Tales from the Fjeld Part 6

When the girls had ended, we all laughed at the droll turn out of Sun, Moon, and Co. from the cat's maw; and I was just going to repay them with a Scotch story, when there came a great knock at the door.

Who could it be? said the girls. Father and mother would not come up from the dale in such weather. Who could it be? Perhaps one of the Hill folk. Perhaps a Huldra.

"Nonsense, la.s.sies!" said Anders; "even if it were anything uncanny, we have guns enough here to fire a shot over a whole pack of them, and men enough to fire them too. Don't stand dawdling there, Karin, but open the door."

Karin did as she was bid, and drew back the wooden bolt.

"My!" she cried, "if it isn't Peter the Forester! Come in, Peter. Come in."

In strode Peter, a strapping fellow, long past youth, but still hale and hearty. His tight-fitting breeches and hose showed a well-knit frame; over his many-b.u.t.toned jacket he wore a loose cloak of russet woollen stuff, "Wadmel," as they call it in the north of Scotland, and "Vadmal,"

as they call it in Norway. A broad, flapping wide-awake covered his head, which on this occasion was tied down across the top, and under the chin by a red cotton kerchief. On his shoulder was his rifle.

"Why, Peter," said Anders, "what brought you out in such Deil's weather?"

"Well!" said Peter, "the owner of the sawmills down at the end of the dale on the other side of the Fjeld, sent me up here last night to see if I could mark down any reindeer for him; and so I came, though I told him 'twas no use. The poor, silly body fancies the deer are like a pack of barn-door fowls, that you can count morning and evening, as they go out and come home to roost. He little thinks that the deer seen to-day here, are to-morrow fifty miles off, or more; but as I wanted to cross the Fjeld, and look at the forest on the other side down in the dale, I said I would come and tell him if I saw any deer; and to make a long story short, I came, and thought to get here last night; but just on the edge of the Fjeld it grew dark as pitch, and so I crept into a reft in the rocks, and spent the night as I best could. Luckily I had fladbrod and gammelost, and a flask of brandy, else I should have fared badly.

But here I am, drenched to the skin, and nigh starved. Let me have a pair of dry stockings, and a bowl of milk, and make myself comfortable.

But G.o.d's peace! I did not see you had English lords here. Good day!

Good day! After deer, too, no doubt. Did you see the deer yesterday?"

While Anders told him in a low voice who we were, in which story Edward's mishap was sure to find a place, Peter took off his shoes and stockings, and put on dry ones, and then draining off his bowl of milk, sate before the fire to enjoy his pipe.

But Anders was not going to let him off so lightly.

"You must often hear and see strange things in the woods, and on the Fjeld, Peter!"

"Aye! aye!" replied Peter, under a cloud of puffs, to this rather leading question. "Aye, aye, I have both heard and seen many things.

Strange sounds and noises; sometimes for all the world like the sweetest music."

"And what made it?" I asked.

"What made it!" scornfully replied Peter, "why the Huldror--the fairies."

"The fairies! then you believe in the Good People?"

"Good or bad," said Peter, "and I think they are more often bad than good, by their leave be it spoken; for to tell the truth, they say this very Saeter was haunted in old days. Good or bad, why shouldn't I believe in them? Doesn't the Bible speak of evil spirits? and if I believe in the Bible I must believe in them."

I was too eager to get out of Peter what he knew about the Hill folk or Huldror or fairies, to stop to discuss his dictum as to the Bible, so I said,

"But do tell us what you saw yourself."

"Well!" said Peter, "once in August I was sitting on a knoll by the side of a path, with bushes on each side, so that I could look across the path down into a little hollow full of heath and ling. I was out calling birds, for I can call them by their notes, and just then I heard a grey hen call among the heather, and I called to her and thought, 'If I only set eyes on you, you shall have gobbled and cackled your last.' Then all at once I heard something come rustling behind me along the path, and I turned round and saw an old, old man; he was a strange looking chap altogether, but the strangest thing about him was that he had--at least so it seemed to me--three legs; and the third leg hung and dangled between the other two right down to the ground, and so he walked along the path. When I say 'walked,' it wasn't walking either, but a sliding, sloping motion, and so he went along, and I lost sight of him in one of the darkest hollows of the glen. Now if that were not a fairy I should like to know what it was?"

"Why an old gaberlunzie man, who helped himself along going down hill with his stick behind him," said I. "Come, come, Peter, you must know better stories than that. Tell us something that you have not seen, but only heard tell of. Can't you tell us 'Grumblegizzard?'" For that, you must know, was the name of a Norse tale that I had often heard of but never yet heard.

