The Finn and his wife now understood that it was their friend, who had transformed himself thus in order to do them a service, and from that time held these creatures in great veneration. [[203]]
[1] The magpie in folk-lore is an ominous bird, and is avoided by the peasantry, because one can not know whether it is the spirit of a Troll, friend or foe. When the magpies build near the house it is regarded as a lucky omen, but if they build on the heath, and meantime come to the house and chatter, it bodes evil. [↑]
The Plague.[1]
Memories of the epidemics that have ravaged our country still live in the minds of the people, though, with time, like many other recollections, they have taken the form of myths.
During the plague there was seen, wandering from village to village, a boy and a girl, the one with a rake, the other with a broom. Wherever the boy was seen to use his rake, one and another was spared from death, but where the girl swept, death left an empty house, and the places that were not approached by these beings escaped the plague entirely.
On Soller Island, in Siljan, they strewed gold and precious stones along the roads and paths, which were so infected that he who so much as moved one with his hand became a corpse before the next sunset.
In the end there remained no one on the island except two wise old men, one named Bengh, the other Harold, who were not deluded by the gold, thereby saving their lives.
A number of the islanders escaped by flight and moved to the North Land through the “Twelve-Mile Roads,” that bordered upon Vermland.