mi-lantuhns don't come out of marshes, but out of grave-yards, and stun drowning folk, and then suck out their blood and leave them as dry as husks; that kind of Wuller-Wups are the worst, because they grow from sucking the life out of creatures till they are as tall as big cotton-wood trees, and the creatures they have sucked to death get up and go on in the same business, and they too grow and grow, appearing in fiery shape, but all their life is on the outside, and their hearts are as cold as death" (p. 280). The last touch seems peculiarly horrible, and their malignant vampire-like habits have no counterpart in English folk-lore, but must be due to African imagination. I do not know whether any Will-o'-the-wisp conceptions and stories are current amongst the Red Indians.
THE IRISH MIRABILIA IN THE NORSE "SPECULUM REGALE".
BY KUNO MEYER.
Kongs Skuggsjo, or Speculum Regale, is the title of an old Norse book written about 1250 A.D.[1] An outline of its contents is as follows.
In an introduction the writer says that, anxious for instruction and advice on various matters pertaining to the proper conduct of life, he applied to his wise and kind father, who gave him full answers to all his questions. The son was then asked by several distinguished and learned men, who had been present at these conversations, to put them all in writing. He did so, and called his book Speculum Regale, not boastfully, but because it was to be as a mirror to men, and because, among other things, rules for the conduct of kings are set forth therein. Lastly, he says that for the reader or hearer of the book it is not
- ↑ See Vigfusson and Powell, Icelandic Prose Reader, p. 425. I have used the editions of Halfdan Einersen, 1768, and of Oscar Brenner, Munich, 1881.
