Guess now what that can be.
Answer. A silver ring.
Before parting with her, I begged the old lady to accept a small coin in return for her rhymes, which she said she had heard from her grandmother; but this she indignantly refused to accept, begging me at the same time, as she saw a man approaching, not to say a word about what she had been telling me. The fact is, as has been observed by the Norwegians themselves, that the peasants fancy that nobody would inquire about these matters unless for the sake of ridiculing them, of which they have a great horror. Although they retain these rhymes themselves, they imagine that other people must look upon them as useless nonsense.
The man who approached the cottage brought with him a tiny axe, a couple of inches long, which he had dug up in the neighbourhood. Its use I could not conceive, unless, perhaps, it was the miniature representation of some old warrior’s axe, which the survivors were too knowing and parsimonious to bury with the corpse, and so they put in this sham. That the ancient Scandinavians were addicted to this thrift is well known. In Copenhagen, as we have already seen, facsimiles, on a very small scale, of bracelets, &c. which have been found in barrows, are still preserved. This peasant had likewise a bear-skin for sale. The bear he shot last spring, and the meat was bought by the priest.
The storm being over, I walked on through the forest alone, my female guide being by this time, no doubt, many miles in advance. All houses had ceased, but, fortunately, there was but one path, so that I could not lose my way. How still the wood was! There was not a breath of wind after the rain, so that I could distinctly hear the sullen booming of the river, now some distance off. As I stopped to pick some cloud-berries, which grew in profusion, I heard a distant scream. It was some falcons at a vast height on the cliff above, which I at first thought were only motes in my eyes. With my glass I could detect two or three pairs. They had young ones in the rock, which they were teaching to fly, and were alternately chiding them and coaxing them. No wonder the young ones are afraid to make a start of it. If I were in their places I should feel considerable reluctance about making a first flight.
At length I spied a cottage to the right in the opening of a lateral valley. Hereabout, I had heard, were some old bauta stones; but an intelligent girl who came up, told me a peasant had carried them off to make a wall. This girl, who wore two silver brooches on her bosom, besides large globular collar-studs and gilt studs to her wristbands, asked me if I would not come and have a mjelk drikke (drink of milk).
Jorand Tarjeisdatter was all the time busily engaged in chewing harpix (the resinous exudation of the fir-tree); presently, on another older woman coming in, she pulled out the quid, and gave it to the new-comer, who forthwith put it into her own mouth. But after all this is no worse than Dr. Livingstone drinking water which had been sucked up from the ground by Bechuana nymphs, and spit out by them into a vessel for the purpose.
Jorand was nice-looking, and had a sweet voice, and without the least hesitation she immediately sang me one or two lullabies, e.g.—