to display, it was only because the pixies labored for her at night; turning her wheel briskly in the moonlight, splitting the wood, and drawing the water, while she drowsed idly in her bed.
"And every night the pixies good
Drive round the wheel with sound subdued,
And leave—in this they never fail—
A silver penny in the pail."
Even to the clergy this engaging theory brought its consolations. When the Reverend Lucas Jacobson Debes, pastor of Thorshaven in 1670, found that his congregation was growing slim, he was not forced, in bitterness of spirit, to ask himself were his sermons dull, but promptly laid all the blame upon the biergen-trold, the spectres of the mountains, whom he angrily accused, in a lengthy homily, of disturbing his flock, and even pushing their discourtesy so far as to carry them off bodily before his discourse was completed.
Indeed, it is to the clergy that we are indebted for much interesting information concerning the habits of goblins, witches, and gnomes. The Reverend Robert Kirke, of
