CHAPTER XX.WENERN.
“The Night has covered her beauty. Her hair sighs on Ocean’s wind. Her robe streams in dusky wreaths. She is like the fair Spirit of heaven in the midst of its shadowy mist.“From the wood-skirted waters of Lago ascend at times grey-bosomed mists, when the gates of the West are closed on the Sun’s eagle eye. Wide over Lara’s stream is poured the vapour dark and deep. The Moon, like a dim shield, is swimming through its folds.“‘Spread the sail,’ said the King; ‘seize the winds as they pour from Lena.’ We rose on the wave with songs,—we rushed with joy through the foam of the deep.”Ossian.
“The Night has covered her beauty. Her hair sighs on Ocean’s wind. Her robe streams in dusky wreaths. She is like the fair Spirit of heaven in the midst of its shadowy mist.
“From the wood-skirted waters of Lago ascend at times grey-bosomed mists, when the gates of the West are closed on the Sun’s eagle eye. Wide over Lara’s stream is poured the vapour dark and deep. The Moon, like a dim shield, is swimming through its folds.
“‘Spread the sail,’ said the King; ‘seize the winds as they pour from Lena.’ We rose on the wave with songs,—we rushed with joy through the foam of the deep.”
Ossian.
“So peaceful, calm, and leaden grey,Beneath our keel the waters lay,Parting around the vessel’s prowWith rippling murmur, sweet and low,—And rising slowly from the lake,The wreathing mists asunder break—Revealing all concealed beforeOf forest, hill, and rocky shore.”Anon.
“So peaceful, calm, and leaden grey,Beneath our keel the waters lay,Parting around the vessel’s prowWith rippling murmur, sweet and low,—And rising slowly from the lake,The wreathing mists asunder break—Revealing all concealed beforeOf forest, hill, and rocky shore.”Anon.
“So peaceful, calm, and leaden grey,Beneath our keel the waters lay,Parting around the vessel’s prowWith rippling murmur, sweet and low,—And rising slowly from the lake,The wreathing mists asunder break—Revealing all concealed beforeOf forest, hill, and rocky shore.”
“So peaceful, calm, and leaden grey,
Beneath our keel the waters lay,
Parting around the vessel’s prow
With rippling murmur, sweet and low,—
And rising slowly from the lake,
The wreathing mists asunder break—
Revealing all concealed before
Of forest, hill, and rocky shore.”
Anon.
Anon.
There was no great stir next morning at Gäddebäck, considering the importance of the expedition; as for preparations, no more preparation was necessary than is necessary for a detachment of soldiers that has received its route; the guns and ammunition were paraded, and the knapsacks were packed in light marching order; the carioles had been despatched over night to the post-master at Wenersborg, under the charge of Piersen and one of Moodie’s people, with directions to send on a forebud, and then to proceed by land to Amal; and the cutter having received her freight, had, on the preceding evening, hauled out into the stream in order to be taken in tow by the night steamer, for Wenersborg. Moodie had determined that there was no need of disappointinghimself or his friends of their day’s fishing at the upper rapids, seeing that they might easily be taken on the road. He proposed, therefore, joining the cutter at Wenersborg in the evening, and making the passage to Amal by night, observing, that by getting what sleep they could while at sea, they would lose no time, and might start immediately on landing.
“This is rather close shaving, Moodie,” said the Captain, as they sat at breakfast the following morning,—rather an early breakfast, for Moodie meant to give the fishing-ground what he called a full due.—“You have made the evening breeze an element in your calculation; we shall be in a mess if this night is anything like the last.”
“O, but it will not be, ‘you see ghosts by daylight,’ as our people say; there is always a breeze on the open lake, it is not like this valley; besides, if it does fail us, we have only to post; there is a regular posting track across the lake, with stations on the islands, where they keep boats in the summer and horses in the winter. If the breeze does fail us, which I tell you it will not, we have only to send the dingy to Leckö or Lurön, whichever we may be nearest to, and get boats enough to carry us all.”
