Northern mythology

NETHERLANDISH TRADITIONS. 257
with the black hen, which he had stolen from his
master,
under his frock, and hardly had the clock struck the first
stroke, before all the devils made their appearance.
Their
chief stepping forwards, took the hen, which the man drew
forth trembling. The bargain was now concluded, and as
an acknowledgement of the agreement, the man was required
to set his signature in blood in a little book that
the devil had brought with him.
The man on his return was not reprimanded by his
master, and his pockets were never empty. Whenever he
put his hand in he drew forth a piece of seventy-five cents,
with which he paid his reckoning, when he had been
drinking in an alehouse. Once when he was watching his
master's sheep, they, through his heedlessness,
ran into a
neighbour's field, where they did serious injury to the
corn.
This the peasant, to whom the land belonged, had
witnessed, and came running with the intention of inflicting
chastisement on the shepherd for the damage done.
The latter was too well aware of the bodily strength of the
peasant not to feel terrified; but the craft of the devil
came to help him out of his peril. Both shepherd and
sheep were transformed into dung-heaps before the peasant
could reach the spot, where he stood staring about him in
the utmost astonishment.
Thus did he continue to live ;
but the five years, at the
expiration of which the devil was to become possessor of
his soul, were nearly ended, and the seller dreaded nothing
more than that moment. What does he do ?—He goes
to the priest of Nederbraekel, to whom he makes a full
confession. The priest, naturally well-disposed to rescue
an erring Christian soul from the fire of hell, causes him
first to perform an act of penitence, and then tells him to
come to him on the following day, being the dreaded day
of settlement. The man had hardly been an hour in the
house of the holy pastor, before a great noise of chains