[4] Elia
[5] If the reader will refer again to the form of “Relief List,” he will perceive that there are three general divisions, named severally, ordinary, medical, and casual. These terms were preserved, because they are well known in actual practice, rather than because they express a really broad distinction. The ordinary relief list is supposed to contain all those recipients of relief who are likely to continue chargeable for a long period. But the distinction attempted to be drawn between those who may require relief for a long and those who require it for a short period only, depends upon circumstances too vague and variable to be of any practical utility. These objections are not applicable to the generic term “medical.”
[6] A tradesman is not a shopkeeper, but a mechanic who is skilled in his particular branch of industry.
[7] In other words, that he will be condemned to slavery, and employed on the public works in wheeling a barrow.
[8] The belief in hard men, i.e. of men whose skins were impervious to a musket or pistol ball, was extremely prevalent during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. They could be killed only by a silver bullet. Fitzgerald, the notorious duellist and murderer, in the middle of the last century, was said to have been a hard man.—See Thoms’ Anecdotes and Traditions, printed for the Camden Society, p. 111.
[9] It must be borne in mind that the priests here alluded to are Danish.
[10] Junker (pronounced Yunker,) the title given to a son of noble family. Fröken (dimin. of Frue, madam, lady; Ger. Fräulein) is the corresponding title of a young lady of rank.
[11] Madam, applied strictly to ladies of rank only.
[12] The Nisse of the Scandinavian nations is, in many respects, the counterpart of the Scottish Brownie, while, in others, he occasionally resembles the Devonian and Cornish Pixie and Portune. He is described as clad in gray, with a pointed red cap. Having once taken up his abode with a family, it is not easy to dislodge him, as is evident from the following anecdote:—A man, whose patience was exhausted by the mischievous pranks of a Nisse that dwelt in his house, resolved on changing his habitation, and leaving his troublesome guest to himself. Having packed his last cart-load of chattels, he chanced to go to the back of his cart, to see whether all was safe, when, to his dismay, the Nisse popped his head out of a tub, and with a loud laugh, said, “See, we flit to-day,” (See, idag flytte vi.)—Thiele, Danske Folkesagn, i. p. 134, and Athenæum, No. 991.
There are also ship Nisses, whose functions consist in shadowing out, as it were, by night all the work that is to be performed the following day,—to weigh or cast anchor, to hoist or lower the sails, to furl or reef them—all which operations are forerunners of a storm. For the duty even of a swabber, he does not consider himself too high, but washes the deck most delicately clean. Some well-informed persons maintain that this spiritus navalis, or nautical goblin, proves himself of kindred race with the house or land Nisse by his roguish pranks. Sometimes he turns the vane, sometimes extinguishes the light in the binnacle, plagues the ship’s dog, and if there chance to be a passenger on board who cannot bear the sea, the rogue will appear before him with heart-rending grimaces retching in the bucket. If the ship is doomed to perish, he jumps overboard in the night, and either enters another vessel or swims to land.