by Jonas Lie
And it sounded far and wide through the summer evening, and rang back again across the hills.
But she, the prettiest and daintiest of them all, who had cast herself on the ground, stuck her fingers in her ears, and mimicked her and laughed and jeered.
Then she glanced up at him with her blue eyes peeping through her ashen-yellow hair, and whispered—
“If thou dost want me, swain, thou must pick me up.”
“She has a strong firm grip for a gentle maiden,” thought he to himself, as he raised her from the ground.
“But thou must catch me first,” cried she.
And right towards the house they ran—she first, and he after her.
Suddenly she stopped short, and putting both arms akimbo, looked straight into his eyes: “Dost like me?” she asked.
The swain couldn’t say no to that. He had now got hold of her, and would have put his arm round her.
“’Tis for thee to have a word in the matter, father,” she shouted all at once in the direction of the house; “this swain here would fain wed me.”
And she drew him hastily towards the hut door.
There sat a little grey-clad old fellow, with a cap like a milk-can on his head, staring at the livestock on the mountain-side. He had a large silver jug in front of him.
“’Tis the homestead westward in the Blue Mountains that he’s after, I know,” said the old man, nodding his head, with a sly look in his eyes.
“Haw, haw! That’s what they’re after, is it?” thought the swain. But aloud he said, “’Tis a great offer, I know; but methinks ’tis a little hasty too. Down our way ’tis the custom to send two go-betweens first of all to arrange matters properly.”
“Thou didst send two before thee, and here they be,” quoth she smartly, and produced his drumsticks.
“And ’tis usual with us, moreover, to have a look over the property first; though the lass herself have wit enough and to spare,” added he.
Then she all at once grew so small, and there was a nasty green glitter in her eyes—
“Hast thou not run after me the livelong day, and wooed me right down in the enclosure there, so that my father both heard and saw it all?” cried she.
“Pretty lasses are wont to hold back a bit,” said the swain, in a wheedling sort of way. He perceived that he must be a little subtle here; it was not all love in this wooing.
Then she seemed to bend her body backwards into a complete curve, and shot forward her head and neck, and her eyes sparkled.
But the old fellow lifted his stick from his knee, and she stood there again as blithe and sportive as ever.
She stretched herself out tall and stiff, with her hands in her silver girdle; and she looked right into his eyes and laughed, and asked him if he was one of those fellows who were afraid of the girls. If he wanted her he might perchance be run off his legs again, said she.
Then she began tripping up and down, and curtseying and making fun of him again.
But all at once he saw on the sward behind her what looked like the shadow of something that whisked and frisked and writhed round and round, and twisted in and out according as she practised her wheedling ways upon him.
“That is a very curious long sort of riband,” thought the drummer to himself in his amazement. They were in a great hurry, too, to get him under the yoke, he thought; but they should find that a soldier on his way to the manoeuvres is not to be betrothed and married offhand.
So he told them bluntly that he had come hither for his drumsticks, and not to woo maidens, and he would thank them to let him have his property.
“But have a look about you a bit first, young man,” said the old fellow, and he pointed with his stick.
And all at once the drummer saw large dun cows grazing all along the mountain pastures, and the cow-bells rang out their merry peals. Buckets and vats of the brightest copper shone all about, and never had he seen such shapely and nicely dressed milkmaids. There must needs be great wealth here.
“Perchance thou dost think ’tis but a beggarly inheritance I have here in the Blue Mountains,” said she, and sitting down on a haycock, she began chatting with him. “But we’ve four such sætar[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 lass 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 haycock. 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 today behind,” said she, “so we couldn’t go dancing the Halling-fling[3] together on the green sward. B
ut the homestead in the Blue Mountains is my lawful property, and tell the old man that it was madcap Gyri thou wast running after today, 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, scraping, 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 sturdy 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 lasses 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 lasses 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 Sæter (Swed. säter) 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”
They had chatted so long about the lasses 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.
So Gygra’s daughter tramped along in the middle of the river, till the foss steamed and the storm whirled round about her. Down she went to the ground gnome, and was scoured and scrubbed and combed out finely.
One evening a large-limbed coarse-grained wench stepped into the general-dealer’s kitchen, and asked if she could be taken into service.
“You must be cook, then,” said Madame.[2] It seemed to her that the wench was one who would stir the porridge finely, and would make no bones about a little extra wood-chopping and tub-washing. So they took her on.
She was a roughish colt, and her ways were roughish too. The first time she carried in a load of wood, she shoved so violently against the kitchen door that she burst its hinges. And however many times the carpenter might mend the door, it always remained hingeless, for she burst it open with her foot every time she brought in wood.
When she washed up, too, heaps and heaps of pots and pans were piled up higgledy-piggledy from meal to meal, so that the kitchen shelves and tables could hold no more, and bustle about as she might, they never seemed to grow less.
