Among the girls, one especially distinguished herself by her Strong frame of body, and her long black hair, which, now that her cap was torn off, hung in disorder over her red face. The dark eyebrows were grown together. All seemed to rage most violently within her, and in truth she assumed something wild, nay almost brutal. Both arms she raised high in the air, and with outstretched fingers she whirled around.
“That is disgusting!” whispered Otto: “they all look like crazy people.”
Wilhelm laughed at it. The wild merriment was lost in a joyous burst of laughter. The girl with the grown-together eyebrows let fall her arms; but still there lay in her glance that wild expression, which the loose hair and uncovered shoulders made still more striking. Either one of the others had had the misfortune to scratch her lip, or else she herself had bitten it in bacchanalian wildness until it bled: she accidentally glanced toward the open door where stood the friends. Otto’s countenance became clouded, as was ever the case when anything unpleasant affected him. She seemed to guess his thoughts, and laughed aloud. Otto stepped aside; it was as though he in anticipation felt the shadow which this form would one day cast across his life.
When he and Wilhelm immediately afterward returned to Sophie and Louise, he related the unpleasant impression which the girl had made upon him.
“O, that is my Meg Merrilies!” exclaimed Sophie. “Yes, spite of her youth, do you not find that she has something of Sir Walter Scott’s witch about her? When she grows older, she will be excellent. She has the appearance of being thirty, whereas she is said not to be more than twenty years old: she is a true giantess.”
“The poor thing!” said Louise; “every one judges from the exterior. All who are around her hate her, I believe, because her eyebrows are grown together, and that is said to be a sign that she is a nightmare:
[Note: This superstition of the people is mentioned in
Thieles’s Danish traditions: “When a girl at midnight
stretches between four sticks the membrane in which the foal
lies when it is born, and then creeps naked through it, she
will bear her child without pains; but all the boys she
conceives will become were-wolves, and all the girls
nightmares. You will know them in the daytime by their
eyebrows grown together over the nose. In the night she
creeps in through the key-hole, and places herself upon the
sleeper’s bosom. The same superstition is also found in
German Grimm speaks thus about it: If you say to the
nightmare,—
Old hag, come to-morrow,
And I from you will borrow,
it retreats directly, and comes the next morning in the
shape of a man to borrow something.”]
they are angry with her, and how could one expect, from the class to which she belongs, that she should return scorn with kindness? She is become savage, that she may not feel their neglect. In a few days, when we have the mowing-feast, you yourself will see how every girl gets a partner; but poor Sidsel may adorn herself as much as she likes, she still stands alone. It is truly hard to be born such a being!”
“The unfortunate girl!” sighed Otto.
“O, she does not feel it!” said Wilhelm: “she cannot feel it; for that she is too rude, too much of an animal.”