Note 16 — Chapter XII · WÄLSCH-TIROL. VAL SUGANA.—GIUDICARIA.—FOLKLORE.

He has also a ‘Salvanel,’ who seems a male counterpart of his Gannes, helpful and soft-natured, with no vice save a tendency to steal milk. In return he teaches mankind to make butter and cheese, and other useful arts, and is specially kind to little children; his name bears some relation with the local word for the ‘Jack-’o-lantern’ reflection from glass or water. But he found also the ‘Salvan’ in his pernicious character under the names of ‘Bedelmon,’ ‘Bildermon,’ and ‘Salvadegh.’ But the most pernicious spirit that came in his way was the ‘Beatrik,’ who is an unmitigated fury,16 and the natural enemy and antagonist of a gentle, helpful, beauteous spirit called Angane, Eguane, and Enguane, but possessed with his German ideas, he saw in the being so designated nothing but ‘a witch, or perhaps a fairy-natured being.’17 In another page he pairs them off more fairly with the ‘Säligen Fräulein’ of Germany. Here is a story of their ways which was given me, but I do not know if it was founded on his at page 215, or independently collected:—A young woodman was surprised one day to meet, in the midst of his lonely toil, a beautiful maiden, who nodded to him familiarly, and bid him ‘good day’ with more than common interest. Nor did her conversation end with ‘good day;’ she found enough to prattle about till night fell; and then, though the young woodman had been sitting by her side instead of attending to his work, he found he had a bigger faggot to carry home than he had ever made up with all his day’s labour before. ‘That was a sweet maiden, indeed,’ he mused on his way home. ‘And yet I doubt if she is all right. But her talk showed she was of the right stuff to make a housewife; but then Maddalena, what will she say? ha! let her say what she will, she won’t stand comparing with her! I wonder if I shall see her again! And yet I don’t think she’s altogether right, either.’ So he mused all through the lonely evening, and all through the sleepless night; and his first thought in the morning was of whether he should meet that strange maiden again in the wood. In the wood he did meet her, and again she wiled away the day with her prattle; and again and again they met. Maddalena sat at home weeping over her spinning-wheel, and wondering why he came no more to take her for a walk; but Maddalena was forgotten, and one day it was her fate to see her former lover and the strange maiden married in the parish church. The woodman was not surprised to find his seiren the model of a wife. The house was swept so clean, the clothes so neatly mended, the butter so quickly churned, that though all the villagers had been shy of the strange maiden, none could deny her excellent capacity. The woodman was very well satisfied with his choice; but as he had always a misgiving that there was something not quite right with her, he could not help nervously watching every little peculiarity. It was thus he came to notice that it was occasionally her custom to lay her long wavy tresses carefully outside the bedclothes at night; he thought this odd, and determined to watch her. One night, when she thought him asleep, and he was only feigning, he observed that she took a little box of salve from under her pillow, and rubbing it into her hair, said, Schiva boschi e schiva selva (shun woods and forests), and then was off and away in a trice. Determined to follow her, he took out the box of salve, and rubbing it into his hair, tried to repeat her saying, but he did not recall it precisely, and said instead, Passa boschi e passa selvi (away through woods and forests), and away he went, faster than he liked, while his clothes and his skin were torn by the branches of the trees. He came, however, to the precincts of a great palace, where was a fresh green meadow, on which were a number of kine grazing, and some were sleek and well-favoured, while some were piteously lean; and yet they all fed on the same pasture. The palace had so many windows that it took him a long while to count them, and when he had counted them he found there were three hundred and sixty-five. He climbed up and looked in at one of them—it was the window of a great hall, where a number of Enguane were dancing, and his wife in their midst. When he saw her, he called out to her; but when she heard his voice, instead of coming she took to flight, nor could he overtake her with all his strength for running. At last, after pursuing her for three days, he came to the hut of a holy hermit, who asked him wherefore he ran so fast; and when he had told him, the hermit bid him give up the chase, for an Enguane was not a proper wife for a Christian man. Then the woodman asked him to let him become a hermit too, and pass the remainder of his life under his guidance. To this the hermit consented; so he built him a house, and they lived together in holy contemplation. One day the woodman told the hermit of what he had seen when he went forth to seek his wife; and the hermit told him that the palace with three hundred and sixty-five windows represented this temporal world, with its years of three hundred and sixty-five days; but the fresh green meadow was the Church, in which the Redeemer gave His Flesh for the food of all alike; but that while some pastured on it to the gain of their eternal salvation, who were represented by the well-favoured kine, there were also the perverse and sinful, who eat to their own condemnation, and were represented by the lean and distressed kine.18