‘No such luck,’ answered Andras, shaking his head sorrowfully. By this
time he had taken his own shape again.
‘Well, but I don’t see how I am to get to you1’ said the Stalo, looking
up and down.
‘Jump over, as I did,’ answered Andras; ‘it is quite easy.’
‘But I could not jump this river; and I don’t know how you did,’
replied the Stalo.
‘I should be ashamed to say such things,’ exclaimed Andras. ‘Do you
mean to tell me that a jump, which the weakest Lapp boy would make
nothing of, is beyond your strength?’
The Stalo grew red and angry when he heard these words, just as Andras
meant him to do. He bounded into the air and fell straight into the
river. Not that that would have mattered, for he was a good swimmer;
but Andras drew out the bow and arrows which every Lapp carries, and
took aim at him. His aim was good, but the Stalo sprang so high into
the air that the arrow flew between his feet. A second shot, directed
at his forehead, fared no better, for this time the Stalo jumped so
high to the other side that the arrow passed between his finger and
thumb. Then Andras aimed his third arrow a little over the Stalo’s
head, and when he sprang up, just an instant too soon, it hit him
between the ribs.
Mortally wounded as he was, the Stalo was not yet dead, and managed to
swim to the shore. Stretching himself on the sand, he said slowly to
Andras:
‘Promise that you will give me an honourable burial, and when my body
is laid in the grave go in my boat across the fiord, and take whatever
you find in my house which belongs to me. My dog you must kill, but
spare my son, Andras.’
Then he died; and Andras sailed in his boat away across the fiord and
found the dog and boy. The dog, a fierce, wicked-looking creature, he
slew with one blow from his fist, for it is well known that if a
Stalo’s dog licks the blood that flows from his dead master’s wounds
the Stalo comes to life again. That is why no REAL Stalo is ever seen
without his dog; but the bailiff, being only half a Stalo, had
forgotten him, when he went to the little lakes in search of Andras.
Next, Andras put all the gold and jewels which he found in the boat
into his pockets, and bidding the boy get in, pushed it off from the
shore, leaving the little craft to drift as it would, while he himself
ran home. With the treasure he possessed he was able to buy a great
herd of reindeer; and he soon married a rich wife, whose parents would
not have him as a son-in-law when he was poor, and the two lived happy
for ever after.
[From Lapplandische Mahrchen, J. C. Poestion.]
The White Slipper
Once upon a time there lived a king who had a daughter just fifteen
years old. And what a daughter!
Even the mothers who had daughters of their own could not help allowing
that the princess was much more beautiful and graceful than any of
them; and, as for the fathers, if one of them ever beheld her by
accident he could talk of nothing else for a whole day afterwards.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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