 Section 6, Part 2 of Popular Tales from the Norse. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Popular Tales from the Norse by Sir George Webb Dacent. Section 6, Introduction Part 4, Norse Popular Tales, Part 2. The North was not free any more than the rest of the Protestant world from this direful superstition which ran over Europe like a pestilence in the 16th century. In Sweden especially, the witches and their midnight ridings to Blokula, the Black Hill, gave occasion to processes as absurd and abominable as the trial of Dr. Fian and the witch findings of Hopkins. In Denmark, the sorceresses were supposed to meet at Tromsø, high up in Finmark, or even on Hekla in Iceland. The Norse witches met at a blockhole of their own, or on the Doverfell, or at other places in Norway or Finmark. As might be expected, we find many traces of witchcraft in these tales, but it may be doubted whether these may not be referred rather to the old heathen belief in such art still lingering in the popular mind or the processes of the 15th and 16th centuries which were far more a craze in mania of the educated classes acting under a mistaken religious fanaticism against popular superstitions than a movement arising from the mass of the community. Still in the mastermaid, number 11, the witch of a sister-in-law who had rolled the apple over to the prince and so charmed him, was torn to pieces between 24 horses. The old queen in the lassi and her godmother, number 27, tries to persuade her son to have the young queen burnt alive for a wicked witch who was dumb and had eaten her own babies. In east of the sun and west of the moon, number 4, it is a wicked stepmother who has bewitched the prince. In bushy bride, number 45, the ugly bride charms the king to sleep and is at last thrown with her wicked mother into a pit full of snakes. In the twelve wild ducks, number 8, the wicked stepmother persuades the king that Snow White and Rosie Red is a witch and almost persuades him to burn her alive. In tatterhood, number 47, the whole troop of witches come to keep their revels on Christmas Eve in the queen's palace and snap off the young princess's head. It is hard indeed in tales where trolls play so great a part to keep witches and trolls separate, but the above instances will show that the belief in the one as distinct from the other exists in the popular superstitions of the north. The frequent transformation of men into beasts in these tales is another striking feature. This power the gods of the Norsemen possessed in common with those of all other mythologies. Europa and her bull, Lida and her swan, will occur at once to the reader's mind, and to come to closer resemblances, just as Athena appears in the Odyssey as an eagle or a swallow perched on the roof of the hall, Odyssey 3, 372 and 22, 239, so Odin flies off as a falcon and Loki takes the form of a horse or bird. This was only part of that omnipotence which all gods enjoy, but the belief that men under certain conditions could also take the shape of animals is primeval and the traditions of every race can tell of such transformations. Herodotus had heard how the Nureans, a Slavonic race, cast for wizards amongst the Scythians and the Greeks settled round the Black Sea because each of them once in the year became a wolf for a few days and then returned to his natural shape. Pomponius Mela and Saint Augustine, in his great treatise Decivitate Dei, tell the same story, and Virgil in his echelogues has sung the same belief. The Latins called such a man a turnskin versipelis, an expression which exactly agrees with the Icelandic expression for the same thing, in which is probably the true original of our turncoat. In Petronius the superstition appears in its full shape and is worth repeating. At the banquet of Trimelchion, Nekoros gives the following account of the turnskins of Nero's time. It happened that my master was gone to Kapua to dispose of some secondhand goods. I took the opportunity and persuaded our guest to walk with me to the fifth milestone. He was a valiant soldier and a sort of grim water-drinking Pluto. About Kotpro, when the moon was shining as bright as midday, we came among the monuments. My friend began addressing himself to the stars, but I was rather in a mood to sing or to count them. And when I turned to look at him, lo, he had already stripped himself and lain down his clothes near him. My heart was in my nostrils and I stood like a dead man, but he circumincet vestimenta and on a sudden became a wolf. Do not think I jest. I would not lie for any man's estate, but to return to what I was saying. When he became a wolf, he began howling and fled into the woods. At first I hardly knew where I was, and afterwards, when I went to take up his clothes, they were turned into stone. Who then died with fear but I? Yet I drew my sword and went cutting the air right and left until I reached the villa of my sweetheart. I entered the courtyard. I almost breathed my last, the sweat ran down my neck, my eyes were dim, and I thought I should never recover myself. My Melissa wondered why I was out so late and said to me, Had you come sooner, you might have at least helped us, for a wolf has entered the farm and worried all of our cattle. But he had not the best of the joke for all he escaped, for our slave ran a lance through his neck. When I heard this, I could not doubt how it was, and, as it was clear daylight, ran home as fast as a robbed innkeeper. When I came to the spot where the clothes had been turned into stone, I could find nothing except blood. But when I got home, I found my friend the soldier in bed, bleeding at the neck like an ox, and a doctor dressing his wound. I then knew he was a churn-skin, nor would I ever have broke bread with him again, known not if you had killed me. A man who had such a gift or greed was also called Lycanthropus, or man-wolf, or wolf-man, which termed the Anglo-Saxons translated literally in Canute's laws, ver-wolf, and the early English were-wolf. In the old French he was loup-garou, which means the same thing, except that garou means man-wolf in itself, without the antecedent loup. So that, as Madden observes, the whole word is one of those reduplications of which we have an example in lukewarm. In Brittany he was blaze-garou and den-blaze, formed respectively from blaze, wolf, and den, man. Garou is merely a distorted form of wear, or ver, man and loup. In later French the word became warrel, whence the Scotch wrote, warrel, and warlin. It was not likely that a belief so widely spread should not have extended itself to the north, and the grave assertions of Olaus Magnus in the sixteenth century in his treatise De Gentibus Septentriana Libus show how common the belief in were-wolves was in Sweden so late as the time of Gustavus Vassa. In mythical times the Volsunga Saga, Fornald Saga 1, 130, 131, expressly states of Sigmund and St. Piotli that they became were-wolves, which, we may remark, were Odin's sacred beasts, just in the same way as Bryn Hilder and the Volcrice, or coarse-choosers, who followed the god of battles to the field and chose the dead for Valhalla when the fight was done, became swan-maidens, and took the shape of swans. In either case the wolfskin or the swan's feathery covering was assumed and laid aside at pleasure, though the Volundar Quedar in the Edda, and the stories of the Fair Melusina and other medieval swan-maidens show that anyone who seized that shape while thus laid aside had power over its wearer. In later times when this old heroic belief degenerated into the notion of sorcery it was supposed that a girdle of wolfskin thrown over the body or even a slap on the face with a wolfskin glove could transform the person upon whom the sorcerer practiced into a shape of a ravening wolf which fled at once to the woods and remained in that shape for a period which varied in popular belief for nine days, three, seven, or nine years. While in this state he was especially ravenous after young children whom he carried off as the werewolf carried off William in the old romance, though all werewolves did not treat their prey with the same tenderness as that werewolf treated William. But the favorite beast for Norse transformations in historic times if we may judge from the evidence afforded by the sagas was the bear, the king of all their beasts, whose strength and sagacity made him an object of great respect. This old belief then might be expected to be found in these Norse tales and accordingly we find men transformed in them into various beasts. Of all these transformations, as we have already stated, were active if we may use the expression as well as passive. A man who possessed the gift frequently assumed the shape of a beast at his own will and pleasure like the soldier of Petronius. Even now in Norway it is a matter of popular belief that Finns and Laps, who from time immemorial have passed for their most skillful witches and wizards in the world, cannot will assume the shape of bears. And it is a common thing to say of one of these beasts when he gets unusually savage and daring, that can be no Christian bear. On such a bear in the parish of Afoden, after he had worried to death more than sixty horses and six men, it is said that a girdle of bearskin, the infallible mark of a man thus transformed, was found when he was at last trapped in slain. The tale called Farmer Weather Sky, number 41 in this collection, shows that the belief of these spontaneous transformations still exists in popular tradition, where it is easy to see that Farmer Weather Sky is only one of the ancient gods degraded into a demon's shape. His sudden departure through the air, horse, sledge, and lad and all, and his answer, I'm at home alike north and south and east and west, his name itself and his distant abode, surrounded with the corpses of the slain, sufficiently betrayed the divinity and disguise. His transformation, too, into a hawk, answers exactly to that of Odin when he flew away from