unclean spirits, who beheld them as they wandered through the wilderness, bestowed their embraces upon them and begat this savage race, which dwelt at first in the swamps,–a stunted, foul and puny tribe, scarcely human, and having no language save one which bore but slight resemblance to human speech. Such was the descent of the Huns who came to the country of the Goths.

This is certainly a great morality tale about how not to treat witches! Filimer feared them and expelled them from among his people and they gave birth to the Huns, who later came and conquered the Goths. The main value in this story, however, is the fact that Gothic possessed the same word as OE, which means that hellerune was a pre-christian pan-germanic concept.

Gauls Meeting a Goth

What is meant by burgrune and leodrune is far from clear. Neither has an extant masculine counterpart. Burgrune is used only to translate Latin for female figures from classical mythology, the Parcae and the Furiae. If it only glossed the Parcae, one could speculate that it was a manufactured compound capturing the protective role of the parcae. Latin parcere (spare) has a similar meaning to OE beorgan, which is related to burg, town. But the fact that it also glosses the Furiae makes this unlikely. It seems then that burgrune is a preexisting compound, which meant “wise woman of the town”. However, the meaning of burg in very early Germanic society cannot have been the same as its later meaning, as the Germans did not have towns. The most likely early meaning of burg was a “refuge castle” (German Fliehburg) or a hill-fort. Refuge castles could have christian chapels inside them (see en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tönsberg#Hünenkapelle), while hill-forts sometimes had (pagan) temples built inside them (see en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hillfort#Types_of_hill_fort). I have been unable to locate any academic work on the connection between early proto-towns and temples, but it seems likely they were associated. The pagan religious complex at Yeavering, for example, was built on the site of an Iron Age hill-fort (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yeavering). So a burgrune may have originally been a priestess associated with a fortified temple.

Reconstruction of Yeavering

The term leodrune is only found in a late medicinal work Bald’s Leechbook. The original editor (Cockayne) translated it as “spell, incantation”, which might have been correct if it had been leoðrun, but it wasn’t. However, as it stands, its components mean “wise woman of the people”. If there ever was an equivalent male role, *leodruna, it has not come down to us. However, we do find a similar Latin term sacerdos civitatis, (male) priest of the state, used by Tacitus in Book X of his Germania, which would fit the bill. Tacitus also points to the role of priestesses in his Book VIII, where he says: Inesse quin etiam sanctum aliquid et providum putant, nec aut consilia earum aspernantur aut responsa neglegunt. (They even believe that the sex has a certain sanctity and prescience, and they do not despise their counsels, or make light of their answers.)

It seems that in burgrune and leodrune we are looking at words which originally referred to respected female community advisors, probably with a religious function, probably priestesses. The meaning subsequently changed to “pagan sorceress” with the conversion to Christianity. The term hellerune, on the other hand, points to an original female soothsayer, which was not necessarily identical with the other runan.

Wiccan

The modern word “witch” goes back to Old English. Witches were not originally only female. Beside the OE feminine wicce, sorceress, soothsayer, we find a masculine wicca. Various words for their practices are found, including wiccung = witching, and wiccecræft. Middle High German had a word wicken, which meant ‘work with a probing instrument, dance, hop, do magic, tell the future’. (http://www.koeblergerhard.de/mhd/mhd_w.html). All these meanings look remarkably like the sort of things a shaman would do. Wicce/wicca is related to the word wih, idol, which means temple in Old Saxon, and to the German word weihen, consecrate. These connections point to an original role of witches as priests and priestesses, shamans and soothsayers. [Correction 7.6.2020 – I no longer believe that it is correct to connect Wicce/wicca with wih and weihen. I must have been bewitched when I made this error! There is a strict distinction between ‘h’ and ‘c’ in these positions in Anglo-Saxon and Germanic in general. Wicce/wicca are NOT related to wih and weihen. Wicce/wicca are instead possibly related to words denoting (time-related) change, including E. ‘week’ and G. Wechsel, change. However, any connection with these words is too remote to tell us anything useful. So the evidence for the words wicce/wicca does point to shamanism and soothsaying but not to priesthood.]

Hægtessan

Finally, we come to another word for witch – hægtesse. This is cognate with OHG hazissa, hazussa and so goes back to the time before the Anglo-Saxons migrated to Britain. The first element probably means hedge, although other explanations (wood, skillful) have been put forward. The second element, -tesse, is probably the same as the Norwegian dialectical word tysja, fairy, indicating some kind of elf. Unlike the runan and the wiccan, who were priestesses and/or soothsayers, the hægtessan were mythical non-human creatures who came from beyond the boundaries of society (the hedge indicating the boundary).

Summary

So using the magic of etymology to study surviving words relating to the supernatural, it is possible to deduce some otherwise unknown features of Germanic pagan society. It is likely that these features continued in England right up to the time of the conversion. We can view pagan priests as in some way artists, who used paint (either for visual representations or body painting) as part of their religious practices. We can find confirmation for the existence of a class of respected wise women priestesses and male priests who operated from temples and advised the people on religious affairs. Finally, we can see that the later concept of a witch was a confluence of the idea of a pagan sorceress with the idea of a kind of elf-like creature which lived outside but in close proximity to human society.

It can also contribute to the development of mental health conditions like depression and bipolar disorder. Moreover, the Sleep Curse takes a toll on our physical health. Sleep deprivation weakens the immune system, making individuals more susceptible to infections, colds, and other illnesses. It also increases the risk of developing chronic conditions such as diabetes, heart disease, and obesity. Furthermore, lack of sleep can lead to hormonal imbalances, including increased levels of cortisol (the stress hormone) and decreased levels of leptin (the hormone responsible for regulating appetite), which may contribute to weight gain. The Sleep Curse also poses dangers on the road. Studies have shown that sleep-deprived individuals are more likely to be involved in car accidents due to impaired alertness and slower reaction times. Drowsy driving is as dangerous as drunk driving, and it is estimated to be a contributing factor in a significant number of road accidents worldwide. To break the Sleep Curse, it is important to prioritize sleep as an essential part of our daily routine. Implementing good sleep hygiene practices can help improve the quantity and quality of sleep, such as establishing a regular sleep schedule, creating a calm and comfortable sleep environment, avoiding caffeine and electronic devices before bedtime, and engaging in relaxation techniques. Recognizing the severity of the Sleep Curse and taking proactive steps to address it is crucial for maintaining our overall well-being. Adequate sleep is not a luxury but a necessity for our physical, mental, and emotional health. Let us break the curse and prioritize our sleep for a better and healthier life..

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