“Yes, that is the work of the Ljus Alfar—Lys Alfir they call them here,—the Elves of Light. All elves work in metals, and these make a silver filagree so fine that it can only be seen by moonlight on a background of water. It is the floor of their ball-room, and if we were either of us good enough, which it seems we are not, we should see the little fairy beings dancing on it. When they are tired, they will go to sleep under the leaves of the limes, which tree belongs to them especially; the little spots of light which you see in its foliage on a moonshiny night are their bright eyes, which they have not yet closed in sleep.”
“Really,” said the Parson, “Prospero’s Isle ought to have been placed on the coasts of Norway; it would seem that the more scarce the visible inhabitants, the more numerous the invisible.”
“O, yes, nature, nature abhors a vacuum, and these Alfar are by far the most numerous of all the supernatural beings. The White Elves, or Elves of Light, are seldom found out of Norway and Sweden, but the Brown Elf you have in Scotland as well. He works in metals of all sorts, though he delights most in silver and gold. It is the Brown Elf that is the fitful capricious being, which gives their meaning to the words elf and elvish: these are the creatures which pinch untidy maids, and drink up the milk, and light up their evening candles as Wills’-o’-the-Wisp, and lead men into bogs and marshes. When seen, they are dressed in brown jackets with crimson binding, and wear brown caps on their heads, whereas the Ljus Alfar wear always the helmet of the foxglove, and are dressed in white. It is the Black Elves that are malicious, though they often do good service to men; they, too, work in metals, but it is generally in iron and copper; they make arms and armour too, and sometimes filagree work, like the Ljus Alfar, but theirs is always black.”
“Berlin iron?” suggested the Parson.
“Perhaps so; at all events the chain armour that they make is a most valuable present, for, though no heavier than filagree-work, or, as you say, Berlin iron, it will turn a sword or a shot.”
“The disposition of the elf, then, varies with its colour.”
“Yes, but one characteristic runs through all—all are capricious. All may benefit you, some may hurt you, but none can be reckoned upon, and that peculiarity, together with their universal horror of daylight, gives a key to their allegorical origin.[37] These elves, or dwarfs, are the incarnation of mining speculations, a very general form of gambling both in Norway and Sweden. Mines are proverbially capricious; it is impossible to tell how they may turn out. Occasionally these spirits are beneficent in the highest degree, and their protégés become suddenly rich, but this is never to be relied on; the best are capricious, and the greater number are tricksy; while some—though even these are now and then capricious benefactors—are positively wicked and malicious. There, now you have my theory of the alfs and alfheim.
“And there is another allegory about them, with a good Christian moral to it,” continued Birger, after a pause spent in cherishing the fading embers of his pipe; “these alfs are not baptised and have no part in salvation, but they are capable of baptism under certain circumstances; they are always anxious for it for themselves in their good moments, but invariably so for their children, though those instances in which they succeed are rare. The Icelandic family of Gudmund are cursed with a disease peculiar to their race, which originated—so the family tradition goes—in the curse of an alf frue, whom one of their ancestors had deceived in this particular. Andreas Gudmund had a child by an alf frue: at her earnest request, he promised that it should be taken in the church; and when the child was old enough, she duly brought it to the churchyard wall, which was as far as she might go herself, for no alf may enter consecrated ground. The sound of the bells was torture to her, but she bore it, and laid her child on the wall, with a golden cup as an offering. But Gudmund, fearing the censures of the Church and the reproaches of his friends, would not fulfil his promise. The alf frue waited and waited, but the service was over, and the parting bells began to ring again. So she snatched up the child and vanished into her hill, and neither she nor it were ever seen again under the light of day. But from that time forward, the right hand of every Gudmund is leprous, in token that their ancestor was forsworn.
“Now all this must be allegory; what should you say was the meaning of the spirits of the mine being capable of salvation, and being occasionally, though rarely, seen admitted into the Church?”