folks down yonder, and especially little Zilla. They two were always
together: she knew such a lot about the Merman. Henceforth his
conscience always plagued him when he played with her; and whenever she
stared at him with her large black eyes while she told him tales, he
used to begin to feel a little bit afraid, for at such times he
reflected that she and her people belonged to the Damned, and that was
why they knew so much about such things. But, on the other hand, the
thought of it made him so bitterly angry, especially on her account.
She, too, was frequently taken aback by his odd behaviour towards her,
which she couldn't understand at all; and then, as was her wont, she
would begin laughing at and teasing him by making him run after her,
while she went and hid herself.
One day he found her sitting on a boulder by the sea-shore. She had in
her lap an eider duck which had been shot, and could only have died
quite recently, for it was still warm, and she wept bitterly over it. It
was, she sobbed, the same bird which made its nest every year beneath
the shelter of their outhouse--she knew it quite well, and she showed
him a red-coloured feather in its white breast. It had been struck dead
by a single shot, and only a single red drop had come out of it; it had
tried to reach its nest, but had died on its way on the strand. She wept
as if her heart would break, and dried her face with her hair in
impetuous Finnish fashion. Eilert laughed at her as boys will, but he
overdid it, and was very pale the whole time. He dared not tell her that
that very day he had taken a random shot with his father's gun from
behind the headland at a bird a long way off which was swimming ashore.
One autumn Eilert's father was downright desperate. Day after day on the
fishing grounds his lines caught next to nothing, while he was forced to
look on and see the Finn pull up one rich catch after another. He was
sure, too, that he had noticed malicious gestures over in the Finn's
boat. After that his whole house nourished a double bitterness against
them; and when they talked it over in the evening, it was agreed, as a
thing beyond all question, that Finnish sorcery had something to do with
it. Against this there was only one remedy, and that was to rub
corpse-mould on the lines; but one must beware of doing so, lest one
should thereby offend the dead, and expose oneself to their vengeance,
while the sea-folk would gain power over one at the same time.
Eilert bothered his head a good deal over all this; it almost seemed to
him as if he had had a share in the deed, because he was on such a good
footing with the Finn folks.
On the following Sunday both he and the Finn folks were at Berg church,
and he secretly abstracted a handful of mould from one of the Finn
graves, and put it in his pocket. The same evening, when they came home,
he strewed the mould over his father's lines unobserved. And, oddly
enough, the very next time his father cast his lines, as many fish were
caught as in the good old times. But after this Eilert's anxiety became
indescribable. He was especially cautions while they were working of an
evening round the fireside, and it was dark in the distant corners of
the room. He sat there with a piece of steel in his pocket. To beg
"forgiveness" of the dead is the only helpful means against the
consequences of such deeds as his, otherwise one will be dragged off at
night, by an invisible hand, to the churchyard, though one were lashed
fast to the bed by a ship's hawser.
When Eilert, on the following "Preaching Sunday," went to church, he
took very good care to go to the grave, and beg forgiveness of the dead.
As Eilert grew older, he got to understand that the Finn folks must,
after all, be pretty much the same sort of people as his own folks at
home; but, on the other hand, another thought was now uppermost in his
mind, the thought, namely, that the Finns must be of an inferior stock,
with a taint of disgrace about them. Nevertheless, he could not very
well do without Zilla's society, and they were very much together as
before, especially at the time of their confirmation.
But when Eilert became a man, and mixed more with the people of the
parish, he began to fancy that this old companionship lowered him
somewhat in the eyes of his neighbours. There was nobody who did not
believe as a matter of course that there was something shameful about
Finn blood, and he, therefore, always tried to avoid her in company.
The girl understood it all well enough, for latterly she took care to
keep out of his way. Nevertheless, one day she came, as had been her
wont from childhood, down to their house, and begged for leave to go in
their boat when they rowed to church next day. There were lots of
strangers present from the village, and so Eilert, lest folks should
think that he and she were engaged, answered mockingly, so that every
one could hear him, "that church-cleansing was perhaps a very good thing
for Finnish sorcery," but she must find some one else to ferry her
across.
After that she never spoke to him at all, but Eilert was anything but
happy in consequence.
