The Baptizing of the Baby
By Elizabeth Taylor
THE Baby arrived in a howling nor'easter. The fjelds were white with driving snow, the sea was white with the spindrift of gale-lashed waves, when the little procession filed into the parsonage courtyard. There were a father, five godfathers, two godmothers, and a few non-official friends. No baby was visible, but a muffled gurgle betrayed her presence. One of the godfathers, a fine young Viking of a lad, had a woman's dress-skirt buttoned around his neck and hanging down in front. Within its warm folds was the Baby.
The Baby's age was but four weeks, and this her first journey into the outside world. Custom has decreed that a Faroe Island baby must not pass its parents' threshold until it goes to the Pastor to be received into the Church, and so made secure from the Powers of Darkness. Having once left its home, it cannot return with the sacred rite unperformed.
Imagine, then, the dismay that fell upon the Baby's escorts when they learned that the Pastor had gone to the capital, several days before, on important church business. To Thorshavn! Only seven miles away, by sea, to be sure, but, with that gale, it might as well be seventy. What to do now? The Baby could not be taken back unbaptized. And there was the baptismal feast all arranged: sweet soup, hung mutton, potatoes, coffee, little cakes, with card-playing in the afternoon, and rice-porridge and sandwiches in the evening. The Baby's mother was putting the sweet soup over the fire when they left that morning. Five miles by fjord they had come; then, as the gale increased, and they neared the open sea, they had 'set up' on land, and trudged the remaining three miles through deep snow.
'Oh, well,' sighed the father, 'we may as well "take it with quiet." The women-folk are too weary, anyhow, to go through those drifts again. We had better send one man home to explain matters, while the rest of us visit our friends. The storm may lessen at any time, so we can go to Thorshavn and bring home the Pastor.'
But—the Baby—And here the 'Pastorinde' was called upon to advise. Yes the Pastorinde did know of a newly-arrived baby in the village, and she doubted not that its mother would kindly permit the stranger-baby to share and share alike with her own.
I, too, was 'weather-fast.' From Thorshavn I had come, twelve days before, to 'hold Jule' at the parsonage, intending to return two days after Christmas. Then came this long storm. There was no going to Thorshavn by sea; but in a roundabout way, by fjord and fjeld, it might be done in a case of necessity, such as this church-meeting that the Pastor must attend.
The foreman of the eight-man boat, however, flatly refused to take me. 'The Herr Pastor,' he explained patiently, 'has strong legs. He can jump and stand fast in surf, climb cliffs, and go through deep snow. But it is no journey for women-folk in high winter-time.'