Page:Popular tales from the Norse (1912).djvu/142

 cxxxvi he might at least have raised some of his votaries to temporal rank, and to the pomps and the vanities of this world. An old German proverb expresses this notorious fact, by saying, that "every seven years a witch is three halfpence richer;" and so with all the unholy means of Hell at their command, they dragged out their lives, along with their black cats, in poverty and wretchedness. To this fate at last came the worshippers of the great goddess Freyja, whom our forefathers adored as the goddess of love and plenty; and whose car was drawn by those animals which popular superstition has ever since assigned to the "old witch" of our English villages.

The North was not free, any more than the rest of the Protestant world, from this direful superstition, which ran