[255] So Oberon in Huon de Bordeaux.

[256] Str. 1564, seq.

[257] Grimm, Deut. Mythol., p. 398, seq.

[258] See above, pp. 19, 169; below, Ireland; and Grimm, ut sup. p. 1216. The swan-dresses also occur in the Arabian tales of Jahânshâh and Hassan of Bassora in Trebutien's Arabian Nights.

[259] Poésies de Marie de France, i. 177, seq.

[260] Another term is Wicht and its dim. Wichtlein, answering to the Scandinavian Vættr and the Anglo-Saxon wiht, English wight, all of which signify a being, a person, and also a thing in general. Thus our words aught and naught were anwiht and nawiht.

[261] See Grimm's Deutsche Sagen, vol. i. p. 38. As this work is our chief authority for the Fairy Mythology of Germany, our materials are to be considered as taken from it, unless when otherwise expressed.

[262] In Lusatia (Lausatz) if not in the rest of Germany, the same idea of the Dwarfs being fallen angels, prevails as in other countries: see the tale of the Fairies'-sabbath in the work quoted above, p. 179.

[263] This tale is given by MM. Grimm, from the Brixener Volksbuch. 1782.

[264] Related by Hammelmann in the Oldenburg Chronicle, by Prætorius, Bräuner, and others.

[265]

[266] This tale was orally related to MM. Grimm in Saxony. They do not mention the narrator's rank in life.

[267]

[268] Grimm, Deut. Mythol., p. 434. Both legends are in the Low-Saxon dialect.

[269] The terms used in the original are Wichtelmänner, Wichtelmännerchen, and Wichtel.

[270] The Saxon ó seems to answer to the Anglo-Saxon I, Irish Inis: see below, Ireland.

[271] Grimm, Deut. Mythol., p. 428. The latter story is in the Low-Saxon dialect.

[272] In Scandinavia the Dwarfs used to borrow beer, even a barrel at a time, which one of them would carry off on his shoulders, Thiele i. 121. In the Highlands of Scotland, a firlot of meal. In all cases they paid honestly. On one occasion, a dwarf came to a lady named Fru (Mrs.

) Mettè of Overgaard, in Jutland, and asked her to lend her silk gown to Fru Mettè of Undergaard, for her wedding. She gave it, but as it was not returned as soon as she expected, she went to the hill and demanded it aloud. The hill-man brought it out to her all spotted with wax, and told her that if she had not been so impatient, every spot on it would have been a diamond. Thiele iii. 48.

The Vends of Lüneburg, we are told, called the underground folk Görzoni (from gora, hill), and the hills are still shown in which they dwelt. They used to borrow bread from people; they intimated their desire invisibly, and people used to lay it for them outside of the door. In the evening they returned it, knocking at the window, and leaving an additional cake to express their thankfulness. Grimm, Deut. Mythol.

, p. 423.

[273] See above, p. 225.

[274] Grimm, Deut. Mythol., p. 437.

[275] Grimm, Deut. Mythol., p. 453.

[276] See Grimm, ut sup., p. 447 seq.

[277] Deutsche Sagen, from Prætorius., Agricola, and others.

[278] Grimm, Deut. Mythol., pp. 451, 881.

[279] Kohl, Die Marschen und Inseln der Herzogthümer Schleswig und Holstein.

[280] These terms all signify Underground folk.

[281] See above, p. 116.

[282] The Puk is also called Niss-Puk, Huis-Puk, Niske, Niske-Puk, Nise-Bok, Niss-Kuk—all compounds or corruptions of Nisse and Puk. He is also named from his racketing and noise Pulter-Claas, i. e. Nick Knocker, (the German Poltergeist,) Claas being the abbreviation of Nicolaus, Niclas; see above, p. 139, for this same origin of Nisse.

[283] All relating to the Wild-women and the Wunderberg is given by MM. Grimm from the Brixener Volksbuch, 1782. For an account of the various Bergentrückte Helden, see the Deutsche Mythologie, ch. xxxii.

[284] In a similar tradition (Strack, Beschr. von Eilsen, p. 120) the wife cuts off one of her fair long tresses, and is afterwards most earnestly conjured by her to restore it.

[285] Given by Büsching (Volks-sagen Märchen und Legenden. Leipzig, 1820), from Hammelmann's Oldenburg Chronicle, 1599. Mme. Naubert has, in the second volume of her Volksmärchen, wrought it up into a tale of 130 pages.

The Oldenburg horn, or what is called such, is now in the King of Denmark's collection.

[286] This word is usually derived from the Greek κοβαλος, a knave, which is found in Aristophanes. According to Grimm (p. 408) the German Kobold is not mentioned by any writer anterior to the thirteenth century, we find the French Gobelin in the eleventh; see France.

[287] In Hanover the Will-o'the-wisp is called the Tückebold, i. e. Tücke-Kobold, and is, as his name denotes, a malicious being. Voss. Lyr.

Ged. , ii. p. 315.

[288] Deutsche Sagen, i. p. 103. Feldmann's work is a 12mo vol. of 379 pages.

[289] Heinze is the abbreviation of Heinrich (Henry). In the North of Germany the Kobold is also named Chimmeken and Wolterken, from Joachim and Walther.

[290] This is a usual measure of size for the Dwarfs, and even the angels, in the old German poetry; see above, p. 208. In Otnit it is said of Elberich: nu bist in Kindes mâze des vierden jâres alt; and of Antilois in Ulrich's Alexander: er war kleine und niht grôz in der mâze als diu kint, wenn si in vier jâren sint, Grimm, Deut. Mythol. , p.

418.

[291] The feats of House-spirits, it is plain, may in general be ascribed to ventriloquism and to contrivances of servants and others.

