Brownies and Bogles Part 4

England and Ireland had no water-sprites which answered to the Nix and the Kelpie, only the Merrow, who was a Mermaid. She was a fair woman, with white, webbed fingers. She carried upon her head a little diving-cap, and when she came up to the rocks or the beach, she laid it by; but if it were stolen from her, she lost the power of returning to the sea. So that if her cap were taken by a young man, she very often could do nothing better than to marry him, and spend her time hunting for it up and down over his house. And once she had found it, she forgot all else but her desire to go home to "the kind sea-caves," and despite the calling of her neighbors and husband and children, she flitted to the sh.o.r.e, and plunged into the first oncoming billow, and walked the earth no longer.

[Ill.u.s.tration: MER-FOLK.]

Tales of these spirit-brides who suddenly deserted the green earth for their dear native waters, are common in Arabian and European folk-lore.

And this characteristic was noted also in the Sea-trows of the Shetland Islands, who divested themselves of a shining fish-skin, and could not find the way to their ocean-beds if it were kept out of their reach. It was the Danish sailor's belief that seals laid by their skins every ninth night, and took maiden's forms wherewith to sport and sleep on the reefs. And for their capture as they were, warm, living and human, one had only to s.n.a.t.c.h and hide away their talisman-skin.

The strange German Water-man wore a green hat, and when he opened his mouth, his teeth as well were green; he appeared to girls who pa.s.sed his lake, and measured out ribbon, and flung it to them.

But we must search for smaller sprites than these.

The little water-fairies who devoted themselves to drawing under whomsoever encroached on their pools and brooks, were called Nixies in Germany, Korrigans (for this was part of their office) in Brittainy; Ondins about Magdebourg, and Roussalkis, the long-haired, smiling ones, among the Slavic people.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE LITTLE OLD NIX NEAR GHENT.]

The engaging Nixies were very minute and mischievous, and abounded in the Shetland Isles and Cornwall, as did, moreover, the Kelpies, who were like tiny horses, known even in China; sporting on the margin, and foreboding death by drowning, to any who beheld them; or tempting pa.s.sers-by to mount, and plunging, with their victims, headlong into the deep. The Nix-lady was recognized when she came on sh.o.r.e by the edges of her dress or ap.r.o.n being perpetually wet. The dark-eyed Nix-man with his seaweed hair and his wide hat, was known by his slit ears and feet, which he was very careful to conceal. Once in a while he was observed to be half-fish. The naked Nixen were draped with moss and kelp; but when they were clothed, they seemed merely little men and women, save that the borders of their garments, dripping water, betrayed them. They did their marketing ash.o.r.e, wheresoever they were, and, according to all accounts, with a sharp eye to economy. Like the land-elves, they loved to dance and sing. Nix did not favor divers, fishermen, and other intruders on his territory, and he did his best to harm them. He was altogether a fierce, grudging, covetous little creature. His comelier wife was much better-natured, and befriended human beings to the utmost of her power.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE WORK OF THE NICKEL.]

Near Ghent was a little old Nix who lived in the Scheldt; he cried and sighed much, and did mischief to no one. It grieved him when children ran away from him, yet if they asked what troubled his conscience, he only sighed heavily, and disappeared.

The modern Greeks believed in a black sprite haunting wells and springs, who was fond of beckoning to strangers. If they came to him, he bestowed gifts upon them; if not, he never seemed angry, but turned patiently to wait for the next pa.s.ser-by.

There was a curious sea-creature in Norway, who swam about as a thin little old man with no head. About the magical Isle of Rugen lived the Nickel. His favorite game was to astonish the fishers, by hauling their boats up among the trees.

At Arles and other towns near the Spanish border in France, were the Dracs, who inhabited clear pools and streams, and floated along in the shape of gold rings and cups, so that women and children bathing should grasp them, and be lured under.

The Indian water-manittos, the Nibanaba, were winning in appearance, and wicked in disposition. They, joining the Pukwudjinies, helped to kill Kwasind.

In Wales were the Gwragedd Annwn, elves who loved the stillness of lonely mountain-lakes, and who seldom ventured into the upper world.

They had their own submerged towns and battlements; and from their little sunken city the fairy-bells sent out, ever and anon, m.u.f.fled silver voices. The Gwragedd Annwn were not fishy-finned, nor were they ever dwellers in the sea; for in Wales were no mermaid-traditions, nor any tales of those who beguiled mortals--

Under the gla.s.sy, cool, translucent wave.

The Neck and the Stromkarl of Swedish rivers were two little chaps with hardly a hair's breadth of difference. Either appeared under various shapes; now as a green-hatted old man with a long beard, out of which he wrung water as he sat on the cliffs; now loitering of a summer night on the surface, like a chip of wood or a leaf, he seemed a fair child, harping, with yellow ringlets falling from beneath a high red cap to his shoulders. Both fairies had a genius for music; and the Stromkarl, especially, had one most marvellous tune to which he put eleven variations. Now, to ten of them any one might dance decorously, and with safety; but at the eleventh, which was the enchanted one, all the world went mad; and tables, belfries, benches, houses, windmills, trees, horses, cripples, babies, ghosts, and whole towns full of sedate citizens began capering on the banks about the invisible player, and kept it up in furious fashion until the last note died away.

