ort succeeded to the throne. It is no longer necessary for us to
conceal our marriage and our children. Here sit my twelve daughters, and
their foster-parents, the labourer and his wife, shall dwell with me as
my pensioners till their death. But you, worthless scamp, whom I have
put in chains, shall also receive your just reward. You shall sit
chained in a mountain of gold, so that your greedy eyes shall ever
behold the gold without your being able to touch a particle. For seven
hundred years you shall endure this torment before death shall have
power to bring you rest. This is my decree."

When the queen had finished speaking, a noise was heard like a violent
clap of thunder; the earth quaked, and the magistrates and their
servants fell down stunned. When they recovered their senses, they found
themselves in the wood to which their guide had led them, but on the
spot where the palace of glass had stood in all its splendour, clear
cold water now gushed forth from a small spring. Nothing more was ever
heard of the labourer, his wife, or his avaricious son-in-law. The widow
of the latter married another husband in the autumn, and lived happily
with him for the rest of her life.

[Footnote 37: Compare the story of the "Treasure-Bringer," in a later
section of the volume.]

[Footnote 38: Brandy is offered by a lover in Esthonia, and accepted by
the girl if she favours him.]

[Footnote 39: Small stones are used for cleaning milk-cans.]

[Footnote 40: Jannsen remarks that her authority seems to have been
limited to these, and also that she cannot have been the supreme
Water-Goddess, whose husband is Ahti, the God of the Sea.]

[Footnote 41: These long-lived, but mortal Elemental Powers seem to
correspond to some classes of the Arabian Jinn, as for instance, the
Diving Jinn in such tales as "Jullanar of the Sea" (_Thousand and One
Nights_). They may also be compared with the Elemental Spirits of the
Rosicrucians, who are long-lived, but likewise mortal.]

THE FOUR GIFTS OF THE WATER-SPRITE.

(JANNSEN.)

Four boys were playing one Sunday on the banks of Lake Peipus, when the
water-spirit appeared to them in the form of an old man with long grey
hair and beard, and gave each of them a present--a boat, a hammer, a
ploughshare, and a little book. As they grew up, one became a smith,
another a fisherman, another a farmer, and the last a great king, who
conquered the Danes and Swedes.

* * *