"He is _not_ mixed up with it," said my mother. "What I am about to relate occurred many a long year before he was born. But he is fond of hearing odd tales; and some time ago when he was poorly, I told him this one amongst others, and it was then he made the observation that it is a relic of the worship of the Danes. Truly the child talked both sensibly and learnedly. The Danes, he said, were once a mighty people, and were masters of the land where we at present are; that they had gods of their own, strange and wild like themselves, and that it was their god Frey who gave his name to what we call Friday." "All this may be true," said my father, "but I should never think of quoting the child as an authority." "You must not be too hard on him," said my mother. "So this Frey had a wife whose name was Freya, and the child says that the old pagans considered them as the gods of love and marriage, and worshipped them as such; and that all young damsels were in the habit of addressing themselves to Freya in their love adventures, and of requesting her assistance. He told me, and he quite frightened me when he said it, that a certain night ceremony, in which I took part in my early youth, and which is the affair to which I have alluded, was in every point heathenish, being neither more nor less than an invocation to this Freya, the wife of the old pagan god." "And what ceremony might it be?" demanded my father. "It is getting something dark," he added, glancing around. "It is so," said my mother; "but these tales, you know, are best suited to the dark hour. The ceremony was rather a singular one; the child, however, explains it rationally enough. He says that this Freya was not only a very comely woman, but also particularly neat in her person, and that she invariably went dressed in snow-white linen." "And how came the child to know all this?" demanded my father. "Oh, that's his affair. I am merely repeating what he tells me. He reads strange books and converses with strange people. What he says, however, upon this matter, seems sensible enough. This Freya was fond of snow-white linen." "And what has that to do with the story?" "Everything. I have told you that the young maidens were in the habit of praying to her and requesting her favour and assistance in their love adventures, which it seems she readily granted to those whom she took any interest in. Now the readiest way to secure this interest and to procure her assistance in any matter of the heart, was to flatter her on the point where she was the most sensible. Whence the offering." "And what was the offering?" "It was once a common belief that the young maiden who should wash her linen white in pure running water and should 'watch' it whilst drying before a fire from eleven to twelve at night, would, at the stroke of midnight, see the face of the man appear before her who was destined to be her husband, and the child says that this was the '_Wake of Freya_'."