Part 12 (1/2)
”In the olden times of Christianity,” said Pastor Lindal, ”it was found necessary to employ symbols, and to take measures to occupy the attention of an ignorant people, and it is possible that thus the practice arose to be followed by the legend.”
”It was a heathen practice to bury living creatures,” continued the Pastor, ”to avert the plague, when sometimes they buried children, or for other fantastic reasons. Thus, there is the legend of the Gravso, meaning the buried sow. The reason for its having been buried alive is lost. The sow is supposed to appear in the streets of towns, and when it appears is an omen of bad luck or death. Sometimes it is said that it runs between people's legs, and takes them on its back, and leaves them in strange places.”
”You said just now that children were buried to avert or stay the plague, when it visited Denmark,” said Hardy; ”does there exist any authentic record of such, or does it rest entirely on tradition?”
”I fear we must admit it to have occurred,” replied Pastor Lindal.
”The records of it are too many and consistent to doubt the truth of the practice. There is a tradition of a place in Jutland where all the inhabitants died of the plague, and the inhabitants of an adjoining town averted the spread of the pestilence by buying a child of a gypsy, and burying it alive, which tradition says had the desired result. There is also a tradition that on the east side of a certain church in Jutland no one is buried, because a child was buried there to stay the plague. At another place, two children were purchased of very poor parents, and were buried alive in a sandhill, to stay the pestilence then raging in the district. The people gave them some bread and b.u.t.ter, to induce them to go into the living grave prepared for them; and when the first spadeful of sand was thrown into the hole, one of the children cried out, 'Mother, they are throwing sand on my bread and b.u.t.ter!' Comparing this with the treatment of witches, or women suspected of witchcraft, at the same epoch, it is not at all impossible that such senseless and cruel customs prevailed. The stories of robbers that may be well attributed to the same period have all a cruel tinge.”
”Can you tell us any?” asked Hardy.
”A very great many. One story has been adopted and embellished, and has appeared in many lands, and it is possible that you may have heard it, so wide has the same story spread. The story is that a rich man had an only daughter, and amongst many suitors was a young stranger of singularly bold manners, and she accepted him with her father's full consent. But, as it happened, she went out for a walk in a wood near, and she came to a cave. She was astonished to find that this cave was inhabited and divided into rooms. There were chairs and a table and kitchen utensils in the first room, in the second room there was much old silver plate and costly articles, but in the inner room of all there were portions of dead bodies. She was terrified, and would have fled from these horrors, but she heard steps at the entrance of the cave, and the robbers entered. She hid herself under a bed, and, to her horror, she saw the man she had promised to marry bring in a woman, whom he brutally murdered; and as he could not get a gold ring off that was on her finger, he chopped it off with an axe, with such violence that it rolled underneath the bed where she was. The robber could not find it, and gave up the search. At night, the robbers all departed on a plundering expedition, when she hastened home. She said, however, nothing of what had happened. The wedding-day was fixed, and the wedding guests a.s.sembled; but when the festivities were at the highest, she produced the finger of the dead woman, with the ring on it! The bridegroom turned pale, and, after being put to the torture, confessed many murders, and was, with his band, executed with the cruelty then practised; that is, their entrails were cut out by the executioner, the bodies severed into pieces, and hung up to rot on a gallows.”
”The whole story is a very cruel picture,” said Hardy.
”So the stories of robbers all are,” said the Pastor. ”There is a story of a robber called Langekniv, or 'long knife.' His practice was to kill people by casting a heavy knife at them, with a string attached to it, so that he could possess himself of the knife again with celerity. He committed many murders. But one day a pedlar was going across a lonely heath, when he saw Langekniv coming. The pedlar fell down at first with fright, but afterwards pretended to be nearly dead from illness; and when Langekniv came up, he said, 'Take my pack and my money, and fetch a doctor; I am dying.' Langekniv thought that with a man who could be so easily robbed, it was not necessary to do more than he was asked; but as soon as he turned to go away, the pedlar struck him with his staff a blow on the ankle, that disabled him from running. He then ran for a.s.sistance, and Langekniv, after making it very hot for his captors by casting his long knife, was seized, and bound, and put in a cart, and was executed. When his entrails was being cut out by the executioner, he was asked if it hurt, and Langekniv replied that it was not so bad as the toothache.
”There is one robber story, however, that ill.u.s.trates the extraordinary manner in which a clue to a murder can sometimes be acquired. A pedlar was pa.s.sing in a lonely hollow of a road on a heath in Jutland, when two robbers attacked him, and killed him under circ.u.mstances of great cruelty. A flock of wild geese was flying over head, and the pedlar said the birds of the air shall witness against you of my murder. Years went by, when, one day, the people were waiting in the churchyard for the priest to come to service. A flock of geese was flying overhead, when a horse-dealer from Holstein, a stranger to the place, said, 'There goes the pedlar's witnesses.'
These words excited attention. The man lost all control over himself, and confessed the murder.”
”A very extraordinary story,” said Hardy, ”but a very possible one.
But have you not traditions of very supernatural things, as the story of the Kraken?”
