Extracted from Jacob Grimm's Teutonic Mythology
Water sprites have manythings in common
with mountain sprites but many things peculiar to them.
The males like those of the schrat
kind, come up singly rather than in companies, the water man is
represented as oldish with a long beard, often he is many headed. In
Danish folk song the enokke lifts his beard aloft he wears a green hat
and when he grins you see his green teeth.
He at times is the figure of a wild boy
with shaggy hair or else with yellow girls and a red cap
Nakki of the Finns is said to have iron
teeth.
At times water sprites will go and buy grain and if they pay more
than the price a dearth follows but if he buys cheaper the prices fall.
Dancing and song and music are the
delight of all water sprites, like sirens the nixe by her song draws listing youth to herself then into the deep. In Sweden they tell of the stromkarls
alluring enchanting strain they have eleven song variations but only
ten may you dance to the eleventh belongs to the night spirit and his
band; begin to t play that the table sand benches, cup and can, gray
beards grandmothers, blind lame, and even babes in cradle would begin
to dance.
The stromkarl loves to linger by mills
and waterfulls hence his Norwegion name fossegrim people would offer a black lamb and
were taught music by him in return the fossegrimm too on calm dark
evenings entices men by his music and instruct in the fiddle or other
stringed instruments in return for a little white he-goat. If the
victim is fat the fossegrim clutches hold of the players right and
guides it up and down till blood starts out of hall his finger tips, then the pupil is perfect in his art and can play so that all the
trees shall dance and torrents in their fall stand still.
Although Christianity forbids such
offerings people retain a certain awe and reverence and have not
quite given up all faith in their power and influence.
The nix also extracts cruel sacrifices
of which memory is preserved in nearly all popular tradition, when
people are drowned in a river it is common to saw the river sprite
demands his yearly victim which is usually an innocent child.
On the whole there runs through stories
of water sprites a vein of cruilty of bloodthirstiness which is not
found among the sprites of mountains woods and homes. The nix kills
humans and his own folk who go ashore to mingle with men. A girl was
taken by a sprite and passed fifteen years in a haf-fruns gard home
(sea wife)and was never seen for all that time. Her brother rescued
her
Some others suppose that they do not
drown but instead bear peoples souls to their next abode
in seaden drowned men who's bodies ar
enot found are supposed to have been drawn into the dwelling of
hafafru
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