The Parson made no opposition, though in his heart he agreed with the Captain that the experiment might very possibly involve the loss of their ultimate object, the skål; the salmo ferox was, however, a new fish to him, and notwithstanding all he had said in its disparagement on the banks of the Torjedahl, he would not much have liked to lose his chance of landing one. By his advice a light rod or two were added to the baggage,—for the rivers north of the Wener abound in grayling, though, strange to say, these delicate fish are never found south of it.
The four-oared gig being the fastest pulling boat, carried them up the stream to the point at which the great canal leaves the river; beyond this it ceases to be navigable on account of its rocks and rapids, but for this very reason becomes much more valuable as a fishing preserve. At these rapids, which was the crack station of all Moodie’s fishery, was a sort of out-post, where he had a keeper’s house, with a separate establishment of boats. The Captain turned up hiseyes a little at hearing of this fresh proof of his friend’s magnificence; but it sounds grander to English ears than it is in fact, for Moodie made money by his fishery, and of course required men, not only to preserve it, but to catch the fish while he was absent on any roving expedition like the present; and as for boats, where planks may be had at the saw-mills for almost nothing, and where every man is more or less of a carpenter, rough fishing punts are articles of very small expense indeed, and are generally built at home.
It is said that the great lake, Wener, even now the largest in Europe, was once much larger; that it once extended to the falls of Trollhättan; that all the low-lying and marshy shores, which are now the delight of ducks and the glory of musquitoes, were once under water, but that the stream having gradually worked its way over the falls, like a saw, continually wearing away the rock from which it fell, and carrying it off, portion by portion, opened a deeper passage, and that the lake has gradually receded to its present limits.
This of course, happened in Preadamite times, or, to use the language of the allegorical history of creation supplied by the prose Edda—in those days, “before the sons of Bör had slain the giant Ymir.”[48]And certainly the formation of the valley afforded some grounds for the conjecture: two low lines of hills, steep and cliff-shaped, suggested readily the idea of Preadamite banks; while the flat bottom of the valley, in many places irrecoverably marshy, in all liable to be covered with water whenever the river is in flood, looked quite as much like the bottom of a drained pond as it did like the real land. It was not without its beauty, either; if ever it had been a lake, it must have been a lake studded with low islands, and these, as well as much of the marshy ground, were covered with forests, hiding, by the luxuriance of their growth, the numerous cultivated spots which intervened.
It was a very different description of scenery to that ofNorway certainly, for the hills of Hunneberg and Halleberg, which bound the view to the east and contain some very valuable limestone quarries, are, what limestone soil invariably is, tame and monotonous. They, however, abound in oak—a very rare tree in the north,—and also in deer and roe-bucks, which are not common either, but this being a royal forest, they were probably better looked after than they are in private lands, and Moodie, who, practically, had the rangership, as he was the only man allowed to shoot there, was scrupulously particular, and would as soon have thought of shooting a keeper as of shooting a deer.
The rapids are formed by a ridge of rock which crosses the river, over which it pours down one or two steps leaving deep broad pools of eddying water between them. The whole of this part of the river is overhung with trees of the largest growth which Sweden affords, and is as beautiful a spot as any they had seen. As the rocks are extremely rugged, the river is of very unequal breadth,—the banks, at one place, approaching so near to each other, that an Alpine bridge is formed of pine trees thrown across it. Four of the longest firs that could be found, with their stems resting on the rocks, are tied together in pairs, at their upper ends, by means of two iron bands, forming a broad Gothic arch. This is the skeleton of the bridge; the horizontal timbers, which were laid for the footways, passed them at about a third of their height, like the cross-bar of the letter A, and formed ties to steady them as well as to support the rest of the structure. It was an exceedingly picturesque affair, and told well for the ingenuity of the architect.
This bridge was their first stage. The keeper’s hut commanded the pools both above and below the bridge, and had establishments of boats for both divisions of the river—for there was considerable difficulty in getting a boat from one to the other.
