Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 18, 1907.djvu/311

 Children and Wells. 275

saw the sun the whole of the time. But at last her brother went down for her and managed to bring her safely back to the upper world. For seven long years the sea-wife awaited the return of the girl, and at last, when the time passed and she never appeared, the sea-wife got into a rage, and, seizing her staff, lashed the water until it splashed up high, and cried, " Had I trowed thou wert so false, I'd have nicked thy thievish neck."^

Among the Lithuanians and Prussians there was an old fable of a personage known as Laiinie, who used to steal babies.^ This Laume had a thunderbolt for her breast and a rainbow for her girdle, so she is, without doubt, another personification of the rain and thunder deity. The same deity is known as Holla in some parts of Germany. She also takes a lively interest in children. In North Germany the peasants say that the water-sprites steal their children. And in Oldenburg the Schinonie, who lives in holes and caverns, steals unbaptized children, and leaves behind a little being known as Wasser- weibchen?

In some German fairy tales, children who fall into wells come under the power of the water-nixie.*

Going one stage further in our enquiry, if the water- gods are supposed to be partial to little children, we ought to be able to find instances of child-sacrifice to wells and rivers.^ Now, although the dreadful crime of killing or forsaking new-born children has been a world- wide practice in ages past and is not abolished yet, and although we do come across cases where such children were destroyed by drowning, still I have only been able to find comparatively few examples of the deliberate sacrifice of children to water. A number of highly suggestive

'Grimm, I.e., vol. ii., p. 494. - Ploss, I.e., Bd. i., p. 113.

^ Ploss, I.e., Bd. i., p. 114. ^ Grimm, I.e., vol. ii., p. 497.

"See Grimm on this point. I.e., vol. ii., p. 494 ct scq.