”There is the tradition of the Basilisk, as we call it, and that of the Lindorm. The legend of the Basilisk is, of course, of cla.s.sic origin. It is that when a c.o.c.k becomes very old, it lays an egg, and the heat of a dungheap hatches it, and a Basilisk is produced. It is so hideous a monster, that whoever looks on it can no longer live, but melts away. It is also said that the Basilisk inhabits wells, and that it is dangerous to look down a well, as to encounter the gaze of a Basilisk would be to turn the beholder to stone. There is also another variation of the legend. The egg when laid by the c.o.c.k must be hatched by a toad; but when the Basilisk is hatched, if it be first seen by a human being, it at once dies, but if the contrary, the beholder dies.”
”There is a novel written by Sir Walter Scott,” said Hardy, ”under the t.i.tle of 'Count Robert of Paris' in which he describes the Varanger guard. It is possible that as such a body of men did exist, that such legends were brought back by them.”
”It may be,” said Pastor Lindal; ”but in all such matters we may dogmatize, and be very wide of the mark, although we cannot deny the possibility.”
”But what about the Lindorm?” asked Hardy.
”The Lindorm is a legendary serpent,” replied the Pastor. ”Your English story of St. George and the dragon is a contest with a Lindorm, and we have many variations of the story. The princ.i.p.al incidents, however, coincide with your English story. One story of a Lindorm is, that a girl went out to milk her master's cows, and as she went over the fields she saw a little spotted snake. It appeared so pretty that she took it home and kept it in a box. Every day she fed it with milk and what else she could get that it would eat, but it became at last so large that it could not be kept in the box any longer. It ran after the girl wherever she went, and drank out of the milk-pails, as she milked the cows. This the house mother (the farmer's wife) objected to, and she said the snake should be killed to prevent further mischief; but the snake was not killed, and further mischief did occur. It became so big that it was not satisfied with what was given it, but seized the cattle, one after another, and ate them. It soon became the terror of the district. A wise woman, however, advised that a bull calf should be reared with fresh milk and wheat bread, to destroy the Lindorm. Meanwhile it had attained such a size, that every day a cow had to be given it, or an old horse, to prevent its taking the more valuable cattle. When, however, the bull calf was three years old, it was strong enough to combat the Lindorm, and killed it; but when the combat took place, the snake struck a large stone with its tail, and cut thereby a furrow in it, and the stone is shown to this day as a proof of the legend.”
”A very interesting legend,” said Hardy. ”Are there more?”
”There is a remarkable one,” replied Pastor Lindal, ”as one of the legends of the old cathedral at Aarhus. Many years ago, it was observed that the bodies buried in the churchyard, then belonging to the cathedral, were taken away, no one knew how. At last, it was observed that a Lindorm had its habitation under the cathedral, and came out every night, and devoured the corpses. As it was feared that not only this would continue, but also that the foundations of the cathedral might be undermined by the excavations made by the Lindorm, it was determined to seek means to destroy it. At this time a glazier came to Aarhus, and when he heard the danger in which the cathedral was placed, he promised to help the town councillors to get rid of the Lindorm. He made a box of looking-gla.s.s so large that he could himself go into it, and to which there was only one opening, and which was not larger than that he could use his sword with effect. He had this box taken into the cathedral by daylight, and when midnight came he lighted four wax candles, which he placed in the four corners of the box. When the Lindorm came up the aisle of the cathedral and saw its reflection in the looking-gla.s.s, it thought that it was another Lindorm, with whom it could pair, and was so occupied in its contemplation that the glazier had the opportunity of cutting its throat with his sword, and it died of the wound thus given. The poisonous nature of the blood that flowed from the Lindorm, however, caused the glazier's death.”
”That is certainly a striking legend,” said Hardy.
”There is also a legend of a Lindorm that encircled a church and devoured the people as they came out, as it appeared only after their being in it. It had its head at one entrance and its tail at the other, and destroyed the people with both. The people then made a hole in the church wall, through which they escaped. Another legend is that a Lindorm bathes once a year in a lake, which after has a green film on it. This, however, you may have observed in the lakes at Silkeborg this summer, arising from the quant.i.ty of weed growth during the hotter weather.”
”I have observed what you mention,” said Hardy, ”and I should expect it is not the first time that an ordinary natural occurrence has been attributed to supernatural causes.”
”That applies,” said the Pastor, ”also to what you call in England will-o-the-wisp. We call this in Danish, Lygtemaend, or men with lanterns. The tradition is that they are spirits of wicked people, particularly of men who have measured land falsely, and so acquired an advantage over their neighbours. They are supposed to desire to mislead the traveller, and entice him into bogs and swamps. It is said that the best means to prevent being thus deceived is to turn one's hat, so that the back part should come to the front; care, however, must be taken not to point at a Lygtemaend, as he is then dangerous.
Such is the tradition.”
”Your legends, this evening, have been more than usually interesting, Herr Pastor,” said Hardy. ”It would appear as if, with such a ma.s.s of legendary lore, you would have men growing up and becoming authors of the richest fancy.”