Page:Norse mythology or, the religion of our forefathers, containing all the myths of the Eddas, systematized and interpreted with an introduction, vocabulary and index.djvu/212

 To learn music of him, a person must present him with a black lamb and also promise him resurrection and redemption.

The stromkarl, called in Norway grim or fosse-grim (force-grim), is a musical genius like the neck. He who has learned from him can play in such a masterly manner that the trees dance and waterfalls stop at his music.

The merman is described as of a handsome form with green or black hair and beard. He dwells either in the bottom of the sea or in cliffs near the sea-shore, and is regarded as rather a good and beneficent kind of being.

The mermaid (haffrue) is represented in the popular tradition sometimes as good, at other times as evil and treacherous. Her appearance is beautiful. Fishermen sometimes see her in the bright summer's sun, when a thin mist hangs over the sea, sitting on the surface of the water, and combing her long golden hair with a golden comb, or driving up her snow-white cattle to feed on the strands or small islands. At other times she comes as a beautiful maiden, chilled and shivering with the cold of the night, to the fires the fishermen have kindled, hoping by this means to entice them to her love. Her appearance prognosticates both storm and ill success in their fishing. People that are drowned, and whose bodies are not found, are believed to be taken into the dwellings of the mermaids.

It is the prevalent opinion among the common people of the North that all these various beings were once worsted in a conflict with superior powers, and condemned to remain until doomsday in certain assigned abodes. The rocks were given to the dwarfs; the groves and leafy trees to the elves; the caves and caverns to the