toiling to market with his basket of eggs, was met by a Troll from Brönö, who sang out to him lustily:—
"Hör du, Plat,
Siig til din Kat
At Knurremurre er död."
("Hark you, Plat,
Tell your cat
That Knurremurre is dead.")
In no way enlightened by this message, the peasant went home and repeated it to his wife; whereupon his cat leaped from the hearth, cried joyously, "Then I am the Master Troll," and overturned the pot of soup in his haste to scramble up the chimney, and be gone.
In Sternberg's "Legends of Northamptonshire," we have the story of a woodman whose dinner was stolen from him daily by a cat. After many vain attempts, he succeeded in waylaying the creature and cutting off one of its paws, only to find, when he reached home, that his wife had lost her hand. The curious deviltry which provoked witches to plague their husbands, in preference to other men, is one of the interesting points in the annals of sorcery. Those were wild times, when strength ruled the world roughly; and the witch wife—once innocent and weak—had doubtless a long score of insults to avenge before she took to burning her husband's mill, or stealing his daily bread.
