CHAPTER XXXI.

The fish and the ring-Fortunes of the house of Stubbe- The traitor page-Marsk Stig, the outlaw — Château of Friisenborg — Artificial egg hatching.

LINAA.

June 21st.-THE horses are ordered at six o'clock-it is nearly seven before they arrive-postilion overslept himself. We retrace our steps as far as the village of Linaa, concerning which I before promised you a story.

Many centuries ago there lived, in the neighbourhood of the kro where we now stand, three sisters, Linaa, Dall, and Bjara by name, as remarkable for their piety as for their riches. Their father, a fierce viking, on his departure upon some marauding expedition, confided to their care his treasure, and then disappeared from the face of the earth-killed in battle, slain, or drowned; so his daughters wisely dug up his gold, instead of leaving it to grace in modern days the cabinets of the Musée Scandinave, and divided it among them; each determined to apply a part of her share to a good purpose very much in vogue at that period-the building of a church. Three sacred edifices soon rose proudly on the banks of the adjoining lake, on the spots where the villages of Linaa, Dallerup, and Bjarup now stand. For matins, mid-day, and vesper song, these pious damsels passed the water in a boat-quite edifying it would

have been to the surrounding population, but unfortunately there was no one to see them; Jutland was then a bleak, bare desert, quite uninhabited. One Sabbath morn the sisters as usual rowed across the waters of the lake; Bjara held the oars, Linaa steered, while Dall was busily employed looking out the morning lessons in her Book of Hours. The bark now touches land; the sisters leap ashore-when suddenly Bjara misses from her finger her golden ring, the gift of her viking father. "My ring, my ring!" cries Bjara; "somebody must have taken it; lost-stolen !"—and she begins to hunt in every corner of the boat, but without success; so, waxing wroth, she invokes maledictions on the head of the man, woman, or living thing, who may have deprived her of her ornament. Loud and fearful were her curses; in vain her sisters tried to pacify her.

Bjara, dear Bjara! how can you be so wicked?” exclaimed Dall, while Linaa wept bitterly. Their entreaties were of no avail; but now, as they gain the church porch, the waters of the lake begin to swell, overflow, and gradually disperse themselves over the plain, leaving the bottom dry, and the fishes, eels, carp, salmon, perch, and flounders, all stranded upon the heather. "It's a fish who has swallowed my ring," triumphantly exclaims Bjara; and quick and sharp as a policeman she passes in review the different members of the finny tribe. The eels wriggle; flounders perform somersaults in the air--no guilt there; pike open wide their jaws," Put your finger down if you like," say they; "you'll catch something, not the ring"-when, reposing on a bed of reeds, puffing, blowing, she espies a bloated carp: "Here's the culprit," she exclaims-out with her bodkin, rips him up without mercy, and draws forth from

his stomach her lost treasure. Anon the waters again become troubled, and recede quickly, fish and all, to the basin of the lake. Somehow or other, though, the lake never recovered Bjara's malediction; gradually it thickened, dried up, and the Bjarup Sø in course of time became a Bjarup Mose. See how the curse recoiled upon Bjara's church. The foundation soon gave way, the effect, some say, of the inundation; it is now a heap of ruins, while Dallerup and Linaa both stand, picturesque objects, though perhaps a little churchwardenized. We are at Mollerup: let us observe the storks -one, two, three, four nests, each with young ones ready to fly-not quite courage yet; and here arrives the male -what has he brought them home for breakfast in his mouth? a marsh frog! More nests still in Laasby: happy village! rather too productive perhaps, for the storks bring "triplets" to the Danish peasants, as common an occurrence as twins in England. In our own tongue we have no term like "trillinge;" we borrow triplets from the dice-box-a very bad throw in either case; but the storks mean to be kind, though the present be unwelcome. Mind how you make game of the young ones; they never forget it—are very tenacious about their long lanky legs. As there is nothing to look at until we come to Skovby, I may as well tell what befell the Stubbe family-"gammel adelige familie uddodt,” -all because they laughed at the young storks' legs.

You have all heard of Cadet Roussel, whose fortunes hung on his possessing three of everything—

"Cadet Roussel a trois habits,

Deux jaunes, et l'autre en papier gris,”—

the last not a solid article perhaps, but it rhymes

very nicely. Well, the fortunes of the noble house of Stubbe depended upon the mystic number seven :— 7 churches, 7 mills, 7 islands, 7 lakes, 7 forests, 77 ploughs, 777 windows in their manor; cows, pigs, horses, all in proportion; and 7 children, or 77 if they could get them,-so much the better, but 7 they must have. This last, as he proved to be, of the Stubbes, was a bad small boy, always making game of the young storks as they sat in their mother's nest on the house-top. "Stork, long-legged stork," he sang: I'm sure I forget what besides, but something very rude, at which they were highly affronted. “All very fine now, Mr. Stubbe; wait a little, and our turn will come; who'll laugh then?" muttered the old mother.

The young squire grew up and was sent to Aalborg College, where he received a first-rate education learnt Italian and dancing, and very useful he must have found the former accomplishment, living on his estates in Jutland, among the moors and forests; he spoke it however with a first-rate (Aalborg) accent. Young Stubbe grows apace, and somehow does not tame down. He is thirty now, and should think of settling forty finds him an old bachelor, and fifty still.

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Marry before it is too late and I close my eyes," exclaims his venerable mother; so marry he did—a neighbour's daughter. "Plenty of time, mother," he laughingly exclaimed; "you know we Stubbes always throw doublets; I shall have my seven children before five years are over." There is great joy at Stubbesholm, an heir expected daily. Young Stubbe rubs his hands"Triplets, you'll see, mother, like the old lady on her epitaphium in the church-aisle-our grandam." "Hah, hah!" laughed the old stork from the top of the chimney,

where she was listening; "we shall see when the time comes." The time did come, and a bad time too-dead twins-nearly costing the young mother's life; and months and years rolled on-more dead children, and more still, and Stubbe borne down with age and sorrow. Then says the old stork, "Vengeance is not ours; we must pardon his offences for his young wife's sake." Next time a living baby comes, fresh and blue-eyed; and then come twins, and then a fourth, and twins again. Stubbe rubs his hands: six children living; one more and he is saved; and so he would have been had he reckoned with the storks alone; but grim Death steps in-a fit of apoplexy after the christening dinner of the last-born child: he is carried to the church vaults, father of six children. The fortunes of the Stubbes now ended: like others of ancient lineage, they passed away-one lake "Stubbe Sø"* marked on the map alone recalls their memory.

At Skovby pause one moment. Turn to the right and gaze towards Storring; there you will discern two mounds of earth, not far removed one from the other Dronninghøi and Steilehøi they are called. Here, on the first-named, stood Queen Agnes of Brandenburg, widowed queen of Erik Glipping, who was slain by the Grand Marshal Stig† and other confederate

*Stubbe Sø is in the Mols district.

† Marsk (Marshal) Stig Andersen Hvide was of the same family as Absalon and Duke Porse; like the latter, he made a grand marriage. Concerning the intimacy of King Erik and this lady there was great scandal, and it was to revenge the insult offered to his honour that the marshal plotted, and later executed, the murder of his sovereign. Marsk Stig was renowned all over the North for his splendour. In an old Swedish lay it runs, "Stig, he proceeds to the marble halls: there he invites the king to his home so joyfully; he invites the king and all his men, the queen with her damsels fair. When they came to