Fairy Tales, Their Origin and Meaning; With Some Account of Dwellers in FairylandBunce, John Thackray
History
Fairy Tales, Their Origin and Meaning; With Some Account of Dwellers in Fairyland
Bunce, John Thackray
Fairy tales -- History and criticism
Now there are a great many other kinds of creatures in the Wonderland of
all European countries; but I must not stop to tell you about them or
we shall never have done. But there is one little story of the Danish
Nis--who answers to the German Kobold--which I may tell you, because it
is like the story of Hodeken which you have just read, and shows that
the creatures were of the same kind. There was a Nis in Jutland who was
very much teased by a mischievous boy. When the Nis had done his work he
sat down to have his supper, and he found that the boy had been playing
tricks with his porridge and made it unpleasant. So he made up his
mind to be revenged, and he did it in this way. The boy slept with
a servant-man in the loft. The Nis went up to them and took off the
bed-clothes. Then, looking at the little boy lying beside the tall man,
he said, "Long and short don't match," and he took the boy by the
legs and pulled him down to the man's legs. This was not to his mind,
however, so he went to the head of the bed and looked at them, Then said
the Nis--"Short and long don't match," and he pulled the boy up again;
and so he went on all through the night, up and down, down and up, till
the boy was punished enough. Another Nis in Jutland went with a boy to
steal corn for his master's horses. The Nis was moderate, but the boy
was covetous, and said, "Oh, take more; we can rest now and then!"
"Rest," said the Nis, "rest! what is rest?" "Do what I tell you,"
replied the boy; "take more, and we shall find rest when we get out of
this." So they took more corn, and when they had got nearly home the boy
said, "Here now is rest;" and so they sat down on a hill-side. "If I had
known," said the Nis, as they were sitting there, "if I had known that
rest was so good I'd have carried off all that was in the barn."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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