The Scandinavian näcken, näkki, nøkk were male water spirits who played enchanted songs on the violin, luring women and children to drown in lakes or streams.
Any authentic water-sprite folklore the site may originally have had was thus trampled down by Evershed's enthusiastic inculcation of the local people in ideas about water-dragons. Yet the waters at the pool were badly muddied by a local antiquarian named Samuel Evershed, who from 1866 tried assiduously to connect the pool with dragons and thus with the tale of St. The great Victorian authority Skeat had plausibly suggested the pool's name of knucker (a name attested from 1835, Horsfield) was likely derived from the Old English nicor, a creature-name found in Beowulf. These include Jenny Greenteeth, the Shellycoat, the river-hag Peg Powler, the Bäckahäst-like Brag, and the Grindylow.Īt Lyminster, near Arundel in the English county of Sussex, there are today said to dwell "water-wyrms" called knuckers, in a pool called the Knucker-hole. The southern Scandinavian version can transform himself into a horse-like kelpie, and is called a Bäckahästen (the "brook horse"), whilst the Welsh version is called the Ceffyl Dŵr (the "water horse").Įnglish folklore contains many creatures with similar characteristics to the Nix or Näck. The Norwegian Fossegrim and Swedish Strömkarlen are related figures sometimes seen as by-names for the same creature. The Old High German form nihhus also meant "crocodile", while the Old English nicor could mean both a "water monster" like those encountered by Beowulf, and a "hippopotamus". In Middle Low German, it was called necker and in Middle Dutch nicker (compare also Nickel or Nikkel plus Kobolt). The Icelandic and Faroese nykur are horselike creatures.
In Old Danish, the form was nikke and in modern Danish and Norwegian Bokmål it is nøkke/ nøkk. The Swedish form is derived from Old Swedish neker, which corresponds to Old Icelandic nykr ( gen. The form neck appears in English and Swedish ( näck or nek, meaning "nude"). They are related to Sanskrit nḗnēkti, Greek νίζω nízō and νίπτω níptō, and Irish nigh (all meaning to wash or be washed).
The names are held to derive from Common Germanic * nikwus or * nikwis(i), derived from PIE *neigʷ ("to wash").
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