se who ventured to look up at
him. The priest was sent for, and he exorcised the ghost, and ordered
him to remain, until the world's end, at the bottom of a moss bog, and
to keep him there had a sharp stake driven through him; but,
notwithstanding, the ghost rises at night, but as he cannot, from the
exorcising of the priest, assume human form, he flies about in the
likeness of the bird we call the night raven until cock crow."

"In English," said Hardy, "the night jar. It was the practice in
England to bury suicides with a stake driven through their bodies at
four cross-ways. It is possible that this arose from a desire to
prevent the ghost of the dead person from troubling the living, and
being at a four cross-ways, that it should not know which direction to
take."

"It may be so," said Pastor Lindal; "but in discussing these things we
are apt, as in philology, to assume our own comparisons to be correct.
We have also the traditions of spectral huntsmen, with the
accompaniment of horses and hounds with red-hot glowing tongues; and,
singularly enough, the tradition often occurs that their quarry was
the Elle-kvinder, that is women of the elves, but who are described as
of the size of ordinary women. The spectral huntsmen have often been
seen with the Elle-kvinder tied to their saddles by their hair."

"Your traditions of witches," said Hardy, "appear to be similar to
ours. You appear to have burnt and thrown them into ponds to drown
after the same cruel custom as in England."

"True," replied the Pastor, "and the description in Macbeth of witches
answers to our traditions. On St. John's night witches were supposed
to fly to Bloksberg, a mythical place in Norway, upon broomsticks and
in brewing tubs. There they met Gamle Erik, the evil one, who entered
their names in his ledger, and instructed them in witchcraft, and,
after executing the witches' dance, they returned to their respective
homes in the same fashion. This tradition is common to other
countries, but in Jutland the belief was that the favourite form a
witch adopted was that of a hare, which evaded the huntsmen, and could
not be shot except by a piece of silver, which must have been
inherited--a piece of silver purchased or given had no effect. The
witch was then found in the person of some old woman with a wound, who
was forthwith dealt with in the cruel fashion then the rule. The
gypsies, or, as they are called with us, Tatarfolk, from their eastern
ori