Judas that he is forgiven. But remorse drives him to hang himself, notwithstanding. He tries a pine and a fir, but finds them too soft, so he selects an aspen tree--hence the perpetual agitation of its leaves. One of their peculiar legendary saints is Diter Thomas, who was so holy that he could hang his clothes when going to bed--which he appears to have done in the daytime--on a sunbeam. One day, however, at church this devout man espied the Devil seated behind the altar, engaged in taking down on a fresh cowhide the names of all whom he saw sleeping in church. There must have been an unusually large number, for the cowhide proved too small, and Satan was fain to stretch it by holding one end with his teeth and pulling at the other with his hands. As it happened, his teeth let go, and back went his head against the wall, with a bang which woke up all the sleepers. This aroused in pious Thomas so much mirth that he forgot the respect due to the holy place, and laughed aloud--in punishment for which offence his grace departed from him, and he was thenceforth reduced to the necessity of using pegs. For their regularity in attendance at church I half suspect that the peculiar fondness of the Wends for singing is, in not a small degree, accountable; and, it may be, also the attraction of a little gossip after service, and the excitement of an occasional little fair. The Wends would indeed not be Slavs if they were not engrossingly fond of singing. Singing is, in fact, among young folk reckoned the principal accomplishment. And they have a rich store of songs, set to exceedingly melodious airs. They have them of all descriptions--legends and convivial songs, martial songs, sacred hymns, short _róncka_ and _reje_ for the dancing-room, and long elegies and ballads for the field, to shorten the long summer's day out at work. They have their own curious instruments, too, still in use--a three-stringed fiddle, a peculiar sort of hautboy, and bagpipes of two different sizes, the larger one invariably ornamented with a goat's head. To be a _kantorka_ (precentress) in church, or even in a spinning-room, is a thing for a Wendish girl to be proud of, and to remember to her old age. What a Wendish village would in winter time be without those social spinning meetings it is difficult to imagine. To no race do conviviality, mirth, harmless but boisterous amusement, seem so much of a necessary of life. And none appears to be so thoroughly devoted to the practice of homely household virtues. Spinning, poultry-breeding, bee-keeping, gardening, coupled with singing, and nursing children, and making model housewives--these are the things which occupy girls' thoughts. At her very christening the baby-girl, borne back from church "as a Christian," is made to find a spindle and a broom carefully laid in the room, to act as charms in setting her infant thoughts in the right direction. Her "sponsor's letter" is sure to contain some symbolic grains of flax and millet.