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492
WIGHTS AND ELVES.
her dress, the wet tips of her Here is another
apron.*
point
of
contact with swan-maidens, whose swan-foot betrays them : and
as they have their veils and clothes taken from them, the mxe
too is embarrassed by the removal and detention of her gloves
in dancing (Deut. sag. nos. 58. 60). Among the Wends the
water-man appears in a linen smockfrock with the bottom of its
skirt wet ; if in buying up grain he pays
more than the market
price, a dearth follows, and if he buys cheaper than others, prices
fall (Lausitz. monatschr. 1797, p. 750). The Russians name
their water-nymphs rusdlki: fair maidens with green or gar
landed hair, combing themselves on the meadow by the waterside,
and bathing in lake or river. They are seen chiefly on Whit-
Sunday and in Whitsun-week, when the people with dance and
in their honour and throw them into the
song plait garlands
water. The custom is connected with the German river-worship
on St. John s day. Whitsun-week itself was called by the
Russians rusaldnaya, in Boh. rusadla, and even in Wallachian
rusalie. 2
Dancing, song and music are the delight of all water-sprites, as
they are of elves (p. 470). Like the sirens, the nixe by her
song draws listening youth to herself, and then into the deep.
So Hylas was drawn into the water by the nymphs (Apollod.
come the dam
i. 9, 19. Apollon. rhod. 1, 131). At evening up
sels from the lake, to take part in the human dance, and to visit
their lovers. 3 In Sweden they tell of the stromharl s alluring
is said to have
enchanting strain : the stromkarls-lag (-lay)
eleven variations, but to only ten of them may you dance,
the eleventh belongs to the night-spirit and his band; begin
1 In Olaf the Saint s saga (Fornm. sog. 4, 56. 5, 162) a margygr is pictured as a
beautiful woman, from the girdle downward ending in a fish, lulling men to sleep
stories of
with her sweet song ; evidently modelled on the Roman siren. Pretty
nixes are told in Jul. Schmidt s Eeichenfels, p. 150 (where the word doc ken = dolls,
puppets) and 151. Water-wives when in labour send for human assistance, like
she-dwarfs (p. 457). They spake at Dr. M. L. s table of spectra and of changelings,
then did Mistress Luther, his goodwife, tell an history, how a midwife at a place
was fetched away by the devil to one in childbed, with whom the devil had to do,
and that lived in a hole in the water in the Mulda, and the water hurt her not at
all, but in the hole she sat as in a fair chamber. Table-talk 1571. 440b.
2
Schafarik in the Casopis cesk. mus. 7, 259 his furnished a full dissertation on
the rusalky [from rusy, blond ; but there is also ruslo, river s bed, deepest part] .
3 Hebel doubtless founds on popular tradition when (p. 281) he makes the
jungfere usem see roam through the fields at midnight, probably like the roggenmuhme
to make them fruitful. Other stories of the meerwdblein in Mone s Anz. 8,
178, and Bechstein s Thiir. sagen 3, 236.