THE SATTERVAL.
“’Tis merry, ’tis merry, in good greenwood,
Though the birds have stilled their singing;
The evening blaze doth Alice raise,
And Richard is faggots bringing.”
_Alice Brand._
Avoiding the advanced column of the dref, which had halted just short of
the watercourse, the Parson and his follower took a line nearly parallel
to that of the hills. It is no easy thing to beat a Swedish forest,
for there are every now and then thick-tangled brakes, and grass-grown
svedgefalls, and occasionally, it may be, a little lake to break the
line, causing perpetual halts, since one part must necessarily wait for
another. But simply making a passage through a Swedish forest is almost
as easy as walking on plain turf:—here there will be a wide patch of high
pines, under which nothing will grow,—then there will be actual green
glades of considerable length, with short mountain turf, broken only by
tufts of lilies of the valley, or, perhaps, whortleberry or cranberry
plants; and everywhere, when the trees are young, or have been cut, and
the understuff has been permitted to come up thick, the whole space is
intersected by cattle paths,—for all the fjeld is divided into sœters
belonging to the lowland farms, forming the summer runs for their cattle.
The Parson and his follower, therefore, had no difficulty in leaving the
whole line behind them, so that first their shouts and then the reports
of their firearms were lost in the distance, and the forest, soon to be
so busy with life, looked as quiet and lonely as if it never could echo
sounds louder than the coo of the wood-pigeon.
After five or six miles’ walking, the closeness of the air under the
trees began to tell upon them—more especially as this afternoon’s
excursion had been preceded by a morning’s walk of sixteen or seventeen
miles, and neither of them felt at all sorry when, in a natural opening
of the forest, the rough enclosures of a sœter came into view.
“Come,” said Torkel, “we shall get some brandy here, anyhow.” He was
mistaken, however, for no living thing was to be found there, except a
dog tied to a stump (for dogs are strictly forbidden in skals), that at
first made the forest ring with its barking, but soon became reconciled
to the intruders by that sort of free-masonry, whatever be the cause of
it, which always exist between a dog and a sportsman.
“At all events, they must have milk here,” he said, “and I am not sure
whether, just now, I had not rather find milk than brandy.”
The Parson laughed at Torkel’s unusual feelings of sobriety, but quite
participated in his longing for milk. This they found, and plenty of it,
for the single room of the cabin was full of vessels, shoved in anywhere,
as if the milkers had been in such a hurry to complete a task which they
could not have neglected without spoiling their cows, that they had not
given themselves time to put their milk away.
Torkel went down on his hands and knees, put his mouth into a bucket
that stood near the door, and drank away as if—like Odin, when he
wheedled Gunlauth into letting him take a sip from the cup of poetic
inspiration—he meant to drain it to the very bottom, and then set to
upon a sort of cake that he found strung upon a cord between two of the
rafters, which looked something like a number of round, thin discs, of
semi-transparent paste, with holes punched out of the centre to hang them
up by.[54]
The Parson, who was not less thirsty and exhausted, evinced a little
more moderation than this “hog of the flock of Epicurus;” he was content
with filling his horn occasionally at the milkpail, and floating in it a
handful of cranberries, bushels of which were growing wherever a glimpse
of sunshine could penetrate the canopy of foliage, “incarnading” with
their red berries the turf of the whole forest, “and making the green one
red.”
The refreshment was, as Torkel had observed, better than brandy, and
both felt quite sufficiently invigorated for a fresh journey; but their
present quarters looked very comfortable,—the shadows of the evening
were fast lengthening, and they had already advanced far beyond any
point which the skal could be expected to reach that day. They remained,
therefore, comfortably sitting on the rail fence, and looking down the
grassy glade, without any intention of going farther that night. Since
diving into the forest they had not seen a head of game of any kind,
except a flock (for it hardly deserved a more sportsman-like appellation)
of the smaller description of grouse, which Torkel, whose eyes were
everywhere, had detected on the higher branches of one of the trees.
Three of these the Parson had brought down in the most pot-hunting and
unsportsman-like fashion, by getting them into a line as they sat, and
bringing them down as a boy massacres fieldfares. These Torkel was
indolently picking, and preparing for the frying-pan, an article which
is generally to be found in a sœter, while, at the same time, he kept a
professional eye on the glade. The Parson, sitting beside him, was as
indolently pulling off the fruit of the hägg, a sort of wild cherry, a
clump of which overshadowed the fence on which they were sitting, and
afforded them a partial cover from any quick-sighted animal coming up
from the forest.
