White dwarf

“ She was tall, and her white profile was stern and grave, and she was attended by the most diminutive black dwarf in the world—a little creature who appeared absolutely to perspire under the weight of her enormous train, which was of some dark rich stuff, but brilliantly brocaded with white stars. The captain paused and bowed very low, lifting up the end of his long claymore, believing that this stately dame might wish to descend ”

“ The white dwarfs, in the spring and summer, dance and frolic all their time in sunshine and starlight, and climb up into the flowers . and trees, and sit amongst the leaves and blossoms, and sometimes they take the form of bright little birds, or white doves, or butterflies, and are very kind to good people. In the winter, when the snow falls, they go underground, and spend their time in making the most beautiful ornaments of silver and gold. The brown dwarfs are stronger and rougher than the white ”

“ One of them tells of a Troll Giant who wanted to punish a farmer; so he filled one of his gloves with sand, and poured it out over the farmer's house, which it quite covered up; and with what was left in the fingers he made a row of little sand hillocks to mark the spot.
The Giants had their day, and died out, and their places were taken by the Dwarfs. Some of the most wonderful dwarf stories are those which are told in the island of Rügen, in the Baltic Sea. These stories are of three kinds of dwarfs: the White, and the Brown, and the Black, who live in the sand-hills. ”

“ And through the dim wood Dian threads her way.
p. 25With water-weeds twined in their locks of gold
The strange cold forest-fairies dance in glee,
Sylphs over-timorous and over-bold
Haunt the dark hollows where the dwarf may be,
The wild red dwarf, the nixies’ enemy;
Then ’mid their mirth, and laughter, and affright,
The sudden Goddess enters, tall and white,
With one long sigh for summers pass’d away ”

“ In spite of the dwarf's bad temper, the girls took all possible pains to release the little man, but without avail, the beard could not be moved, it was wedged too tightly.
"I will run and get someone else," said Rose-Red.
"Idiot!" cried the dwarf. "Who would go and get more people? Already there are two too many. Can't you think of something better?"
"Don't be so impatient," said Snow-White. "I will try to think." She clapped her hands as if she had discovered a remedy, took out her scissors, and in a moment set the dwarf free by cutting off the end of his beard. ”

“ They can change themselves into any shape, and can go through key-holes, so that they enter any house they please, and sometimes they bring gifts for the children, like the good Santa Klaus in the German stories; but they also play sad tricks, and frighten people with bad dreams. Like the white dwarfs, the brown ones work in gold and silver, and the gifts they bring are of their own workmanship. The black dwarfs are very bad people, and are ugly in looks and malicious in temper ”

“ So they had a fight, and while they were fighting that horrid old Fairy hit the Princess, and then the Yellow Dwarf took her up on the cat, and flewed away wiz her. That's all about the first part. Don't you think it's time for luncheon?"
"Oh, but you are never going to stop there, Snow-white! I want to know what became of them. Even if the dwarf did carry off the Princess, and even if she had promised to marry him,—for she did promise, you say,—still, of course he did not get her. Dwarfs have no rights that anybody is bound to respect, have they, Snow-white?" ”

“ There has come later a dwarf sort, six or ten inches high, wonderfully rich and fine, which, with a low, white aster, seems to hold the field against everything else, though the taller golden-rod and the masses of the high, blue asters nod less thickly above it. ”

“ Then they recognized his voice and stood still, and when the bear was quite close to them his skin suddenly fell off, and a beautiful man stood beside them, all dressed in gold. "I am a king's son," he said, "and have been doomed by that unholy little dwarf, who had stolen my treasure, to roam about the woods as a wild bear till his death should set me free. Now he has received his well-merited punishment."
Snow-white married him and Rose-red his brother, and they divided the great treasure the dwarf had collected in his cave [357] between them. ”

