take them under her care. She is an excellent Christian, but will keep for them one corner of her heart. To them alone can she entrust those little natural affairs, which, harmless as they are in a chaste wife’s dwelling, the Church at any rate would count as blameworthy. They are the confidants, the confessors of these touching womanly secrets. Of them she thinks, when she puts the holy log on the fire. It is Christmastide; but also is it the ancient festival of the Northern spirits, the Feast of the Longest Night. So, too, the Eve of May-day is the Pervigilium of Maia, when the tree is planted. So, too, with the Eve of St. John, the true feast-day of life, of flowers, and newly-awakened love. She who has no children makes it her especial duty to cherish these festivals, and to offer them a deep devotion. A vow to the Virgin would perhaps be of little avail, it being no concern of Mary’s. In a low whisper, she prefers addressing some ancient genius, worshipped in other days as a rustic deity, and afterwards by the kindness of some local church transformed into a saint.[22] And thus it happens that the bed, the cradle, all the sweetest mysteries on which the chaste and loving soul can brood, belong to the olden gods.
Nor are the sprites ungrateful. One day she awakes, and without having stirred a finger, finds all her housekeeping done. In her amazement she makes the sign of the cross and says nothing. When the good man goes she questions herself, but in vain. It must have been a spirit. “What can it be? How came it here? How I should like to see it! But I am afraid: they say it is death to see a spirit.”—Yet the cradle moves and swings of itself. She is clasped by some one, and a voice so soft, so low that she took it for her own, is heard saying, “Dearest mistress, I love to rock your babe, because I am myself a babe.” Her heart beats, and yet she takes courage a little. The innocence of the cradle gives this spirit also an innocent air, causing her to believe it good, gentle, suffered at least by God.
From that day forth she is no longer alone. She readily feels its presence, and it is never far from her. It rubs her gown, and she hears the grazing. It rambles momently about her, and plainly cannot leave her side. If she goes to the stable, it is there; and she believes that the other day it was in the churn.[23]
Pity she cannot take it up and look at it! Once, when she suddenly touched the brands, she fancied she saw the tricksy little thing tumbling about in the sparks; another time she missed catching it in a rose. Small as it is, it works, sweeps, arranges, saves her a thousand cares.
It has its faults, however; is giddy, bold, and if she did not hold it fast, might perhaps shake itself free. It observes and listens too much. It repeats sometimes of a morning some little word she had whispered very, very softly on going to bed, when the light was put out. She knows it to be very indiscreet, exceedingly curious. She is irked with feeling herself always followed about, complains of it, and likes complaining. Sometimes, having threatened him and turned him off, she feels herself quite at ease. But just then she finds herself caressed by a light breathing, as it were a bird’s wing. He was under a leaf. He laughs: his gentle voice, free from mocking, declares the joy he felt in taking his chaste young mistress by surprise. On her making a show of great wrath, “No, my darling, my little pet,” says the monkey, “you are not a bit sorry to have me here.”
She feels ashamed and dares say nothing more. But she guesses now that she loves him overmuch. She has scruples about it, and loves him yet more. All night she seems to feel him creeping up to her bed. In her fear she prays to God, and keeps close to her husband. What shall she do? She has not the strength to tell the Church. She tells her husband, who laughs at first incredulously. Then she owns to a little more—what a madcap the goblin is, sometimes even overbold. “What matters? He is so small.” Thus he himself sets her mind at ease.
Should we too feel reassured, we who can see more clearly? She is quite innocent still. She would shrink from copying the great lady up there who, in the face of her husband, has her court of lovers and her page. Let us own, however, that to that point the goblin has already smoothed the way. One could not have a more perilous page than he who hides himself under a rose; and, moreover, he smacks of the lover. More intrusive than anyone else, he is so tiny that he can creep anywhere.
He glides even into the husband’s heart, paying him court and winning his good graces. He looks after his tools, works in his garden, and of an evening, by way of reward, curls himself up in the chimney, behind the babe and the cat. They hear his small voice, just like a cricket’s; but they never see much of him, save when a faint glimmer lights a certain cranny in which he loves to stay. Then they see, or think they see, a thin little face; and cry out, “Ah! little one, we have seen you at last!”
In church they are told to mistrust the spirits, for even one that seems innocent, and glides about like a light breeze, may after all be a devil. They take good care not to believe it. His size begets a belief in his innocence. Whilst he is there, they thrive. The husband holds to him as much as the wife, and perhaps more. He sees that the tricksy little elf makes the fortune of the house.
FOOTNOTES:
“Trois pas du côté du banc,
Et trois pas du côté du lit;
Trois pas du côté du coffre,
Et trois pas—— Revenez ici.”
(Old Song of the Dancing Master.)
[19] All passages bearing on this point have been gathered together in two learned works by M. Maury (Les Fées, 1843; and La Magie, 1860). See also Grimm.
[20] A body of tales by the Trouvères of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.—Trans.
[21] This loyalty of hers is very touching indeed. In the fifth century the peasants braved persecution by parading the gods of the old religion in the shape of small dolls made of linen or flour. Still the same in the eighth century. The Capitularies threaten death in vain. In the twelfth century, Burchard, of Worms, attests their inutility. In 1389, the Sorbonne inveighs against certain traces of heathenism, while in 1400, Gerson talks of it as still a lively superstition.
[22] A. Maury, Magie, 159.
[23] This is a favourite haunt of the little rogue’s. To this day the Swiss, knowing his tastes, make him a present of some milk. His name among them is troll (drôle); among the Germans kobold, nix. In France he is called follet, goblin, lutin; in England, Puck, Robin Goodfellow. Shakespeare says, he does sleepy servants the kindness to pinch them black and blue, in order to rouse them.
CHAPTER IV.
TEMPTATIONS.
