Chapter CLXXXVIII: Section IX: The Serpent

Either from terror, or from a shadowy remembrance of the original temptation, the implanted enmity between the serpent and man has often resulted in a species of worship.

The North believed in the Jörmungandr, or Midgardsorm, the serpent that encircled the world and was one of the monstrous progeny of Loki.

And even till late in the seventh century the Lombards had a golden image of an enormous viper to which they sacrificed, until St. Barbatus recovered them from the heathenism into which they had relapsed.

One species of ship among the Northmen was called serpent. It was long and low, with the gilded head of a dragon at the prow, a long tail raised and curling over the stern, while with coloured shields ranged along the sides, and thirty oars on either side propelling it, besides the winged sails, it must have been more like a water-dragon than any creature that has ploughed the waves since the Plesiosaurus, and this probably accounts for the prevalence of the name of Orm among the northern nations.

Twenty-two Ormrs appear in the _Landnama-bok_; Orm and Ormar (_Ger._ Wurmhar) are both in Domesday. Orm was the founder of the Scottish house of Abernethy. Homer was considered, by the Danes of the middle ages, as the translation into Latin of the name of Ormr.

Ormilda is likewise a northern name, and it is not quite impossible that Ophelia may have been a translation of one of these serpent-names by the Greek ὄφις (ophis); at any rate the fair Ophelia shows no precedents for her name, and no other derivation for it occurs. The gentle maiden, with her most touching fate, is altogether an invention of Shakespeare, for though a woman appears in the old story of Amleth, she is of far other mould, and Ophelia may have been merely devised by himself. If so it is curious that he should have placed her in the chief land of serpentine names. A few lovers of its sound have used it in England and America.

_Lind_ is another term for a serpent. The German dragons are always called _lindwurmer_, and the word is, in fact, the same as that which we still use as _lithe_, expressing supple grace; the adjective _linths_ becoming, on the one side _lind_, on the other _lithe_. The Spaniards use _lindo_, _linda_, for pretty, with about the same difference of sense, in the masculine or feminine, as we do when we speak of a pretty woman, or a pretty man. Norse poetry considered it a compliment to compare a gaily dressed lady to a glistening serpent, and thus the idea seems to have passed from the reptile to the woman, so that, though the German Lintrude is the only instance of a commencing _lind_, the word is one of the most common of all terminations among German and Italian names, and dropping its _d_, so as to become _linn_, was made to serve as a favourite feminine diminutive, its relation to the Spanish _linda_, fair, keeping up its reputation. Thus we have Rosalind, or Rosaline, Ethelind, and many more of the same kind.[126]

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Footnote 126:

Munch; Mallet; Grimm; Chalmers; Laing.