Still broader sweep its channels made.”
Lady of the Lake.
“How shall it be? Will you look your lay-lines to-day or to-morrow?” said the Parson, who, though not a little amused at the tilting between the rival champions, and by the manner in which Birger had suffered himself to be drawn into the squabble, began to think it had gone quite far enough for the future peace and unanimity of the expedition. “Come, Jacob, shoulder your knapsack, and march like a sensible Swede.”
“There never was but one sensible Swede,” said Torkel, in a grumbling aside, “and that was Queen Kerstin, when she jumped over the boundary, and thanked God that Sweden could not jump after her.”[24]
Jacob had sense enough not to hear this laudatory remark on his late sovereign’s discrimination, but, with his ordinary phlegm, resumed his load and his place in the line of march.
“By the way,” said the Parson, as they resumed their journey, “what was it, Torkel, that made you scrape the mud from your right foot and put it on your head in that insane manner, just now?”
“I can answer that,” said Birger; “you know that the whole tribe of Alfs, white, brown, and black, and the Trolls, and in fact the whole class that go under the generic name of Bjerg-folk, or Hill-men, live under the earth. To see them, therefore, on ordinary occasions, you must put yourself—at least, typically—in a similar condition. That upon which you have trod must cover your head; and you take it from the right foot rather than the left, partly as being more lucky, and partly because the left being a mark of disrespect, would incense the dwarfs, who would be sure to make you pay for it sooner or later; in fact they are a dangerous race to meddle with at all, they take offence so very easily. I believe, however, this is the safest plan, for they are not aware, unless you betray yourself, that the veil is removed from your sight. Did you never hear the story of the Ferryman of Sund?”
The Englishman, of course, had not heard it, neither had any of the men, for the legend is Danish and local; and though anything Danish is much better known in Norway than stories or legends relating to Sweden, it so happened that it was new to them all, and they closed up to listen to it.
“One evening, between the two lights,[25] a strange man came to the ferry at Sund and engaged all the boats: no sooner had the bargain been made, than they began to sink deeper and deeper into the water, as if some heavy cargo had been put into them, though the astonished boatmen could see nothing, and the boats looked quite empty.