nightmare: [Note: This superstition of the people is mentioned in
Thieles's Danish traditions: "When a girl at midnight stretches
between four sticks the membrane in which the foal lies when it is
born, and then creeps naked through it, she will bear her child
without pains; but all the boys she conceives will become were-wolves,
and all the girls nightmares. You will know them in the daytime by
their eyebrows grown together over the nose. In the night she creeps
in through the key-hole, and places herself upon the sleeper's bosom.
The same superstition is also found in German Grimm speaks thus
about it: If you say to the nightmare,--
Old hag, come to-morrow,
And I from you will borrow,
it retreats directly, and comes the next morning in the shape of a
man to borrow something."] they are angry with her, and how could
one expect, from the class to which she belongs, that she should
return scorn with kindness? She is become savage, that she may not
feel their neglect. In a few days, when we have the mowing-feast,
you yourself will see how every girl gets a partner; but poor
Sidsel may adorn herself as much as she likes, she still stands
alone. It is truly hard to be born such a being!"

"The unfortunate girl!" sighed Otto.

"O, she does not feel it!" said Wilhelm: "she cannot feel it; for
that she is too rude, too much of an animal."



CHAPTER X