NOTE
“East of the Sun and West of the Moon” (Asbjörnsen and Moe, N.F.E., p. 200, No. 41). The maiden’s journeys with the winds are here recounted in a colorful and imaginative manner, and the motive of the washing out of the three drops of tallow is a delicate and ingenious development of the idea of the fateful candle.
XXIII
MURMUR GOOSE-EGG
Once upon a time there were five women who were standing in a field, mowing. Heaven had not given a single one of them a child, and each of them wanted to have one. And suddenly they saw a goose-egg of quite unheard-of size, well-nigh as large as a man’s head. “I saw it first,” said the one. “I saw it at the same time that you did,” insisted another. “But I want it, for I saw it first of all,” maintained a third. And thus they went on, and fought so about the egg that they nearly came to blows. Finally they agreed that it should belong to all five of them, and that all of them should sit on it, as a goose would do, and hatch out the little gosling. The first remained sitting on the egg for eight days, and hatched, and did not move or do a thing; and during this time the rest had to feed her and themselves as well. One of them grew angry because of this and scolded.
“You did not crawl out of the egg either before you could cry peep!” said the one who was sitting on the egg and hatching. “Yet I almost believe that a human child is going to slip out of the egg, for something is murmuring inside it without ever stopping: ‘Herring and mush, porridge and milk,’” said she. “And now you can sit on it for eight days, while we bring you food.”
When the fifth day of the eight had passed, it was plain to her that there was a child in the egg, which kept on calling: “Herring and mush, porridge and milk,” and so she punched a hole in the egg, and instead of a gosling out came a child, and it was quite disgustingly homely, with a big head and a small body, and no sooner had it crawled out than it began to cry: “Herring and mush, porridge and milk!” So they named the child Murmur Goose-Egg.
In spite of the child’s homeliness, the women at first took a great deal of pleasure in him; but before long he grew so greedy that he devoured everything they had. When they cooked a dish of mush or a potful of porridge that was to do for all six of them, the child swallowed it all by himself. So they did not want to keep him any longer. “I have not had a single full meal since the changling crawled out,” said one of them; and when Murmur Goose-Egg heard that, and the rest agreed, he said that he would gladly go his own gait, for “if they had no need of him, then he had no need of them,” and with that he went off. Finally he came to a farmstead that lay in a rocky section, and asked for work. Yes, they needed a workman, and the master told him to gather up the stones in the field. Then Murmur Goose-Egg gathered up the stones in the field; he picked up some that were so large that a number of horses could not have dragged them, and large and small, one and all, he put them in his pocket. Before long he had finished his work, and wanted to know what he was to do next.
“You have picked up the stones in the field?” said his master. “You cannot possibly have finished before you have really begun!”