Northern mythology

NORTH GERMAN TRADITIONS. 63
gratis. The condition is, that whosoever, at the termination
of the lecture, when the course is ended, of all the
pupils that frequent the school, goes last out by the door,
shall belong to him. By many, who proved more cunning
than their master, he has been outwitted, among others,
by the sacristan of Brons, in the west part of the bailiwick
of Hadersleben. He was the last of all that left the
school, but he knew how to help himself, when the
would lay hold on him.
devil
The school-door was to the south,
and it happened that the lecture was finished in bright
sunshine, exactly at noon ; so the sacristan veiy justly said,
that not he, but his shadow was the last to go out ; that,
if he liked, the devil was welcome to keep. The devil could
object nothing to this reasoning, and let
the man go, but
detained his shadow. From that time the sacristan has
been shadowless ; and many who have seen and known
him can testify, that even in the brightest sunshine not
the faintest appearance of a shadow accompanies him.
It hardly need he mentioned that Chamisso's * Peter Schlemihl ' is
founded on a similar tradition. According to a Spanish tradition, there
was a cave at Salamanca in which the devil always maintained seven
pupils, under the condition that when they were fully instructed, the
last must pay the reckoning. One day when he was dismissing his
scholars, and had ordered the last to remain, the scholar pointed to his
shadow, sajdng: "That is the last." The devil was obliged to be content
with the shadow, and the pupil continued for the rest of his life
shadowless.
Jamieson, speaking of the Scottish superstition, says :
" Losing one's
shadow arrives to such as are studjdng the art of necromancy. When a
class of students have made a certain progress in their mystic studies, they
are obhged to run tlirough a subterraneous hall, where the devil literally
catches the hindmost in the race, unless he crosses the hall so speedily,
that the arch-enemy can only apprehend his shadow. In the latter case
the person of the sage never after throws any shade, and those who
have thus lost their shadow always prove the 1)est magicians." See Grimm,
D. M. p. 976. Most readers will recollect Walter Scott's lines, in the
Lay of the Last Minstrel, when speaking of the lady of Buccleuch's father,
who had studied in " Padua, far beyond the sea" :
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