As Joseph was a-walking, He heard an angel sing, “This shall be the birth-night Of Christ our heavenly king. “His birth-bed shall be neither In housen nor in hall, Nor in the place of paradise, But in the oxen’s stall. “He neither shall be rockèd In silver nor in gold, But in the wooden manger That lieth in the mould. “He neither shall be washen With white wine nor with red, But with the fair spring water That on you shall be shed. “He neither shall be clothèd In purple nor in pall, But in the fair white linen That usen babies all.” As Joseph was a-walking, Thus did the angels sing, And Mary’s son at midnight Was born to be our King. [Illustration: two men] The “Jule-Nissen” and Blowing in the Yule I do not know how the forty years I have been away have dealt with “Jule-nissen,” the Christmas elf of my childhood. He was pretty old then, gray and bent, and there were signs that his time was nearly over. So it may be that they have laid him away. I shall find out when I go over there next time. When I was a boy we never sat down to our Christmas Eve dinner until a bowl of rice and milk had been taken up to the attic, where he lived with the marten and its young and kept an eye upon the house—saw that everything ran smoothly. I never met him myself, but I know the house-cat must have done so. No doubt they were well acquainted; for when in the morning I went in for the bowl, there it was, quite dry and licked clean, and the cat purring in the corner. So, being there all night, he must have seen and likely talked with him.... The Nisse was of the family, as you see, very much of it, and certainly not to be classed with the cattle. Yet they were his special concern; he kept them quiet and saw to it, when the stableman forgot, that they were properly bedded and cleaned and fed. He was very well known to the hands about the farm, and they said that he looked just like a little old man, all in gray and with a pointed red nightcap and long gray beard. He was always civilly treated, as he surely deserved to be, but Christmas was his great holiday, when he became part of it, indeed, and was made much of. So, for that matter, was everything that lived under the husbandman’s roof, or within reach of it.