“I do not like these great summer skals,” said he. “If you really want
to see sport you should come here in the winter, when the snow is on
the ground,—that is the time for a man to set his wits against ‘old Fur
Jacket,’—to ring him in the snow—to look out for his den—to turn him
out—to dash after him through the snow on our skier—to follow him day
after day—to camp on his track—and after him again as soon as day breaks,
and at last, after a week’s hunting, perhaps, to run in upon him and
put a rifle-ball upon his head. All this too is done quietly,—a party
of two or three at the most,—not mobbing the poor devil to death in
this fashion,—that is the thing that tries a man’s talents as a hunter.
In such a skal as this, one of those squalling women could knock over
a bear as well as the best of us, if she happened to meet with him;
he very seldom shows fight, either, in the summer time,—he sees he is
overmatched, and gives it up as a bad job; but in the winter, you may as
well have a firm heart and a steady hand before you bring your rifle to
bear, and you would be none the worse for a stout comrade to stand beside
you, with pike and knife.”
“The bear does charge them sometimes?” said the Parson.
“Yes, if hit,” said Torkel, “or if he thinks you have got him into a
corner, otherwise he would always rather run than fight. I remember one
journey I had with two young Englishmen a few years ago; we went to shoot
in Nordre Trondhjemsampt;—ah! you should go there if you want shooting.
I never saw such a place for grouse of all kinds,—aye, and for deer too.
Well, these Englishmen were always wanting to find a bear,—they would not
be satisfied with the very best of sport, they kept saying that it would
never do to come from Norway without having a bearskin to show their
friends,—for all these Englishmen seem to think that bears are the common
game of the country.”
“We shot deer and grouse as many as we pleased, but we did not so much
as hear of a bear till we had given up shooting altogether, and were
travelling home, which we did by the road through Ostersund, Hernösand,
and Gefle. When we got to the post-house at Skalstuga, the first on the
Swedish side of the mountains; early in the morning, long before it was
light, the cow-boy came in crying, and said that a bear had just killed
one of the cows. Off goes one of our Englishmen, half naked, with his gun
in his hand, just as if he had nothing bigger to shoot than a hare. I
caught up an axe that was lying there and ran after him. Up he comes, and
stands right in the bear’s path, just as if he cared no more for him than
for a big dog, and fires away two barrels right in his face. Lord! it was
nothing but small shot, such as he had been shooting grouse with, and the
bear came at him like Thor’s hammer. Just in the way, as luck would have
it, stood a sapling fir-tree; and I never could tell whether the bear
was blinded by the smoke, or whether some of the small shot had taken
him about the eyes, but he seemed to take the tree for that which had
hurt him, and he reared himself up against it, and shook it, and fixed
his teeth in it, and shook it again, and seemed to mind nothing else,
till I stole up quietly behind him and drove the axe into his skull. The
Englishman never seemed to care a bit about the danger he had escaped;
all he said was, ‘Got him at last!’ ‘That’s the ticket!’ and shoved into
my hand more yellow and green notes than ever I saw there before or
since; and, for all he was so free with his money, he went to the Länsman
at Ostersund and got the bear’s nose sealed, and touched the Government
reward for it, just like one of us, and then he tossed the money to me,
and told me to get drunk upon it.”
“Which you did, I’ll be sworn,” said the Parson.
“I believe I did!” said Torkel; “I was not fairly sober for a good three
days after it.”
“Hist! what is that,” said he, dropping, as he spoke, on the inside of
the fence, and motioning the Parson to do so likewise.
A wolf came lolloping along with the slovenly gallop in which that
disreputable beast usually travels, looking as if it had sat up all
night drinking and was not quite sober yet. The Parson laid down his
gun, and quietly taking his rifle from Torkel, cocked it, and lodged it
upon an opening between the planks. The wolf had not seen them, but came
shambling on, when, either scenting his enemies, or knowing by experience
the ineligibility of a path near fences, he edged away towards the close
covert, showing a portion of his ungainly side at a long shot, and though
looking as if he were lame of all four legs at the same time, clearing
the ground with his immense and untiring strides faster than any dog
could have followed him.
