saw formerly familiar spirits, which, under the form of men or
women, waited on certain persons. He speaks of certain nymphs dwelling
in caverns and in the depths of the forest, who announce things to
come; some are good, others bad; they appear and speak to those who
consult them. Travelers and shepherds also often see during the night
divers phantoms which burn the spot where they appear, so that
henceforward neither grass nor verdure are seen there.

He says that the people of Finland, before their conversion to
Christianity, sold the winds to sailors, giving them a string with
three knots, and warning them that by untying the first knot they
would have a gentle and favorable wind, at the second knot a stronger
wind, and at the third knot a violent and dangerous gale. He says,
moreover, that the Bothnians, striking on an anvil hard blows with a
hammer, upon a frog or a serpent of brass, fall down in a swoon, and
during this swoon they learn what passes in very distant places.

But all those things have more relation to magic than to familiar
spirits; and if what is said about them be true, it must be ascribed
to the evil spirit.

The same Olaus Magnus[280] says that in mines, above all in silver
mines, from which great profit may be expected, six sorts of demons
may be seen, who under divers forms labor at breaking the rocks,
drawing the buckets, and turning the wheels; who sometimes burst into
laughter, and play different tricks; all of which are merely to
deceive the miners, whom they crush under the rocks, or expose to the
most imminent dangers, to make them utter blasphemy, and swear and
curse. Several very rich mines have been obliged to be disused through
fear of these dangerous spirits.

Notwithstanding all that we have just related, I doubt very much if
there are any spirits in mountain caves or in mines. I have
interrogated on the subject people of the trade and miners by
profession, of whom there is a great number in our mountains, the
Vosges, who have assured me that all which is related on that point is
fabulous; that if sometimes they see these elves or grotesque figures,
it must be attributed to a heated and prepossessed imagination; or
else that the circumstance is so rare that it ought not to be repeated
as something usual or common.

A new "Traveler in the Northern Countries," printed at Amsterdam, in
1708, says that the people of Iceland are almost all conjurers or
sorcerers; that they have fa