Hjúki and Bil

A waxing crescent moon.

In Norse mythology, Hjúki (Old Norse, possibly meaning "the one returning to health"^[1]) and Bil (Old Norse, possibly meaning "moment"^[2]) are a brother and sister pair of children who follow the personified moon, Máni, across the heavens. Both Hjúki and Bil are solely attested in the Prose Edda, written in the 13th century by Snorri Sturluson. Scholarly theories that surround the two concern their nature, their role as potential personifications of the craters on the moon or its phases, and speculate about a relation between the tale of the two and the English nursery rhyme "Jack and Jill" and later folklore in Germanic Europe.

Attestations

In chapter 11 of the Prose Edda book Gylfaginning, the enthroned figure of High states that two children by the names of Hjúki and Bil were fathered by Viðfinnr. Once while the two were walking from the well Byrgir (Old Norse "Hider of Something"^[3]) — both of them carrying on their shoulders the pole Simul (Old Norse, possibly meaning "eternal"^[4]) that held the pail Sæg between them — Máni took them from the earth, and they now follow Máni in the heavens, "as can be seen from the earth".^[5]

Hjúki is otherwise unattested, but Bil receives other mentions. In chapter 35 of Gylfaginning, at the end of a listing of numerous other goddesses in Norse mythology, both Sól (the personified sun) and Bil are listed together as goddesses "whose nature has already been described".^[6] Bil appears twice more in the Prose Edda book Skáldskaparmál. In chapter 75, Bil appears within another list of goddesses,^[7] and her name appears in chapter 47 in a kenning for "woman".^[8]

Theories

As the two are otherwise unattested outside of Snorri's Prose Edda, suggestions have been made that Hjúki and Bil may have been of minor mythic significance, or that they were made up outright by Snorri, while Anne Holtsmark (1945) posits that Snorri may have known or had access to a now lost verse source wherein Hjúki and Bil personified the waxing and waning moon. Holtsmark further theorizes that Bil may have been a dís (a type of female deity).^[9]

Scholars have theorized that Hjúki and Bil may represent lunar activity, including that they may represent the phases of the moon or may represent the craters of the moon. 19th century scholar Jacob Grimm rejects the suggestion that Hjúki and Bil represent the phases of the moon, and states that Hjúki and Bil rather represent the craters on the moon seen from the earth. Grimm says that the evidence for this "is plain from the figure itself. No change of the moon could suggest the image of two children with a pail slung over their shoulders. Moreover, to this day the Swedish people see in the spots of the moon two persons carrying a big bucket on a pole."^[10] Grimm adds that:

What is most important for us, out of the heathen fancy of a kidnapping man of the moon, which, apart from Scandinavia, was doubtless in vogue all over Teutondom, if not farther, there has evolved itself since a Christian adaptation. They say the man in the moon is a wood-stealer, who during church time on the holy sabbath committed a trespass in the wood, and was then transported to the moon as a punishment; there he may be seen with the axe on his back and the bundle of brushwood (dornwelle) in his hand. Plainly enough the water-pole of the heathen story has been transformed into the axe's shaft, and the carried pail into the thornbrush; the general idea of theft was retained, but special stress laid on the keeping of the christian holiday; the man suffers punishment not so much for cutting firewood, as because he did it on Sunday.^[10]

Grimm gives further examples from Germanic folklore up until the time of his writing (the 19th century) and notes a potential connection between the German word wadel (meaning the full moon) and the dialectal employment of the word for "brushwood, twigs tied up in a bundle, esp[ecially] fir-twigs, wadeln to tie up brushwood", and the practice of cutting wood out in the full moon.^[10] Benjamin Thorpe agrees with the theory of Hjúki and Bil as the personified shapes of moon craters.^[11]

Rudolf Simek states that the obscurity of the names of the objects in the tale of Hjúki and Bil may indicate that Snorri derived them from a folktale, and that the form of the tale of the Man in the Moon (featuring a man with a pole and a woman with a bucket) is also found in modern folklore in Scandinavia, England, and Northern Germany.^[12]

Jack and Jill, proposed as connected to Hjúki and Bil

In both the story Hjúki and Bil found in the Icelandic Prose Edda and the English nursery rhyme "Jack and Jill", two male and female children fetch a pail of water, and both pairs have phonetically similar names. These similarities have resulted in theories connecting the two,^[13] and the notion has had some influence into the modern age, appearing in school books for children from the 19th century and into the 20th century.^[14] The traditional rhyme reads:

Jack and Jill went up the hill

to fetch a pail of water

Jack fell down and broke his crown

and Jill came tumbling after.

Up Jack got and home did trot

as fast as he could caper.

He went to bed to mind his head

with vinegar and brown paper.^[15]

The village of Bilsby in Lincolnshire, England (from which the English surname Billing derives) has been proposed as having been named after Bil.^[13]

Notes

References