Crack went the Parson’s rifle; but whether the wolf was hit, or whether
he knew what a rifle-shot meant, or whether he so much as heard it, or
saw the smoke, it was all the same; his course was not altered, his pace
was neither relaxed nor quickened, he went lolloping on, just as when
he was first seen, and, as much at his ease as ever, disappeared in the
forest not a hundred yards from them.
“Missed him, by all that is unlucky!” said the Parson, jumping up.
“There is no knowing,” said Torkel; “if you had hit him it would have
been all the same. Unless the shot strikes a part immediately vital they
take no notice of it.”
There was evidently nothing to be done; and, indeed, the probabilities
were that the Parson really had missed, for there was not a vestige of
blood to be seen on the turf; and as the shades were closing in and the
woods were getting too dark to see anything, they returned to their
comfortable quarters, and, by bringing in one of the cocks of rushy hay,
they succeeded in making up on the floor of the hut two couches, much
more luxurious than anything they had enjoyed since leaving Gäddebäck.
“That will do,” said Torkel; “it is a great piece of luck that we
happened upon this sœter. We shall make a much better cookery of our
grouse here than we should have done under a tree in the fjeld. There
must be a frying-pan here somewhere, if we had only light to find it by.”
“Why do you not light the fire?” said the Parson; “that will give you
light enough, for this fuel is as dry as tinder, and good honest birch,
too, with some heart in it. You must have a fire for cooking, whether you
want it for light or not, so heap up the hearth-stone at once.”
This was done as soon as said; and to the cheerful blaze of dry and
crackling fir succeeded the steady, candle-like flame of the birch,
lighting up the remotest corners, and glancing on that indispensable
requisite of mountain life which Torkel had been seeking. Fresh butter,
just from the churn, is not altogether uneatable even in Sweden, and
besides, hunger is not nice; the Parson consumed, with considerable
relish, his own share of the grouse, and only wished they had been as big
as black game, or tjäder. Brandy there certainly must have been somewhere
in the hut, for there never was a Swedish hut without; but so well was it
hidden, that all Torkel’s experience failed to bring it to light, and,
very much to the Parson’s delight, they were reduced to milk, of which
there was enough to supply the whole skal.
“Well,” said the Parson, who had succeeded in twisting up his hay into
a sort of chaise-longue, with a well-formed cushion for his back, “I
did not expect to have a roof over my head; I must say this is a real
piece of luxury. Why we are better off than the Captain with his tents;
everything we want to our hands, and no host to ask for a reckoning.”
“That would not be over safe in the Hardanger-fjeld,” said Torkel; “but
I suppose Sweden is another thing: indeed, in Norway it is only on the
Hardanger that the thing is permitted.”
“What is permitted?” said the Parson.
“Why the ghosts of the damned,” said Torkel, “are permitted to wander
about the Hardanger as they please. No great favour after all, as you
would say if you had ever seen the place; and when they see travellers
coming they build comfortable huts by the wayside, with fires burning,
and dry clothes, and plenty of brandy and good provisions, and everything
a man wants in order to make himself comfortable. It would be pretty
much of a temptation anywhere, and you may fancy what it is on that
exposed and treeless waste, where, whenever it is not raining it is
snowing, and if it is not snowing it is raining. But if a man once enters
and accepts the hospitality, he is lost,—the rushing wind carries away
the house and all that is in it, and the travellers are never heard of
more.”
“You never happened upon a ghost-house yourself, did you?” said the
Parson.
“I never did,” said Torkel, “though I have been a good deal on the
Hardanger-fjeld in my day; it is a capital place for ripar. But the truth
is, these things are not so frequent as they used to be. My father,
though, once passed a very uncomfortable night on the fjeld, and he never
could make out, to his dying day, whether the ghosts had or had not
anything to do with it.”
“How was that?” said the Parson, as he threw another log on the fire, and
stirred the embers into a good ghost-story-telling blaze.