The salmo ferox, when small, is often caught with a fly, and may be so caught when fourteen or sixteen pounds weight, but this is not a very common occurrence. The usual way of fishing for him is with a large litch of six pairs of hooks and a lip-hook, very heavily loaded and baited witha bleak or a gwinead, of which there are plenty in the river. A boat is absolutely necessary. The fisherman stands in the stern, and runs out some thirty yards of the line heavily loaded, with a short stiff pike-rod; the boat must be kept continually traversing the stream, beginning at the head of it and quartering it down to the foot, while the troller at the stern, with the point of his rod low, keeps his bait spinning in jerks,—the object being to imitate a sick or wounded fish. At each turn of the boat, the line must be gathered in by the hand, or the edges of the rapids, which indeed are the most likely parts, would be untried; four out of five fish are caught while the boats are in the act of turning.
This rather monotonous description of sport had gone on for some time, when the Parson felt the rod nearly taken out of his hand by the rush of a fish. The battle was furious, for the salmo ferox does not belie his name, but it was a mere trial of tackle, without any opportunity for the exercise of skill,—carried on, too, at the bottom of water twenty feet deep; and when, after a quarter of an hour’s boring against the bottom, the Parson succeeded in bringing to the gaff his huge capture, he declared he had done enough for fame, struck up his rod, sought the lower pool in pursuit of gös and id, with which, as well as with trout, it was said to abound.
The Swedes say that gös is a fish very difficult to catch; to an Englishman, by far the most difficult part of the business is to name the fish when he has caught it. Certainly, no one is qualified to do so who speaks of Göthe under his English appellations of Goth and Goaty: the dotted o affects and softens the preceding consonant as well as the vowel, and the name of this fish is pronounced much as if it was spelt “yeus,” in French letters. The difficulty experienced by the Swedes in catching it, arises from the fact of its requiring fine tackle in the clear waters which it frequents, instead of the coarse gimp or wire which is sufficient for the rash and headlong pike; in all other respects the habits of the two fish are very similar, except that the gös is a much smaller fish, and very much more prized. For him, the Parson was content with setting lay-lines with live baits and considerablelength of fine gut, while he directed his personal attention to the id.
In every particular, except one, the id is a chub; his haunts, his habits, his food are those of a chub; in looks, too—though certainly not altogether so clumsy, and, so to speak, chubby,—he reminds one forcibly of the chub family. He is something like the half-polished parvenu in his transition state of existence, just admitted into aristocratic circles, but, as yet, unable entirely to lay aside his brandy-and-water habits and feelings. In every particular,except one, the id is a chub, and that is, that he is by far the best eating of any of the cyprinæ; in fact, so far as the pot goes, he is a very respectable prize. The Parson, who, in his youth, had caught many a chub, and was fully aware of the zoological affinity of the two fish, was by no means at a loss for subjects of mutual interest between himself and his new introduction; a fly, resembling, as near as it could be made on the spur of the moment, a humble-bee, was tied on his finest gut, and the boat, anchored in the stern, was by slow degrees permitted to descend within long-cast of a still, over-shaded pool: the fly, thrown from as great a distance as he could command, fell as lightly as so clumsy a combination of fur and feathers could be expected to fall, and was moved very slowly and regularly over, or rather through, the water; for, as it may be supposed, the length of line caused it to sink a few inches below the surface.
His science was not unrewarded, for, before long, a sluggish roll in the waters, and a strong, obstinate, pig-headed pull at his line announced a capture. This was quickly followed by others, for id, though gregarious, are quite as indifferent to the troubles of their neighbours as if they were human creatures; provided you do not show yourself and alarm them for their individual safety, their friend may kick and struggle before their eyes, without causing a single wag of their selfish tails.