the frost giant in the shape of that bird. But on these tales such transformations are for the most part passive. They occur not at the will of the person transformed, but through sorcery practiced on them by someone else. Thus the White Bear in the beautiful story of East of the Sun and West of the Moon, number 4, is a prince transformed by his stepmother, just as it is the stepmother who plays the same part in the romance of William and the werewolf. So the horse in the widow's son, number 44, is a prince over whom a king has cast that shape. So also in Lord Peter, number 42, which is the full story of what we have only hitherto known in part as Puss in Boots, the cat is a princess bewitched by the troll who had robbed her of her lands. So also in the seven foals, number 43, and the twelve wild ducks, number 8, the foals and the ducks are princes over whom that fate has come by the power of a witch or a troll to whom an unwary promise had been given. Thoroughly Mythic is the trait in the twelve wild ducks, where the youngest brother reappears with a wild duck's wing instead of his left arm, because his sister had no time to finish that portion of the shirt upon the completion of which his re-transformation depended. But we should ill-understand the spirit of the Norsemen if we supposed that these transformations into beasts were all that the national heart has to tell of beasts and their doings, or that when they appear, they do so merely as men beasts without any power or virtue of their own. From the earliest times, side by side with these productions of the human mind, which speak of the dealings of men with men, there has grown up a stock of traditions about animals and their relations with one another, which forms a true beast epic and is full of the liveliest traits of nature. Here, too, it was reserved for Grimm to restore these traditions to their true place in the history of the human mind and show that the poetry which treats of them is neither satirical nor didactic, though it may contain touches of both these artificial kinds of composition, but on the contrary, purely and intensely natural. It is epic, in short, springing out of that deep love of nature and close observation of the habits of animals, which is only possible in an early and simple stage of society. It used to be the fashion when these beast traditions were noticed to point to Aesop as their original, but Grimm has sufficiently proved, Reinhard Fuchs' introduction, that what we see in Aesop is only the remains of a great, world-old cycle of such traditions, which had already, in Aesop's day, been subjected by the Greek mind to that critical process which a late state of society brings to bear on popular traditions, that they were then already worn and washed out and moralized. He had also shown how the same process went on till in Phaedrus nothing but the dry bones of the traditions, with a drier moral, are served up to the reader. And he has done justice on La Fontaine, who wrote with all the wanton licentiousness of his day, and frittered away the whole nature of his fables by the frivolity of his illusions to the artificial society of his time. Nor has he spared lessing, who, though he saw through the poverty of Phaedrus, as compared with Aesop, and was alive to the weakness of La Fontaine, still wandered about in the classical mist which hung heavy over the learning of the 18th century, and saw in the Greek form the perfection of all fable when in Aesop it really appears in the state of degeneracy and decay. Here, too, as in so many other things, we have a proof that the world is older than we think it. The beast fables in the Pancha-Tantra and the Hitopadesa, the Indian parallels to Aesop, reveal in the connection in which they occur, and in the moral use to which they are put, a state of society long past that simple early time in which such fictions arise. They must have sprung up in the east in the very dawn of time, and thence traveling in all gypsies and in all gypsies, and thence traveling in all directions, we find them after many centuries in various shapes which admit of no mistake as to their first origin at the very ends of the earth in countries as opposite as the poles to each other. In New Zealand and Norway, in Central Africa and Serbia, in the West Indies and in Mongolia, all separated by immense tracks of land or sea from their common center. To the earnest inquirer, to one who believes that many dark things may yet be solved, it is very satisfactory to see that even Grimm, in his Reynard the Fox, is at a loss to understand why the North, properly so called, had none of the traditions which the middle age molded into that famous beast epic. But since then the North, as the great master himself confesses in his later works, has amply avenged herself for the slight thus cast upon her by mistake. In the year 1834, when Grimm thus expressed his surprise at a point, the North had no such traditions to show in books indeed, but she kept them stored up in her heart in an abundance with which no other land perhaps can vie. This book at least shows how natural it seems to the North's mind now and how much more natural, of course, it seemed in earlier times, when sense went for as much and reflection for so little that beasts should talk, and how truly and faithfully it has listened and looked for the accents and character of each. Still the king of beasts, in which character he appears in true and untrue, number one, but here, as in Germany, he is no match for the fox in wit. Thus, Reynard plays him a trick which condemns him forever to a stumpy tale in number 23. He cheats him out of his share of a fricken of butter in number 52. He is preferred as herdsman in number 10, before either bear or wolf by the old wife who wants yet, all the while, he professes immense respect for the bear and calls him Lord, even when in the very act of outwitting him. In the tale called Well Done and Ill Paid, number 38, the crafty fox puts a finish to his misbehavior to his Lord Bruin by handing him over, bound hand and foot, to the peasant and by causing his death outright. Here, too, we have an example which we shall see repeated in the case of the giants that are not always wise and that wit and wisdom never fail to carry the day against mere brute force. Another tale, however, restores the bear to his true place as the king of beasts, endowed not only with strength, but with something divine and terrible about him which the trolls cannot withstand. This is the cat on the Doverfell number 12. In connection with which, it should be remembered that the same tradition existed in the 13th century in Germany and, familiarly, grandfather in the north and that the laps reckon him rather as akin to man than beasts. That they say he has the strength of ten and the wit of twelve men. If they slay him, they formally beg his pardon as do also the Ostjax, a tribe akin to the laps and bring him to their huts with great formalities and mystic songs. To the wolf whose nickname is Greylegs, these tales are more complimentary. He is not the spiteful, stupid, greedy man of Germany and France. Not that Eisengrimm, of whom the old English fables of the 13th century tell us that he became a monk but when the brethren wished to teach him his letters that he might learn the pattern-noster, all they could get out of him was lamb, lamb, nor could they ever get him to look to the cross for his eyes with his thoughts were ever to the woodward. Duce, illustration to Shakespeare vol. 2, 33, section 344 quoted in Reinhard Fuchs 221. He appears on the contrary in the giant who had no heart in his body, No. 9, as a kindly grateful beast who repays tenfold out of the hidden store of his supernatural sagacity the gift of the old jade which Boots had made over to him. The horse was a sacred animal among the Teutonic tribes from the first moment of their appearance in history, and Tacitus, Germania 9 and 10, has related how in the shade of these woods which served them for temples, white horses were fed at the public cost whose backs no mortal man crossed, whose neighing and snortings were carefully watched as agaries in omens, and who were thought to be conscious of divine mysteries. In Persia 2 the classical writer will remember how the neighing of a horse decided the choice for the crown. Here in England at any rate we have only to think of Heingest and Horsa, the twin heroes of the Anglo-Saxon migration, as the legend ran, heroes whose name meant horse, and of the veil of the white horse, in Berkshire, where the sacred form still gleams along the down, to be reminded of the sacredness of the horse to our forefathers. The Eddas are filled with the names of famous horses, and the sagas contain many stories of good steeds in whom their owners trusted and believed as sacred to this or that particular god. Such a horse is Dappelgrimm in number 40 of these tales, who saves his master out of all his perils, and brings him to all fortune, and is another example of that mysterious connection with the higher powers which animals in all ages have been supposed to possess. Such a friend, too, to the helpless lassie is the Dun Bull in Katie Woodencloak, number 1 out of whose ear comes the wishing cloth, which serves up the choicest dishes. The story is probably imperfect, as we would expect to see him again in human shape after his head was cut off and played. But after being the chief character up to that point, he remains from that time forth in the background, and we only see him darkly in the man who comes out of the face of the rock and supplies the lassie's wands when she knocks on it. Dun, or blue, or mouse color is the favorite color for fairy kind. Thus the cow which Guy of Warwick killed was Dun. The hull drawer in Norway gave large flocks of blue kind. In Scotland runs the story of the golden calf in bull. In Iceland the color of such kind is apple grar, dapple gray. This animal has been an object of adoration and respect from the