“What we like best ourselves, cakes and ale.”
“But what had you to do with it,” said the Captain; “I suppose you do not believe in spirits?”
“The men asked leave to go, when they had done their work, and wanted me to go with them, to that high rock you see down there,—for they always choose out some bare and elevated locality, as best adapted to a spirit of the air; and so—well, I went with them; don’t laugh at me.”
“That will I not,” said the Parson; “you could not have done a wiser thing. Always fall in with men’s superstitions; there is nothing that attaches them so much as humouring their little illegitimate beliefs; to say nothing,” he added slily, “of believing a little in them yourself.”
“How is this offering made?” said the Captain: “what are the rites belonging to the worship of a spirit of the air?”
“They are simple enough,” said Birger, “and not at all like those you would see on the stage of London,—no blue fires or poetical incantations: they consist in simply placing the cake on the most exposed pinnacle you can find, pouring the ale into the nearest hollow that will hold it, and then retreating in silence, and without looking behind you.”
“While some thirsty soul, after the manner of Bel in the Apocrypha, plays Nyssen and accepts the offering,” said the Captain.
“What! eat Nyssen’s offering! Tom, what do you say to that?”—for the men were still fidgetting about the fire,—“what do you say to that? The Captain thinks that one of you will eat up Nyssen’s cake; what do you say about it?”
“Well,” said Tom, “we have bold men in Norway, as all our histories will tell you; but bold as we are, I do not think you will get a man in the whole country to do that.”
“There was a young fellow once who did it in my country though,” said Jacob, “and dearly he paid for it. The family used to place the yearly gifts to Nyssen under the sails of their windmill every Christmas Eve;—you Norwegians do not know what windmills are; you grind all your corn by water, poor devils!”