The Baptizing of the Baby

THE Baby arrived in a howling nor’easter. The fjelds were white with driving snow, the sea was white with the spindrift of gale-lashed waves, when the little procession filed into the parsonage courtyard. There were a father, five godfathers, two godmothers, and a few non-official friends. No baby was visible, but a muffled gurgle betrayed her presence. One of the godfathers, a fine young Viking of a lad, had a woman’s dress-skirt buttoned around his neck and hanging down in front. Within its warm folds was the Baby.

The Baby’s age was but four weeks, and this her first journey into the outside world. Custom has decreed that a Faroe Island baby must not pass its parents’ threshold until it goes to the Pastor to be received into the Church, and so made secure from the Powers of Darkness. Having once left its home, it cannot return with the sacred rite unperformed.

Imagine, then, the dismay that fell upon the Baby’s escorts when they learned that the Pastor had gone to the Capital, several days before, on important church business. To Thorshavn ! Only seven miles away, by sea, to be sure, but, with that gale, it might as well be seventy. What to do now? The Baby could not be taken back unbaptized. And there was the baptismal feast all arranged: sweet soup, hung mutton, potatoes, coffee, little cakes, with card-playing in the afternoon, and rice-porridge and sandwiches in the evening. The Baby’s mother was putting the sweet soup over the fire when they left that morning. Five miles by fjord they had come; then, as the gale increased, and they neared the open sea, they had ‘set up’ on land, and trudged the remaining three miles through deep snow.

‘Oh well,’ sighed the father, ‘ we may as well “take it with quiet.” The women-folk are too weary, anyhow, to go through those drifts again. We had better send one man home to explain matters, while the rest of us visit our friends. The storm may lessen at any time, so we can go to Thorshavn and bring home the Pastor.’

But — the Baby — And here the ‘ Pastorinde’ was called upon to advise. Yes the Pastorinde did know of a newlyarrived baby in the village, and she doubted not that its mother would kindly permit the stranger-baby to share and share alike with her own.

I, too, was ‘weather-fast.’ From Thorshavn I had come, twelve days before, to ‘hold Jule’ at the parsonage, intending to return two days after Christmas. Then came this long storm. No going to Thorshavn by sea; but in a roundabout way, by fjord and fjeld, it might be done in a case of necessity, like this church-meeting that the Pastor must attend.

The foreman of the eight-man boat, however, flatly refused to take me. ‘The Herr Pastor,’ he explained patiently, ‘has strong legs. He can jump and stand fast in surf, climb cliffs, and go through deep snow. But it is no journey for woman-folk in high wintertime.’

So I was left behind when the Pastor went to Thorshavn.

One must start before daylight these short winter days to enable the boats to return before dark. For eight days I had been living as much packed up as possible, sleeping lightly, waking in the blackness of morning at the sound of voices in the kitchen below. Groping to the head of the stairway, I could hear the decision of the foreman: ‘Not possible to-day, Fru Pastorinde. There is ribbingur i sjónum (dangerous sea) outside.’ — And back I would creep shivering, sure of one day more in the parsonage.

‘What is the Baby’s name to be?’ I asked one of the godfathers, as we chanced to meet the next day. An embarrassed silence was followed by an abrupt change of subject, and I felt that I had made a faux pas. Later, I was told that a baby’s name must never be asked, never be told before baptism. I knew, already, some bits of baby-lore. For instance, if a child cries while it is being baptized, it will have a good voice and sing well at the ballad dances. The water must never be allowed to run down into the baby’s eyes, or it will have ‘second sight.’ This is not a happy gift, and I notice that the godmother holding the child, tilts it at the right moment so that the water flows back over the forehead. I know, too, that the man who carries a baby-boy to and from the church goes as fast as possible, so that the boy will be strong at the oar, sure-footed on the fjelds. This, you observe, for the boy baby. No such trouble is taken for a mere girl. But, for both alike, there is this precaution: never leave a child alone before it is baptized. Until then it falls easily into the power of evil spirits, and is in danger of being carried away by Hulderfolk. These underground creatures are not ‘the little people,’ or the Brownies. In size and appearance they resemble human beings. They have boats and go to the fishery; they have cows, sheep (that are always gray), dogs (large black hounds that often have a light on the end of their tails); but one thing the Hulderfolk lack and that is souls. If, however, they can take away a Faroe baby and substitute one of their own, and it is baptized, then that child will have a soul.

I know a peasant woman whose daughter died in childbirth not long ago, leaving her baby to her mother’s care. The father of the baby was fishing in Iceland, and the old woman lived alone in her little cottage. I went to see her, and during my visit, she wished to show me some articles in another part of the house. Wherever we went she took the cradle with her. I understood the reason and said to her, —

‘But, Sanna, living by yourself as you do, are you not obliged sometimes to leave the baby alone?’