“ A hundred years or so ago, many stories were told by old folks about the dwarfs. One of these will show how kind, obliging, and useful, or how surly and troublesome, the dwarfs could be—according as they are treated by merry, or by grumpy folks.
For example, Mr. Hilty was a dairy farmer, or shepherd, who was always ready to treat a dwarf with a cocoanut dipper full of cream. Because of this, the dwarfs were willing, whenever he called them, to look after his herds, when he wanted to leave his chalet, in the high pastures, and go down into the valley, to sell his cheeses, or to buy groceries. ”

“ Look at that little dark spot under the fire. When I look at it in the way I have told you, it is the form of a dwarf. He is ugly and rough- looking, he is crooked, and he has a wicked face. He slips and tumbles slowly along, till he catches sight of the water nymphs, and they look so pretty and graceful and happy, as they chase one another about and up and down and around, that his cruel little eyes light up with pleasure, and he calls to them that he should like to come up and play with them too. ”

“ Not long after that, towards evening, the seven dwarfs came home, and were terrified to see their dear Snow-white lying on the ground, without life or motion; they raised her up, and when they saw how tightly she was laced they cut the lace in two; then she began to draw breath, and little by little she returned to life. When the dwarfs heard what had happened they said,
"The old pedlar woman was no other than the wicked queen; you must beware of letting any one in when we are not here!" ”

“ That seems a large price, but the dwarf is as crafty as he is wicked, though his craft seldom does him much good, and he thinks that even if he gives up all his treasure he can soon pile up as much more, with the help of the ring. So, by the power of the ring, he calls the dwarfs to bring him the treasure, and up they come with it, out of the cleft of the rocks, and they pile it in a great, glittering heap just there where the new fire is beginning to burn so bright. ”

“ In this case the small male reproduced his small Mexican great-grandsire, while the large males took after their West Highland ancestors.
But dwarfs often enough turn up in old-established “pure” breeds, and now and again a dwarf is found in an otherwise normal human family. There is no reason for supposing that such dwarfs are the result of reversion. Just as one of a litter of pups may prove a dwarf, one of five or six foals, full brothers and sisters, may prove a dwarf. ”

“ Fall through tropic din with a clatter of light.
The crooked dwarf now ripples the strings of a mandoline,
His floating voice has wings that brush us like a butterfly;
Music fills the mountains
With a riot of fountains
That spray back on the hot plain like a waterfall.
Smaller grow the dwarfs, singing "I'll bring shoes of satin,"
Smaller they grow, fade to golden motes, then die. ”

“ And what a wonderful way the dwarfs had of finding things out without books. George of the Moor was easily traced. King Loc is very undwarflike or, let us say, very human when he learns where George is. But would the laugh of these little creatures even in unison be a "jovial great guffaw"? Surely it is only jolly giants who make great guffaws. Perhaps you can describe the dwarf laughter in a better way. What do you think the writer means by making Nur live in a deep well? ”

“ According to popular superstition, the dwarfs envied man’s taller stature and often tried to improve their race by winning human wives or by stealing unbaptized children, and substituting their own offspring for the human mother to nurse. These dwarf babies were known as changelings, and were recognizable by their puny and wizened forms. ”

“ If the dwarf is short and ugly, he is tall and handsome; if the dwarf's face has a scowl of wicked hatred and cunning, his has a smile that beams with kindliness and candor; if the dwarf is old and crooked and rough and hairy, he is young and straight and graceful and fair. ”

“ Then back comes the other dwarf, who wears the helmet and the ring, driving before him a crowd of his fellows, all laden down with gold and gems, and they throw them in a pile. They are so rich and dazzling, and there is such a quantity of them that the fire actually burns brighter there in the corner where they have heaped them up. The dwarf drives all his workmen away, and then sulkily asks the gods what they want here, for with his ring and his helmet he thinks that he is just as good as any of the gods. ”

“ On the banks of the upper Nile, where the Greeks located the pygmies, modem travelers have found whole tribes of dwarfish men.
In Russia and Turkey, until quite lately, great sympathy was felt for dwarfs, they being generally considered keen-witted and often talented. In Germany, in the eighteenth century, a dwarf was regarded as a necessary appendage to every noble family. In this present century there have been isolated cases of extremely small people, as, for instance, Richebourg, who died in Paris in 1858 at the age of ninety ”

