In Britain, it was on the eve of the first of May, the second of November, and on All Souls’ Day. At these times, indeed, they might be induced to divulge the secrets of their mysterious freemasonry.
In Germany, on May-day, when the unearthly rendezvous was on the dark mountain of the Hartz, and on Halloween, in Caledonia, even the secrets of time and futurity were unfolded by the spirits to a mortal, if one were found so bold as to repair on these festivals to their unhallowed haunts.
If a mortal enters the secret abodes of the Daoine Shi, in Scotland, and anoints his eyes with their charmed ointment, the gift of seeing that which is to all others invisible is imparted; but this must be kept secret, for the Men of Peace will blind the second-sighted eye, if once they are recognized on earth by a mortal.
In the gloomy forests of Germany rose the legends of _Kobolds_, and _Umbriels_, and _Wehrwolves_, the _Holts Konig_, the _Waldebach_, the _Reiberzahl_, and the _Schattenman_, the _Hudekin_, the _Erl Konig_, and the beautiful naiad, the _Nixa_. The devil himself was believed to be a gnome king; for when the Elector of Saxony offered Martin Luther the profit of a mine, he refused it, “lest by accepting it he should tempt the devil, who is lord of those subterraneous treasures, to tempt _him_.”
Then we have the _Putseet_, or Puck of the Samogitæ, on the Baltic; the _Biergen Trold_, or _Skow_, of Iceland; and those mermaids which gambol around the Faroe Islands. We read in the _Danske Folksaga_, that these “merrows” cast their skins like the boa, and in that condition are changed into human beings, till their scales are restored to them. And the Shetlanders implicitly believe that awful storms instantly arise on the murder of one of these sea-maids.
There was the Norse goddess, Freya, which, like the Dragon of Wantley, and the Caliban of the “still vexed Bermoothes,” blasted the fair face of nature, and far eclipsed the giant-serpent off Cape Saint Anne, or the _kraken_ of Norway; and even that monstrous sea-snake, the _jormungandz_ (so conspicuous among the wild romances of the Edda), whose coils entwined the globe. Thor angled for this snake with a bull’s head, but it was not to be caught, being reserved for some splendid achievement in the grand conflict which is to herald the _Ragnarockr_,—the twilight of the gods.
