§342

‘I was five or six years old, and encountered a little red man at a tree stump. He was about two to three feet tall, dressed entirely in red, with a solid red face, tiny white horns on the top of his head, and with a red, pointed tail. He looked like Santa Claus, with a white beard, mustache and eyebrows, but everything else was a bright Santa red. I was charmed by him, and talked to him briefly before he disappeared. I went into the house, and told my parents that I had seen ‘Debiloss’, my childish way of saying ‘Devil Lost.’ I talked about him for weeks, and kept going back out to the stump, but I never saw him again. I have wondered as an adult whether he was a tomte, the Scandinavian gnome’ ‘Gnomish, red skin and clothing, small white horns on head, white beard, mustache and eyebrows. Red tail with pointed tip. Short and squat.’ ‘Did not hear music. The gnome talked to me, and said he was lost, but was now living in the stump. He may have said he used to live in the tree, before it was cut down when the house was built.’ ‘[Fairies are] nature spirits, elementals.’ ‘Although the creature described himself as a devil, I was not afraid of him – he was happy and friendly, though sad about his tree having been cut down. He really did look like a little Santa Claus, except for the red skin, horns and tail.’