“ Do you know that you are a dwarf—that you are so ugly that one cannot bear to look at you—and that I should have killed you myself long before this if you had been worthy of such a glorious death?”
The Yellow Dwarf, deeply enraged at these words, set spurs to his cat, which yelled horribly, and leaped hither and thither—terrifying everybody except the brave King, who pursued the Dwarf closely, till he, drawing a great knife with which he was armed, challenged the King to meet him in single combat, and rushed down into the courtyard of the palace with a terrible clatter. ”

“ The heathen Northmen believed in the existence of a race of dwarfish artisans, who were skilled in the working of metals, and who fashioned implements of warfare in their subterranean workshops. These dwarfs were also thought to inhabit isolated rocks; and according to a popular notion, if a man chanced to encounter one of them, and quickly threw a piece of steel between him and his habitation, he could thereby prevent the dwarf from returning home, and could exact of him whatever he desired. ”

“ So then the old hag had likewise changed his person; and hence it was his mother did not know him, and people called him an ill-favoured dwarf.
“Master,” said he, half crying to the cobbler, “have you no looking-glass at hand in which I might behold myself?”
“Young gentleman,” replied his father, gravely, “you have not exactly been favoured as to appearance so as to make you vain, and you have no cause to look often in the glass. You had better leave it off altogether. It is with you a particularly ridiculous habit.”
“Oh! pray let me look in the glass,” cried the dwarf. ”

“ They ran forward, and saw with horror that the eagle had pounced on their old friend the dwarf, and was about to carry him off. The tender-hearted children seized hold of the little man, and struggled so long with the bird that at last he let go his prey. When the dwarf had recovered from the first shock he screamed in his screeching voice: “Couldn’t you have treated me more carefully? You have torn my thin little coat all to shreds, useless, awkward hussies that you are!” Then he took a bag of precious stones and vanished under the rocks into his cave. ”

“ The needles, which have accumulated for centuries, make fine beds, a fact well known to other mountaineers, such as deer and wild sheep, who paw out oval hollows and lie beneath the larger trees in safe and comfortable concealment. This lowly dwarf reaches a far greater age than would be guessed. A specimen that I examined, growing at an elevation of 10,700 feet, yet looked as though it might be plucked up by the roots, for it was only three and a half inches in diameter and its topmost tassel reached hardly three feet above the ground. ”

“ Dwarfs are conventionally limited to persons under 4 ft. They are more likely than giants to have the modulus of the body perfect. Where, disproportion occurs in the true dwarf it takes, the form of a large-sized head, broad shoulders and capacious chest, and undersized lower limbs. Dwarfs with rickets are perhaps to be distinguished from true dwarfs; these are cases in which the spine is curved, and sometimes the bones of the limbs bent and the pelvis deformed. As in the case of giants, dwarfs are seldom the progeny of dwarfs, who are, in fact, usually sterile ”

“ He had his gardes-du-corps, resplendent in scarlet and silver, his cadets-gentilhommes, who were practically pages, half of them Lorrains, the remainder Poles, his regular pages, two of whom must always stand by him, when playing at tric-trac, never moving a muscle all the while. He had his pet dwarf "Bébé," decked out in military dress, with a diminutive toy-coach and two goats to carry him about, and a page in yellow and black always to wait upon him. This dwarf the king would for a joke occasionally have baked up in a pie. ”

“ The older cases of extended sleep thus find a close parallel in the newer cases.
One of the chief constituents of every fairy story is the giant or dwarf, who occupies a central position. That giants and dwarfs exist today there can be no doubt. They are frequently to be seen in the side-shows, and even in public life. But it is now known that giants and dwarfs suffer from a certain disease, which renders them particularly short-lived; and they are, generally speaking, muscularly weak for their size. ”