The Giants had their day, and died out, and their places were taken by the Dwarfs. Some of the most wonderful dwarf stories are those which are told in the island of Rugen, in the Baltic Sea. These stories are of three kinds of dwarfs: the White, and the Brown, and the Black, who live in the sand-hills. The white dwarfs, in the spring and summer, dance and frolic all their time in sunshine and starlight, and climb up into the flowers and trees, and sit amongst the leaves and blossoms, and sometimes they take the form of bright little birds, or white doves, or butterflies, and are very kind to good people. In the winter, when the snow falls, they go underground, and spend their time in making the most beautiful ornaments of silver and gold. The brown dwarfs are stronger and rougher than the white; they wear little brown coats and brown caps, and when they dance—which they are fond of doing—they wear little glass shoes; and in dress and appearance they are very handsome. Their disposition is good, with one exception—that they carry off children into their underground dwellings; and those who go there have to serve them for fifty years. They can change themselves into any shape, and can go through key-holes, so that they enter any house they please, and sometimes they bring gifts for the children, like the good Santa Klaus in the German stories; but they also play sad tricks, and frighten people with bad dreams. Like the white dwarfs, the brown ones work in gold and silver, and the gifts they bring are of their own workmanship. The black dwarfs are very bad people, and are ugly in looks and malicious in temper; they never dance or sing, but keep underground, or, when they come up, they sit in the elder-trees, and screech horribly like owls, or mew like cats. They, too, are great metal-workers, especially in steel; and in old days they used to make arms and armour for the gods and heroes: shirts of mail as fine as cobwebs, yet so strong that no sword could go through them; and swords that would bend like rushes, and yet were as hard as diamonds, and would cut through any helmet, however thick.
So long as they keep their caps on their heads the dwarfs are invisible; but if any one can get possession of a dwarf's cap he can see them, and becomes their master. This is the foundation of one of the best of the dwarf stories—the story of John Dietrich, who went out to the sandhills at Ramfin, in the isle of Rugen, on the eve of St. John, a very, very long time ago, and managed to strike off the cap from the head of one of the brown dwarfs, and went down with them into their underground dwelling-place. This was quite a little town, where the rooms were decorated with diamonds and rubies, and the dwarf people had gold and silver and crystal table-services, and there were artificial birds that flew about like real ones, and the most beautiful flowers and fruits; and the dwarfs, who were thousands in number, had great feasts, where the tables, ready spread, came up through the floor, and cleared themselves away at the ringing of a bell, and left the rooms free for dancing to the strains of the loveliest music. And in the city there were fields and gardens, and lakes and rivers; and instead of the sun and the moon to give light, there were large carbuncles and diamonds which supplied all that was wanted. John Dietrich, who was very well treated, liked it very much, all but one thing—which was that the servants who waited upon the dwarfs were earth children, whom they had stolen and carried underground; and amongst them was Elizabeth Krabbin, once a playmate of his own, and who was a lovely girl, with clear blue eyes and ringlets of fair hair. John Dietrich of course fell in love with Elizabeth, and determined to get her out of the dwarf people's hands, and with her all the earth children they held captive. And when he had been ten years underground, and he and Elizabeth were grown up, he demanded leave to depart, and to take Elizabeth. But the dwarfs, though they could not hinder him from going, would not let her go, and no threats or entreaties could move them. Then John Dietrich remembered that the little people cannot bear an evil smell; and one day he happened to break a large stone, out of which jumped a toad, which gave him power to do what he pleased with the dwarfs, for the sight or smell of a toad causes them pain beyond all bearing. So he sent for the chiefs of the dwarfs, and bade them let Elizabeth go. But they refused; and then he went and fetched the toad. Then the story goes on in this way:—
"He was hardly come within a hundred paces of them when they all fell to the ground as if struck with a thunderbolt, and began to howl and whimper, and to writhe as if suffering the most excruciating pain. The dwarfs stretched out their hands, and cried, 'Have mercy, have mercy! we feel that you have a toad, and there is no escape for us. Take the odious beast away, and we will do all you require.' He let them kneel a few seconds longer, and then took the toad away. They then stood up, and felt no more pain. John let all depart but the six chief persons, to whom he said, 'This night, between twelve and one, Elizabeth and I will depart, Load for me three waggons with gold, silver, and precious stones. I might, you know, take all that is in the hill; but I will be merciful. Further, you must put into two waggons all the furniture of my chamber (which was covered with emeralds and other precious stones, and in the ceiling was a diamond as big as a nine-pin bowl), and get ready for me the handsomest travelling carriage that is in the hill, with six black horses. Moreover, you must set at liberty all the servants who have been so long here that on earth they would be twenty years old and upwards, and you must give them as much silver and gold as will make them rich for life; and you must make a law that no one shall be kept here longer than his twentieth year.'
