Part 11 (2/2)
”But it is not a question of religion,” said Helga, ”if we Danes differ in opinion from the English or if our customs are different.”
”Just so,” said the Pastor; ”but G.o.d is over all. Nation may call to nation and generation to generation; but, as Herr Hardy suggests, nationalities may differ, but what is best in thought and deed will come to the front.”
”But why should he despise us?” asked Helga.
”Herr Hardy despises nothing,” replied her father. ”He sees and appreciates what is good in us, and sympathizes with the stability of the Danish character, but he naturally values the broader thought in everyday life of the English people.”
”That is because he is an Englishman,” retorted Helga.
”You forget, Helga, that Herr Hardy is present,” said her father, ”and what you have said would pain him. If he be an Englishman he cannot help it, and if he should be English in thought and character it is not what you should condemn. He is only true to himself. Since he has been with us, what has his conduct been?”
Helga knitted in silence; she felt the justice of her father's reproof and her injustice to Hardy.
Hardy, to change the conversation, said to Karl, ”Well, Karl, you have not told us how soft you found the ditch that you went to the bottom of.”
”I do not know how I fell off,” said Karl. ”I was suddenly under water in the ditch.”
”You fell off as Buffalo was about to jump. He checked his stride before he jumped, and then you tumbled off,” said Hardy.
”What should I have done?” asked Karl.
”Stuck on,” replied Hardy. ”You have to learn the motion of the horse when jumping, which only practise gives.”
”It was like the Damhest,” said the Pastor, ”which is a legendary horse that comes out of mill-dams, ponds, or lakes, at night, and entices people to ride it, when it jumps into the water. The best story of it is from Thisted, a little to the north-west of this. Three tipsy Bnder (farmers) were going home, when one of them wished for a horse, that they might ride home, when, lo! there appeared a long-backed black horse, on whose back they all clambered, and there appeared room for many more. As the last man got up he exclaimed--
'Herre, Jesu Kors Aldrig saae jeg saadan Hors.'
'By the Lord Jesu's cross, Never saw I such a horse.'
Instantly at that holy name the horse disappeared from under them, and the three Bnder were lying on the ground. The Danish word for horse is 'hest,' but the Jutland people use the word 'hors,' in their dialect.”
”There is a similar legend in the Shetland Islands; but, then, it is a little horse that jumps into the sea, with the unfortunate person it has enticed to mount it,” said Hardy.
”There is also a similar legend in France,” said the Pastor. ”The horse is called 'Le Lutin.' We have another legendary horse, that is said to abide in churchyards, and has three legs. The legend has arisen from the practice in old times of burying a living horse at the funeral of a man of distinction. This horse's ghost is called the 'Helhest.' If any one meets it, it is a sign to him of an early death.
It is a tradition of the cathedral at Aarhus, that such a horse is occasionally seen there. A man whose window looked out to the cathedral exclaimed one day to a neighbour, 'What horse is that?'
There is none,' said his neighbour. 'Then it must be the Helhest,'
said the other, who shortly after died. It is said that in the cathedral at Roeskilde, there is a narrow stone on which, in old times, people used to spit, because a Helhest was buried there. The word 'hel' is from 'hael,' a heel, because the horse lacked one hoof or heel. The legend appears to have existed in the Roman times, as they called it Unipes, or the one-footed.”
”The p.r.o.nunciation of 'hel' in Danish is as if it were spelt in English as 'hael'” said Hardy. ”I certainly never heard that legend before.”
”There are other legends of animals,” said Pastor Lindal. ”There is the Kirkelam, or the church lamb. This arose from the practice, when a church was founded, to bury under the altar a living lamb, to prevent, it was said, the church from sinking. This lamb's ghost was called the Kirkelam, and, if at any time a child was about to die, the church lamb was supposed to appear at the threshold of the door. In Carlslunde church tower there is a bas-relief of a lamb, to show that a living lamb was buried there when the church was built. It is related that a woman was sent for to nurse another woman who was very ill; as she went through the churchyard, she was aware of something like a dog or a cat rubbing itself against her clothes. She stooped down to look at it, in the half light of the evening, when, lo! it was the church lamb. The sick woman died at the very same instant, so runs the legend.”
”The legend of the Kirkelam,” said Hardy, ”is distinctive, insomuch as it appears symbolical, and not based, as most legends are, on the fancies and wild imaginations of the people.”
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