It was not bad fun upon the whole, for the id, though not possessing a tithe of the life and activity of the salmo genus, pull like donkeys, and might have lasted some time longer, for the Parson was getting interested, when Jacob was seenmaking his leisurely way along the bank, for the purpose of announcing “mid-dag’s mad.” The ground was sufficiently tangled, and Torkel, who was managing the boat and landing the fish, was extremely amused at the air of vexation and annoyance with which he dipped under a low-spreading fir branch, or put aside a too affectionate bramble. About a hundred yards above the id pool was a little beach of the whitest and smoothest sand that ever fairy danced upon. From the point where the boat was anchored, it was evident that this was caused by a little dull-looking stream, which had brought the white particles from the hills during the floods; but which then, very suspiciously, didnotrun into the river, but lost itself behind the white beach. All this was lost upon Jacob, who was in the wood, and who, not liking the tangled ground, made a valorous jump on to the white beach.
“Der var et spring af en Leerovn!” shouted Torkel, quoting a Danish proverb (“there was a jump for a tile-stove!”)—as poor Jacob flopped through the thin crust of white sand into a bed of black, tenacious clay, in which he seemed planted up to his middle, with his long flowing coat-tails spread out upon the unbroken sand.
The more he screamed with fear, the more they screamed with laughter. There was not the slightest danger, for he had evidently got as far as he meant to sink; but as for getting out without a purchase from something solid, the thing was impossible.
“We must have another fish,” said Torkel, to make up the dozen; “and it will be impossible to get Jacob out without spoiling the pool by pulling the boat across it.”
The Parson coolly took another cast,—Jacob screamed louder than ever.
“Bother that fellow,—I have missed him,” said the Parson, meaning not Jacob, but the fish.
“Try again,” said Torkel, coolly, “you will get him next time.”
A despairing shriek from Jacob.
“Ah! that is in him!—this is the biggest we have had yet! mind what you are about with the landing-net,—donot let him run under the boat! Well, really, we must pull out poor Jacob, or he will poison us with bad cookery, out of revenge. Up killick! or whatever you call it in your language, and shove across to him.”
But when they landed, they seemed as far from the rescue as ever. Jacob had jumped vigorously, and the bank from which he had jumped was high. To reach him was impossible, and to get out on the sand would be to share his fate. While Torkel was trying to slip down the bank, the Parson took out his knife to cut a branch.
“Stop! stop!” said Torkel, who, unsuccessful, had scrambled back. “What are you doing?—we shall all suffer for this; it is elder that you are cutting.”
“Well! what then?”
“Why, if we take it without asking for it, the elves will have power over us for nine days, and the chances are, some of us will die suddenly.”
The Parson was inclined to laugh, but he did not, and turned to look for a branch of less dangerous wood; but Torkel, placing himself before it, taking off his hat and bowing three times to the tree, said, “Elf-mother! elf-mother! let me have some of thy elder, and I will give thee something of mine.”
The elf-mother certainly did not refuse, and Torkel took silence for consent, which it proverbially is, and cut away at the bough, which, stripped of its side branches, formed a communication with the imbedded Jacob, who, black without and sulky within, and, as Torkel said, looking more like a pig than ever, was dragged floundering to the shore,—not at all the more pleased when Torkel reminded him that, as they were in light marching order, he would have to wash his shirt, trousers, and stockings, and to sit without them till they were dry.
When the party met at their mid-dag’s mad, which was not till long after the Swedish time for mid-dag’s mad had passed, there was a very respectable show of fish—not only enough for the cutter, but also a very handsome basket for the Gotheborg steamer that evening, which was duly packed and forwarded in a light cart to the locks; while the party,shouldering their weapons and that part of their prize which they had reserved for themselves, took the forest path to Wenersborg. Before sundown they were safely established on board the little cutter, who immediately tripped her anchor, hoisted jib and foresail—for the mainsail was already set,—payed off slowly before it, and stood out into the lake, which was glowingly reflecting the red beams of the setting sun, but still faintly rippling under the easterly breeze.
