It is more difficult to adduce pure Scandinavian remains of popular superstitions, as in this respect the Teutonic races have so very much in common; and consequently one is afraid to draw too strong conclusions from the striking agreement usually shown in the phantoms of the imagination among north Englishmen and their Scandinavian kinsmen. Yet it deserves to be mentioned that the Scandinavian name _Nök_ (a river-sprite), is not yet forgotten in Yorkshire; although some by “Nick” or “Oud-Nick” erroneously imagine the devil to be meant, instead of the water-sprite. Many little tricks performed by the _nix_ (_Dan._, nisse, a brownîe) are known there, as well as in Scandinavia. Once, in England, the conversation happening to turn on these little beings, I related our Scandinavian legend about a peasant who was plagued and teazed in all possible ways by a _nisse_ or brownîe, till at last he could bear it no longer, and determined to _flit_ (move house) to another place. When he had conveyed almost all his goods to the new house, and was just driving thither with the last load, he accidently turned round, and whom did he see? Why, the brownîe with his red cap, who sat quietly on the top of the load, and nodded familiarly to him, with the words, “Now we flit.” One of the persons present immediately expressed a lively surprise on hearing a legend related as Danish, and that, too, almost word for word, which he had often heard in Lancashire in his youth. The word _flit_ was, and still is, used there by the common people. A natural result of the long-continued and extensive dominion of the Danes in the north of England is, that they also are classed with the invisible mystical beings, which, in the imagination of the people, haunt that district. In certain places among the remote mountains of the north-west, people still fancy that they hear on the evening breeze tones as of strings played upon, and melancholy lays in a foreign tongue. Often, too, even when nobody hears anything unusual, the animals prick up their ears as if in astonishment. It is “the Danish boy,” who sadly sings the old bardic lays over the barrows of his once mighty forefathers. ---------- SECTION IX. The Outrages of the Danes.—The Danes and Normans.—Influence of the Danes in England.