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So, too, in 'Little Annie the Goose- girl', No. lix, the stone which tells the Prince all the secrets of his brides is plainly the old Oskastein, or 'wishing-stone'. These instances will suffice to show the prolonged faith in 'Wish', and his choice things; a belief which, though so deeply rooted in the North, we have already traced to its home in the East, whence it stretches itself from pole to pole, and reappears in every race.
I'd go with you myself though it's rough traveling, the steepest trail on the mountain only my man is laid up with the rheumatiz, hangin' on to him like a puppy-dog to a root." "Oh! we can find it for ourselves hurrah!" shouted Una, almost squinting with anticipation. "I've never stood upon a real mountain wishing-stone before. Who who knows what may come of it?"
"If that's so, girlie," said the mountain landlady alas! for Andrew True-penny, alias Campbell, now came the evil chance over which he sulked "if that's so, and you could only find the mountain wishing-stone, stand on it and wish three times wish har-rd maybe, the good fairies would give you back what you're looking for!" "Where where is it the wishing-stone?"
Thus we have oska-steinn, wishing-stone, i.e. a stone which plays the part of a divining rod, and reveals secrets and hidden treasure; oska-byrr, a fair wind, a wind as fair as man's heart could wish it; osk-barn and oska-barn, a child after one's own heart, an adopted child, as when the younger Edda tells us that all those who die in battle are Odin's choice- bairns, his adopted children, those on whom he has set his heart, an expression which, in their turn, was taken by the Icelandic Christian writers to express the relation existing between God and the baptized; and, though last, not least, oska-maer, wish- maidens, another name for the Valkyries Odin's corse-choosers who picked out the dead for him on the field of battle, and waited on the heroes in Valhalla.
Was there, then, a wishing-stone in that window embrasure where she had been sitting, and had the knight come because she had willed it? How much did he know? How much ought she to tell? Nothing whatever, prudently decided the lawyer's daughter. "I've had, I'm almost certain, the pleasure of seeing you before," imparted Amory pleasantly, adjusting his pince-nez and looking down at her.
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