Northern mythology

183 DANISH TRADITIONS.
ample provision of meat and drink. This cask he caused
to be buried in a field which was aftei-wards ploughed and
sown. When the devil now came he could get no power
over him, but ran backwards and forwards on the field
every night for three weeks, and at last howled so terrifically
that he might have been heard on the other side of
the fiord as far as Ulfborg church. At the expiration of
the three weeks Jens Plovgaard was free, and caused himself
to be dug up ; and from that time there was no man
in the whole parish so pious as he; but his great cunnmg
he possessed no longer.
HOW THE DEVIL ALLOWED HIMSELF TO BE OUTWITTED.
In Jutland there was once a priest who knew more than
his Paternoster. One evening there came a message to hnn
from the manor-house, requiring his attendance there with
the least delay possible, his aid being quite mdispensable.
The fact was that the proprietor, in order to attain to his
vast riches, had sold himself to the devil, who was already
there to fetch him, his time being expired. The priest,
who arrived at the house just at the moment when the
fiend was about to depart with the master, endeavoured to
prevail on him to grant a further delay, first a year, then
a month,-a week,-a day,
but not even an hour ^^x)uld
the fiend grant him. There stood on the table a little
stump of wax candle nearly burnt out, pointing to which
the priest said :
" Thou wilt surely let him live as long as
that stump lasts?" To this the fiend assented, but at
the same moment the priest seizing the light, blew it out
and put it into his pocket ; so that for the present the fiend
was obliged to leave the proprietor in peace, but who from
that hour so amended his life that the devil got him not.
A similar artifice with a wax candle occurs in Noma Gest's Saga, whereby
Noma Gest attains to an age of many hundred years. In the Popular
Traditions and Tales of Poland, we find the devil allowing himself to be