THE WILL-O'-THE-WISP AND ITS FOLK-LORE. 75 



" It is wrong ! it is wrong ! it is wrong ! " There is also a Danish 

 tradition which informs us that near Skovby, on the Isle of Falster, 

 there are many Jack-o'-Lanterns. They are believed to be the souls 

 of land-measurers, who, having in their lifetime perpetrated injustice 

 in their measurements, are doomed to run up Skovby bakke at mid- 

 night, which they measure with red-hot irons, exclaiming, "Here is 

 the clear and right boundary ! from here to there." By another cu- 

 rious notion the Will-o'-the- Wisps are represented to be the souls of 

 unbaptized children. On one occasion,* a Dutch parson, happening to 

 go home to his village late one evening, fell in with no less than three 

 of these fiery phenomena. Remembering them to be the souls of un- 

 baptized children, he solemnly stretched out his hand and pronounced 

 the words of baptism over them. Much, however, to his consternation 

 and surprise, in the twinkling of an eye a thousand or more of these 

 apparitions suddenly made their appearance no doubt all earnestly 

 wanting to be baptized. The good man, runs the story, was so terribly 

 frightened, that, forgetting all his kind intentions, he took to his heels 

 and ran home as fast as his legs could take him. In Lusatia, where 

 the same superstition prevails, these fires are supposed to be quite harm- 

 less, and the souls of the unbaptized children to be relieved from their 

 destined wanderings so soon as any pious hand throws a handful of 

 consecrated ground after them.f A Brittany piece of folk-lore is that 

 the " Porte-brandon " appears in the form of a child bearing a torch, 

 which he turns round like a burning wheel occasionally setting fire to 

 the villages which from some inexj^licable cause are suddenly wi'apped 

 in flames. According to a Netherlandish tradition,^ because the souls 

 of these wretched children can not enter heaven, they, under the form 

 of "Jack-o'-Lanterns," take their abode in forests, and in dark and 

 desert places, where they mourn over their bitter lot. Whenever they 

 are fortunate enough to see any one, they run up and hasten before 

 him, in order to show the way to some water, that they may get bap- 

 tized. Should no one take compassion on them, it is said that they 

 must for ever remain without the gates of paradise. 



Among other legends connected with this subject, we may mention 

 one current on the Continent, thus recorded by Carl Engel : On the 

 ridge of the high Rhon, near Bischofsheim, there are two morasses 

 known as the red and black morass where two villages are reported 

 to have stood which sunk into the earth on account of the dissolute 

 life of the inhabitants.] On these two morasses there appear at night 

 maidens in the shape of dazzling apparitions of light. They float and 

 flutter over the light of their former home, but are now less frequently 

 seen than in the olden time. A good many years ago, two or three of 



* Engel's "Musical Myths and Facts," 1876, i, 407. 



f Thoms's "Notelets on Shakespeare," I860, 63. 



X Thorpe's "North-German Mythology," iii, 220. " Musical Myths and Facts," i, 208. 



I Cf . similar tale in Hunt's " Popular Romances of the West of England." 



