Weird Tales from Northern Seas Part 17

"Perchance thou dost think 'tis but a beggarly inheritance I have here in the Blue Mountains," said she, and sitting down on a hayc.o.c.k, she began chatting with him. "But we've four such _saetar[2]_ as this, and what I inherit from my mother is twelve times as large."

But the drummer had seen what he had seen. They were rather too anxious to settle the property upon him, thought he. So he declared that in so serious a matter he must crave a little time for consideration.

Then the la.s.s began to cry and take on, and asked him if he meant to befool a poor innocent, ignorant, young thing, and pursue her and drive her out of her very wits. She had put all her hope and trust in him, she said, and with that she fell a-howling.

She sat there quite inconsolable, and rocked herself to and fro with all her hair over her eyes, till at last the drummer began to feel quite sorry for her and almost angry with himself. She was certainly most simple-minded and confiding.

All at once she twisted round and threw herself petulantly down from the hayc.o.c.k. Her eyes spied all about, and seemed quite tiny and piercing as she looked up at him, and laughed and jested.

He started back. It was exactly as if he again saw the snake beneath the birch tree down there when it trundled away.

And now he wanted to be off as quickly as possible; he cared no longer about being civil.

Then she reared up with a hissing sound. She quite forgot herself, and a long tail hung down and whisked about from behind her kirtle.

He shouldn't escape her in that way, she shrieked. He should first of all have a taste of public penance and public opinion from parish to parish. And then she called her father.

Then the drummer felt a grip on his jacket, and he was lifted right off his legs.

He was chucked into an empty cow-house, and the door was shut behind him.

There he stood and had nothing to look at but an old billy-goat through a crack in the door, who had odd, yellow eyes, and was very much like the old fellow, and a sunbeam through a little hole, which sunbeam crept higher and higher up the blank stable wall till late in the evening, when it went out altogether.

But towards night a voice outside said softly, "Swain! swain!" and in the moonlight he saw a shadow cross the little hole.

"Hist! hist! the old man is sleeping at the other side of the wall," it sounded.

He knew by the voice that it was she, the golden-red one, who had behaved so prettily and been so bashful the moment he had come upon the scene.

"Thou need'st but say that thou dost know that serpent-eye has had a lover before, or they wouldn't be in such a hurry to get her off their hands with a dowry. Thou must know that the homestead westwards in the Blue Mountains is mine. And answer the old man that it was me, Brandi, that thou didst run after all the time. Hist! hist! here comes the old man," she whispered, and whisked away.

But a shadow again fell across the little hole in the moonlight, and the duck-necked one stuck her head in and peeped at him.

"Swain, swain, art thou awake?"

"That serpent-eye will make thee the laughingstock of the neighbourhood.

She's spiteful, and she stings. But the homestead westward in the Blue Mountains is mine, and when I play there the gates beneath the high mountains fly open, and through them lies the road to the nameless powers of nature. Do but say that 'twas me, Randi, thou wert running after, because she plays so prettily on the _Langelijk_.--"Hist, hist!

the old man is stirring about by the wall!"--she beckoned to him and was gone.

A little afterwards nearly every bit of the hole was darkened, and he recognised the Black one by her voice.

"Swain, swain!" she hissed.

"I had to bind up my kirtle to-day behind," said she, "so we couldn't go dancing the _Halling-fling_[3] together on the green sward. But the homestead in the Blue Mountains is my lawful property, and tell the old man that it was madcap Gyri thou wast running after to-day, because thou art so madly fond of dancing jigs and _hallings_."

Then she clapped her hands aloud, and straightway was full of fear lest she should have awakened the old man.

And she was gone.

But the lad sat inside there, and thought it all over, and looked up at the thin pale summer moon, and he thought that never in his whole life had he been in such evil case.

From time to time he heard something moving, sc.r.a.ping, and snorting against the wall outside. It was the old fellow who lay there and kept watch over him.

"Thou, swain, thou," said another voice at the peep-hole.

It was she who had planted herself so firmly on the rock with such st.u.r.dy hips and such a masterful voice.

"For these three hundred years have I been blowing the _langelur[4]_ here in the summer evenings far and wide, but never has it drawn any one westward hither into the Blue Mountains. And let me tell thee that we are all homeless and houseless, and all thou seest here is but glitter and glamour. Many a man has been befooled hither time out of mind. But I won't have the other la.s.ses married before me. And rather than that any one of them should get thee, I'll free thee from the mountains. Mark me, now! When the sun is hot and high the old man will get frightened and crawl into his corner. Then look to thyself. Shove hard against the door of the hayloft, and hasten to get thee over the fence, and thou wilt be rid of us."

The drummer was not slow to follow this counsel. He crept out the moment the sun began to burn, and cleared the fence with one good bound.

In less than no time he was down in the valley again.

And far, far away towards sunrise in the mountains, he heard the sound of her _langelur_.

He threw his drum across his shoulder, and hied him off to the manoeuvres at Moen.

But never would he play rat-tat-tat and beat the tattoo before the la.s.ses again, lest he should find himself westwards in the Blue Mountains before he was well aware of it.

[1] A long slow dance, and the music to it.

[2] A _Saeter_ (Swed. _sater_) is a remote pasturage with huts upon it, where the cows are tended and dairy produce prepared for market and home use during the summer.

[3] A country dance of a boisterous jig-like sort.

[4] A long wooden trumpet.

"_IT'S ME_."

[Ill.u.s.tration: "IT'S ME."]

"IT'S ME"

They had chatted so long about the la.s.ses down in the valley; and what a fine time they had of it there, that Gygra's[1] daughter grew sick and tired of it all, and began to heave rocks against the mountain side. She was bent upon taking service in the valley below, said she.

"Then go down to the ground gnome first, and grind thy nose down, and tidy thyself up a bit, and stick a comb in thy hair instead of an iron rake," said the dwellers in the mountains.