‘Yes, FrÓken,’ she replied sadly, ‘several times I have had to leave him just for a few minutes. But I put the Psalm-book under his pillow, I mark him with the sign of the Cross, and I run my best! ’

Another story I have heard lately is about a Hulderchild on Videró. A peasant and his wife had a baby-boy, a good happy healthy child, that never cried or made trouble. One day the mother had to leave him alone a little while. When she returned she found the baby crying and fretting. Its face seemed changed, somehow, and yet she could not say that it was not their child. From that time it cried night and day until the parents were worn out, and they took it to the Pastor to ask his advice. Now the Pastor ‘knew more than his Paternoster,’ as the saying is; that is, he had studied Black Art. He examined the child and said he feared it was a bytte (changeling). ‘Now,’ said he, ‘go home and build a great brewing fire in the fire-place. In each of the four corners put a limpetshell filled with milk. Then hide yourselves, so you can see and hear the child, but it will not know you are there. If it says or does anything that shows it is a Hulderchild, then you may hope to get your own baby back again.’

The parents followed carefully the Pastor’s instructions, and, trembling with anxiety, awaited the result. As the fire roared and crackled, the child stirred uneasily and stopped crying. Then it raised itself on its elbow and watched the fire and the four limpet shells that were sizzling away in the corners. Then they heard the child laugh scornfully, and saw it point at the limpets. ‘Huh!’ it exclaimed, ‘how can a child be expected to thrive in a house where they have such things for kettles! They should just see the great kettles — the great brewing-pots — in the house of my father, Buin!’ The Hulderchild had betrayed itself! That night there was no crying, the parents slept in peace and woke to find their own good happy baby in the cradle.

What are the cradle-songs this Baby will hear in the cabin where she first saw the gray light of December? Verses from the old Kingos Psalm-book, ballads of the Long Serpent and King Olaf, of Queen Dagmar’s death, the Whale Song, stories from the Iceland Sagas and the Nibelungenlied. Little verses, too, Mother Goosey jingles, one that is sung in Norwegian to babies in all the Scandinavian lands: —

Here is a little Faroe verse: —

When the Baby grows a little bigger, she will not be taught that ‘the Bossycow says “Mo-o-o,” the Pussy-cat says “Me-ow.”’ No, she will learn what the birds say: —

and so on through a long list of the birds of fjeld and sea.

Summer and winter the birds will be the Baby’s neighbors. From her father’s cabin she can hear the eider-ducks cooing softly as they rise and fall just beyond the white crest of the breakers. Starlings bubble and chortle on the grassy house-roof; from the dark cliffs sounds the raven’s clarion cry, and there are always sea-gulls near. With spring come all the sea-fowl to the bird-cliffs, and curlew, golden plover and Arctic jaegers, ‘plaintive creatures that pity themselves on moorlands.’ All through the long dark winter the wren and titlark sing cheerfully. The ‘Mouse’s Brother’ the Baby will call the Faroe wren, and she will know one fact of which grave scientists are ignorant, that the ‘Mouse’s Brother’ and the titlark sing a bird-translation of a verse from the old Kingos Psalm-book. She will know, too, how the eiderduck won her down, the story of the naughty shag and the Apostle Peter, why the cormorant has no tongue, and that the great black-backed gull once struck our Lord upon the Cross and thenceforth bore a blood-red spot on his bill. Well can the Baby say in the words of the Kalevala, ‘The birds of Heaven, the waves of the sea, have spoken and sung to me; the music of many waters has been my master.’

Few will the Baby’s pleasures be. She will never have a Christmas tree, nor hang up her stocking, nor have other presents than a pair of mittens or a woolen kerchief for her head. The day before Christmas she will help her mother to scrub everything that can be scrubbed, indoors and out, working far into ‘ Jóla-Natt,’ so that all shall be sweet and clean for the birthday of our Lord. And next morning, in the sodroofed church where never was a fire made, she will sit with her mother on the women’s side, waiting meekly after service until the last man and the last boy have left their seats. She will dance lightly on the sea-rocks, her fair hair blowing in the wind, retreating as the big waves crash down, and singing something which sounds like ‘ Ala kan eje taka mej !’ (‘The wave cannot catch me!’) She sings it to the same little tune I sang as a child when dancing back and forth across the danger-line of Taffy’s land, mocking the rushes of an agile Taffy.

From seven to fourteen years she will go to school two weeks out of every six (the schoolmaster must be shared between three hamlets), and when fourteen years old, she will be confirmed, if she has learned enough Danish to pass the examinations and to say the prayers and creed. On that morning of confirmation she will turn up her hair, and wear a dress skirt that will flap about her little heels. And that afternoon there will be chocolate and cakes in her father’s cabin, with friends coming and going.

She will know suspense and fear and sickening dread when ‘the boats are out,’ and the great gales burst without warning. From every hamlet the sea has taken many; not one home has been spared. She cannot escape the common lot; of grief she shall have her share.

Three days of storm passed and the Baby was not thriving. She needed her mother, and a consultation was held, the old sea-dogs of the hamlet advising. The gale was surely lessening, and with nine picked men, eight to row and one to steer, it could and should be done. The passage was to be made to Thorshavn to bring the Pastor home. So off they went in the early morning.

