In the popular creed there is some strange connexion between the Elves and the trees. They not only frequent them, but they make an interchange of form with them. In the church-yard of Store Heddinge,[147] in Zealand, there are the remains of an oak wood. These, say the common people, are the Elle-king's soldiers; by day they are trees, by night valiant warriors. In the wood of Rugaard, in the same island, is a tree which by night becomes a whole Elle-people, and goes about all alive. It has no leaves upon it, yet it would be very unsafe to go to break or fell it, for the underground-people frequently hold their meetings under its branches. There is, in another place, an elder-tree growing in a farm-yard, which frequently takes a walk in the twilight about the yard, and peeps in through the window at the children when they are alone. It was, perhaps, these elder-trees that gave origin to the notion. In Danish _Hyld_ or _Hyl_--a word not far removed from Elle--is Elder, and the peasantry believe that in or under the elder-tree dwells a being called Hyldemoer (_Elder-mother_), or Hyldequinde (_Elder-woman_), with her ministrant spirits.[148] A Danish peasant, if he wanted to take any part of an elder-tree, used previously to say, three times--"O, Hyldemoer, Hyldemoer! let me take some of thy elder, and I will let thee take something of mine in return." If this was omitted he would be severely punished. They tell of a man who cut down an elder-tree, but he soon after died suddenly. It is, moreover, not prudent to have any furniture made of elder-wood. A child was once put to lie in a cradle made of this wood, but Hyldemoer came and pulled it by the legs, and gave it no rest till it was put to sleep elsewhere. Old David Monrad relates, that a shepherd, one night, heard his three children crying, and when he inquired the cause, they said some one had been sucking them. Their breasts were found to be swelled, and they were removed to another room, where they were quiet. The reason is said to have been that that room was floored with elder. The linden or lime tree is the favourite haunt of the Elves and cognate beings; and it is not safe to be near it after sunset.[149] FOOTNOTES: [128] That is, Wise People or Conjurors. They answer to the Fairy-women of Ireland. [129] Afzelius is of opinion that this notion respecting the Hill-people is derived from the time of the introduction of Christianity into the north, and expresses the sympathy of the first converts with their forefathers, who had died without a knowledge of the Redeemer, and lay buried in heathen earth, and whose unhappy spirits were doomed to wander about these lower regions, or sigh within their mounds till the great day of redemption.