While the provost, Lille Strale, was pastor of the parish church, a servant was sent out late one evening to bring a horse in from a pasture. Plodding along as best he could in the darkness, he had not gone far when it was discovered that he had lost his way, and, turn which way he would, he could not find the sought for meadow.
Exhausted at last by constant walking, he sat down at the foot of an oak to rest himself. Presently strains of lovely music reached his ears, and he saw, quite near, a multitude of little people engaged in a lively ring dance upon the sward. So light were their footsteps that the tops of the grass blades were scarcely moved.
In the middle of the ring stood the Elf Queen herself, taller and more beautiful than the others, with a golden crown upon her head and her clothes sparkling in the moonlight with gold and precious stones.
Beckoning to him, she said: “Come, Anders, and tread a dance with me!” and Anders, thinking it would be impolite not to comply with the request of a woman so beautiful, rose and stepped bowing into the ring.
Poor lad, he did not know what a fate awaited him who ventured to participate in the sports of the Elves. How the dance terminated is not known, but at its conclusion the young man found himself again under the oak, and from that hour he was never again wholly [[161]]himself. From being the most lively and cheerful young man in the village, he became the dullest and most melancholy, and, before the year had gone, his days were ended. [[162]]
The Fiddler and The Sea Nymph.
Many years ago a dancing society of Brästa, a village in the parish of Stora Mellösa, planned a great Christmas festival, to which, on the appointed day, old and young flocked from far and near, knowing that Sexton Kant, of Norrbyås, would be there with his fiddle, and assured that fun would run riot. Kant, it is related, was no ordinary fiddler, not a little proud of his skill, and ready at the least word of praise to laud himself to the skies.
When the merry making had gone well into the night and the pleasures were at their height, some one remarked that not many could measure themselves with Father Kant, when he let the bow leap over the strings and played in “four voices,” as he himself called it. Nothing further was needed. Kant, always ready to begin where the others left off, declared that the devil, good player as he was reputed to be, could not compete with him in the waltz which they had just heard. This boast came near costing Kant dear. When the dance ended and he set out in the night on his way home, he met, near the hill of Bjurbäcka, a young woman clad in white, who saluted him and addressed him as follows:
“If you will play a polka for me, Father Kant, I will dance for you.”