Page:The Folk-Lore Journal Volume 5 1887.djvu/346

338 people, too, and so they learnt that Dorret was a maid, and Ekke's sweetheart. At this Dorret was very angry, and indeed played Ekke so many tricks—some of them ugly enough—as would suffice to rile the most patient lover, and Ekke was fain to consult Finn again. Finn was greatly annoyed, particularly at Ekke's irrepressible singing, and told him he was ever so much too stupid to be an earth-man. He bade Ekke swim off to Harnum and trouble the plain no more. At this the friends quarrelled, and Ekke seating himself on Finn's throne declared that so long as he sat there he was king of Finn and all his folk. The story here is abundantly interesting, but suffice it to say that Finn at last brings a tremendous sea-monster on the scene. "Oho!" cried Ekke. "It is my sea-wife, Ran. Come no nearer." Ajttd as she approached, he took a great leap into the sea, and was never more seen. So ends the tale of Ekke's wooing. The legends of Sylt are numerous and very interesting. My authority for the above is Sagen und Erzählungen des Sylter Friesen, by the late C. P. Hansen, of Keitum. I bought the book at Westerland, in Sylt. I have not seen it elsewhere. There is a kindred tale quoted in a note by Nork in his Mythologie der Volkssacen und Folksmärchen^ p. 169, from Mullenhof's ''Schlesweg-Holst. und Lauenb.'', p. 578. In Depenau dwelt a servant-maid who had a lover betrothed to her who visited her from time to time, but never said where he lived or what his name was. One morning as she was going amilking, she heard some one singing jollily. So she peeped through a hedge, and there was a dwarf dancing and singing,

(Hans Donnerstag.) Then knew the maid that her lover was really a dwarf. So when he came next to visit her, she said she would have no more to do with him, for he was one of the Underground Folks,—like Finn and his subjects in the Sylt legend I have given above.

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Glasgow.