Nor had her mistress a much better opinion of her scouring.
When Toad, for so they called her, set to work with the sand-brush, and scrubbed with all her might, the wooden, tin, and pewter vessels would no doubt have looked downright bonny if they hadn’t broken to bits beneath her hands. And when her mistress tried to show her how it ought to be done, she only gasped and gaped.
Such sets of cracked cups, and such rows of chipped and handleless jugs and dishes, had never before been seen in that kitchen.
And then, too, she ate as much as all the other servants put together.
So her mistress complained to her master, and said that the sooner they were well quit of her the better.
Out into the kitchen went the general dealer straightway. He was quite red in the face, and flung open the kitchen-door till it creaked again. He would let her know, he said, that she was not there to only stand with her back to the fire and warm her dirty self.
Now when he saw the lazy sluttish beast lounging over the kitchen bench and doing nothing but gape through the window-panes at his boats, which lay down by the bridge laden with train-oil, he was downright furious. “Pack yourself off this instant!” said he.
But Toad showed her teeth, and grinned and blinked up at him, and said that as master himself had come into the kitchen, he should see that she did not eat his bread for nothing.
Then she slouched down to the boats, and snorted back at him with her arm before her face. Before any one could guess what she was after, she had one of the heavy hogsheads of train-oil on her back.
And back she came through the kitchen door, all smirking and smiling, and begged father to be so good as to tell her where she was to put it.
He simply stood and gaped at her. Such a thing he had never seen before.
And hogshead after hogshead she carried from the boat right up into the shop.
The general dealer laughed till he quite gasped for breath, and slapped his thighs so far as his big belly would let him reach them.
Nor was he sparing of compliments.
And into the dwelling-room he rushed almost as quickly as he had rushed out of it.
“Mother has no idea what a capital wench she has got,” said he.
But, ever after that, she put her hand to nothing, nay, not so much as to drive a wooden peg into the wall, and if some one else hadn’t warmed up a thing or two now and then, there would have been very little to eat in the house. It was as much as they could do to get her away from the fireside at meal times.
When her mistress complained about it, her master said that she oughtn’t to expect too much. The lass surely required a little rest now and again, after carrying such drayman’s loads as she did.
But Toad always had an ogle and a grin ready at such times as the general dealer came through the door from the shop. Then she grew quick and lively enough, and went on all sorts of errands, whether it was with the bucket to the spring or to the storehouse for bread. And when she saw that her mistress was out of the way, she took it upon herself to do exactly as she liked, both in this and in that.
No sooner was the pot hung on the pot-hook, than she would slip away with a big saucer and fetch sirup from the shop. And she would flounce down before the porridge dish and gobble to her heart’s content. If any of her fellow-servants claimed an equal share, she would simply answer, “It’s me!”
They dared not rebel. Since the day she had taken up the hogsheads of train-oil, they knew that she had master on her side.
But her mistress was not slow to mark the diminishing both of the sirup-pot and the powdered sugar, and she perceived also in which direction the gingerbreads and all the butter and bacon went. For out the wench would come, munching rye cakes and licking the sirup from her fingers.
And she grew as round and thick an
d fat as if she would burst.
When her mistress took away and kept the key, Toad would poke her head into the parlour door, and ogle and writhe at the general dealer, and ask if there was anything to carry up to the store-room. And then he would go to the window and watch her as she lifted and carried kegs of fish and casks of sugar and sacks of meal.
He laughed till he coughed again, and, wiping the sweat from his forehead, would bellow all over the place—“Can any one of my labouring men carry loads like Toad can?”
And when her master came home, dripping wet and benumbed with cold, from his first autumn voyage, it was Toad who was first and foremost to meet him and unbutton his oil-skin jacket for him, and undo his sou’wester, and help him off with his long sea-boots.
He shivered and shook; but she was not slow to wring out his wet stockings for him, and fetch no end of birch bark and huge logs. Then she made up a regular bonfire in the fireplace, and placed him cosily in the chimney corner.
Madame came to give her husband some warm ale posset; but she was so annoyed to see the wench whisking and bustling about him, that she went up into the parlour and howled with rage.
Early in the morning, the general dealer bawled and shouted downstairs for his long worsted stockings. They could hear that he was peevish and cross because he had to put on his sea-jacket and cramped water-boots, and go out again into the foul weather.
He tore open the kitchen door, and asked them furiously how much longer they were going to keep him waiting.
But now his mouth grew as wide open as the door-way he stood in, and his face quite lit up with satisfaction.
Round about the walls, and in the warmth of the chimney corner, hung his sou’wester, and his oil-skin jacket, and his trousers, and every blessed bit of clothes he was to put on, as dry as tinder. And in the middle of the kitchen bench he saw his large sea-boots standing there, so snug, and so nicely greased, that the grease ran right down the shafts and over the straps.