“Did not I tell you so?” said Moodie, who, seating himself with his legs dangling down the well, had assumed the tiller just as a gentleman drives his own carriage; “we have had a capital day’s sport, and got a glorious breakfast for to-morrow. I have turned a few bancos, which will help to pay for the trip, and here we are, resting from our labours while the wind is carrying us on our journey.”
“I hope it will stand,” said old Nils, “but it is easterly, you see, and the sun is setting; the wind does not like to blow in the face of the sun.”
“Go to the—Strömkarl—your old croaker, and check the main-sheet; you have got the sail a fathom too flat. The wind is drawing round to the southward, as any one may see; ease off the jib and foresail too, while you are about it.”
The fact was, that the wind had stood steady enough, but Moodie, in his anxiety, had let her fall off a couple of points, which Nils saw, but was too sulky to mention, and which the rest of the party did not see, because, as strangers, they were ignorant of the true course, and there was no binnacle, or, so far as they could see, compass of any kind, besides those they had in their pockets.
The cutter was half-decked, with a tidy little cabin forward, and a couple of bunks for sleeping—one on each side of the well; in these the party very shortly disposed themselves, for they knew that a pretty stiff day’s work lay before them; and having established the best defence in their power against the musquitoes, slept as campaigners sleep, in right down earnest.
“Hallo, Nils! where are we?” asked a sleepy voice next morning.
The Captain, who had curled himself into the opposite bunk, was not quite certain whether it was not still a part of his dreams.
The next call was quite enough to settle this fact.
“Nils!” roared Moodie, “why Nils! confound the fellow, I believe he is asleep.”
And so, sure enough, he was, with his head on the rudder-case, as fast as any one of the seven sleepers of Ephesus; and poor Nils was by no means singular in this respect—passengers were asleep, attendants were asleep, dogs were asleep, Jacob was asleep and snoring, the winds were asleep, everything was asleep but the sails, and they were waving to and fro with the knittles pattering against their surfaces, and shaking the night dew on the deck like rain, while over all, like an eider-down coverlet, had sunk on them all a steaming white fog, so thick that the sharpest eyes could not see the little burgee at the mast-head, or the out-haul block at the bowsprit end. It was not dark, it never is in summer, but no one could tell whether the sun had risen or not.
“Here’s a go!” said the Captain.
“Faith! I wish it was a go,” said the Parson, putting his head out of the cabin door; “it seems to me just the reverse.”
Moodie, whose clever plan seemed to promise anything but success, was as sulky as Nils had been overnight, and rated the poor fellow soundly for going to sleep.
Nils represented, not altogether unreasonably, that the wind had gone to sleep first.
“What is to be done now?” said Moodie, breaking off a discontented and reflective whistle, the last notes of which had been singularly out of tune; “I cannot send this sleepy old fool to Leckö, or anywhere else, for I do not know where Leckö is, or where we are, or anything about it in this fog; who was to have thought of this?”
“Never mind,” said the Parson—
“The wisest schemes of mice and menGang aft ajee;”—
“The wisest schemes of mice and menGang aft ajee;”—
“The wisest schemes of mice and menGang aft ajee;”—
“The wisest schemes of mice and men
Gang aft ajee;”—
“I suppose this fog will clear off some time or other, and we are well provisioned, at all events.”
“Yes,” said Moodie, “but we have sent on a forebud, and we shall have to pay for the horses all the way up.”
“Well, that is a bad job,” said the Parson, “as far as it goes; but the worst that can come of it is to pay double,—once for the failure, and once for the real journey.”
“No, that is not the worst, by any means; we have not only lost our money, but our forebud; we shall be kept waiting for an hour or two at every station, and shall most probably arrive when the fun is over. At such out-of-the-way places there is not a chance of holl-horses, that is to say, horses which the post-master keeps himself on speculation, and we shall have to send to the farms, whose turn it is to furnish them. I have been kept waiting that way for four hours at a single station.”