earliest times, and we need only to remind our readers of the sanctity of cows and bulls among the Indians and Egyptians, or the golden calf in the Bible, of Yo and her wanderings from land to land, and, though last, not least, of Adhumla, the mythic cow in the Eda, who had so large a part of the creation of the first giant in human forms. The dog, to which, with all his sagacity and faithfulness something unclean and impure clings, as Grimwell observes, plays no very prominent part in these tales. We find him, however, in not a pin to choose between them, number 24, where his sagacity fails to detect his mistress, and, as the foe of his own house, the half-bread foxy hound who chases away the cunning fox in Well Done and Ill Paid, number 38. Still he, too, in popular superstition, is gifted with the sense of the supernatural. He howls when death impends, and in Buttercup, number 18, it is Goldtooth their dog who warns Buttercup and his mother of the approach of the old hag. In Bushey Bride, number 45, he appears only as the lassie's lapdog, is thrown away as one of her sacrifices, and at last goes to the wedding in her coach, yet in that tale he has something weird about him, and he is sent out by his mistress three times to see if the dawn is coming. In one tale, number 37, the goat appears in full force and dashes out the brains of the troll who lived under the bridge over the burn. In another, Tatterhood, number 48, he helps the lassie in her onslaught on the witches. He, too, lives to thaw in the old mythology and drew his thundering car. Here something of the divine nature of his former lord, who was the great foe of all trolls, seems to have been passed on in popular tradition to the animal who had seen so many adventures with the great god who swayed the thunder. This feud between the goat and the trolls comes out curiously in the Old Damon or Hen, number 3, where a goat falls down the trapdoor to the troll's house, who sent for you like to know you long bearded beast, said the man of the hill, who was in an awful rage, and with that he whipped up the goat, rung his head off and threw him down into the cellar. Still he belonged to one of the heathen gods, and so in later middle-age superstition he is assigned to the devil, who even takes his shape when he presides at the witches' sabbath. Nor in this list must the little birds be forgotten which taught the man's daughter, in the tale of the two stepsisters, number 17, how to act in her trials. So too in Katie Woodencloak, number 50, the little bird tells the prince, who understood the song of birds very well, that blood is gushing out of the golden shoe. The belief that some persons had the gift of understanding what the bird said is primeval. We pay homage to it in our proverbial expression, a little bird told me. Popular traditions and rhymes protect their nests, as in the case of the wren, the robin and the swallow. Occasionally this gift seems to have been acquired by eating or tasting the flesh of a snake or dragon, as Seagird in the Valsong tale first became aware of Regan's designs against his life, when he accidentally tasted the heartblood of Fafnir, whom he had slain in dragon shape, and then all at once the swallow's song perched above him became as intelligible as human speech. We now come to a class of beings which plays a large part, and always still in these tales. These are the giants or trolls. In modern Norse tradition there is little difference between the names, but originally troll was a more general expression for a supernatural being than giant, which was rather confined to a race more dull than wicked. In the giants we have the wantonness of boundless bodily strength and size, which, trusting entirely to these qualities, falls at last by its own weight. At first it is true that proverbial wisdom all the stores of traditional lore, all that can be learned by what we may call rule of thumb, was ascribed to them. One sympathizes too with them, and almost pities them as the representatives of a simple primitive race, whose day is past and gone, but who still possessed something of the innocence and virtue of ancient times, together with a stock of old experience, which, however useful it might be as an example to others, was quite useless to help themselves. They are the old stories of mythology, as opposed to the acer, the advanced liberals. They can look back and say what has been, but to look forward to say what will be and shall be and to mold the future is beyond their can. True is gold to the traditional and received, and worthless as dross for the new and progressive. Such a nature, when unprovoked, is easy and simple, but rouse it, and its exuberant strength rises in a paraxum of rage, though its clumsy awkward blows, guided by mere cunning, fail to strike the slight and lissum foe who waits for and eludes the stroke, until his reason gives him the mastery over sheer brute force, which has wearied itself out by its own exertions. This race, and that of the upstart acer, though almost always it feud, still had their intervals of common intercourse and even social enjoyment. Marriages take place between them, visits are paid, feasts are given, ale is breached, and mirth is fast and furious. Thor was the worst foe the giants ever had, and yet he met them sometimes on good terms. They were destined to meet once and for all on that awful day the twilight of the gods, but till then they entertained for each other some sense of mutual respect. The trolls on the other hand, with whom mankind had more to do, were supposed to be less easy-tempered and more systematically malignant than the giants, and with the term were bound up notions of sorcery and unholy power. But mythology is a wolf of many colors, of which the hues are shot and blended, so that the various races of supernatural beings are shaded off and fade away almost imperceptibly into each other, and thus, even in heathen times, it must have been hard to say exactly where the giant ended and the troll began. But when Christianity came in and heathendom fell, when the godlike race of the acer became evil demons instead of good menial powers, then all the objects of the old popular belief, whether acer, giants, or trolls, were mingled together in one superstition as nocanny. They were all trolls, all malignant, and thus it was that, in these tales, the traditions about Odin and his underlings, about the frost giants, and about sorcerers and wizards, are confused and garbled. And all supernatural agency that plots man's ill is the work of trolls, whether the agent be the large enemy himself, or giant, or witch, or wizard. In tales such as the Old Dame and her hen, number three, the giant who had no heart in his body, number nine, short shanks, number twenty, boots and the troll, number thirty-two, boots who ate a match with the troll, number five, the easy temper of the old frost giants predominates and we almost pity them as we read. In another, the big bird Dan, number fifty-five, we have a troll prince who appears as a generous benefactor to the young prince and lends him a sword by help of which he slays the king of the trolls just as we sometimes find in the Eda friendly meetings between the Aesir and this, or the frost giant. In tatterhood, number forty-eight, the trolls are very near akin to the witches of the middle age. In other tales, as the mastermind, number eleven, the blue belt, number twenty-two, farmer weather sky, number forty-one, a sort of settled malignity against man appears as the direct working and result of a bad and evil spirit. In buttercup, number eighteen and the cat in the dover fell, we have the troll proper, the supernatural dwellers of the woods and hills who go to church and eat men in porridge and sausages indifferently, not from malignity but because they know no better because it is their nature and because they have always done so. At one point they all agree, in their place of abode, the wild pine forest that clothes the spurs of the fells but more than all the interior recesses of the rocky fell itself is where the trolls live. Thither they carry off the children of men and to them belongs all the untold riches of the mineral world. There, in caves and clefs in the steep face of the rock sits the troll as the representative of the old giants among heaps of gold and silver and precious things. They stride off into the dark forest by day where there no rays of the sun can pierce. They return home at nightfall, feast themselves full and snore out the night. One thing was fatal to them, the sight of the sun. If they looked him full in the face his glory was too great for them and they burst as in Lord Peter, number forty-two, and in the old Dame and her hen, number three. This, too, is a deeply mythic trait. The old religion of the north was a bright and lively faith. It lived in the light of joy and gladness. Its gods were the blithe powers. Opposed to them were the dark forces of mist and gloom who could not bear the glorious face of the sun, of boulders beaming visage, or the bright flash of Thor's leaven bolt. In one aspect the whole race of giants and trolls stands out in strong historical light. There can be little doubt that in their continued existence amongst the woods and rocks and hills the memory of the gradual suppression and extinction of some hostile race who gradually retired into the natural fastnesses of the land and speedily became mythic. Nor, if we bear in mind their natural position and remember how constantly the infamy of sorcery has plung to the fins and laps, shall we have far to go to seek this ancient race even at the present day. Between this outcast nomad race, which wandered from forest to forest and from fell to fell without a fixed place of abode and the old natural powers and frost giants, the minds of the race which adored Odin and the Aesir soon engendered a monstrous man-eating crossbreed of supernatural beings who fled from contact with the intruders as soon as the first