“In those days,” said Torkel, “we lived near Bykle, on the upper
Torjedahl, and grew a good deal of barley which we could not very well
consume ourselves, and had no means to transport to Christiansand, where
generally there is a pretty good market for it. So my father set up a
still, and drove a good thriving trade with the country about Jordbrakke
and Skore, exchanging our brandy for their salt fish, an article which
is scarce enough in the Tellemark. My father used generally to meet a
trader, of the name of Nilssen, at what is called a post-house, situated
on a ridge that divides the Torjedahl from the waters that flow into
Wester Hafvet (the North Sea). Why they called it a post-house I am sure
I do not know, for there is not a horse within a day’s journey of it,
nor a post-master neither, nor, indeed, any one else. It was built by
Government, no doubt, but you seldom saw anything so bad at a common
sœter. One miserable room of ten feet square, the walls built of dry
stones, with the wind whistling in at one side and out at the other,
which was the only means of carrying off the smoke. Fuel there was, and
straw there was, for Government provides that, and the post-master
of the next station is responsible that there shall always be a store
of both; but Government says nothing about the quality, and we used
generally to find the green bog myrtle which grows there, bad as it is,
better fuel and better bedding than either of them.
“One evening, about eight o’clock, my father arrived at the usual place,
having appointed a meeting with Nilssen, but when he came there he could
nowhere find the hut. He recognised the place well enough, there was
no missing that; there was the deep still lake, the waters of which
contained no living thing,—there it was, as black as ever; there, too,
was that old mass of whinstone, which used to form the back of the hut,
and always had a stream of moisture trickling down it, but no house was
to be seen, and, what made matters worse was, that a thick mountain mist
had come on, with driving rain, which felt as if every spiteful little
drop was a needle. My father looked disconsolately along the track, and
fancied he saw, through the blinding fog, the gleam of a fire; he went
on some fifty yards, and there, sure enough, was a nice comfortable hut,
water-tight and weather-tight, with the door wide open, a bright fire on
the hearth, and two or three rounds of flad bröd and a Dutch cheese on
the great stone in the middle which did duty for a table,—but not a soul
was there.
“My father was not easily frightened; he was an old sailor, and had
helped to catch many of your English traders during the last war. He
could have looked down the throat of a cannon, and did pretty near, for
he was on board the _Najaden_ when the _Dictator_ sank her; but he did
not much fancy being damned, for all that. So he looked and looked at the
merry blaze that smiled its welcome through the door, and watched the
cheese and the flad bröd which seemed to be dancing in its light, but for
all that he laid himself down under the lee of a rock, and cold, and wet,
and miserable, wished for morning, for the wind blew, and the rain kept
pelting away all night, till he thought it would have floated him, rock
and all, into the Normand’s Laagen; and there, all the time, was the fire
blazing away, till it subsided into a glowing heap of red-hot embers.
“Towards morning he fell into a miserable sleep, and when he woke up the
mist was gone, the sun was shining brightly, and there was not a shred
of cloud to be seen. The first thing he put his eyes upon was Nilssen,
coming up from the shores of the lake, and looking as wet, and as cold,
and as wretched as he was.
“‘Ah,’ said Nilssen, ‘so you have been lost in the fog, like me. My
misfortune was all my own fault, too. I got here yesterday in very good
time, and lighted the fire, and made all comfortable, and then I must
needs be fool enough to start after a covey of ripar, that I did not get
a shot at after all; and then the mist came on, and I could not find my
way back. A wretched night I have passed, I can tell you.’
“‘What,’ said my father, ‘was it you who lighted that fire?’
“‘To be sure I did,’ said Nilssen, ‘who else should? Men are not so
plentiful in this cursed place.’
“‘And you are not damned, after all?’
“‘Not that I know of,’ said Nilssen.
“‘That is not the old hut, though, I will take my oath.’
“‘No,’ said Nilssen, ‘it is not; the other was very nearly to pieces,
as you may recollect, when we were last here. The roof fell in not a
month after that, and then the authorities of the three Ampts contrived
to settle their differences, and do what they ought to have done years
ago—build a new one at their joint expense. They have not made a bad job
of it. Come in, you are cold enough.’
“‘And I have been lying out in this cursed rain and wind all night,’ said
my father, ‘with a good fire before my eyes, and a warm roof within fifty
yards of me, fancying all the while that you were damned, and that you
wanted to take me off to the Devil along with you! What a confounded fool
I have been!’