Here Nils, who had been up to the mast-head to see if he could make out anything (for these fogs very often lie on the surface, not a dozen feet thick, looking from above like so much cotton wool in a box, while the sun is shining brightly above them), slid down the back-stay, and declared he could feel a light air aloft on the starboard beam; “his cheek felt quite cold,” he said, “though the heavy main-sail, dripping with dew, did not acknowledge the breeze at all.”
“How is her head; why, confound you, you have forgotten the compass” (not at all an unlikely piece of forgetfulness in a river yacht.) This was soon remedied, for the Parson put his own little pocket affair on the deck, which, as it was a calm, did quite as well as her own.
She was looking a little southward of east, having probably turned round and round a dozen times during the night.
“That would do, the wind was southerly then; but where were they?”
The day was now getting bright, and the fog was looking like a silver veil; the tiresome pattering of the knittles had ceased, or was renewed only at intervals; she was evidently gliding through the water,—but which way were they to steer? Amal certainly must be somewhere to the northward,but within six or eight points it was impossible to tell where after such a sleepy watch as had been kept during the past night. Reluctantly, Moodie brought her to the wind, and hauled his foresheet to windward.
But the breeze increased, and the fog began to lift now and then; it could be seen under, as it were, and though just as thick about the mast-head as ever, a hundred yards or so of the surface could be seen plainly on either side.
Nils rubbed his hands at this infallible sign of the rising of the fog, and Moodie, somewhat easier in his mind, ordered coffee.
“There’s land on the port-beam,” said the Captain, during one of these lifts. “I am sure I saw land, whatever it is.”
“There ought to be no land there,” said Moodie; for, lying as she did now, close to the wind, she had brought the east, that is to say, the great expanse of the lake, to her port-side, and was looking exactly on the opposite direction to her course; “get a cast of the lead, and keep a bright look out for rocks.”
Just then the curtain of the fog rose in earnest, and disclosed a cluster of rocks and islets, among which they had got themselves completely entangled. “Why, what is this?—it is! no, it can’t be! yet it is—”
“It is Lurön,” said Nils.
“Lurön,” said Moodie, “why, that is miles to the eastward of our course! Where have you been steering to during the night?”
“You told me to ‘keep her as she goes,’ and so I did.”
And so he had; the fault lay with Moodie himself, who from the first starting had steered two points to the eastward of his course; the fog and the current—for the Wener is big enough for current—had done the rest.
It did not however signify, the breeze blew merrily and promised to stand; the fog now lay in light fleecy clouds far above their heads; the sun, not far from the horizon, began to smile upon them and to chase away the dangers of the night, and with them the ill-humour they had engendered; the fore-sheet was let draw, and as she gathered way shetacked, fell off on the port-tack, and with a jolly breeze on her quarter, buzzed away through the water to the northwest.
Soon a line of trees appeared on the horizon, as if they were dancing in the air, or floating in the water; then the trunks began to form and unite with something below them; then the line of land, real firm land, began to manifest itself; then red, and white, and black, and brown, and striped cottages began to show out; and before ten the anchor was let go before the little town of Amal.
The horses were still awaiting them, for the allotted three hours, during which they are bound to remain, had not yet elapsed and they escaped on payment of the regulated fine for being after time. The men were sent on immediately in the waggon which Moodie had spoken of, and which he had written to his friend the farmer to borrow, sending his note by the forebud. In half-an-hour the carioles were harnessed, and as they plunged into the forests at the back of Amal, the last thing they saw was the pretty cutter, close hauled, lying as near to her course to Wenersborg as the wind would let her look.
The trees of Western Carlstadtlan, which they were now traversing, are said to be the finest in Sweden; this is due partly to the depth and goodness of the soil—a circumstance which will eventually secure their destruction, by offering a temptation to convert the fjeld into arable land; that they stood, even yet, was principally on account of the absence of any great rivers, which afford the only means of conveying timber to the coast. The land is quite as good on the banks of the Klara and Swedish Glommen, the latter of which runs into the lake a few miles eastward of Amal, but there is a sensible difference in the growth of the timber. There was fir, no doubt, in plenty—there is no Swedish forest without fir,—but there were also huge beech trees, and a sprinkling of not very happy-looking oak, that put one in mind of the English in India: they lived in the country, but they did not enjoy it.