You know that the wren was hunted in certain countries on a certain day.

Well, here is one legend about her. There was a malicious fairy once in the Isle of Man, very winsome to look at, who worked a sorry Kelpie-trick, on the young men of the town, and inveigled them into the sea, where they perished. At last the inhabitants rose in vengeance, and suspecting her of causing their loss and sorrow, gave her chase so hard and fast by land, that to save herself, she changed her shape into that of an innocent brown wren. And because she had been so treacherous, a spell was cast upon her, inasmuch as she was obliged every New Year's Day to fly about as that same bird, until she should be killed by a human hand. And from sunrise to sunset, therefore, on the first bleak day of January, all the men and boys of the island fired at the poor wrens, and stoned them, and entrapped them, in the hope of reaching the one guilty fairy among them. And as they could never be sure that they had captured the right one, they kept on year by year, chasing and persecuting the whole flock. But every dead wren's feather they preserved carefully, and believed that it hindered them from drowning and shipwreck for that twelvemonth; and they took the feathers with them on voyages great and small, in order that the bad fairy's magic may never be able to prevail, as it had prevailed of yore with their unhappy brothers.

The presence of the sea-fairies had a terror in it, and against their arts only the strongest and most watchful could hope to be victorious.

Their sport was to desolate peaceful homes, and bring destruction on gallant ships. They, dwelling in streams and in the ocean, the world over, were like the waters they loved: gracious and n.o.ble in aspect, and meaning danger and death to the unwary. We fear that, like the earth-fairies, they were heartless quite.

[Ill.u.s.tration: HOB IN HOBHOLE]

But it may be that the gentle Nixies had only a blind longing for human society, and would not willingly have wrought harm to the creatures of another element. We are more willing to urge excuses for their wrong-doing than for the like fault in our frowzly under-ground folk; for ugliness seems, somehow, not so shocking when allied with evil as does beauty, which was destined for all men's delight and uplifting. As the air-elves had their Fairyland whither mortal children wandered, and whence they returned after an unmeasured lapse of time, still children, to the ivy-grown ruins of their homes, so the water-elves had a reward for those they s.n.a.t.c.hed from earth; and legends a.s.sure us the wave-rocked prisoners a hundred fathoms down, never grew old, but kept the flush of their last morning rosy ever on their brows.

Among a little community full of guile, there is great comfort in spotting one honest, kind water-boy, who, not content with being harmless, as were the Flemish and Grecian Nixies, put himself to work to do good, and charm away some of the worries and ills that burdened the upper world. His name was Hob, and he lived in Hobhole, which was a cave scooped out by the beating tides in old Northumbria.

The lean pockets of the neighboring doctors were partly attributed to this benignant little person; for he set up an opposition, and his specialty was the cure of whooping-cough. Many a Scotch mother took her lad or la.s.s to the spray-covered mouth of the wise goblin's cave, and sang in a low voice:

Hobhole Hob!

Ma bairn's gotten t' kink-cough: Tak't off! tak't off!

And so he did, sitting there with his toes in the sea. For Hobhole Hob's small sake, we can afford to part friends with the whole naughty race of water-folk.

CHAPTER VIII.

MISCHIEF-MAKERS.

THE fairy-fellows who made a regular business of mischief-making seemed to have two favorite ways of setting to work. They either saddled themselves with little boys and spilled them, sooner or later, into the water, or else they danced along holding a twinkling light, and led any one so foolish as to follow them a pretty march into chasms and quagmires. Their jokes were grim and hurtful, and not merely funny, like Brownie's; for Brownie usually gave his victims (except in Molly Jones's case) nothing much worse than a pinch. So people came to have great awe and horror of the heartless goblins who waylaid travellers, and left them broken-limbed or dead.

Very often quarrelsome, disobedient or vicious folk fell into the snare of a Kelpie, or a Will-o'-the-Wisp; for the little whipper-snappers had a fine eye for poetical justice, and dealt out punishments with the nicest discrimination. We never hear that they troubled good, steady mortals; but only that sometimes they beguiled them, for sheer love, into Fairyland.

We know that all "ouphes and elves" could change their shapes at will; therefore when we spy fairy-horses, fairy-lambs, and such quadrupeds, we guess at once that they are only roguish small gentlemen masquerading.

Never for the innocent fun of it, either; but alas! to bring silly persons to grief.