Now it happened one winter that Eilert was out all alone fishing for
Greenland shark. A shark suddenly bit. The boat was small, and the fish
was very big; but Eilert would not give in, and the end of the business
was that his boat capsized.
All night long he lay on the top of it in the mist and a cruel sea. As
now he sat there almost fainting for drowsiness, and dimly conscious
that the end was not far off, and the sooner it came the better, he
suddenly saw a man in seaman's clothes sitting astride the other end of
the boat's bottom, and glaring savagely at him with a pair of dull
reddish eyes. He was so heavy that the boat's bottom began to slowly
sink down at end where he sat. Then he suddenly vanished, but it seemed
to Eilert as if the sea-fog lifted a bit; the sea had all at once grown
quite calm (at least, there was now only a gentle swell); and right in
front of him lay a little low grey island, towards which the boat was
slowly drifting.
The skerry was wet, as if the sea had only recently been flowing over
it, and on it he saw a pale girl with such lovely eyes. She wore a green
kirtle, and round her body a broad silver girdle with figures upon it,
such as the Finns use. Her bodice was of tar-brown skin, and beneath her
stay-laces, which seemed to be of green sea-grass, was a foam-white
chemise, like the feathery breast of a sea-bird.
When the boat came drifting on to the island, she came down to him and
said, as if she knew him quite well, "So you're come at last, Eilert;
I've been waiting for you so long!"
It seemed to Eilert as if an icy cold shudder ran through his body when
he took the hand which helped him ashore; but it was only for the
moment, and he forgot it instantly.
In the midst of the island there was an opening with a brazen flight of
steps leading down to a splendid cabin. Whilst he stood there thinking
things over a bit, he saw two heavy dog-fish swimming close by--they
were, at least, twelve to fourteen ells long.
As they descended, the dog-fish sank down too, each on one side of the
brazen steps. Oddly enough, it looked as if the island was transparent.
When the girl perceived that he was frightened, she told him that they
were only two of her father's bodyguard, and shortly afterwards they
disappeared. She then said that she wanted to take him to her father,
who was waiting for them. She added that, if he didn't find the old
gentleman precisely as handsome as he might expect, he had,
nevertheless, no need to be frightened, nor was he to be astonished too
much at what he saw.
He now perceived that he was under water, but, for all that, there was
no sign of moisture. He was on a white sandy bottom, covered with
chalk-white, red, blue, and silvery-bright shells. He saw meadows of
sea-grass, mountains thick with woods of bushy seaweed and sea-wrack,
and the fishes darted about on every side just as the birds swarm about
the rocks that sea-fowl haunt.
As they two were thus walking along together she explained many things
to him. High up he saw something which looked like a black cloud with a
white lining, and beneath it moved backwards and forwards a shape
resembling one of the dog-fish.
"What you see there is a vessel," said she; "there's nasty weather up
there now, and beneath the boat goes he who was sitting along with you
on the bottom of the boat just now. If it is wrecked, it will belong to
us, and then you will not be able to speak to father to-day." As she
said this there was a wild rapacious gleam in her eyes, but it was gone
again immediately.
And, in point of fact, it was no easy matter to make out the meaning of
her eyes. As a rule, they were unfathomably dark with the lustre of a
night-billow through which the sea-fire sparkles; but, occasionally,
when she laughed, they took a bright sea-green glitter, as when the sun
shines deep down into the sea.
Now and again they passed by a boat or a vessel half buried in the sand,
out and in of the cabin doors and windows of which fishes swam to and
fro. Close by the wrecks wandered human shapes which seemed to consist
of nothing but blue smoke. His conductress explained to him that these
were the spirits of drowned men who had not had Christian burial--one
must beware of them, for dead ones of this sort are malignant. They
always know when one of their own race is about to be wrecked, and at
such times they howl the death-warning of the Draug through the wintry
nights.
Then they went further on their way right across a deep dark valley. In
the rocky walls above him he saw a row of four-cornered white doors,
from which a sort of glimmer, as from the northern lights, shot
downwards through the darkness. This valley stretched in a
north-eastwardly direction right under Finmark, she said, and inside the
white doors dwelt the old Finn Kings who had perished on the sea. Then
she went and opened the nearest of these doors--here, down in the salt
ocean, was the last of the kings, who had capsized in the very breeze
that he himself had conjured forth, but could not afterwards quell.
