The saga, from the time of the plague (A.D., 1350), here impresses itself on the mind, when the pestilence passed through the land, and transformed cultivated fields and towns—­nay, whole parishes, into barren fields and wild forests.  Deserted and forgotten, overgrown with moss, grass, and bushes, churches stood for years far in the forest; no one knew of their existence, until, in a later century, a huntsman lost himself here:  his arrow rebounded from the green wall, the moss of which he loosened, and the church was found.  The wood-cutter felled the trees for fuel; his axe struck against the overgrown wall, and it gave way to the blow; the fir-planks fell, and the church, from the time of the pestilence, was discovered; the sun again shone bright through the openings of the doors and windows, on the brass candelabra and the altar, where the communion-cup still stood.  The cuckoo came, sat there, and sang:  “Many, many years shalt thou live!”

Woodland solitude! what images dost thou not present to our thoughts!  Woodland solitude! through thy vaulted halls people now pass in the summer-time with cattle and domestic utensils; children and old men go to the solitary pasture where echo dwells, where the national song springs forth with the wild mountain flower!  Dost thou see the procession?—­paint it if thou canst!  The broad wooden cart laden high with chests and barrels, with jars and with crockery.  The bright copper kettle and the tin dish shine in the sun.  The old grandmother sits at the top of the load and holds her spinning-wheel, which completes the pyramid.  The father drives the horse, the mother carries the youngest child on her back, sewed up in a skin, and the procession moves on step by step.  The cattle are driven by the half-grown children:  they have stuck a birch branch between one of the cows’ horns, but she does not appear to be proud of her finery, she goes the same quiet pace as the others and lashes the saucy flies with her tail.  If the night becomes cold on this solitary pasture, there is fuel enough here—­the tree falls of itself from old age and lies and rots.

But take especial care of the fire fear the fire-spirit in the forest desert!  He comes from the unextinguishable pile—­he comes from the thunder-cloud, riding on the blue lightning’s flame, which kindles the thick, dry moss of the earth:  trees and bushes are kindled, the flames run from tree to tree—­it is like a snow-storm of fire! the flame leaps to the tops of the trees—­what a crackling and roaring, as if it were the ocean in its course!  The birds fly upward in flocks, and fall down suffocated by the smoke; the animals flee, or, encircled by the fire, are consumed in it!  Hear their cries and roars of agony!  The howling of the wolf and the bear, dos’t thou know it?  A calm, rainy-day, and the forest-plains themselves, alone are able to confine the fiery sea, and the burnt forest stands charred, with black trunks and black stumps of trees,