"Yes! yes," said Anders. "Peter knows it, I'll be bound."

"Well!" said Peter, "it's a queer story, but here it is. This is the story of

GRUMBLEGIZZARD.

"Once on a time there were five goodies, who were all reaping in a field; they were all childless, and all wished to have a bairn. All at once they set eyes on a strangely big goose-egg, almost as big as a man's head.

"'I saw it first,' said one.

"'I saw it just as soon as you,' screamed another.

"'Heaven help me, but I will have it,' swore the third; 'I was the first to see it.'

"So they flocked round it and squabbled so much about the egg that they were tearing one another's hair. But at last they agreed that they would own it in common, all five of them, and each was to sit on it in turn like a goose, and so hatch the gosling. The first lay sitting eight days, and sat and sat, but nothing came of it; meanwhile the others had to drag about to find food both for themselves and her. At last one of them began to scold her.

"'Well,' said the one that sat, 'you did not chip the egg yourself before you could cry, not you; but this egg, I think, has something in it, for it seems to me to mumble, and this is what it says, "Herrings and brose, porridge and milk, all at once." And now you may come and sit for eight days too, and we will change and change about and get food for you.'

"So when all five had sat on it eight days, the fifth heard plainly that there was a gosling in the egg, which screeched out, 'Herrings and brose, porridge and milk;' so she picked a hole in it, but instead of a gosling out came a man child, and awfully ugly it was, with a big head and little body. And the first thing it bawled out when it chipped the egg, was 'Herrings and brose, porridge and milk.'

"So they called it 'Grumblegizzard.'

"Ugly as it was, they were still glad to have it, at first; but it was not long before it got so greedy that it ate up all the meat in their house. When they boiled a kettle of soup or a pot of porridge, which they thought would be enough for all six, it tossed it all down its own throat. So they would not keep it any longer.

"'I've not known what it is to have a full meal since this changeling crept out of the egg-sh.e.l.l,' said one of them, and when Grumblegizzard heard that all the rest were of the same mind, he said he was quite willing to be off. If they did not care for him, he didn't care for them; and with that he strode off from the farm.

"After a long time he came to a farmer's house, which lay in a stone country, and there he asked for a place. Well, they wanted a labourer, and the goodman set him to pick up stones off the field. Yes!

Grumblegizzard gathered the stones from the field, and he took them so big that there were many horse-loads in them, and whether they were big or little, he stuffed them all into his pocket. 'Twas not long before he was done with that work, and then he wanted to know what he was to do next.

"'I've told you to pluck out the stones from the field,' said the goodman, 'you can't be done before you begin, I trow.'

"But Grumblegizzard turned out his pockets and threw the stones in a heap. Then the goodman saw that he had done his work, and felt he ought to keep a workman who was so strong. He had better come in and have something to eat, he said. Grumblegizzard thought so too, and he alone ate all that was ready for the master and mistress and for the servants, and after all he was not half full.

"'That was a man and a half to work, but a fearful fellow to eat, too; there was no stopping him,' said the goodman. 'Such a labourer would eat a poor farmer out of house and home before one could turn round.'

"So he told him he had no more work for him. He had best be off to the king's grange.

"Then Grumblegizzard strode on to the king, and got a place at once. In the king's grange there was enough both of work and food. He was to be odd man, and help the la.s.ses to bring in wood and water and other small jobs. So he asked what he was to do first.

"'Oh, if you would be so good as to chop us a little firewood.'

"Yes. Grumblegizzard fell to chopping and hewing till the splinters flew about him. 'Twas not long before he had chopped up all that there was, both of firewood and timber, both planks and beams; and when he had done he came back and asked what he was to do now.

"'Go on chopping wood,' they said.

"'There's no more left to chop,' said he.

"'That couldn't be true,' said the king's grieve, and he went and looked out in the wood-yard. But it was quite true; Grumblegizzard had chopped everything up; he had made firewood both of sawn planks and hewn beams.

That was bad work, the grieve said, and he told him he should not taste a morsel of food till he had gone into the forest and cut down as much timber as he had chopped up into firewood.

"Grumblegizzard went off to the smithy, and got the smith to help him to make an axe of fifteen pounds of iron; and so he went into the forest and began to clear it; down toppled tall spruces and firs fit for masts.

Everything went down that he found either on the king's or his neighbour's ground; he did not stay to top or lop them, and there they lay like so many windfalls. Then he laid a good load on a sledge, and put all the horses to it, but they could not stir the load from the spot, and when he took them by the heads and wished to set them a-going, he pulled their heads off. Then he tumbled the horses out of the traces on to the ground, and drew the load home by himself.