Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 18, 1907.djvu/309

 Children and Wells. 273

In some places, as we have seen, he is a crocodile or a fish. In others he is a frog. In others, again, he is a snake or a worm.^ And here, again, we come into con- tact with a branch of folk-lore not without bearing upon fertility.

In many places the water-gods are small beings who sometimes, it would seem, look very like children. In Russia, e.g., the souls of wee unchristened bairns, when they die, soar up into the air, and you can hear them beg just three times for baptism. If some kind person accedes to this very proper request by pronouncing the appropriate prayers and formulae, the babies will go to heaven. If not, they will go into the rivers and become Russalki, that is river-gods like the Naiads and Nereids.^ In South Russia these beings are called "Mafki."

Some tales from the old German mythology and folk- lore may be cited as further examples. Once upon a time a little girl was playing on the grass by the shore when she was seized by a pretty boy wearing a handsome peasant's belt. He wanted his head scratched, and forced her to do it for him. When she was busy at her task he quietly slipped the girdle round her without her noticing, and chained her, in this way, to himself. But she went on scratching all the same, until the boy, soothed by the friction, fell asleep. Then a woman came along and asked the little girl what she was doing. As she was explaining the situation to the new-comer, she slipped her- self out of the girdle which was binding her to the boy. Meantime the boy lay asleep with his lips apart, and the woman went up and had a good look at him. " Why ! " she exclaimed, "that is a nixie. Look at his fish's teeth!" And in a moment the nixie was gone.^

^Robertson-Smith, I.e., p. i68 ; Hope, I.e., p. 68 et seq.\ Grimm, I.e., vol. ii., p. 585.

'Ploss, Das Kind, vol. i., p. 104 and p. 97.
 * Grimm, I.e., vol. ii., p. 491.