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494 WIGHTS AND ELVES.
what had happened. The father, who was a priest, said you
have sinned against the neck, go back, comfort him and tell him
he may be saved. When they returned to the river, the neck
sat on the bank weeping and wailing. The children said :
( Do
not cry so, poor neck, father says that your Redeemer liveth too/
Then the neck joyfully took his harp, and played charmingly till
1
long after sunset. I do not know that anywhere in our legends
it is so pointedly expressed, how badly the heathen stand in need
of the Christian religion, and how mildly it ought to meet
them. But the harsh and the compassionate epithets bestowed
on the nixes seem to turn chiefly upon their unblessedness, their
damnation. 2
But beside the freewill offering for instruction in his art, the
nix also exacted cruel and compulsory sacrifices, of which the
memory is preserved in nearly all popular tradition. To this day,
when people are drowned in a river, it is common to say : the
river-sprite demands his f
yearly victim,/ which is usually
3 3
innocent child.
This points to actual human sacrifices offered
to the nichus in far-off heathen times. To the nix of the Diemel
they throw bread and fruit once a year (see SuppL).
On the whole there runs through the stories of water-sprites a
vein of cruelty and bloodthirstiness, which is not easily found among
demons of mountains, woods and homes. The nix not only kills
human beings who fall into his clutches, but wreaks a bloody
vengeance on his own folk who have come on shore, mingled
with men, and then gone back. A girl had passed fifteen years
m the sea-wife s house (i haf-fruns giird), and never seen the sun
all that time. At last her brother ventures down, and brings
his^ beloved sister safely back to the upper world. The hafsfru
waited her return seven years, then seized her staff, and lashing
the water till it splashed up high,
saa foder him en havfrue
she cried :
,
an
and Danish tra-
for 488) ; den .
gg h S Sm fiskennde paa soen,