“But I am not sure that my father was such a fool either,” continued
Torkel, “for Nilssen died very soon after that; in fact, he had caught a
bad cold during that night, and as he had sold us a lot of bad fish, I
have no doubt he _was_ damned; at all events, it is quite true that from
that day forward my father was never entirely free from the rheumatism,
and this in his latter days, when he began to get religious, he always
attributed to the sight of the fire in the post-house; for he never was
without his misgivings that Nilssen had been damned before he met him.
He once went as far as Hardnæs to ask the priest about it, and he said
that the idea was new to him, certainly, but that he would not take upon
himself to pronounce it impossible. To the very end of his life, my
father used to congratulate himself upon the fortitude and self-denial he
had evinced during that terrible night, ‘because,’ said he, ‘if the bare
sight of that fire through the mist was visited so severely, no one can
say what would have been the consequence had I sat by it all night.’”
“No,” said the Parson, solemnly, “no one can.”
“You see,” said Torkel, “the whole question hinges on the fact whether
Nilssen was damned or not; now he certainly did take us in about the
fish—we were obliged to throw away half of it. I should like very much to
have your opinion on the subject.”
“Why,” said the Parson, gravely, “will you take upon yourself to say, on
your conscience, as a Christian man, that there was no potato-haulm in
the wash from which your brandy was distilled?”
Torkel laughed, and rubbed his hands at the recollection. “No,” said he,
“that I will not; I do not think the old scoundrel made much by us, after
all.”
“Well, if that is the case, I do not think, if I were you, I would be too
hard upon poor Nilssen about the next world. But you ought to be able
to judge for yourself whether the laager was a ghost-house or not; what
became of it?”
“O, there it is still,” said Torkel. “I have slept in it often myself
since, and no harm has happened from it. But all that hill-country is a
terrible place. Do you know, the Evil One once leaped over the Tind Sö,
where it is four miles across? He did, indeed; I have seen the prints of
his footsteps with my own eyes—and a very curious thing it is, that one
foot is bigger than the other. Our Kyrkesonger says it is to mark the
difference between mortal and venial sins.”
“I am afraid your Kyrkesonger will never rise to the rank of Candidatus,”
said the Parson, “if he does not get up his theology a little better. Is
not this the place where your witches meet?”
“It is not far from it; and it is generally supposed that it was in
hurrying away from one of these meetings, which was suddenly dispersed
by some one having accidentally named a holy name, that the Devil left
the mark of his feet on the shores of the Tind Sö; but the actual place
of meeting is the top of Gousta Fjeld. The ridge of the mountain is so
narrow that you may sit astride on it, with a leg on each side in the
air, and no resting-place under either foot for a thousand fathoms. On
this ridge the Devil sits playing on the bagpipe, while the witches dance
the polska round him in the air. They come from all parts of the country,
riding upon the skyts-horse, which looks like a flying cow, and carrying
with them all the children they can catch, in order to enlist them in
the Devil’s service; for each witch has a needle, by which she unlocks
the sides of the houses, and makes an opening, if she likes, big enough
for a carriage and horses to pass through; and after she has passed,
she locks them up so that no one can know where she has been. When she
arrives at the convent—so the assembly is called,—she presents to the
Devil all those children whom she has brought with her: she cannot force
the children to take service with him,—some refuse, and the witches are
obliged to carry them back again. These are good and holy people ever
afterwards; but most of them do enter the Devil’s service, for though he
is bound down with a chain, which he has always worn ever since our Lord
came upon earth, yet he can make himself look so fine and so glorious
that very few of them like to say ‘no,’ and to go back to their homes
through the dark night. If they once say ‘yes,’ he gives them a silver
dollar each, and marks them, by biting the crown of their heads; and then
they are taught to curse all that is holy—the Heaven, and the earth, and
the fruits of the field, and the birds of the air,—all except the magpie,
for that is the Devil’s own peculiar favourite. And then the witches
make them a mess of rö-gröd, with corn that has been stolen. They have a
way of their own for stealing corn: they put a sack to the roof of the
granary as they fly past, and say ‘Corn draw corn, and straw draw straw,’
and then all the corn flies up into their sacks, and the straw remains
behind. I know this to be true, for I have lost lispund after lispund
myself that way. I had a girl in my service once, who was a witch, and
I lost as much as three tonne of corn, and a great many things besides,
while she was with me. But she vanished one night and has never been
heard of since, and with her a great scoundrel, who had lately come into
our parts, whom she called her lover,—but the people said he was the
Devil in disguise.”