"The six took the oath, and went away quite melancholy, and John buried his toad deep in the ground. The little people laboured hard and prepared everything, and at midnight John and Elizabeth, and their companions, and all their treasures, were drawn up out of the hill. It was then one o'clock, and it was midsummer—the very time that, twelve years before, John had gone down into the hill. Music sounded around them, and they saw the glass hill open, and the rays of the light of heaven shine on them after so many years; and when they got out they saw the first streaks of dawn already in the East. Crowds of the underground people were around them, busied about the waggons. John bid them a last farewell, waved his brown cap in the air, and then flung it among them. And at the same moment he ceased to see them; he beheld nothing but a green hill, and the well-known bushes and fields, and heard the church clock of Ramfin strike two. When all was still, save a few larks, who were tuning their morning song, they all fell upon their knees and worshipped God, resolving henceforth to lead a pious and Christian life." And then John married Elizabeth, and was made a count, and built several churches, and presented to them some of the precious cups and plates made by the underground people, and kept his own and Elizabeth's glass shoes, in memory of what had befallen them in their youth. "And they were all taken away," the story says, "in the time of the great Charles the Twelfth of Sweden, when the Russians came on the island, and the Cossacks plundered even the churches, and took away everything."
Now there is much more to be told about the dwarfs, if only we had space—how there were thousands of them in German lands, in the Saxon mines, and the Black Forest, and the Harz mountains and in other places, and in Switzerland, and indeed everywhere almost—how they gave gifts to good men, and borrowed of them, and paid honestly; how they punished those who injured them; how they moved about from country to country; how they helped great kings and nobles, and showed themselves to wandering travellers and to simple country folk. But all this must be left for you to read for yourselves in Grimm's stories, and in the legends of northern lands, and in many collections of ancient poems, and romances, and popular tales. And in these, and in other books which deal with such subjects, you will find out that all these dwellers in Wonderland, and the tales that are told about them, and the stories of the gods and heroes, all come from the one source of which we read something in the first chapter—the tradition's of the ancient Aryan people, from whom all of us have sprung—and how they all mean the same things; the conflict between light and darkness, the succession of day and night, the changes of the seasons, the blue and bright summer skies, the rain-clouds, the storm-winds, the thunder and the lightning, and all the varied and infinite forms of Nature in her moods of calm and storm, peace and tempest, brightness and gloom, sweet and pleasant and hopeful life and stern and cold death, which causes all brightness to fade and moulder away.
CHAPTER V.—DWELLERS IN FAIRYLAND: WEST HIGHLAND STORIES.
In a very delightful book which has already been mentioned, Campbell's "Popular Tales of the West Highlands," there are many curious stories of fairy folk and other creatures of the like kind, described in the traditions of the west of Scotland, and which are still believed in by many of the country people. There are Brownies, for instance, the farm spirits. One of these, so the story goes, inhabited the island of Inch, and looked after the cattle of the Mac Dougalls; but if the dairymaid neglected to leave a portion of milk for him at night, one of the cattle would be sure to fall over the rocks. Another kind of Brownie, called the Bocan, haunted a place called Moran, opposite the Isle of Skye, and protected the family of the Macdonalds of Moran, but was very savage to other people, whom he beat or killed. At last Big John, the son of M'Leod of Raasay, went and fought the creature in the dark, and tucked him under his arm, to carry him to the nearest light and see what he was like. But the Brownies hate to be seen, and this one begged hard to be let off, promising that he would never come back. So Big John let him off, and he flew away singing:—
"Far from me is the hill of Ben Hederin;
Far from me is the Pass of Murmuring;"
and the common story says that the tune is still remembered and sung by the people of that country. It is also told of a farmer, named Callum Mohr MacIntosh, near Loch Traig, in Lochaber, that he had a fight with a Bocan, and in the fight he lost a charmed handkerchief. When he went back to get it again, he found the Bocan rubbing the handkerchief hard on a flat stone, and the Bocan said, "It is well for you that you are back, for if I had rubbed a hole in this you were a dead man." This Bocan became very friendly with MacIntosh, and used to bring him peats for fire in the deep winter snows; and when MacIntosh moved to another farm, and left a hogshead of hides behind him by accident, the Bocan carried it to his new house next morning, over paths that only a goat could have crossed.