There, on a block of stone, sat a wrinkled yellow Finn with running eyes
and a polished dark-red crown. His large head rocked backwards and
forwards on his withered neck, as if it were in the swirl of an ocean
current. Beside him, on the same block, sat a still more shrivelled and
yellow little woman, who also had a crown on, and her garments were
covered with all sorts of coloured stones; she was stirring up a brew
with a stick. If she only had fire beneath it, the girl told Eilert, she
and her husband would very soon have dominion again over the salt sea,
for the thing she was stirring about was magic stuff.
In the middle of a plain, which opened right before them at a turn of
the road, stood a few houses together like a little town, and, a little
further on, Eilert saw a church turned upside down, looking, with its
long pointed tower, as if it were mirrored in the water. The girl
explained to him that her father dwelt in these houses, and the church
was one of the seven that stood in his realm, which extended all over
Helgoland and Finmark. No service was held in them yet, but it would be
held when the drowned bishop, who sat outside in a brown study, could
only hit upon the name of the Lord that was to be served, and then all
the Draugs would go to church. The bishop, she said, had been sitting
and pondering the matter over these eight hundred years, so he would no
doubt very soon get to the bottom of it. A hundred years ago the bishop
had advised them to send up one of the Draugs to Rödö church to find out
all about it; but every time the word he wanted was mentioned he
couldn't catch the sound of it. In the mountain "Kunnan" King Olaf had
hung a church-bell of pure gold, and it is guarded by the first priest
who ever came to Nordland, who stands there in a white chasuble.
On the day the priest rings the bell, Kunnan will become a big stone
church, to which all Nordland, both above and below the sea, will
resort. But time flies, and therefore all who come down here below are
asked by the bishop if they can tell him that name.
At this Eilert felt very queer indeed, and he felt queerer still when he
began reflecting and found, to his horror, that he also had forgotten
that name.
While he stood there in thought, the girl looked at him so anxiously. It
was almost as if she wanted to help him to find it and couldn't, and
with that she all at once grew deadly pale.
The Draug's house, to which they now came, was built of boat's keels and
large pieces of wreckage, in the interstices of which grew all sorts of
sea-grass and slimy green stuff. Three monstrously heavy green posts,
covered with shell-fish, formed the entrance, and the door consisted of
planks which had sunk to the bottom and were full of clincher-nails. In
the middle of it, like a knocker, was a heavy rusty iron mooring-ring,
with the worn-away stump of a ship's hawser hanging to it. When they
came up to it, a large black arm stretched out and opened the door.
They were now in a vaulted chamber, with fine shell-sand on the floor.
In the corners lay all sorts of ropes, yarn, and boating-gear, and among
them casks and barrels and various ship's inventories. On a heap of
yarn, covered by an old red-patched sail, Eilert saw the Draug, a
broad-shouldered, strongly built fellow, with a glazed hat shoved back
on to the top of his head, with dark-red tangled hair and beard, small
tearful dog-fish eyes, and a broad mouth, round which there lay for the
moment a good-natured seaman's grin. The shape of his head reminded one
somewhat of the big sort of seal which is called Klakkekal--his skin
about the neck looked dark and shaggy, and the tops of his fingers grew
together. He sat there with turned-down sea-boots on, and his thick grey
woollen stockings reached right up to his thigh. He wore besides, plain
freize clothes with bright glass buttons on his waistcoat. His spacious
skin jacket was open, and round his neck he had a cheap red woollen
scarf.
When Eilert came up, he made as if he would rise, and said good
naturedly, "Good day, Eilert--you've certainly had a hard time of it
to-day! Now you can sit down, if you like, and take a little grub. You
want it, I'm sure;" and with that he squirted out a jet of tobacco juice
like the spouting of a whale. With one foot, which for that special
purpose all at once grew extraordinarily long, he fished out of a
corner, in true Nordland style, the skull of a whale to serve as a chair
for Eilert, and shoved forward with his hand a long ship's drawer full
of first-rate fare. There was boiled groats with sirup, cured fish,
oatcakes with butter, a large stack of flatcakes, and a multitude of the
best hotel dishes besides.
