Page:The Folk-Lore Journal Volume 5 1887.djvu/344

 336 The Frisian tale has its scene in Sylt, a singular and weird island interesting to Englishmen above all others because thence Hengist and Horsa sailed to the conquest of England. Ekke the sea-god, or giant merman, fell in love with and captured a girl of Rantum to be his bride. She did not know who he was, and in answer to her entreaties he promised that if she discovered his name he would let her free. Long she wondered over this. At last one night as she wandered sadly over the grey sand, she heard a voice as if under one of the sand-mounds, singing:

Or in English:

Right joyfully jumped up the girl, and called out "Thou art Ekke Nekkepenn, and I remain Inge of Rantum." Never came Ekke to her again as wooer, but from that day to this, by storms and floods, he has unceasedly laboured to destroy Inge's country. And Rantum now lies a mile under the sea, and still he labours on at lonely Hornum.

A stranger and probably more ancient version of Ekke's wooing is also preserved in Sylt. Long, long ago, when the Frisians first came to Sylt, they found there a race of little people, whom they drove to the empty waste to the north of the island. There these little folk, who wore red caps and had stone axes, who had no money but were always merry, who worked none and stole all they could, lived in hills and holes. They danced by moonlight on the mounds and sang. Their head was King Finn. His traditional home was an underground dwelling of the late stone age, which I visited a few days ago