great struggle was over, abhorred the light of day and looked upon agriculture and tillage as a dangerous innovation which destroyed their hunting fields and was destined finally to root them out from off the face of the earth. It appears in countless stories all over the globe for man is true to himself in all climes and the savage in Africa or across the rocky mountains dreads tillage and detests the plough as much as any lap or Samoid. See what pretty playthings mother cries the giant's daughter as she unties her apron and shows her a plough and horses and peasants. Back with them this instant cries the mother in wrath and put them down as carefully as you can for these playthings can do our race great harm and when these come we must budge. What sort of an earthworm is this? said one giant to another when they met a man as they walked. These are the earthworms that will one day eat us up brother answered the other and soon both giants left that part of Germany nor does this trade appear less strongly in these Norse tales the giants or trolls can neither brew nor wash properly as we see in short shanks number 20 where the ogre has to get short shanks for him and in east of the sun and west of the moon number 4 where none of the trolls are able to wash out the spot of tallow so also in the two steps sisters number 17 the old witch is forced to get human maids to do her household work and lastly the best example of all in Lord Peter number 42 where agriculture is plainly a secret of mankind which the giants were eager to learn but which was a branch of knowledge beyond their power to attain stop a bit said the cat and I'll tell you how the farmer sets to work to get in his winter rye and so she told him such a long story about the winter rye first of all you see he plows the field and then he dungs it and then he plows it again and then he harrows it and so she went on until the sun rose before we leave these gigantic natural powers let us linger a moment to point out how heartily the winds are sketched in these tales as four brothers of course the north wind is the oldest and strongest and roughest but though rough in form and tongue he is a genial kind-hearted fellow after all he carries the lassie to the castle east of the sun and west of the moon where there none of his brothers had strength to blow all he asks is that she won't be afraid and then he takes a good rest and puffs himself up with as much breath as ever he can hold begins to blow a storm and off they go so too in a lad who went to the north wind number 34 though he can't restore the meal he carried off he gives the lad three things which make his fortune and amply repay him he too like the grecian boraeus is divine and linearly descended from praise velger that great giant in the edda who sits at the end of the world in eagle shape and when he flaps his wings all the winds come that blow upon men enough surely has now been said to the old religion and mythology of the Norsemen still lives disguised in these popular tales besides this internal evidence we find here and there in the written literature of earlier days hints that the same stories were even then current and current then as now among the lower classes thus in king severi saga we read and so it is just like what is said to have happened in the old stories of what the king's children suffered from their stepmother's ill will then in olof trigveson saga by the monk odd and better is it to hear such things with mirth than stepmother's stories which shepherds tell where no one can tell whether anything is true and where the king has always made the least in their narrative but in truth no such positive evidence is needed anyone who has read the vol song tale as we have given it will be at no loss to see where the little birds who speak to the prince and the lassie in these tales come they read in the big bird dan number 55 about the naked sword which the princess lays by her side every night will they fail to recognize sigurd sword graham which he laid beside himself in brunhilder when he rode through the flame and won her for gooner these mythical deep rooted groves throwing out fresh shoots from age to age in the popular literature of the race are far more convincing proofs of the early existence of these traditions than any mere external evidence end of section 6 part 2 section 7 of popular tales from the Norse this is a libra vox recording all libra vox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit libravox.org read by daniel w popular tales from the Norse by sir george web descent section 7 introduction part 5 conclusion we have now only to consider the men and women of these tales and then our task is done it will be sooner done because they may be left to speak for themselves and must stand or fall by their own words and actions the tales of all races have a character and manner of their own among the hindus the straight stem of the story is overhung with a network of imagery which reminds one the parasitic growth of a tropical forest among the arabs the tales more elegant pointed with a moral and adorned with tropes and episodes among the italians it is bright light dazzling and swift among the french we have passed from the woods and fields and hills to my ladies bourgeois rose pink is the prevailing color and the air is loaded with patchouli and mille fleurs we miss the song of birds the modest owner of the wildflowers and the balmy fragrance of the pine forest its weeds are more stiff and their style is more like that of a chronicle than of a tale the germans are simple, hearty and rather comic than humorous and M. Moe has well said that as we read them it is if we sat and listened to some elderly woman of the middle class who recites them with a clear full deep voice in scotland the few that have been collected by Mr. Robert Chambers are as good in tone and keeping full range of such popular collections the wonderful likeness which is shown between such tales as the Red Bull of Norway and Mr. Chambers collection and Katie Wooden Cloak in these Norse tales is to be accounted for by no theory of the importation of this or that particular tale in later times from Norway but by the fact that the lowland scots among whom these tales were told were lineal descendants of Norsemen who had either seized the country in Viking times or had been driven into it on the border after the Norman Conquest these Norse tales we may characterize as bold outspoken and humorous in the true sense of humor in the midst of every difficulty and danger arises that old Norse feeling of making the best of everything and keeping a good face to the foe the language and tone are perhaps rather lower than in some other collections but it must be remembered that these are the tales of hemp and homespuns of Norse yeoman the noske bonder who call a spade a spade and who burn tallow not wax and yet no collection of tales is the general tone so chased are the great principles of morality better worked out and right and wrong kept so steadily in sight the general view of human nature is good and kindly the happiness of married life was no never more pridly told than in Gudbrand on the hillside number 21 where the tenderness of the husband weighs down all other considerations and we all agree with M. Moe that it would be well if there were many wives like Gudbrand's the balance two is very evenly kept between the sexes for if any wife should point with indignation out of tales as it's not a pin to choose between them number 24 where wives suffer she will be amply avenged when she reads the husband who was to mine the house number 39 where the husband has decidedly the most of the bargain and is punished as he deserves of particular characters one occurs repeatedly this is that which we have ventured for a want of a better word to call boots from that widely spread tradition in English families that the youngest brother is bound to do all the hard work his brother set him and which has also dignified him with the term here used in Norse he is called Asksvis or Espen Askvisis by M. Moe he is called a Pa a word which the Danes got from Germany and which the readers of Gryms tales will see at once his own brother to Aschenputel the meaning of the word is one who pokes about the ashes and blows up the fire one who does dirty work in short and in Norway according to M. Moe the term is almost universally applied to the youngest son of the family he is Cinderella's brother in fact and just as she had all the dirty work put upon her by her sisters he meets with the same fate from his brothers he is generally the youngest of three whose names are often Peter and Paul as in number 42 and who despise, cry down and mock him but he has in him that deep strength of character and natural power upon which the good powers always smile he is the man whom heaven helps because he can help himself and so after his brothers try and fail he alone can watch in the barn and tame the steed and ride up the grass hill and gain the princess and half the kingdom the Norse boots shares these qualities in common with the pink L of the Swedes and the Doomling of the Germans as well as with R Jack the giant killer but he starts lower than these he starts from the dust bin and the coal hole there he sits idle willst all work there he lies with that deep irony of conscious power which knows its time must one day come and meantime can afford to wait when that time comes he girds himself up to the feet amidst the scoffs and scorn of his flesh and blood but even then after he has done some great deed he conceals it returns to his ashes and again sits idly by the kitchen fire dirty lazy and despised until the time for final recognition comes and then his dirt and rags fall off he stands out in all the majesty of the royal robes and is acknowledged once for all a king in this way it is the consciousness of a nation and the mirror of its thought reflect the image and personification of a great moral truth that modesty