“Signe-kierringe, you mean. Oh, yes. They are still to be found. My aunt there, when she was a girl, was measured by one.”
“How so?”
“They take a string, which they pretend has been prepared in some wonderful manner, and measure round the waist, and along the arms, and so on most accurately, and there is supposed to be some wonderful virtue in the operation. It is a sure recipe against all harm from the Nisser. But I have a book here, with a tale of one Mads, a warlock. He was cutting timber in the forest; it was about mid-day. He had just got the wedge into a fallen tree, when he saw his old woman come up with his dinner. It was romme-gröd (a peculiar sort of porridge). She sat down, when he just spied a tail peeping out behind her, which she chanced to stick in the cleft that he had made in the tree. Mads bade her wait a bit, and he would sit down and eat directly. The cunning fellow meantime managed to get the wedge out. The crack closed, and the tail was fast. At the same time he uttered Jesus’ name. Up started the hag, and snapped off the end of her tail. What a scream she gave. On looking at the dinner, he found it was nothing but some cow-dung in a bark basket.”
“Have not the peasantry here,” I inquired, “some odd notions about the fairies stopping the wheel of the water-mill?”
“Oh, yes!” replied Miss Katinka. “September 1st is an important day for the millers. If it is dry on that day it will be dry, they say, for a long time. This is owing to the Quernknurre (mill sprite).
“There is a tale in Asbjörnsen of a miller near Sandok Foss, in Thelemarken (I visited this place afterwards), whose mill-wheel would not go, although there was plenty of water. He examined the machinery accurately, but could not discover what was amiss. At last he went to the small door that opened into the wheel-box. Opening it a very little he spied a most vicious-looking troll poking about inside. Closing the door with all speed, before the troll caught sight of him, he went to his hut and put on the fire a large pot full of tar. When it was boiling hot he went to the wheel door and opened it wide. The troll inside, who was busy scotching the wheel, faced round at him in a moment, and opened his mouth (or rather his head) wider than a warming pan, indeed so wide that his gape actually reached from the door sill to the top of the door. ‘Did you ever see such a gape as that in all your life?’ said he to the miller. Without a moment’s delay the miller poured the hot pitch right into the monster’s throat (which might be called pitching it into him), and answered the inquiry by asking another, ‘Did you ever get such a hot drink before?’ It would appear that the miller had effectually settled the creature, for he sunk down into the water with a fearful yell, and never was heard of more. From that day forward the miller throve, and much grist came to him, actually and figuratively.”
Miss Katinka was not a classical scholar, so I suppressed certain illustrations which rose to my tongue, as she told the story, such as “hians immane,” and the miller having used a most effectual digamma for stopping the hiatus; and I told her instead, that in the Scottish highlands there is a kindred being called Urisk, a hairy sprite, who sets mills at work in the night when there is nothing to grind, and that he was once sent howling away by a pan full of hot ashes thrown into his lap when asleep.
“I have read another curious story of a mill,” continued my fair informant.
“There was a peasant up in the west whose mill (quern) was burned down two Whitsuntides following. The third year, on Whitsun Eve, a travelling tailor was staying with him, making some new clothes for the next day. ‘I wonder whether my new mill will be burnt down to-night again?’ said the peasant. ‘Oh, I’ll keep watch,’ exclaimed the tailor; ‘no harm shall happen.’ True to his word, when night came on, the knight of the shears betook himself to the mill. The first thing he did was to draw a large circle with his chalk on the floor, and write ‘Our Father’ round it, and, that done, he was not afraid, no not even if the fiend himself were to make his appearance. At midnight the door was suddenly flung open, and a crowd of black cats came in. The tailor watched. Before long the new comers lit a fire in the chimney-corner, and got a pot upon it, which soon began to bubble and squeak, as if it was full of boiling pitch. Just then, one of the cats slily put its paw on the side of the pot, and tried to upset it. ‘Mind, nasty cat, you’ll burn yourself,’ said the tailor, inside his ring. ‘Mind, nasty cat, you’ll burn yourself, says the tailor to me,’ says the cat to the other cats. And then all the cats began dancing round the ring. While they were dancing, the same cat stole slily to the chimney-corner and was on the point of upsetting the pot, when the tailor exclaimed, ‘Mind, nasty cat, you’ll burn yourself.’ ‘Mind, nasty cat, you’ll burn yourself, says the tailor to me,’ says the cat to the other cats. And then the whiskered crew began to dance again round the tailor. Another attempt at arson was made with no better success. And all the cats danced round the tailor, quicker and quicker, their eyes glowing, till his head spun round again. But still he luckily kept his self-possession and his sense. At last the cat, which had tried to upset the pot, made a grab at him over the ring, but missed. The tailor was on the alert, and next time the cat’s paw came near he snipped it off short with his shears. What a spitting and miauling they did make, as they all fled out of the mill, leaving the tailor to sleep quietly in his ring for the rest of the night. In the morning he opened the mill door and went down to the peasant’s house. He and his wife were still in bed, for it was Whitsun morning, and they were having a good sleep of it. How glad the miller was to see the tailor. ‘Good morrow to you,’ he said, reaching out his hand, and giving the tailor a hearty greeting. ‘Good morrow, mother,’ said the tailor to the wife, offering her his hand. But she looked so strange and so pale, he could not make it out. At last she gave him her left hand, and kept the other under the sheepskin. Ay, ay, thought the tailor, I see how the ground lies.”
“The miller-wife was one of the subterranean people, then,” I put in.