One evening, as a farmer was crossing a field to his home, what should
he see sitting on a stone in the middle of it but a tiny creature! The
little thing looked something like a very, very, very small, teeny,
weeny, tiny little child. And it was blue and shivering with cold. The
farmer saw that it must be an elf.
He knew it would bring him good luck to be kind to it. Besides, he
pitied it from his heart. So he took it home and placed it on a stool by
the hearth, and fed it with sweet milk. Soon the bantling was warm and
lively. He capered and sprang about the kitchen merrier than a cricket,
and twice as light-footed.
Well, he didn’t go the next day nor the next nor the next. He stayed for
many days. A curious thing about him was that he never spoke. But that
did not matter, for he kept the farmer and the farmer’s wife laughing at
his tricks.
He and they had many a play together. Sometimes, when the farmer’s wife
was not looking, he would creep into the keyhole. Then the farmer would
call out, “Find him, wife.”
At this the farmer’s wife would search all about the kitchen, under the
chairs, in the closet, behind the wood box, even in the clock case. But
she could not find him. Then she would cry out, “Where are you, Tinykins?”
The farmer would chuckle and hee-haw, and slap his knee, and wink, and
say,
“He’s neither in,
And he’s neither out;
He’s where something goes in
When the light goes out.”
Quick as the crow flies before the farmer’s empty gun the farmer’s wife
would guess, “You’re in the keyhole, Tinykins, you rogue, come out.”
And out he would pop in high glee.