The Merman bade him fall to and eat his fill, and ordered his daughter
to bring out the last keg of Thronhjem _aqua vitæ_. "Of that sort the
last is always the best," said he. When she came with it, Eilert thought
he knew it again: it was his father's, and he himself, only a couple of
days before, had bought the brandy from the wholesale dealer at Kvæford;
but he didn't say anything about that now. The quid of tobacco, too,
which the Draug turned somewhat impatiently in his mouth before he
drank, also seemed to him wonderfully like the lead on his own line. At
first it seemed to him as if he didn't quite know how to manage with the
keg--his mouth was so sore; but afterwards things went along smoothly
enough.
So they sat for some time pretty silently, and drank glass after glass,
till Eilert began to think that they had had quite enough. So, when it
came to his turn again, he said no, he would rather not; whereupon the
Merman put the keg to his own mouth and drained it to the very dregs.
Then he stretched his long arm up to the shelf, and took down another.
He was now in a better humour, and began to talk of all sorts of things.
But every time he laughed, Eilert felt queer, for the Draug's mouth
gaped ominously wide, and showed a greenish pointed row of teeth, with a
long interval between each tooth, so that they resembled a row of boat
stakes.
The Merman drained keg after keg, and with every keg he grew more
communicative. With an air as if he were thinking in his own mind of
something very funny, he looked at Eilert for a while and blinked his
eyes. Eilert didn't like his expression at all, for it seemed to him to
say: "Now, my lad, whom I have fished up so nicely, look out for a
change!" But instead of that he said, "You had a rough time of it last
night, Eilert, my boy, but it wouldn't have gone so hard with you if you
hadn't streaked the lines with corpse-mould, and refused to take my
daughter to church"--here he suddenly broke off, as if he had said too
much, and to prevent himself from completing the sentence, he put the
brandy-keg to his mouth once more. But the same instant Eilert caught
his glance, and it was so full of deadly hatred that it sent a shiver
right down his back.
When, after a long, long draught, he again took the keg from his mouth,
the Merman was again in a good humour, and told tale after tale. He
stretched himself more and more heavily out on the sail, and laughed and
grinned complacently at his own narrations, the humour of which was
always a wreck or a drowning. From time to time Eilert felt the breath
of his laughter, and it was like a cold blast. If folks would only give
up their boats, he said, he had no very great desire for the crews. It
was driftwood and ship-timber that he was after, and he really couldn't
get on without them. When his stock ran out, boat or ship he _must_
have, and surely nobody could blame him for it either.
With that he put the keg down empty, and became somewhat more gloomy
again. He began to talk about what bad times they were for him and her.
It was not as it used to be, he said. He stared blankly before him for a
time, as if buried in deep thought. Then he stretched himself out
backwards at full length, with feet extending right across the floor,
and gasped so dreadfully that his upper and lower jaws resembled two
boats' keels facing each other. Then he dozed right off with his neck
turned towards the sail.
Then the girl again stood by Eilert's side, and bade him follow her.
They now went the same way back, and again ascended up to the skerry.
Then she confided to him that the reason why her father had been so
bitter against him was because he had mocked her with the taunt about
church-cleansing when she had wanted to go to church--the name the folks
down below wanted to know might, the Merman thought, be treasured up in
Eilert's memory; but during their conversation on their way down to her
father, she had perceived that he also had forgotten it. And now he must
look to his life.
It would be a good deal later on in the day before the old fellow would
begin inquiring about him. Till then he, Eilert, must sleep so as to
have sufficient strength for his flight--she would watch over him.
The girl flung her long dark hair about him like a curtain, and it
seemed to him that he knew those eyes so well. He felt as if his cheek
were resting against the breast of a white sea-bird, it was so warm and
sleep-giving--a single reddish feather in the middle of it recalled a
dark memory. Gradually he sank off into a doze, and heard her singing a
lullaby, which reminded him of the swell of the billows when it ripples
up and down along the beach on a fine sunny day. It was all about how
they had once been playmates together, and how later on he would have
nothing to say to her. Of all she sang, however, he could only recollect
the last words, which were these--
"Oh, thousands of times have we played on the shore,
And caught little fishes--dost mind it no more?
We raced with the surf as it rolled at our feet,
And the lurking old Merman we always did cheat.
"Yes, much shalt thou think of at my lullaby,
Whilst the billows do rock and the breezes do sigh.