endurance and ability will sooner or later reap their reward however much they may be degraded scoffed at and despised by the proud the worthless and the overbearing as a general rule the women are less strongly marathon the men for these tales as is well said are uttered with a manly mouth and none of the female characters except perhaps the master maid and tatterhood can compare in strength with the master smith the master thief shorts tanks or boots still the true womanly type comes out in full play in such tales as the two steps sisters number 27 easter the sun in west of the moon number four bushy bride number 65 and the 12 wild ducks number eight in all these the lassie is bright and good and helpful she forgets herself in her eagerness to help others when she goes down the well after the unequal match against her steps sister spinning bristles against flax she steps tenderly over the hedge milks the cow sheers the sheep relieves the bowels of the apple tree all out of the natural goodness of her heart when she is sent to fetch water from the well she washes and brushes and even kisses blows some head she believes what her enemies say even to her own wrong and injury she sacrifices all that she holds most dear and at last even herself because she is made to believe that it is her brother's wish and so on her to the good power smile she can understand and profit by what the little birds say she knows how to choose the right casket and at last after many trials all at once the scene changes and she receives a glorious reward while the wicked step mother and her ugly daughter meet with a just fate nor is another female character less tenderly drawn in Haken Grizzlebeard number six where we see the proud hotty princess subdued and tamed by natural affection into a faithful loving wife we sympathize with her more than with the patient grizzle of the poets who is in reality too good for her story has no relief while in Haken Grizzlebeard we begin by being angry at the princess's pride we are glad at the rep attribution which overtakes her but we are gradually melted at her sufferings and hardships when she gives up all for the beggar and follows him we burst into tears with her when she exclaims oh the beggar and the babe in the cabin and we rejoice with her when the prince says here is the bigger and there is the babe and so let the cabin burn away nor is it unprofitable here to remark how the professions fair when they appear in these tales the church cannot be said to be treated with respect for Father Lawrence is ludicast treated as sieved and scurvely treated by the master thief in number 35 nor does the priest come off any better in goosey grizzle number 33 where he is thrown by the farmer into the wet moss indeed it seems as if the popular mind were determined to revenge itself when left to itself were the superstition in Rome in one hand and the severity of strict modernism on the other it has little to say of either of them but when it does speak its accents are not those of reverence and love the law to as represented by those awful personages the constable the attorney and the sheriff in the master made number nine is held up to ridicule and treated with anything but tenderness but there is one profession for which a good word is said a single word but enough to show the feeling of all the people in the 12 wild ducks number eight the king is as soft and kind to snow white and rosy red as a doctor a doctor alas not of laws but of medicine and thus this profession so often despised but in reality the noblest has homage paid to it in that single sentence which neither the church with all its dignity nor the law with all its cunning have been able to extort from the popular mind yet even this profession has a hard word uttered against it the wooden cloak number one where the doctor takes a great fee from the wicked queen to say she will never be well unless she has some of the done bull's flesh to eat and now it is time to bring this introduction to an end lest it should play the wolf's part to Odin and swallow up the tales themselves enough has been said at least to prove that even nursery tales may have a science of their own and to show how the old nor near in divine spinners can revenge themselves if the old wives's tales are insulted and attacked the inquiry itself might be almost indefinitely prolonged for this is a journey where each turn of the road brings out a new point of view and the longer we linger on our path the longer we find something fresh to see popular mythology is a virgin mind and it's or so far from being exhausted or worked out has here in England at least been scarcely touched it may indeed be dreaded lest the time for collecting English traditions is not past and gone whether the steam engine and printing press have not played their great work of enlightenment too well and whether the popular tales of which no doubt the land was once full have not faded away before those great inventions as the race of giants waned before the might of Odin and the icier still the example of this very norway which at one time was thought even by her own sons to have few tales of her own and now has been found to have them so fresh and full may serve as a warning not to abandon a search which indeed can scarcely be said to have been ever begun and to suggest a doubt whether the ill success may have attended this or that particular attempt may not have been from the fault rather of the secrets themselves after traditions than from the want of the traditions themselves in point of fact it is a matter of the utmost difficulty to gather such tales in any country as those who have collected them most successfully will be the first to confess it is hard to make old and feeble women who are generally the depositaries of these natural treasures believe that the inquirer can have any real interest in the matter they fear that the question is only to put them into ridicule but the popular mind is a sensitive plant it becomes coy encloses its leaves at the first rude touch and when once shut it is hard to make these aged lips reveal the secrets of the memory there they remain however forming part of an undercurrent of tradition of which the educated classes through whose minds flow the bright upper current of faith are apt to forget the very existence things out of sight and therefore out of mind now and then a wave of chance tosses them to the surface from those hidden deaths and all her majesty's inspectors of schools are shocked at the wild shapes which still haunt the minds of the great mass of the community it cannot be said that the English are not a superstitious people here we have gone on for more than a hundred years proclaiming our opinion that the belief in witches and wizards and ghosts and fetches was extinct throughout the land ministers of all denominations have preached them down and philosophers convinced all the world of the absurdity of such vain superstitions and yet it has been reserved for another learned profession the law to produce in one trial at the Stapidshire sizes a year or two ago such a host of witnesses who firmly believed in witchcraft and swore to their belief in spectre dogs and wizards has to show that in the midland countries at least such traditions are anything but extinct if so much of the bad has been spared by steam by natural philosophy and by the church let us hope that some of the good may still linger along with it and that an English Grimm may yet arise who may carry out Mr. Chambers has so well begun in Scotland and discover in the mouth of an Anglo-Saxon Gammer Gretel some at least of those popular tales which England once had in common with all the Aryan race for these Norse tales one may say nothing which can equal the tenderness and skill which M.M. as Borengin and Moe have collected have collected them some of that tenderness and beauty may it is hoped be found in this English population but to those who have never been in the country where they are current and who are not familiar with that hearty simple people no words can tell the freshness and truth of the originals it is not that the idioms of the two languages are different for they are more nearly aligned both in vocabulary and construction than any other two tongues but it is the face of nature herself and the character of the race that looks up to her that fail to the mind's eye the west coast of Scotland and nature in a general way except that it is infinitely smaller and less grand but that constant bright blue sky those deeply indented sinuous gleaming frists those headstrong rivers and headlong falls those steep hillsides those long ridges of fells those peaks and needles rising sharp above them those hanging glaciers and reeds of everlasting snow those towering endless pine forests relieved by slender stems of silver birch those green spots in the midst of the forest those winding dales and upland lakes those various shapes of birds and beasts the mighty crashing elk the fleet reindeer the fearless bear the nimble lynx the shy wolf those eagles and swans and seabirds those many tones and notes of nature's voice making distant music through the twilight summer night those brilliant flashing noise and lights when days grow short those dazzling blinding storms of autumn snow that cheerful winter frost and cold that joy of sledging over the smooth ice when the sharp shod horse careers at full speed with the light sledge what rushes down the steep pitches over the crackling snow through the green spruce wood all of these form a nature of their own these particular features belong in their fullness in combination to no other land when in the midst of all this natural scenery we find an honest manly race not the race of towns and cities but of the dales and fells free and unsubdued holding its own in a country where there are neither lords nor ladies but simple men and women brave men and fair women who cleaned the traditions of their forefathers and whose memory