Northern mythology

NORTH GERMAN TRADITIONS. 55
to the rank of field-marshal. He was one of the most
desperate duellists, and even when he had arrived at an
advanced age, and was possessed of the highest dignity,
he would go disguised among the soldiers and pick quarrels
with them. He once fought with an esteemed friend,
because he had written his name incorrectly. But so long
as he carried his magic sword, he was never, in any battle,
either struck by a bullet or v>^ounded by a stroke. No
one had for a long time placed any confidence in
him, it
being evident to every one that there was some sorcery
in the matter, so that when Caspar von Bockwold, a
Holstein
nobleman, had divulged the story of the goblin, in
a company at Strasburg, many persons denied him the
praise of valour, and ascribed all his feats to the herring.
At this, maddened with rage, Josias, in the presence of
all, cast his sword into the Rhine. Still victory did not
forsake him, though he had to pay dear for it ;
so that at
last, of all those members of which a man has two, he had
lost one, and had besides sixty severe wounds on his body.
WE ARE REMOVING!
Cases have been known of houses in which whole families
and swarms of Puks or Nisser have taken their abode,
and have thereby been rendered uninhabitable.
In Husum
there once lived two families of these beings, one at a
baker's, the other at a brewer's. At night they turned
everything topsy-turvy, made the most horrible noises,
ran up and down the stairs ; sometimes they were in the
cellar, sometimes in the chambers ; from the baker they
stole his flour, from the brewer his beer. They were so
little, that when pursued, like spiders and worms, they
would creep into the smallest crevices, where they would
make an incessant outcry. The people at length could
endure them no longer, and resolved to remove. Their
moveables had all been carried out, and the maid-servants