RSS Feed (xml)
Denmark
As a smith was at work in his forge late one evening, he heard great wailing out on the road, and by the light of the red-hot iron that he was hammering, he saw a woman whom a troll was driving along, bawling at her "A little more! A little more!" He ran out, put the red-hot iron between them, and thus delivered her from the power of the troll.
He led her into his house and that night she was delivered of twins.
In the morning he waited on [went to] her husband, who he supposed must be in great affliction at the loss of his wife. But to his surprise he saw there, in bed, a woman the very image of her he had saved from the troll. Knowing at once what she must be, he raised an axe he had in his hand, and cleft her skull.
The matter was soon explained to the satisfaction of the husband, who gladly received his real wife and her twins.
- Source: Thomas Keightley, The Fairy Mythology: Illustrative of the Romance and Superstition of Various Countries (London: H. G. Bohn, 1850), p. 392.
- Keightley's source: Thiele, I, 88.
