Page:Curious myths of the Middle Ages (1876).djvu/234

 Here John found a little maiden, Elizabeth Krabbin, daughter of the minister of Rambin, who had been spirited away by the little people a few years before. John and she soon formed an attachment, and were wont to walk together. On one of their strolls they must have approached the surface, for they heard the crowing of a cock. At the sound, the remembrance of earth returned to them, and they felt a desire once more to be on Christian land. “Every thing down here,” said Elizabeth, “is beautiful, and the little folk are kind, but there is not pure pleasure here. Every night I dream of my father and mother, and of our churchyard; and I cannot go to the House of God, and worship Him as a Christian should; for this is no Christian life we lead down here, but a delusive, half-heathen one.”

John, however, could not release Elizabeth from the power of the underground folk till he found a toad, the sight and smell of which was so repulsive to them, that they readily complied with every request of John, on condition he should bury the offensive reptile.

Then he and the girl escaped, taking with them gold and silver and jewels, to such an amount, that their fortune was made. They were, of course, married; and John bought up half the island of