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[Illustration: “He picked his way, with much circumspection, between the prostrate forms of the tiny people.”
NOTES OF TRAVEL IN SOUTH-WESTERN NORWAY IN THE SUMMERS OF 1856 AND 1857.
WITH GLANCES AT THE LEGENDARY LORE OF THAT DISTRICT.
BY THE REV. FREDERICK METCALFE, M.A., FELLOW OF LINCOLN COLLEGE, OXFORD, AUTHOR OF “THE OXONIAN IN NORWAY.”
“Auf den Bergen ist Freiheit; der Hauch der Grüfte, Steigt nicht hinauf in die schönen Lüfte, Die Welt is volkommen überall, Wo der Mensch nicht hinein kömmt mit seiner Qual.”
“Tu nidum servas: ego laudo ruris amœni Rivos, et musco circumlita saxa, nemusque.”
LONDON: HURST AND BLACKETT, PUBLISHERS, SUCCESSORS TO HENRY COLBURN, 13, GREAT MARLBOROUGH STREET. 1858.
[_The right of Translation is reserved._]
LONDON: SAVILL AND EDWARDS, PRINTERS, CHANDOS STREET, COVENT GARDEN
In the neighbourhood of Bayeux, in Normandy, it is said that there still lingers a superstition which most probably came there originally in the same ship as Rollo the Walker. The country folks believe in the existence of a sprite (goubelin) who plagues mankind in various ways. His most favourite method of annoyance is to stand like a horse saddled and bridled by the roadside, inviting the passers-by to mount him. But woe to the unlucky wight who yields to the temptation, for off he sets--“Halloo! halloo! and hark away!” galloping fearfully over stock and stone, and not unfrequently ends by leaving his rider in a bog or horse-pond, at the same time vanishing with a loud peal of mocking laughter. “A heathenish and gross superstition!” exclaims friend Broadbrim. But what if we try to extract a jewel out of this ugly monster; knock some commonsense out of his head. Goethe turned the old fancy of _Der getreue Eckart_ to good account in that way. What if a moral of various application underlies this grotesque legend. Suppose, for the nonce, that the rider typify the writer of a book. Unable to resist a strong temptation to bestride the Pegasus of his imagination--whether prose or verse--he ventures to mount and go forth into the world, and not seldom he gets a fall for his pains amid a loud chorus of scoffs and jeers. Indeed, this is so common a catastrophe, from the days of Bellerophon downwards (everybody knows that he was the author of the _Letters_[1] that go by his name), so prone is inkshed to lead to disaster, that the ancient wish, “Oh that mine adversary had written a book,” in its usual acceptation (which entirely rests, be it said, on a faulty interpretation of the original language), was really exceedingly natural, as the fulfilment of it was as likely as not to lead to the fullest gratification of human malice.