IX.
Jh'u crist and seint Benedight
Bliss this hous from every wikkede wyght
ffor the nyghtes verye the white paternoster
Where wentestow þow seynt peters suster.
X,
J'hu Criste and saynte Benedicte
Blysse the howse frome everye wykede wyghte
ffor the nyghtes werye the with pater n'r
Where whentestow you saynte peters suster.
I had hoped to submit a few of the notes I had formerly made on the words "Verray," "Verye," and some analogous names; but it is a curious incident in connection with my advocacy of the reading "Veray," that, with the exception of a few brief references, such as "warra" in Haupt's 'Alt Deutsche Blatter, i. 371, to the word "Werre" in Wackernagel's Worterbuch, and the word "Vare" in Hoffman's Reineke Vos, the only memorandum of any length which I have recovered is in connection with a locality of which I never heard before, except from a cousin, who, when travelling on the Continent some forty years since, found himself in Thomsdorf.
In Kuhn and Schwartz's Nord-deutsche Sagen, Märchen, und Gebräuche, s. 66, they give a curious legend from Thomsdorf of Die Alte Fricke—the Devil's Grandmother; and in a note upon that legend (s. 508) the learned editors tell us that a similar legend is preserved in Haupt and Schmaler's Volkslieder der Wenden, ii. 172, where the old witch or sorceress is called "Wera," a name clearly analogous to "Werra," a Sclavonic deity, nearly connected with Frau Holle. He then refers to Grimm's Mythologie, where (2nd ed. p. 251) we are told in a note upon the infuriated Berchta "that in Voightland, on the eve of the new year, the Werre makes a careful search to see whether all the flax has been spun, and, if it has not, spoils whatever is left; and if on that evening the poise (a sort of thick broad cakes of flour and water) have not been got ready, tears open the body of
