sung in the solemn
dithyrambics of the Edda, and met with in every page of the Islandic
sagas. Though her heart was always Christian, she was amazed, from time
to time, at hearing herself speak, like a pagan, of the beneficent
Baldus, of Loki, the spirit of evil, and of Freya, the golden tears of
whom formed the Baltic amber. To her, the world was yet peopled by the
mythological beings, created by the naive faith of the north, and to them
she had learned to adapt the phenomena of nature. When she heard the
thunder, she thought of Thor, and his mighty hammer, driving across the
heavens in his iron car. If the sky was clear, she thought the luminous
Alfis lighted up the horizon.

In the pantheism of Scandinavian mythology, which, though less seductive,
is less comprehensive than that of the Greeks, all that she heard assumed
a mysterious existence. Plants were watered by the foam the horse of
night shakes on the earth, as he tosses his mane and champs his bit.

Crows had a prophetic power. The eagle sailing through the air, recalled
to her that deathless bird which sits on the boughs of Ygdrasil, the
tree of the world. A secret spring, hidden amid the woods, seemed to her
the emblem of that deep spring in which the Nornas spin and cut the
thread of life. To these traditions, far older than Christianity, she
united the popular legends of the middle age. If night, the whistling of
the wind, the rattling of the rain, the murmur of the trees, made a
confused murmur in her ears, she fancied that she heard the barking of
dogs, the sound of horns, and the cry of the wild huntsman sentenced to
wander forever from vale to vale, from mountain to mountain, because he
had violated a Sabbath or saints' day. If, on some calm day, she looked
at the golden and purple surface of the lake, she fancied that she saw,
in the depth of the water, the spires and roofs of the houses of some
city which God had punished for impiety, by burying it beneath the waves.

If she stood on the banks of a rapid stream, at the foot of a cascade,
she said that the sounds she heard came from Stromkarl. The Stromkarl has
a silver harp, on which he plays wild melodies. If his favor be gained,
by any present, he teaches the listener his songs. Wo, however, to the
man who hears him for the ninth time. He cannot shake off the
supernatural charm, and becomes a victim to his imprudent temerity.

One evening all the family was collected around the earthen stove. E