“That is very true. I shall tell him nothing till you are out of hearing; he can repeat to you what he pleases afterwards, and he will indulge you all the more for your giving him a good supper.”
“So he will, and I will fill his cup myself,” observed Frolich. “He says the corn-brandy is uncommonly good, and I will fill his cup till it will not hold another drop.”
“You will not reach his heart that way, Frolich. He knows to a drop what his quantity is, and there he stops.”
“I know where there are some manyberries (Note 2) ripe,” said Frolich, “and he likes them above all berries. They lie this way, at the edge of the swamp, where the pirate will never think of coming.”
And off she went, as Erica rose from the grass to curtsey to Erlingsen on his approach.
Note 1. It is a popular belief in Norway that there is a race of fairies or magicians living underground, who are very covetous of cattle; and that, to gratify their taste for large herds and flocks, they help themselves with such as graze on the mountains; making dwarfs of them to enable them to enter crevices of the ground, in order to descend to the subterranean pastures. This practice may be defeated, as the Norwegian herdsman believes, by keeping his eye constantly on the cattle.
A certain Bishop of Tronyem lost his cattle by the herdsmen having looked away from them, beguiled by a spirit in the shape of a noble elk. The herdsmen, looking towards their charge again, saw them reduced to the size of mice, just vanishing through a crevice in the hill-side. Hence the Norwegian proverb used to warn any one to look after his property, “Remember the Bishop of Tronyem’s cattle.”
Note 2. The Molteboeer, or Manyberries, so called from its clustered appearance. It is a delicious fruit, amber-coloured when ripe, and growing in marshy ground.