The Water Nymph.1

About a mile northwest from Järna Church was located, at one time, a water mill, Snöåqvarn, belonging to the parishioners of Näs. [195]

One Sunday morning, before the church of Järna had a priest of its own, the chaplain of Näs set out for that place, and had just arrived at the mill, when he saw a water man sitting in the rapids below it, playing on a fiddle a psalm from a psalm book.

“What good do you think your playing will do you?” said the priest. “You need expect no mercy!”

Sadly the figure ceased playing, and broke his fiddle in pieces, whereupon the priest regretted his severe condemnation, and again spoke:

“God knows, maybe, after all.”

“Is that so?” exclaimed the man in joy, “then I’ll pick up my pieces and play better and more charmingly than before.”

To another mill in the same parish, Lindqvarn, near Lindsnäs, a peasant came one time with his grist. Along in the night he thought he would go and see if it was yet ground. He noticed on his arrival that the mill was not running, and opened the wicket to the wheel-house to learn what the matter might be, when he saw, glaring at him from the water below, two eyes “as large as half moons.”

“The devil! what great eyes you have!” cried the peasant, but received no reply.

“Whew! what monstrous eyes you have!” the peasant again cried; again no answer. [196]

Then he sprang into the mill, where he stirred up a large fire brand, with which he returned.

“Are your eyes as large now?” he shouted through the wicket.

“Yes!” came in answer from the stream.

Hereupon the peasant ran the stick through a hole in the floor, where the voice seemed to come from, and at once the wheel began to turn again. [197]

1 The water nymphs are noted musicians; their music usually being in a plaintive strain and expressing a longing to be released on the day of [195]judgment. Sometimes, but not so often, they appear in the folk-lore as the capricious rulers of the streams which they inhabit. It is believed, in certain regions that one should not grind grain on the night before Christmas, for at that time the nymphs are out in all the streams, and if they find a mill going they stop it, break it, or grind at such a furious rate that the millstones burst. ↑