one of those old repoussé plates once used for serving bridal cakes at the wedding feast, but now, my informant said, quite old-fashioned. A tradition of Fanø relates that in days of yore Queen Thyre Danebod was wrecked off this coast, and on her arrival from England first set foot on Danish ground in the adjoining "Isle of Man," spelt just like our own island of the Irish Channel, which was once also a Danish possession.* Here on her first arrival from England, mark, was Queen Thyre wrecked, which leads us to suppose she was, as old Saxo Grammaticus declares, a daughter of King Ethelred, though the Danes now deny it-old Gorm was much too sensible to lug women about on his expedition against King Alfred. In gratitude, a "thankoffering" for her preservation, she gave sundry fields to the church of Man: fields covered with buildings, so they say, which are to this present day called Mang Hølade; to the church of Fanø she presented a font of granite. We entered the * In 1266 Magnus, son of Hakon, King of Norway, concluded a treaty with Alexander III. of Scotland, by which he yielded to him, in perpetuity, the Hebrides and the Isle of Man, with the patronage of the bishopric. The prelates of the Isle of Man had no seat in the British House of Peers, for, till the Reformation, they acknowledged as their metropolitan the Archbishop of Tronyem, and had until the turning over to Sweden of the kingdom of Norway, and may, for what I know, still have, a right to a seat in the Stor-thing of that country, though, as may be imagined, the right was seldom exercised. Endless were the negociations entered upon between the Scottish and the Danish sovereigns as regards the islands of Sodor and Man, and it was some years before the whole affair was amicably arranged by the marriage of the Princess Margaret to James III. So careful, however, were they of their rights, that a clause was entered into the marriage contract, by which the princess in case of widowhood is forbidden to marry the King of England, or any subject of that nation, that they (these islands) may never fall under the power of the English sovereign. We got them, however, after all. church, a modern building, erected after the taste of the inhabitants; and there it stands-circular, misshapen, and rudely hewn-quite old and primitive enough to have been the gift of Queen Thyre. But Queen Thyre does not seem to have been the only person wrecked off this isle, if you may judge from the flotilla of little boats suspended to the beams of the village church. Many are very ancient, and some are as late as the years '45 and '53. The Lutheran Church does not reject, it appears, these thankofferings of the shipwrecked mariners. The people here, as they do at Skagen and other sandy places, cultivate the melon; but the working of amber is their staple trade. Quantities of it are picked up off their coasts. Whether the laws are as arbitrary as on the shores of Pomerania, where amber is a royal monopoly, and gibbets were planted on the beach-side ready to string up the offenders who should pilfer the royal waifs, I do not know; but they work it well and with taste. We returned home to a late dinner, and start to-morrow early for Ribe. CHAPTER XLVI. Ribe Cathedral - The anchorite Bishop- Sacred theatricals-Ribe "ret"-Sumptuary laws - Bridal trousseau of the eighteenth century Ragged schools of the middle ages - Death of Queen DagmarQueen Agnes at Ribehuus-Funeral of Marsk Stig-The robber's bride Legend of Tovelil - A Tinghuus- The werewolf and the nightmare - The night-raven and the basilisk-Monument to the heroes of Fredericia - Farewell to Jutland. - RIBE. Friday, July 22nd.-WE again cross our ferry. Horses ordered in advance, but not ready; the boer-cart fetches us in the water, and lands us at the kro-strax. Strax -how I abominate that word! The carriage is however there, but when that is loaded, and not before, do they harness the horses, and when the horses are at last harnessed then they make out the "time seddel." And the postilion? coming strax, gone to dress himself. Why, it's the very old man who's been loitering about with a pipe in his mouth, as composed as if he was going nowhere. We are off, a tiresome, dull, uninteresting drive of twenty English miles. Let no one ever take the west coast of Jutland, from the Limfiorde downwards; it does not repay. We have amused ourselves well enough with visits to our various friends, and a good dose of historical associations-history mixed up with locality and legend, as it should be. Danes, wise in their own conceit, are apt to consider they do the world a service in disproving the traditions |