reflects is from the faithful mirror of their native steel the whole history and progress of their race when all these natural features and such a manly race meet then we have the stuff out of which these tales are made the living rocks out of which these sharp cut national forms are hewn then to our task of introducing them is over we may lay aside our pen and leave the reader and the tales to themselves end of section 7 recording by daniel w section 8 of popular tales from the north this is the LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org read by siren darktail popular tales from the north by Sir George Web Descent section 8 true and untrue once upon a time there were two brothers one was called true and the other untrue true was always upright and good towards all but untrue was bad and full of lies so that no one could believe what he said their mother was a widow and hadn't much to live on so when her sons had grown up she was forced to send them away and they would earn their bread in the world each got a little script with some food in it and then they went their way now when they had walked till evening they sat down on a windfall in the wood and took out their scraps for they were hungry after walking the whole day and the food would be sweet enough if you're of my mind said untrue I think I better get out of your script so long as there is anything in it and after that we can take to mine yes true was well pleased with this so they fell to eating but untrue got all the best bits and stuffed himself with them while true got only the burnt crusts and scraps next morning they broke their fast off truce food and they dined of it too and then there was nothing left in the script so when they had walked till late at night and were ready to eat again true wanted to eat at his brother's script but untrue said no the food was his and he had only enough of himself aye but you know you had out of my script so long as there was anything in it all very fine I dare say answered untrue but if you're such a fool as to let others eat up your food before your face for now you have to do a sit here and starve very well said true you're untrue by name and untrue by nature so you have been and so you will be all your life long now when untrue heard this he flew into rage and rushed at his brother and plucked out both his eyes now try if you can see whether folk are untrue or not you're blind buzzard and so saying he ran away and left him untrue there he went walking along and feeling his weight with the thick wood blind and alone he scarce knew which way to turn when all at once he caught hold of the trunk of a great bushy lime tree so he thought he could climb up into it and sit there till the night was over for the fear of the wild beasts when the birds began to sing he said to himself then I shall know it is day and I can try to grow up my way farther on so he climbed up into the lime tree and as I sat there all the time he heard of someone came and began to make a stir and clatter under the tree and soon after others came and when they began to greet one another he found out it was brun the bear and grailax the wolf and slyb was the fox and long years the hare who had come to keep St. John's Eve under the tree so they began to eat and drink and be merry and when they had done eating at last the fox said shouldn't we each of us tell a little story while we sit here well the other said nothing against that it would be good fun that he said and the bear began for you may fancy he was king of the company the king of england said brun as such a bad eyesight he can scar see a yard before him but if he only came to this lime tree in the morning while the dew is still in the leaves and took and dropped his eyes with dew he would get his back his side as good as ever very true said grailax the king of england has a deaf and dumb daughter too but if he only knew what I know he would soon cure her last year she went to the communion she let crumb of the bread fall out of her mouth and a great toad came and swallowed it down but if they only dug up the chance of lore they would find the toad sitting right under the altar rails where the bread still sticking in his throat if they were to cut the toad open and take and give the bread to the princess she would be like other folk again as to her speech and hearing that's all very well said the fox but if the king of england knew what I know he would not be so badly off for water in his palace for under the great stone in his palace yard is a spring of the clearest water one could wish for if he only knew to dig for it there ah said the hare in the smaller voice the king of england has the finest orchard in the whole yand but it does not bear so much as a crab but there lies a heavy gold chain in three turns from the orchard if he got that dug up there would not be a garden like it for burying in all his kingdom very true I'd say said the fox but now it's getting very late and we may as well go home so they all went away together after they were gone he fell asleep at his cell up on the tree but when the bears began to sing a dawn he woke up and took the dew from the leaves and dropped his eyes with it and so got his sight back as good as it was before Antru plucked his eyes out then he went straight to the king of england's palace and backed for work and got it on the spot so one day the king came out into the palace yard and when he had walked about a bit he wanted to drink out of his pump you must know the dew was hot and the king very thirsty but when they poured him out of glass it was so muddy and nasty and foul that the king got quite vexed I don't think there's ever a man in my whole kingdom who has such bad water in his yard as I and yet I bring it in pipes from far over hill and dale quite out of the king like enough your majesty said true but if you'd let me have some men to help me dig up this great stone which lies here in the middle of your yard you would soon get good water and plenty of it well the king was winning enough and they had scarcely got the stone well out and dug under it a while for a jet of water spring up high up into the air as clear and full as if it came out of a conduit and clearer water was not to be found in all england a little while after the king was out in his palace yard again and there came a great hawk flying after his chicken and all the king's men began to clap their hands and bawl out there he flies, there he flies the king caught up his gun and tried to shoot the hawk but he couldn't see so far so he fell into great grief what do heaven he said there was anyone who could tell me a cure for my eyes for I think I shall soon go quite blind I can tell you once enough said true and then he told the king what he had done to cure his own eyes and the king said this afternoon to the lime tree as you may fancy and his eyes were quite cured as soon as he rubbed them with the dew which was on the leaves in the morning from that time forth there was no one whom the king held so dear as true and he had to be with him wherever he went both at home and abroad so one day as they were walking together in the orchard the king said I can't tell how it is that I can't there isn't a man in the england who spends so much in his orchard as I and yet I can't get one of the trees to bear so much as a crab well well said true if I may have what lies three times twisted around your orchard and man to dig it up your orchard will bear well enough yes the king was quite willing so true got man and began to dig and at last he dug up the whole gold chain now it was a rich man far richer indeed than the king himself but still the king was well pleased for his orchard bore so that boughs of the trees hung down to the ground and such sweet apples and pears nobody had ever tasted another day too the king and true were walking about and talking together when the princess passed them and the king was quite dumbcast when he saw her isn't it a pity now that so lovely princess's mind should warn speech and hearing he said to true hey but there is a cure for that said true when the king heard that he promised him the princess to wife and half his kingdom into the bargain if you could get her right again so true took of your man and went into the church and dug up the toad which shed under the altar rails then he cut open the toad and took out the bread and gave it to the king's daughter and from that hour she got back her speech and could talk like other people now true was to have the princess and they got ready for the bridal feast and such a feast had never been seen before the whole land just as they were in the midst of dancing the bridal dance in came a beggar led and begged for a morsel of food and he was so ragged and wretched that everyone crossed themselves when they looked at him but true knew him at once he saw that it was untrue his brother do you know me again said true oh where should such as one as I ever have seen so great a lord said untrue still you have seen me before said true it was I whose eyes you plucked out a year ago this very day untrue by name and untrue by nature so I said before and so I say it now but you are still my brother and so you shall have some food after that you may go to the lime tree where I sat last year if you hear anything that can do you good you will be lucky so untrue did not wait to be told twice good by sitting in the lime tree that in one year he has come to be king of a half England what good may I not get he thought so he set off and climbed up into the lime tree he had not sat there long before all the beasts came as before and ate and drank then kept saying Jones Eve under the tree when they had left off eating the Vox wished that they should begin to tell stories and untrue got ready to listen with all his might till his ears were almost fit to fall off but brewing the bear was surely and growled and said someone had been chattering about what was said last year and so now