was a little past one. she got up. and lighted a
fire under the brewing caldron, and was busy with
the wort. But every moment the fire went out
under the caldron, and it was just as though some
one kept throwing the brands out from the
hearth, but who it was she couldn’t see. So she
gathered up the brands, time after time, but it
was all no good, and the wort wouldn’t run out of
the tap either. At last she got tired of all that, so
she took a burning brand, and ran about with it,
swinging it about high and low, and bawling, ‘Be
off with you whence you came. If you think
you’re going to frighten me, you’re quite wrong.’
“‘Fie upon you, then!’ she heard some one say in the darkest corner, ‘I had got seven souls here in this house, and I thought I should have got the eighth as well.’
“After that Katie Gusdal said, ‘No one ever heard or saw the brownie in the Foundling.’”
Here one of the little ones called out. ‘I’m afraid! I’m afraid! No. Lieutenant, you tell something; when you tell us a story I’m never afraid, you always tell it so funnily!”
Then another proposed that I should tell them about the brownie who danced a reel with the lassie. Now, this was an undertaking into which I was very unwilling to put my foot, because there was singing in it as well as telling; but as they wouldn’t let me off, I began to hem and cough in order to get my very discordant voice ready to sing the words of the reel, when to the joy of the children, and to my rescue, in came the pretty niece I spoke of.
“Well, bairns,” I said, as she took her seat, “now I’ll tell you the story, if you’ll only get cousin Liz to sing you the reel; for you’ll all of you dance it, of course.”
So the children took the pretty cousin by storm, and she had to promise to sing the words of the dance while I told the story.
“Once on a time, there was a lassie, who lived I’m sure I don’t know where, but I think it was in Hallingdale, and she had to carry a syllabub to the brownie. Whether it was on a Thursday evening, or on a Chistmas Eve, I can’t bear in mind; but still I think it was a Christmas Eve, like this. Well! she thought it a shame to give the brownie such good food, so she gobbled up the syllabub herself both thick and thin, and then went off to the barn with some oatmeal porridge and sour milk in a pig’s trough.
“‘There you have your trough, ugly beast,’ she said. But the words were scarce out of her mouth before the brownie came tearing at her, and took her by the waist, and began to dance with her. And he kept her at it till she fell down gasping, and then when folks came next morning to the barn, they found her more dead than alive. But so long as he danced he kept on singing” —
(Here my part was over, and Miss Liz took up the brownie’s song, and sang to the tune of the Hallingdale reel:) ——
Thou hast eaten up all the brownie’s brose,
Now come with the brownie and try thy toes.
Thou hast robbed the brownie of his right,
And now thou must dance with brownie all night.
As the cousin sang, I kept time with my feet, while the children with roars of mirth cut the most extraordinary capers, and executed the queerest steps between us both on the floor.
“Bairns, bairns. You turn the room topsy- turvy with all this clatter,” said old Mother Skau; “be quiet a bit, and I’ll tell you some stories.” So all were still as mice, and Mother Skau struck up:
“Old Folk tell so many stories about brownies and huldras, and such like, but, for my part, I don’t put much faith in them. I’m sure, I never saw a brownie or a huldra; but, then, I haven’t tra- velled very far in all my life, still I think all such stories stuff. But old ’Stina, out yonder, she tells how she once saw the brownie. About the time that I was confirmed, she had a place in our house, and before that she was out at service with an old captain who had given up the sea. That just was a still quiet house; they never went out and no one ever came to them, and the captain’s longest walk was down to the wharf and back. They went early to bed too, and people said they had a brownie in the house.
“‘ But once on a time,’ said ’Stina, ‘the cook and I were up at night in the maid’s room mending our clothes; and, when bedtime came — for the watchman had already called past ten!— darning and sowing was hard work; for every moment came Billy Winky; and so she nodded and I nodded, for we had been up early that morning to work. But all at once, as we sat there half-asleep, we heard such a dreadful clatter down in the kitchen. ’Twas just as if someone were tossing all the crockery about and throwing the plates on the floor. Up we jumped in alarm, and I screamed out, Heaven help and comfort us, it’s the brownie! and I was so scared, I daren’t set foot into the kitchen. As for cook she was just as much afeard; but at last she plucked up heart, and then, when she came into the kitchen, all the plates lay on the floor, but there wasn’t one of them broken; and there stood the brownie in the doorway with his red cap on his head, laughing, so that it did one’s heart good to see him [see p. 530]. Well, she had heard tell how sometimes the brownie could bo cheated into flitting, if one only had the courage to beg him to go, and told him of a nice quiet place somewhere else; and so she had long had it in her head to play him a trick. Well, she spoke to him there and then; though to tell the truth her voice faltered a little, and bade him to flit over the way to the coppersmith, there he would find it far less noisy, for there they went to bed every night as the clock struck nine. It was true, too, she said, but you know, too, that the coppersmith was always up with all his mates and apprentices at three o’clock every morning, and kept on hammering and clattering the whole day through. After that day we saw no mere of the brownie at the captain’s. But he got on well at the coppersmith’s in spite of all their hammering and pounding, for people said the gudewife put him a bowl of custard in the loft every Thursday evening, and so one can’t wonder that they soon got rich; for the brownie helped them, and drew money to them.’
“That was what ’Stina said about the brownie,” said Mother Skau, “and true it is that they pros-