“Very likely,” said the Parson, “lovers very often are; but what about
your witch children?”
“When they have done all this, the Devil gives notice of the next
convent, and the witches take the children, and they grow up with their
brothers and sisters just like any of the others, only that they are
cross-grained children from that time forward, and are always getting
into one mischief or another, and quarrelling, and fighting, and
stealing, and lying, and doing the Devil’s work on earth; for they have
all had new names given them at the convent, and whenever the Devil calls
them by those names, they must go and do whatever work he sets them
at, for they have taken his wages, and, having once engaged to be his
servants, they cannot help themselves now.”
The Parson felt by no means inclined to laugh at Torkel’s demonology,
every bit of which may be found gravely and solemnly recorded in the
State papers of Sweden, for it once formed the grounds of accusation upon
which men and women were executed by the dozen; for with the exception
of the material and tangible facts, the cow-like horse, and the silver
dollar, and the ridge of Gousta, and the bagpipes, the whole of Torkel’s
story was but an over-true allegory, the antitype of which may be found
everywhere in real life; and the fact of the Superior Power compelling
the restoration of all who do not willingly engage in the Devil’s
service, is a very sound piece of theology. So he very readily joined
in the prayer of the Evening Hymn, a very ancient composition, dating
from centuries before the Reformation, which Torkel sang as well and as
heartily as if he had been kyrkesonger himself. A portion of it has been
thus translated:—
“Ere thy head, at close of day,
On thy lowly couch thou lay,
On thy forehead and thy breast
Be the Cross of Christ impressed.
“Sin and shame, like shades of night,
Fade before the Cross’s light,—
Hallowed thus, the wavering will
And the troubled heart are still.
“Far, far hence, dark phantoms fly,—
Haunting demons come not nigh,—
Ever waiting to betray,
Arch Deceiver, hence!—away!
“Serpent! with thy thousand coils,
With thy many winding wiles,
With thy deep, meandering arts,
Ruffling calm and quiet hearts;
“Hence!—for Christ, yea, Christ is here,—
At His token disappear;
Lo! the sign thou well hast known
Bids thy cursed crew begone!”
It is a fact that the Gousta Fjeld and the Tind Sö, a very
large and lonely lake at its foot, are popularly supposed to
be the resort of the Devil and his adherents. The author,
however, has not been able to meet with any authentic accounts
of the diabolical convents in Norway. He has, therefore,
substituted those of Sweden, the locality of which is
Blaakulla, in Dalecarlia. These are quoted by Frederika Bremer
from the manuscript of Kronigsward, which details the judicial
murders which took place under Councillor Lawrence Kreutz,
in 1671,—were continued for three years, and were suppressed
at last by the exertions of Countess Catharine de la Gardie.
But, though the executions for witchcraft were put an end to,
the belief in it is as rife as ever. The same book contains
a laughable story of a supposed witch residing in the island
of Söllezo, in the Silya Sjön, and of her recovery; which
proves that the clergy of Sweden have not lost their power as
exorcists. Not many years ago, a young girl of that island
asserted positively that she was conveyed every evening to
Blaakulla. Her parents, who were honest but simple folks, were
much disturbed about it. They closely watched their daughter
by night,—bound her fast in bed with cords,—but nothing would
avail; for, in the morning, weeping bitterly, she still
maintained she had been at Blaakulla. At last, her unhappy
parents took her to the clergyman upon the island, and begged
him, with earnest tears, to save their child from the claws of
Satan. After having had several interviews with the maiden,
the clergyman one day said to her, “I know a remedy,—a certain
remedy to cure you! but it will give me much trouble. Yet, as
nothing else appears to be of any avail, we will have recourse
to it.” With much solemnity, he caused the girl to seat herself
upon a commodious chair in the centre of the apartment, took up
a “Cornelius Nepos,” and began reading one of the lives. Before
he had finished, she fell fast asleep; and when she awoke, the
clergyman told her she was cured—and she was so!