we will hold our tongues about what we know and with that the beast said one another good night and parted and untrue was just as wise as he was before and the reason was that his name was untrue and his nature untrue too end of section 8 for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org once on a time but it was a long long time ago there were two brothers one rich and one poor now one Christmas Eve the poor one hadn't so much as a crumb in the house either of meat or bread so he went to his brother to ask him for something to keep Christmas with in God's name it was not the first time his brother had been forced to help him and you may fancy he wasn't very glad to see his face but he said so the poor brother said he would do anything and was full of thanks well here is the flitch said the rich brother and now go straight to hell would I have given my world to do I must stick to said the other so he took the flitch and set off he walked the whole day and at dusk he came to a place where he saw a very bright light maybe this is the place said the man to himself so he turned aside and the first thing he saw was an old old man with a long white beard who stood in an outhouse queuing wood for the Christmas fire good even said the man with the flitch the same to you where are you going so late said the man oh I'm going to hell if I only knew the right way answered the poor man well you're not far wrong for this is hell said the old man when you get inside they will be all for buying your flitch for me to scarce in hell but mind ya you don't sell it unless you get the hand of the corn which stands behind the door for it when you come out I'll teach you how to handle the corn for it's good to grind almost anything so the man with the flitch thanked the other for his good advice and gave a great knock at the devil's door when he got in everything went just as the old man had said all the devils great and small came swarming up to him and each tried to outbid the other for the flitch well said the man by rights my old dame and I ought to have this flitch for our Christmas dinner but since you have all set your hearts on it I suppose I must give it up to you but if I sell it at all I'll have for it that corn behind the door yonder at first the devil wouldn't hear of such a bargain and chafered and haggled with the man but he stuck to what he said and at last the devil had to part with his corn when the man got out into the yard he asked the old woodcutter how he was to handle the corn and after he had learned how to use it he thanked the old man and went off home as fast as he could but still the clock had struck 12 on Christmas Eve before he reached his own door where ever in the world have you been said his old dame here have I sat hour after hour waiting and watching without so much as two sticks to lay together under the Christmas bros oh said the man I couldn't get back before for I had to go a long way first for one thing now you shall see what you shall see so he put the corn on the table and bade it first of all grind lights then a tablecloth then meat then ale and so on till they had got everything that was nice for Christmas fair he had only to speak the word and the corn ground out what he wanted the old dame stood by blessing her stars and kept on asking where he had got this wonderful corn but he wouldn't tell her it's all one where I got it from you'll see the corn is a good one and the mill stream never freezes that's enough so he ground meat and drink and dainties enough to last out till 12th day and on the third day he asked all his friends and kin to his house and gave a great feast now his rich brother saw all that was on the table and all that was behind in the larder he grew quite spiteful and wild for he couldn't bear that his brother should have anything it was only on Christmas Eve he said to the rest he was in such straits that he came and asked for a morsel of food in God's name and now he gives a feast as if he were count or king and he turned to his brother and said but once in hell's name have you got all this wealth from behind the door answered the owner of the corn for he didn't care to let the cat out of the bag but later on the evening when he had got a drop too much he could keep his secret no longer and brought out the corn and said there you see what has got me all this wealth and so he made the corn grind all kind of things when his brother saw it he set his heart on having the corn and after a deal of coaxing he got it but he had to pay $300 for it and his brother bargained to keep it till hay harvest for he thought if I keep it till then I can make it grind meat and drink that will last for years so you may fancy the corn didn't grow rusty for want of work and when hay harvest came the rich brother got it but the other took care not to teach him how to handle it it was evening when the rich brother got the corn home and next morning he told his wife to go out into the hay field and toss while the mowers cut the grass and he would stay at home and get the dinner ready so when dinner time drew near he put the corn on the kitchen table and said grind herrings and broth and grind them good and fast so the corn began to grind herrings and broth first of all all the dishes full then all the tubs full and so on till the kitchen floor was quite covered then the man twisted and twirled at the corn to get it to stop but for all his twisting and fingering the corn went on grinding and in a little while the broth rose so high that the man was like to drown so he threw open the kitchen door and ran into the parlor but it wasn't long before the corn had ground the parlor full too and it was only at the risk of his life that the man could get hold of the latch of the house door through the stream of broth when he got the door open he ran out and set off down the road with a stream of herrings and broth at his heels roaring like a waterfall over the whole farm now his old dame who was in the field tossing hay thought it a long time to dinner and at last she said well though the master doesn't call us home we may as well go maybe he finds it hard work to boil the broth and we'll be glad of my help the men were willing enough so they sauntered home words but just as they had got a little way up the hill what should they meet but herrings and broth and bread all running and dashing and splashing together in a stream and the master himself running before them for his life and as he passed them he bawled out would to heaven each of you had a hundred throats but take care you're not drowned in the broth away he went as though the evil one were at his heels to his brother's house and begged him for god's sake to take back the corn that instant for said he if it grinds one hour more the whole bearish will be swallowed up by herrings and broth but his brother wouldn't hear of taking it back till the other paid him down three hundred dollars more so the poor brother got both the money and the corn and it wasn't long before he set up a farmhouse far funner than the one in which his brother lived and with the corn he ground so much gold that he covered it with plates of gold and as the farm lay by the seaside the golden house gleamed and glistened far away over the sea all who sailed by put ashore to see the rich man in the golden house and to see the wonderful corn the fame of which spread far and wide till there was nobody who hadn't heard tell of it so one day there came a skipper who wanted to see the corn and the first thing he asked was if it could grind salt grind salt said the owner I should just think it could it can grind anything when the skipper heard that he said he must have the corn cost what it would for if he only had it he thought he should be rid of his long voyages across stormy seas for a lading of salt well at first the man wouldn't hear of parting with the corn but the skipper begged and prayed so hard that at last he let him have it but he had to pay many many thousand dollars for it now when the skipper had got the corn on his back he soon made off with it for he was afraid less the man should change his mind so he had no time to ask how to handle the corn but got on board his ship as fast as he could and set sail when he had sailed a good way off he brought the corn on deck and said grind salt and grind both good and fast well the corn began to grind salt so that it poured out like water and when the skipper had got the ship full he wished to stop the corn but whichever way he turned it and however much he tried it was no good the corn kept grinding on and the heap of salt was higher and higher and at last down sank the ship there lies the corn at the bottom of the sea and grinds away at this very day and that's why the sea is salt end of section 9 recording by Brian von Diedenroth www.bran www.bran www.bran www.bran www.bran.roth.com once upon a time there was an old widow who lived far away from the rest of the world up under her hillside with her three daughters she was so poor that she had no stock but one single hand which she prized at the apple of her eye in short it was always cackling at her heels and she was always running to look after it well one day all at once the hand was missing and the old wife went out and round and round the cottage looking and calling for her hand but it was gone and there was no getting it back so the woman said to her eldest daughter you must just go out and see if you can find our hand for have it back we must even if we have to fetch it out of the hill the daughter was ready enough to go so she set off and walked up and down and looked and called but no hand could she find but all at once just as she was about to give up the hunt she heard someone calling out in a clap in the rock your hand trips inside the hill your hand trips inside the hill so she went into the clap to see what it was but she has scared set her foot inside the clap before she fell through a trap door deep deep down into a vault