[292] Von Steinen, Westfäl. Gesch. ap. Grimm, Deut. Mythol.

, p. 477.

[293] Oral. Cölns Vorzeit. Cöln. 1826.

[294] This legend seems to be connected with the ancient idea of the water-deities taking the souls of drowned persons to themselves. In the Edda, this is done by the sea-goddess Ran.

[295] Grimm, ut sup. p. 463.

[296] Grimm, ut sup. p. 453.

[297] A tale of this kind is to be seen in Luther's Table-talk, told by die frau doctorin, his wife. The scene of it was the river Mulda.

[298] In Swiss Härdmandle, pl. Härdmändlene.

[299] Wyss, Reise in das Berner Oberland, ii. 412. Servants is the term in the original.

[300] This Scottish word, signifying the summer cabin of the herdsmen on the mountains, exactly expresses the Sennhütten of the Swiss.

[301] Alpenrosen for 1824, ap. Grimm, Introd. to Irish Fairy Legends.

[302] Idyllen, Volkssagen, Legenden, und Erzählungen aus der Schweiz. Von J. Rud Wyss, Prof. Bern, 1813.

[303] In Bilder und Sagen aus der Schweiz, von Dr. Rudolf. Müller. Glarus, 1842, may be found some legends of the Erdmännlein, but they are nearly all the same as those collected by Mr. Wyss.

We give below those in which there is anything peculiar.

[304] The original is in German hexameters.

[305] It is a notion in some parts of Germany, that if a girl leaves any flax or tow on her distaff unspun on Saturday night, none of what remains will make good thread. Grimm, Deut. Mythol. Anhang, p. lxxii.

[306] Glanz is the term employed in Switzerland.

[307] This legend was picked up by a friend of Mr. Wyss when on a topographical ramble in the neighbourhood of Bern. It was told to him by a peasant of Belp; "but," says Mr. Wyss, "if I recollect right, this man said it was a nice smoking-hot cake that was on the plate, and it was a servant, not the man's son, who was driving the plough. The circumstance of the table-cloth being handed down from mother to daughter," he adds, "is a fair addition which I have allowed myself."

The writer recollects to have heard this story, when a boy, from an old woman in Ireland; and he could probably point out the very field in the county of Kildare where it occurred. A man and a boy were ploughing: the boy, as they were about in the middle of their furrow, smelled roast beef, and wished for some. As they returned, it was lying on the grass before them. When they had eaten, the boy said "God bless me, and God bless the fairies! " The man did not give thanks, and he met with misfortunes very shortly after.

—The same legend is also in Scotland. See below.

[308] The former account was obtained by a friend in Glarnerland. The latter was given to Mr. Wyss himself by a man of Zweylütschinen, very rich, says Mr. Wyss, in Dwarf lore, and who accompanied him to Lauterbrunnen. Schiller has founded his poem Der Alpenjäger on this legend.

[309] Mr. Wyss heard this and the following tale in Haslithal and Gadmen.

[310] In several of the high valleys of Switzerland it is only a single cherry-tree which happens to be favourably situated that bears fruit. It bears abundantly, and the fruit ripens about the month of August. Wyss.

[311] Compare the narrative in the Swiss dialect given by Grimm, Deut. Mythol. p. 419. The same peasant of Belp who related the first legend was Mr.

Wyss's authority for this one. "The vanishing of the Bergmänlein," says Mr. Wyss, "appears to be a matter of importance to the popular faith. It is almost always ascribed to the fault of mankind—sometimes to their wickedness.

We may in these tales recognise the box of Pandora under a different form, but the ground is the same. Curiosity and wickedness are still the cause of superior beings withdrawing their favour from man.

"I have never any where else," says Mr. Wyss, "heard of the goose-feet; but that all is not right with their feet is evident from the popular tradition giving long trailing mantles as the dress of the little people. Some will have it that their feet are regularly formed, but set on their legs the wrong way, so that the toes are behind and the heels before."

Heywood, in his Hierarchie of the Blessed Angels, p. 554, relates a story which would seem to refer to a similar belief.

[312] Müller, Bilder und Sagen, p. 119; see above, p. 81. Coals are the usual form under which the Dwarfs conceal the precious metals. We also find this trait in Scandinavia.

A smith who lived near Aarhuus in Jutland, as he was going to church, saw a Troll on the roadside very busy about two straws that had got across each other on a heap of coals, and which, do what he would, he could not remove from their position. He asked the smith to do it for him; but he who knew better things took up the coals with the cross straws on them, and carried them home in spite of the screams of the Troll, and when he reached his own house he found it was a large treasure he had got, over which the Troll had lost all power. Thiele, i. 122.

[313] Müller, ut sup. p. 123.

[314] Müller, ut sup. p. 126.

[315] This story is told of two places in the Highlands of Berning, of Ralligen, a little village on the lake of Thun, where there once stood a town called Roll; and again, of Schillingsdorf, a place in the valley of Grinderwald, formerly destroyed by a mountain slip.

The reader need scarcely be reminded of the stories of Lot and of Baucis and Philemon: see also Grimm's Kinder und Hausmärchen, iii. 153, for other parallels.

[316] See above pp. 66, 75.

[317] The Anglo-Saxon Dweorg, Dworh, and the English Dwarf, do not seem ever to have had any other sense than that of the Latin nanus.

[318] As quoted by Picart in his Notes on William of Newbridge. We could not find it in the Collection of Histories, etc., by Martène and Durand,—the only place where, to our knowledge, this chronicler's works are printed.

[319] Guilielmi Neubrigensis Historia, sive Chronica Rerum Anglicarum. Oxon. 1719, lib. i. c.

27.

[320] See above, p. 109.