I was in my room, upstairs, about eleven o’clock, when I noticed that the roar of the wind, and the creaking and groaning of the timbers overhead had ceased. I went to the window in time to see a great mass of snow gathered up from the ground and hurled against the house. In that short pause the wind had changed, and now blew from the west with redoubled fury. I hurried downstairs, and one glance at the Pastorinde’s face confirmed my fears. She knew only too well where the returning boat was at that hour: far out, off the worst place on the coast, in fierce seacurrents, and in the full sweep of this new off-shore gale. The men were in peril. Many boats the Pastorinde had known to ‘go away’ in such a storm, after hours of desperate struggle to hold the boat in place and make some headway toward land. Then, as strength failed, there would be a slipping seaward, faster and faster, till men and boat went under, overwhelmed by a mighty cross-sea — ‘the drowning wave.’

Hour after hour went by; the Pastorinde paced the rooms, pale and silent. Under the shelter of walls and boat-houses were groups of men looking seaward. At last a shout, and men pointing; out in a smother of flying foam a dark spot had been seen, then lost, then seen again far away under the cliffs of distant Stromö. The boat was slowly making its way to a point due west, where it could blow in with the gale. All the men and boys who could stand on their legs were down in the surf to meet it, and with a rush the boat was borne up on land.

All was ready in the parsonage. The rug in the dining-room rolled up, hot coffee made, food on the table; and the Pastorinde was standing in the doorway as the men toiled feebly up, their clothes streaming with sea-water. Nine men only! Where was the tenth — where was the Pastor? And, all together, the tale was told. The Pastor, they had found, was not in Thorshavn; two days ago the Danish gun-boat had carried him off to Trangisvaag on some church affair, and nothing had been seen of him since. Higher and higher rose the voices, trembling with the irritation and unreasoning anger of utter exhaustion. The storm had struck them at the worst place; for four hours they had struggled just to hold their own, and were drifting seaward, when a short lull came, and with hope renewed they fought again and at last reached the sheltering cliffs of Stromö. Their eyes were wild and glassy, their hair matted, their hands swollen and bleeding from straining at the oars. The Pastorinde — wise woman—wasted no words of sympathy: she poured coffee, hot fragrant coffee with plenty of cream in it. The men drank and the talking quieted to grateful mumbles, and the cups were filled again, while their clothes dripped sea-water and the floor was all afloat.

Two mornings later, before dawn, I heard a knock on my door, and the Pastorinde’s voice calling, ‘The storm has ceased and they are going to take the Baby to Thorshavn, to be baptized by the Thorshavn pastor. They will take you, too, if you can be ready in half an hour.’

We were ready, all the baptismal party, plus myself and the borrowed ‘maternal font.’ One of the men came for me with a lantern and I clutched his strong hand and slipped and slid over the icy rocks. Lights flared here and there, and land, sea, and sky were all one blackness; only a faint gray line showed where the sea was breaking. The surf was still high, covering the usual landing-place. One by one, we women were carried to a group of rocks that rose above the surf. Beyond, the boat was pitching and tossing, two men in the rowing-seats keeping the high sharp prow pointing toward the land. It was no easy matter to get on board, but we stood not upon the order of our going but jumped at once. At one moment I was on top of two godmothers, the next moment five godfathers scrambled over me to their places at the oars. Muffled shrieks arose and ejaculations: ‘ Ak Gud bevare os !' ‘Ak Herre Jesu !’ The boat swept out into the darkness, and we womenfolk picked ourselves up and sorted ourselves out.

It was bitterly cold, and it rained — oh, how it rained! But we did n’t care, we were going to Thorshavn at last, and there was a good sea. The change of wind, the down-pour, had flattened the broken surges. Only the great ground-swells swept landward, rank on rank, crashing along the coast. We mounted slowly to their summits and glided down the outer slopes with the motion of a bird in flight. Gayly rose the talk in the boat, and there was a lighting of little pipes, one at a time, so that the rowing need not be hindered. Now a faint yellow gleam on the southern horizon beyond the downdropping veils of mist, then, dimly seen, the snow-crowned heights of Naalsö rising eighteen hundred feet from the sea. The danger-point on Stromö passed, and then in the distance twinkling lights, and a breath from shore bearing the fragrance of peat-smoke. — ‘ So he bringeth them to their desired haven.’

Out on the fjord the Danish gunboat rose and fell, and on the wet shorerocks was a lonely figure gazing out to sea, like the pictures of Napoleon on Elba. It had a familiar look — it was — yes, it was the Pastor!

They laid hands on the Pastor, as though they expected him to vanish from their sight. The Baby would be baptized then and there. Scant time was given to the godmothers to change their shoes, skirts, and stockings, and to prink.

Clang! Clang! Clang! rang the church-bell in treble, staccato notes. There was a clattering of pattens in the stony lanes as children hurried to the Baptism. The Pastor, a dignified priestly figure in his long black robes and Elizabethan ruff, left the Thorshavn parsonage, passed through the side gate to the church-portal, and the bell-ringing died away.

I was down at the landing an hour later to say ‘farvel’ to the Pastor and the baptismal party. And, as the boat left shore I turned away to my little cabin-home with a sigh of relief. The Baby — Karin Marin Malene Elsebet Jakobina Jakobson — was baptized.