cock-crowing and
daybreak, it is highly dangerous to be abroad."{22}

Christmas Eve is also in Scandinavian folk-belief the time when the dead
revisit their old homes, as on All Souls' Eve in Roman Catholic lands.
The living prepare for their coming with mingled dread and desire to make
them welcome. When the Christmas Eve festivities are over, and everyone
has gone to rest, the parlour is left tidy and adorned, with a great fire
burning, candles lighted, the table covered with a festive cloth and
plentifully spread with food, and a jug of Yule ale ready. Sometimes
before going to bed people wipe the chairs with a clean white towel; in
the morning they are wiped again, and, if earth is found, some kinsman,
fresh from the grave, has sat there. Consideration for the dead even
leads people to prepare a warm bath in the belief that, like living
folks, the kinsmen will want a wash before their festal meal.[96] Or
again beds were made ready for them while the living slept on straw. Not
always is it consciously the dead for whom these preparations are made,
sometimes they are said to be for the Trolls and sometimes even for
|236| the Saviour and His angels.{24} (We may compare with this
Christian idea the Tyrolese custom of leaving some milk for the Christ
Child and His Mother{25} at the hour of Midnight Mass, and a Breton
practice of leaving food all through Christmas night in case the Virgin
should come.{26})

It is difficult to say how far the other supernatural beings--their name
is legion--who in Norway, Sweden, Denmark, and Iceland are believed to
come out of their underground hiding-places during the long dark
Christmas nights, were originally ghosts of the dead. Twenty years ago
many students would have accounted for them all in this way, but the
tendency now is strongly against the derivation of all supernatural
beings from ancestor-worship. Elves, trolls, dwarfs, witches, and other
uncanny folk--the beliefs about their Christmas doings are too many to be
treated here; readers of Danish will find a long and very interesting
chapter on this subject in Dr. Feilberg's "Jul."{27} I may mention just
one familiar figure of the Scandinavian Yule, Tomte Gubbe, a sort of
genius of the house corresponding very much to the "drudging goblin" of
Milton's "L'Allegro," for whom the cream-bowl must be duly set. He may
perhaps be the spirit of the founder of the family. At all events on
Christmas Eve Yule porridge and new milk are s