Who sits now and weeps o'er thy cheeks? It is she
Who gave thee her soul, and whose soul lived in thee.
"But once as an eider-duck homeward I came
Thou didst lie 'neath a rock, with thy rifle didst aim;
In my breast thou didst strike me; the blood thou dost see
Is the mark that I bear, oh! beloved one, of thee."
Then it seemed to Eilert as if she sat and wept over him, and that, from
time to time, a drop like a splash of sea-water fell upon his cheek. He
felt now that he loved her so dearly.
The next moment he again became uneasy. He fancied that right up to the
skerry came a whale, which said that he, Eilert, must now make haste;
and when he stood on its back he stuck the shaft of an oar down its
nostril, to prevent it from shooting beneath the sea again. He perceived
that in this way the whale could be steered accordingly as he turned the
oar to the right or left; and now they coasted the whole land of Finmark
at such a rate that the huge mountain islands shot by them like little
rocks. Behind him he saw the Draug in his half-boat, and he was going so
swiftly that the foam stood mid-mast high. Shortly afterwards he was
again lying on the skerry, and the lass smiled so blithely; she bent
over him and said, "It is I, Eilert."
With that he awoke, and saw that the sunbeams were running over the wet
skerry, and the Mermaid was still sitting by his side. But presently the
whole thing changed before his eyes. It was the sun shining through the
window-panes, on a bed in the Finn's hut, and by his side sat the Finn
girl supporting his back, for they thought he was about to die. He had
lain there delirious for six weeks, ever since the Finn had rescued him
after capsizing, and this was his first moment of consciousness.
After that it seemed to him that he had never heard anything so absurd
and presumptuous as the twaddle that would fix a stigma of shame or
contempt on Finn blood, and the same spring he and the Finn girl Zilla
were betrothed, and in the autumn they were married.
There were Finns in the bridal procession, and perhaps many said a
little more about that than they need have done; but every one at the
wedding agreed that the fiddler, who was also a Finn, was the best
fiddler in the whole parish, and the bride the prettiest girl.
* * * * *
_THE HOMESTEAD WESTWARD IN THE BLUE MOUNTAINS_
[Illustration: HOMESTEAD WESTWARD IN THE BLUE MOUNTAINS.]
THE HOMESTEAD WESTWARD IN THE BLUE MOUNTAINS
There was once a farmer's son who was off to Moen for the annual
manoeuvres. He was to be the drummer, and his way lay right across the
mountains. There he could practise his drumming at his ease, and beat
his tattoos again and again without making folks laugh, or having a
parcel of small boys dangling about him like so many midges.
Every time he passed a mountain homestead he beat his rat-tat-tat to
bring the girls out, and they stood and hung about and gaped after him
at all the farmhouses.
It was in the midst of the hottest summer weather. He had been
practising his drumming from early in the morning, till he had grown
quite sick and tired of it. And now he was toiling up a steep cliff, and
had slung his drum over his shoulder, and stuck his drumsticks in his
bandoleer.
The sun baked and broiled upon the hills; but in the clefts there was a
coolness as of a rushing roaring waterfall. The little knolls swarmed
with bilberries the whole way along, and he felt he must stoop down and
pluck whole handfuls at a time, so that it took a long time to get to
the top.
Then he came to a hilly slope where the ferns stood high, and there were
lots of birch bushes. It was so nice and shady there, he thought, and so
he couldn't for the life of him help taking a rest.
His drum he took off, his jacket he put beneath his head, and his cap
over his face, and off he went to sleep.
But as he lay dozing there, he dreamt that some one was tickling him
under the nose with a straw so that he could get no peace; and the
instant he awoke, he fancied he heard laughing and giggling.
The sun had by this time begun to cast oblique shadows, and far down
below, towards the valleys, lay the warm steaming vapours, creeping
upwards in long drawn-out gossamer bands and ribands of mist.
As he reached behind him for his jacket, he saw a snake, which lay and
looked at him with such shrewd quick eyes. But when he threw a stone at
it, it caught its tail in its mouth, and trundled away like a wheel.
Again there was a giggling and a sniggering among the bushes.
And now he heard it among some birch trees which stood in such a
wonderful sunlight, for they were filled with the rain and fine drizzle
of a waterfall. The water-drops glistened and sparkled so that he really
couldn't see the trees properly.