Northern mythology

;
86 NORTH GERMAN TRADITIONS.
covering his loss, he immediately went in search of her
but after seeking her here and there and all over the forest,
without finding her, he sat down, overcome with fatigue,
on the stump of an old tree, and prepared to smoke his
pipe. While he was thus sitting there came all at once a
countless multitude of Jack o^ lanterns dancing wildly
around him, so that he would have been not a little terrified,
had he not been a courageous fellow. He remained,
however, sitting quietly and filling his pipe, but just as he
was about to light it, they began to fly about his head, so
that he expected every moment they would singe his hair.
He therefore seized his stick and began to strike about
him ; but the more he struck the more Jack o' lanterns
came. At last he made a grasp at one of them, and found
that he held in his hand a bone. This seemed to have
scared the others, as they instantly disappeared ; but the
man put the bone into his pocket, lighted his pipe, and
returned home. On the following morning he again drove
out his herd, and also found the missing cow ; but on his
return in the evening, when it was already dark, he saw a
couple of lights before his window, and supposing that a
neighbour with a lantern was come to consult him about
a sick cow, he opened the window and saw the entire
village street full of Jack o' lanterns, which came in large
bodies dancing and whirling about, and crying "
: If you
don^t give us our comrade, we will burn your house !
He now first recollected the bone, and said "
: Don^t make
such a stupid hubbub ; surely the bone cannot be your
comrade.^' But they cried yet more loudly "
: If you
don't give us our comrade, we will burn your house
"
!
Thinking then the matter serious, he took the bone, laid it
on the palm of his hand, and held it out of the window,
when it instantly became a bright, flickering Jack o' lantern,
and danced away, all the others surrounding it as in joy,
and then merrily hopping and springing out of the village.
''