The little Swedish Tomte, though he will receive donations of bread, cheese, and even tobacco, is spoiled for work by new clothes; and when a housewife, in gratitude for the meal he sifted in her meal-tub, placed a suit for him on the edge of the tub, he did nothing more for her. He found that the meal damaged his new kirtle, so he cast the sieve away and repeated—
“The young spark is fine,
He dusts himself!
Never more will he sift.”[1]
And the Dutch Kaboutermannekin, or Redcap, on receiving new clothes vanishes never to retnrn. A miller in Kempnerland thus rewarded his Redcap for a good deal of hard work expeditiously got through; but the goblin, having put on the clothes and strutted about proudly in them, disappeared. The miller, missing his drudge, laid wait for him on a little bridge over a brook, which the Kaboutermannekin used to cross every evening. He watched the sprites as they passed, some clothed, some naked, and last of all came his household sprite in his new suite. “Haha!” said the miller, “have I got thee?” and was about to seize little Redcap, when a voice like that of his wife was heard from the rivulet, crying for help. The miller turned and jumped into the water, and in a moment all the mannekins were gone.[2]
Cranshaws, in Berwickshire, was once the abode of an industrious Brownie, who both saved the corn and thrashed it for several seasons. At length, after one harvest, some person thoughtlessly remarked, that the corn was not well mowed or piled up in the barn. The sprite took offence at this, and the next night threw the whole of the corn over the Raven Crag, a precipice about two miles off, muttering—
“It’s no weel mowed! It’s no weel mowed!
Then its ne’er be mowed by me again;
I’ll scatter it owre the Raven stane,
And they’ll hae some wark e’er it’s mowed again.”
This little story is taken from Mr. George Henderson’s Popular Rhymes of Berwickshire. It reminds us of the