underground when she got to the bottom she went through many rooms each finer than the other but in the innermost room of all a great ugly man of the hillfall came up to her and asked will you be my sweetheart no will not she said she wouldn't have him at any price not she all she wanted was to get the bow ground again as fast as ever she could and to look after her hand which was lost then the man of the hill got so angry that he took her up and run her head off and threw both the head and trunk down into the cellar while this was going on her mother said at home waiting and waiting but no daughter came so after she had waited a bit longer and neither heard nor saw anything of her daughter she said to her midmost daughter that she must go out and see after her sister and she acted you can just give our hand a call at the same time well her sister had to get off and the very same thing befell her she went about looking and calling and all at once she too heard a voice away in the collapse of the rock saying your hand trips inside the hill your hand trips inside the hill she thought this strange and went to see what it could be and so she too went to the trap door deep deep down into the vault there she went from room to room and in the innermost one the man of the hill came to her and asked if she would be his sweetheart no that she wouldn't all she wanted was to get above ground again and hunt for her hand which was lost so the man of the hill got and took her up and wrung her head off and threw both head and trunk down into the cellar now the old dame has sat and waited seven lengths and seven breaths for her second daughter and could neither see nor hear anything of her she said to the youngest now you really must set off and see after your sisters you will lose the hand but will be sillier still if you lose both your sisters and you can give the hand a call at the same time for the old dame's heart was still set on her hand yes the youngest was ready enough to go so she walked up and down wanting for her sisters and calling the hand but she could neither see nor hear anything of them and the last she too came up to the clout in the rock and heard how something said your hand trips inside the hill your hand trips inside the hill she thought this strange so she too went to see what it was and found through the trapdoor too deep deep down into a vault when she reached the bottom she went from one room to another each grander than the other but she wasn't at all of rates and took good time to look about her so as she was peeping into this and that she cast her eye on the trapdoor into the cellar and looked down it and what should she see there but her sisters who lay dead she had scared time to slam the trapdoor before the man of the hill came to her and asked will you be my sweet heart with all my heart answered the girl for she saw very well how it had gone with her sisters so when the man of the hill heard that she got her the finest clothes in the world she had only asked for them or for anything else she had a mind to and got what she wanted so glad was the man of the hill that anyone would be his sweet heart but when she had been there a little while she was one day even more doleful and outcast than was her once so the man of the hill asked her what was the matter and why she was in such dumps ah said the girl because I can't get home to my mother she's heart pinched I know for meat and drink and has no one with her well said the man of the hill I can't let you go to see her but just stuff some meat and drink into a sack and I won't carry to her yes she would do so she said many thanks but at the bottom of the sack she stopped a lot of gold down silver and afterwards she laid a little foot on the top of the gold down silver then she told the auger the sack was ready but he must be sure not to look into it so he gave his word he wouldn't and set off now as the man of the hill talked off she pipped out after him through a chink in the trap door but when he had gone a bit on the way he said this sack is so heavy I would just see what they incited and so he was about to untie the mouth of the sack but the girl called down to him I see what your art I see what your art the dear zero said the man of the hill then you must have like his sharp eyes in your head that's all so he threw the sack over his shoulder and did not try to look into it again when he reached the widow's cottage he threw the sack in through the cottage door and said half meat and wing from your daughter she doesn't want for nothing so when the girl had been in the hill a boot bit longer one day a billy goat found down the trap door who said for you I should like to know you long bearded best said the man of the hill who was in an awful rage that he whipped up the goat and run his head off and threw him down into the cellar oh said the girl why did you do that I might have had the goat to play with down here well said the man of the hill you need to be so down in the mouth about it I sure think for I can soon put life into the billy goat again so saying he took a flask which hung up against the wall put the billy goat's head on his body again and smeared it with some ointment out of the flask and he was as well and as lively as ever again ho ho said the girl to herself that flask is worth something that it is so when she had been some time longer in the hill she watched for a day when the man of the hill was away took her eldest sister and putting her head on her shoulders smeared her with some of the ointment out of the flask just that she has seen the man of the hill do the billy goat twice her sister came to life again then the girl stopped her into a psych laid a little foot over her and as soon as the man of the hill came home she said to him dear friend now do go home to my mother with a morsel of foot again poor thing she's both hungry and thirsty I'll be bound and besides then she's all alone in the world but you must mind not look into the sack well he said he would carry the sack and he said too that he would not look into it but when he had gone a little way he thought the sack got awfully heavy and when he had gone a bit further he said to himself come what will I must see what's inside this sack for however sharp her eyes may be she can't see me all this way off but just that she was about to untie the sack the girl who sat inside the sack called down I see what you are art the deities you do said the orga then you must have plaguey sharp eyes for he thought all the why it was the girl inside the hill who was speaking so he didn't care so much as to pip into the sack again but carried it straight to her mother as fast as he could and when he got to the cottage door he threw it in through the door and rolled down here you have meat and drink from your daughter she once for nothing when the girl had been in the hill a while longer she did the very same thing with her other sister she put her head on her shoulders smeared her with ointment out of the flask brought her to life and stuff her into the sack but this time she scrammed in also as much gold and silver as the sack could hold and overall laid a very little food dear friend she said to the man of the hill you really must run home to my mother with the little food again and mind you don't look into the sack yes the man of the hill had enough to do as she wished and he gave his word to that he wouldn't look into the sack but when he had gone a bit of the way he began to think the sack got awfully heavy and when he had gone a bit further he could scarce their girl along under it so he sat it down and was just about to untie the string and look into it and all inside the sack bolt out I see what you are art I see what you are art the deuce you do said the man of the hill then you must have breaking sharp eyes of your own well he did not try to look into the sack but made all the haste he could and carried the sack straight further when he got to the cottage door he threw the sack in through the door and wore it down here you have food from your daughter she wants for nothing so when the girl had been there a good while longer the man of the hill made up his mind to go out for the day then the girl shamed to be sick and sorry and threatened it's no use you coming home before 12 o'clock at night she said for I shan't be able to have supper ready before I am so sick and poorly but when the man of the hill was well out of the house she stopped some of her clothes with straw and stuck up this less of straw in the corner by the chimney so that it looked just as if she herself was standing there after that she stole off home and got a sharp shooter to stay in the cottage with her mother so when the clock struck 12 or just about it home came the man of the hill and the first thing he said to the straw girl was give me something to eat but she answered him never a word give me something to eat I say call down the man of the hill for I am almost starved no she hadn't a word to throw at him give me something to eat rod down the auger the third time I think you better open your eyes and hear what I say or else I will wake you up that I will no the girl stood just as still as ever so he flew into a rage and gave her such a slap in the face that the straw flew all around the room but when he saw that he knew he had been tricked and began to hunt everywhere and at last when he came to the cellar and found both the girl's sisters missing he soon saw how the cat jumped and ran off to the cottage saying I will soon pay her off but when he reached the cottage the sharp shooter fired off his piece and then the man of the hill dare not got into the house for he thought it was thunder so we set off home again as fast as he could lay legs to the ground but what do you think just as he got to the trapdoor the sun rose and the man of the hill burst oh if one only knew where the trapdoor was I'll be bound there's the whole heap of gold down there still end of section 10