Northern mythology

DANISH TRADITIONS. 129
choose the latter. And when he agam bears you hence,
seize, if you can, on a gooseberry bush, and say :
Now,
in the name of God, now I am on my own
"
!
In an hour the man returned with the child, quite angry
that he had not found what he had been seeking after.
He then offered the stranger woman some refection, and
on her refusal to take any, said :
" They did not strike
thee on the mouth who taught thee that.'' He then
offered her a present, but she accepted only some black
potsherds ]
and when she again found herself on the face
of the earth, she did as she had been directed. With the
potsherds in her apron, she now proceeded to her dwelhng,
but before she entered she cast them into the ash-hole,
and refused to tell her husband where she had been. But
when the maid-servant came running into the room, saying
that something shone like silver in the ash-hole, and
when she herself saw that it was pure silver, she told her
husband where she had been, and they came into good
circumstances through that Christmas eve.
One night a Troll came to a midwife in Bingsbierg and
requested her to accompany him down through a mound
to help his wife. She followed him into the earth, without
suffering any injury ; but having afterwards divulged what
she had seen in the mound, she lost her sight.
An Elf-wife who was in labour sent a message to a midwife,
requesting her aid. Having received the child, the
Elf-folk gave her an ointment to rub over its eyes ; but
in doing which some adhered to her fingers, so that slie
inadvertently anointed her own eyes with it. On her way
home she remarked that something had happened to her
sight; for as she passed by a rye-field she saw that it
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