Northern mythology

158 DANISH TRADITIONS.
asked the skipper; '^ take from the other sack.'*— " Master,
they shine !
''
cried the lad a second time. The skipper
himself now looked at the sacks, and found that one was
full of gold coin and the other of silver. On their return
they divided their treasure and became wealthy people.
The North German traditions of the departure of the " little people "
resemble the foregoing in every essential particular, excepting that the
water they have to cross is the Eider, the Weser, or the AUer, in place of
those above-mentioned ^
THE TROLLS CAST STONES AT CHURCHES.
Before the Trolls had forsaken the country, in consequence
of the constant din
of the church-bells, the erection
of a new^ church was an intolerable vexation to them.
Hence the numerous traditions, how during the night
they destroyed the work,
particularly when a church was
to be raised near their habitations. Equally numerous,
too, are the traditions all over the country, which tell how
the Trolls hurled huge stones against the churches already
built j
a circumstance which affords a most satisfactory explanation
of the manner in which the vast stones, which
are scattered about, came into places where no human hand
could have deposited them.
THE NISSE OR NISS.
In a house in Jutland a Nisse had long been accustomed,
after the servant Avas gone to bed, to fetch his porridge
from the kitchen, where it was set for him in a little
wooden bowl. But one evening, on taking his porridge,
he saw that the girl had forgotten to put butter in it, and
in his anger at the omission went to the cowhouse and
wrung the neck of the best cow. Afterwards feeling
1 See Mullenhoff, No. CDXXIX. Kuhn and Sclmartz,No. 270. Grimm,
D. M. 428, sq. See also ' The Departure of the Fairies ' in Kcightley,
F. M. p. 356, from Cromek's Nithsdale and Galloway Song.