unes which
were dull until it was brandished in war, when they flamed red as
the comb of the fighting-cock.

"Quick lost was that hero
Meeting in battle's night that blade high-flaming with runics.
Widely renown'd was this sword, of swords most choice in the
Northland."

Tegner's Frithiof (G. Stephens's tr.).

The Passing of the Dwarfs

The dwarfs were generally kind and helpful; sometimes they kneaded
bread, ground flour, brewed beer, performed countless household tasks,
and harvested and threshed the grain for the farmers. If ill-treated,
however, or turned to ridicule, these little creatures would forsake
the house and never come back again. When the old gods ceased to be
worshipped in the Northlands, the dwarfs withdrew entirely from the
country, and a ferryman related how he had been hired by a mysterious
personage to ply his boat back and forth across the river one night,
and at every trip his vessel was so heavily laden with invisible
passengers that it nearly sank. When his night's work was over, he
received a rich reward, and his employer informed him that he had
carried the dwarfs across the river, as they were leaving the country
for ever in consequence of the unbelief of the people.

Changelings

According to popular superstition, the dwarfs, in envy of man's
taller stature, often tried to improve their race by winning human
wives or by stealing unbaptized children, and substituting their
own offspring for the human mother to nurse. These dwarf babies were
known as changelings, and were recognisable by their puny and wizened
forms. To recover possession of her own babe, and to rid herself of
the changeling, a woman was obliged either to brew beer in egg-shells
or to grease the soles of the child's feet and hold them so near the
flames that, attracted by their offspring's distressed cries, the dwarf
parents would hasten to claim their own and return the stolen child.

The troll women were said to have the power of changing themselves
into Maras or nightmares, and of tormenting any one they pleased;
but if the victim succeeded in stopping up the hole through which a
Mara made her ingress into his room, she was entirely at his mercy,
and he could even force her to wed him if he chose to do so. A wife
thus obtained was sure to remain as long as the opening through which
she had entered the house was closed, but if the plug were removed,
eith