t they have heard the Huldr sing. I have
spoken with people who have seen the Huldr, and described her to me
with a vividness as if it were a real personage. I have heard people
say they have seen her knitting, sitting on a rock with a ball of
worsted thrown out before her, to entice mortals to take it up, when
they must follow where she would lead."

"We have not that superstition in Jutland," said the Pastor; "that is
begotten of the lonely life in the isolated farms in the fields in
Norway and their interminable woods and natural wildness of nature.
Our superstitions are, as I said, endless. They consist of historical
traditions of a supernatural character, of traditions attached to
places, as old houses, churches, also of particular men, of hidden
treasure, of robbers, and the like. Then there are the more
supernatural superstitions, as of witches, ghosts, the devil, of
Trolds, of mermen and mermaids, of Nissen, like your English pixey, of
the three-legged horse that inhabits the churchyards, the were-wolf,
the gnome that inhabits the elder tree, the nightmare, or, as we call
it, Maren. There is also the tradition of gigantic dragons or
serpents, called by us Lindorm, in which your story of St. George and
the dragon prominently figures. There are also minor superstitions of
the will-o'-the-wisp, the bird called in English the goatsucker, and
the classical Basilisk."

"But surely all those superstitions cannot exist now?" inquired Hardy.

"I do not say they do; but they are hidden to a greater extent in the
recesses of the hearts of the people than you would imagine."

"Can you relate anything of these superstitions?" said Hardy. "It
would interest me beyond everything."

"Yes," said the Pastor. "I will give you an example in any one of the
particular traditions I have mentioned, and I will begin with the
historical superstition, as I mentioned that first.

"When King Gylfe reigned in Sweden, a woman came to him, and she
enchanted him so by her singing that he gave her leave to plough so
much of his land as she could in a day with four oxen, and what she
thus ploughed should be hers. This woman was of the race of the giants
(Aseme). She took her four sons and changed them into oxen, and
attached them to the plough. She ploughed out the place she had
chosen, and thus created the island of Sjaelland. She did this from the
Maelar lake in Sweden; and it is said that where there is a point of
land in Sjaelland ther