Northern mythology

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108 NORTH GERMAN TRADITIONS.
swarmed with those beings ^ But if they had helped to
eat, they helped also in besto\Ndng presents, eveiy one
placing a piece of gold in the basket, which proved
scarcely large enough to hold them all.
A farmer had a beautiful field of peas, but when he
came to gather them, the pods were almost all empty, and
when he set himself to watch, he heard a rustling, but
saw no one.
So one day he and his man went to the field
together, ha\dng with them a rope, of which each taking
an end, they ran up and down the field, and thus swept
off their mist-caps (nebelkappen) from the heads of the
dw^arfs.
Being thus captured, they had to pay the farmer
dearly for his peas, before they could get their caps back
but no sooner had they got them than they were off with
a '
hui
'
A dwarf came one day to a farmer and requested him
to cut for him an ear of barley every day, telling him it
should not be to his detriment. The farmer did so, going
himself daily to cut the ear ; and the dwarf came as regularly,
took the ear on his back, and went away panting
under his burthen.
In the mean while the farmer's cattle
became larger and fatter from day to day, though he gave
them hardly any fodder. But one day the farmer having
no time to spare, sent his man to cut the ear, who seeing
the dwarf go panting away under it, laughed at him, and
said that it was but an ear of barley, and that he had no
occasion to pant so.
This the dwarf took amiss, and never
returned, while the farmer's cattle visibly grew leaner and
leaner, and all the food that was given them was of no
avail ;
the number of their ribs might have been counted.
See vol. ii, p. 134.