A Danish Parsonage

by John Fulford Vicary

"You said just now that children were buried to avert or stay the plague, when it visited Denmark," said Hardy; "does there exist any authentic record of such, or does it rest entirely on tradition?"

"I fear we must admit it to have occurred," replied Pastor Lindal. "The records of it are too many and consistent to doubt the truth of the practice. There is a tradition of a place in Jutland where all the inhabitants died of the plague, and the inhabitants of an adjoining town averted the spread of the pestilence by buying a child of a gypsy, and burying it alive, which tradition says had the desired result. There is also a tradition that on the east side of a certain church in Jutland no one is buried, because a child was buried there to stay the plague. At another place, two children were purchased of very poor parents, and were buried alive in a sandhill, to stay the pestilence then raging in the district. The people gave them some bread and butter, to induce them to go into the living grave prepared for them; and when the first spadeful of sand was thrown into the hole, one of the children cried out, 'Mother, they are throwing sand on my bread and butter!' Comparing this with the treatment of witches, or women suspected of witchcraft, at the same epoch, it is not at all impossible that such senseless and cruel customs prevailed. The stories of robbers that may be well attributed to the same period have all a cruel tinge."

"Can you tell us any?" asked Hardy.

"A very great many. One story has been adopted and embellished, and has appeared in many lands, and it is possible that you may have heard it, so wide has the same story spread. The story is that a rich man had an only daughter, and amongst many suitors was a young stranger of singularly bold manners, and she accepted him with her father's full consent. But, as it happened, she went out for a walk in a wood near, and she came to a cave. She was astonished to find that this cave was inhabited and divided into rooms. There were chairs and a table and kitchen utensils in the first room, in the second room there was much old silver plate and costly articles, but in the inner room of all there were portions of dead bodies. She was terrified, and would have fled from these horrors, but she heard steps at the entrance of the cave, and the robbers entered. She hid herself under a bed, and, to her horror, she saw the man she had promised to marry bring in a woman, whom he brutally murdered; and as he could not get a gold ring off that was on her finger, he chopped it off with an axe, with such violence that it rolled underneath the bed where she was. The robber could not find it, and gave up the search. At night, the robbers all departed on a plundering expedition, when she hastened home. She said, however, nothing of what had happened. The wedding-day was fixed, and the wedding guests assembled; but when the festivities were at the highest, she produced the finger of the dead woman, with the ring on it! The bridegroom turned pale, and, after being put to the torture, confessed many murders, and was, with his band, executed with the cruelty then practised; that is, their entrails were cut out by the executioner, the bodies severed into pieces, and hung up to rot on a gallows."

"The whole story is a very cruel picture," said Hardy.

"So the stories of robbers all are," said the Pastor. "There is a story of a robber called Langekniv, or 'long knife.' His practice was to kill people by casting a heavy knife at them, with a string attached to it, so that he could possess himself of the knife again with celerity. He committed many murders. But one day a pedlar was going across a lonely heath, when he saw Langekniv coming. The pedlar fell down at first with fright, but afterwards pretended to be nearly dead from illness; and when Langekniv came up, he said, 'Take my pack and my money, and fetch a doctor; I am dying.' Langekniv thought that with a man who could be so easily robbed, it was not necessary to do more than he was asked; but as soon as he turned to go away, the pedlar struck him with his staff a blow on the ankle, that disabled him from running. He then ran for assistance, and Langekniv, after making it very hot for his captors by casting his long knife, was seized, and bound, and put in a cart, and was executed. When his entrails was being cut out by the executioner, he was asked if it hurt, and Langekniv replied that it was not so bad as the toothache.

"There is one robber story, however, that illustrates the extraordinary manner in which a clue to a murder can sometimes be acquired. A pedlar was passing in a lonely hollow of a road on a heath in Jutland, when two robbers attacked him, and killed him under circumstances of great cruelty. A flock of wild geese was flying over head, and the pedlar said the birds of the air shall witness against you of my murder. Years went by, when, one day, the people were waiting in the churchyard for the priest to come to service. A flock of geese was flying overhead, when a horse-dealer from Holstein, a stranger to the place, said, 'There goes the pedlar's witnesses.' These words excited attention. The man lost all control over himself, and confessed the murder."

"A very extraordinary story," said Hardy, "but a very possible one. But have you not traditions of very supernatural things, as the story of the Kraken?"

"There is the tradition of the Basilisk, as we call it, and that of the Lindorm. The legend of the Basilisk is, of course, of classic origin. It is that when a cock becomes very old, it lays an egg, and the heat of a dungheap hatches it, and a Basilisk is produced. It is so hideous a monster, that whoever looks on it can no longer live, but melts away. It is also said that the Basilisk inhabits wells, and that it is dangerous to look down a well, as to encounter the gaze of a Basilisk would be to turn the beholder to stone. There is also another variation of the legend. The egg when laid by the cock must be hatched by a toad; but when the Basilisk is hatched, if it be first seen by a human being, it at once dies, but if the contrary, the beholder dies."

"There is a novel written by Sir Walter Scott," said Hardy, "under the title of 'Count Robert of Paris' in which he describes the Varanger guard. It is possible that as such a body of men did exist, that such legends were brought back by them."