The whole country looked like an enormous park—rather too thickly planted, to be sure,—one kept looking, at everyturn of the road, for the mansion; and the road, too, though not one of very great traffic, was very good, winding along with a great border of short turf on each side, comparatively level on the whole, but occasionally interrupted by a descent so sharp that it seemed as if the carioles were going to cut a summerset over the horses’ ears,—more particularly as the horses invariably chose those portions of the road for going as hard as they could lay legs to ground, a peculiarity sufficiently trying to the nerves; and as those portions of the road were invariably cut to pieces by the rush of the water, and were full of rocks besides, sufficiently trying to the bodily feelings.
On the opposite sides of these ravines, the horses would creep at the rate of about a mile an hour, the passenger being so absolutely expected to walk up them, that many of the horses came to a dead halt at the bottom, and refused to proceed at all till disencumbered of their weight.
“It is not without reason,” said Birger, as they sat on the roadside, at the top of one of these descents, watching the slow progress of their carioles, under the care of their respective schutzebonder—little boys or girls, as the case may be, who sit on the foot-boards, and bring the horses back after they have done their stage;—“it is not without reason that the ancient Swedes have invented the legend that in certain places the elves and the trees are identical; that these forest elves are intensely patriotic, and that in times of invasion they assemble their bands and fight by the side of their human countrymen, in defence of their common country. Many of the trees in Carlstadtlan, as well as in other places, are trees only by day, but are armed soldiers by night. Of course the idea is that the forests fight for the country in case of invasion, and add to the numbers of its defenders; and so they do. Russia might pour her thousands upon us, and sweep us off the face of the earth, by mere force of numbers, in an open field; but how would she ever force her passage through a forest like this, filled with a few thousand riflemen? The trees would fight for us even by day; but by night our numbers, counting the elves, would be irresistible.
“The slight variety that there is in the legend in Denmark,bears this out there also; where the deep Sound and fjords intersect the kingdom, the stony promontories are its best defence, and the elf kings are called Klintekonger, or Promontory Kings. There are several stories about their parading their elf soldiers, with fife and drum, on the breaking out of a war, and driving over the sea, with snorting horses, in clouds and blackness, from one promontory to another. The elf king of Bornholm will not allow any earthly prince to sleep more than three nights within his dominions, nor will King Tolv permit any king besides himself to pass the bridge of Skjelskör. This is all part of the same allegory; the elves are the spirits of the woods, and the Grims of the cataracts, and the Haaf manner of the sea, and the Strömkarls of the rivers. They all bear the same character; they are capricious as the elements are over which they preside, and often injure most those who are most accustomed to them, but in case of an invasion become rivers, and lakes, and fjords, and forests, and unite to repel the invader. Bother that little schutzebonde of mine; I wish she were a boy, that I might whip her instead of the horse;” and Birger strode down the hill to infuse fresh spirit into the post-horse and post-girl.
Thus they travelled on, at the rate of five or six miles an hour on the average, bowling along through the forest, but interrupted, whenever they came near cultivation, by timber fences and swing gates across the road, living mostly on their own provisions, with the help of a little gröd which they got from the post-houses, sleeping when they would in the haylofts, sometimes in the open air, and occasionally on peculiarly dirty sheepskins in the post-houses. Oh those sheepskins—
“Ye gentlemen of England,Who live at home at ease,How little do you think uponThe dangers of the fleas!”
“Ye gentlemen of England,Who live at home at ease,How little do you think uponThe dangers of the fleas!”
“Ye gentlemen of England,Who live at home at ease,How little do you think uponThe dangers of the fleas!”
“Ye gentlemen of England,
Who live at home at ease,
How little do you think upon
The dangers of the fleas!”