an irresistible longing to be with Dame Holle. Three days after he died, and it was said of him, “He preferred the society of Frau Hulda to heaven, and now till the judgment he must wander with her in the forest[1].” In like manner, in Scandinavian ballads, we are told of youths who were allured away by the sweet strains of the Elf maidens[2]. Their music is called ellfr-lek, in Icelandic liuflíngslag, in Norwegian Huldreslát.
The reader will have already become conscious that these northern myths resemble the classic fable of the Sirens, with their magic lay; of Ulysses with his ears open, bound to the mast, longing to rush to their arms, and perish.
The root of the myth is this: the piper is no other than the wind, and ancients held that in the wind were the souls of the dead. All over England the peasants believe still that the spirits of unbaptized children wander in it, and that the wail at their doors and windows are the cries of the little souls condemned to journey till the last day. The ancient German goddess Hulda was ever accompanied by a crowd of children’s souls, and Odin in his wild hunt rushed over the tree-tops, accompanied
