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Chap. XLI.
FOOD OF THE PEASANTS.
175
The Agger peasants live chiefly on fish. Like all
Normen, they are lovers of sausages (pøtse) and other
“ salaisons.” A wedding-feast here consists of four
courses of fish—very common fish, too, for they devour
dog-fish and all sorts of nastiness. For meat they care
not, neither for bread. Pity, they say, “ to grind and
bake good corn into loaves, which might be turned into
brandy.”
This indifference to bread is not in accordance with
the religion of the Danes, for they say, “ We must
not even lay the Bible upon bread.” And when in
Zealand a peasant drops a piece of bread, he takes
it up quickly, and, kissing it, begs pardon of “ Our
Lord ” for having treated carelessly “ His good gift.”
Many, too, are the stories related by the old as warning
to the children “ not to profane the blessed bread.”
A young girl in service near Flinterup, in Zealand,
one day received permission to visit her aged mother,
and her mistress gave her five loaves to take as a
present. So the girl dressed herself as fine as a
peafowl, and, coming where the road was impassable
on account of the mud, to avoid dirtying her shoes, laid
down the loaves as stepping-stones, in order to pass
over dry-footed. But as she placed her feet upon the
bread, the loaves sank deeper and deeper, till she
entirely disappeared in the bog and was seen no more.
The girls of the village still sing a lay about “the bad
girl who trod upon bread to keep her shoes clean.” *
* Ilans Andersen has made this legend the subject of one of his
charming tales. The same feeling as regards the “ holiness of bread ”
appears to have existed in Bornholm ; and it is related that a woman.
a.d. 1592, who “ took its name in vain,” having declared to a
beggar-woman that she had none to give her, was punished by finding the
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