(Jannsen.)
A farmer was driving home one winter evening from Fellin across the Parika heath, when he suddenly saw a little blue flame on one side, and his horse stopped short and would not move. It was as if he had been stopped by a ditch. He dismounted, and found not a ditch, but an open pit; and he could not drive round it, because there was deep water on all sides. Presently he saw a light flare up like a torch, and then another, till many of them were flitting about everywhere. In consternation, the farmer cried out, "Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, what's going on here tonight?" The horse sprang forward, as if somebody had stuck a pin into him, and the farmer had only just time to tumble on the sledge, when they went off at full gallop; and the farmer could say that the name of God had occurred to him just at the right time.
THE FOUNDLING.
(Jannsen.)[44]
One evening a little boy was sleeping restlessly in a village on the island of Dagö. His father saw a small hole which had been bored in the wall, and thinking that the draught disturbed the child, he stopped it up. He then saw a beautiful little girl playing with the boy, and preventing him from sleeping quietly. As she could not get away again, she remained in the house; and when the children grew up, they married, and had two children. One Sunday they went to church, and the wife laughed; but when her husband asked why, she replied that she would tell him if he told her how she came into his house. Thinking no harm, he promised to tell her, as he had heard the story from his father. Then she told him that she saw a great horse-skin spread on the wall of the church, on which the devil wrote the names of all the people who slept or talked in church instead of attending to the word of God. When it was full, he tried to stretch it with his teeth, but in doing so, he knocked his head against the wall and made a wry face, and she laughed. When they got home, he took the wooden plug from the hole, and showed it to his wife, but she instantly disappeared through it and never returned. The man wept himself blind, but the children grew up and prospered all their lives. People said their mother visited them secretly and brought treasures to the house.
The next story introduces us to the Gnomes, who appear to come more frequently into contact with human beings than any of the other nature-spirits, perhaps because their nature may be more akin to that of man. They are seen with more or less similar characteristics in all the mining countries of Northern Europe, whether Celtic, as Ireland and the Isle of Man; Teutonic, as England, Germany, and Scandinavia; or Finnish-Ugrian. They were well known to the old Norsemen as the Dvergar.