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
We can give only one more story of the Trolls. They have power over
human beings until their names are found out, and when the Troll's name
is mentioned his power goes from him. One day St. Olaf, a very great
Saint, was thinking how he could build a very large church without any
money, and he didn't quite see his way to it. Then a Giant Troll met him
and they chatted together, and St. Olaf mentioned his difficulty. So the
Troll said he would build the church, within a year, on condition that
if it was done in the time he should have for his reward the sun, and
the moon, or St. Olaf himself. The church was to be so big that seven
priests could say mass at seven altars in it without hearing each other;
and it was all to be built of flint stone and to be richly carved. When
the time was nearly up the church was finished, all but the top of the
spire; and St. Olaf was in sad trouble about his promise. So he walked
out into a wood to think, and there he heard the Troll's wife hushing
her child inside a hill, and saying to it, "To-morrow, Wind and Weather,
your father, will come home in the morning, and bring with him the sun
and the moon, or St. Olaf himself." Then St. Olaf knew what to do. He
went home, and there was the church, all ready except the very top of
the weather-cock, and the Troll was just putting the finishing-touch to
that. Then St. Olaf called out to him, "Oh! ho! Wind and Weather, you
have set the spire crooked!" And then, with a great noise, the Troll
fell down from the steeple and broke into pieces, and every piece was a
flint-stone.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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