In Hampshire, in England, was a spirit known as Coltpixy, which, itself shaped like a miniature neighing horse, beguiled other horses into bogs and mora.s.ses. The Irish Pooka or Phooka was a horse too, and a famous rascal. He lived on land, and was something like the Welsh Gwyll: a tiny, black, wicked-faced wild colt, with chains dangling about him.

Again, he frisked around in the shape of a goat or a bat. Spenser has him:

"Ne let the Pouke, ne other evill spright, ...

Ne let hobgoblins, names whose sense we see not, Fray us with things that be not."

"Fray," as you are likely to guess, means to frighten or to scare.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE IRISH POOKA WAS A HORSE TOO.]

Kelpies, who were Scotch, haunted fords and ferries, especially in storms; allured bystanders into the water, or swelled the river so that it broke the roads, and overwhelmed travellers.

Very like them were the Brag, the little Shoopil-tree of the Shetland Islands, and the Nick, who was the Icelandic Nykkur-horse; gamesome deceivers all, who enticed children and others to bestride them, and who were treacherous as a quicksand, every time. And there were many more of the Kelpie kingdom, of whom we can hunt up no clews.

A man who saw a Kelpie gave himself up for lost; for he was sure, by hook or crook, to meet his death by drowning. Kelpie, familiar so far away as China, never stayed in the next-door countries, Ireland or England, long enough to be recognized. They knew nothing of him by sight, nor of the Nix his cousin, nor of anything resembling them. In Ireland lived the merrow; but she was only an amiable mermaid.

[Ill.u.s.tration: WILL-O'-THE-WISP.]

The j.a.panese had a water-dragon called Kappa, "whose office it was to swallow bad boys who went to swim in disobedience to their parents'

commands, and at improper times and places." In the River Tees was a green-haired lady named Peg Powler, and in some streams in Lancashire one christened Jenny Greenteeth; two hungry goblins whose only delight was to drown and devour unlucky travellers. But we know already that the water-sprites were more than likely so to behave.

In Provence there is a tale told of seven little boys who went out at night against their grandmother's wishes. A little dark pony came prancing up to them, and the youngest clambered on his sleek back, and after him, the whole seven, one after the other, which was quite a wonderful weight for the wee creature; but his back meanwhile kept growing longer and larger to accommodate them. As they galloped along, the children called such of their playmates as were out of doors, to join them, the obliging nag stretching and stretching until thirty pairs of young legs dangled at his sides! when he made straight for the sea, and plunged in, and drowned them all.

The Piskies, or Pigseys, of Cornwall, were naughty and unsociable. Their great trick was to entice people into marshes, by making themselves look like a light held in a man's hand, or a light in a friendly cottage window. Pisky also rode the farmers' colts hard, and chased the farmers' cows. For all his diabolics, you had to excuse him in part, when you heard his hearty fearless laugh; it was so merry and sweet. "To laugh like a Pisky," pa.s.sed into a proverb. The Barguest of Yorkshire, like the Osschaert of the Netherlands, was an open-air bugaboo whose presence always portended disaster. Sometimes he appeared as a horse or dog, merely to play the old trick with a false light, and to vanish, laughing.

The Tuckebold was a very malicious chap, carrying a candle, who lived in Hanover; his blood-relation in Scandinavia was the Lyktgubhe. Over in Flanders and Brabant was one Kludde, a fellow whisking here and there as a half-starved little mare, or a cat, or a frog, or a bat; but who was always accompanied by two dancing blue flames, and who could overtake any one as swiftly as a snake. The Ellydan (dan is a Welsh word meaning fire, and also a lure or a snare: a luring elf-fire) was a rogue with wings, wide ears, a tall cap and two huge torches, who precisely resembled the English Will-o'-the-Wisp, the Scandinavian Lyktgubhe and the Breton Sand Yan y Tad. Our American negroes make him out Jack-muh-Lantern: a vast, hairy, goggle-eyed, big-mouthed ogre, leaping like a giant gra.s.shopper, and forcing his victims into a swamp, where they died. The gentlemen of this tribe preferred to walk abroad at night, like any other torchlight procession. Their little bodies were invisible, and the traveller who hurried towards the pleasant lamp ahead, never knew that he was being tricked by a grinning fairy, until he stumbled on the brink of a precipice, or found himself knee-deep in a bog. Then the brazen little guide shouted outright with glee, put out his mysterious flame, and somersaulted off, leaving the poor tourist to help himself. The only way to escape his arts was to turn your coat inside out.

You may guess that the unG.o.dly wights had plenty of fun in them, by this anecdote: A great many Scotch Jack-o'-Lanterns, as they are often called, were once bothering the horse belonging to a clergyman, who with his servant, was returning home late at night. The horse reared and whinnied, and the clergyman was alarmed, for a thousand impish fires were waltzing before the wheels. Like a good man, he began to pray aloud, to no avail. But the servant just roared: "Wull ye be aff noo, in the deil's name!" and sure enough, in a wink, there was not a goblin within gunshot.