Oeyvind was his name. A low barren cliff overhung the house in which he
was born, fir and birch looked down on the roof, and wild-cherry strewed
flowers over it. Upon this roof there walked about a little goat, which
belonged to Oeyvind. He was kept there that he might not go astray, and
Oeyvind carried leaves and grass up to him. One fine day the goat leaped
down, and--away to the cliff; he went straight up, and came where he
never had been before. Oeyvind did not see him when he came out after
dinner, and thought immediately of the fox. He grew hot all over, looked
around about, and called, "Killy-killy-killy-goat."
"Bay-ay-ay," said the goat, from the brow of the hill, as he cocked his
head on one side and looked down.
But at the side of the goat there kneeled a little girl.
"Is it yours, this goat?" she asked.
Oeyvind stood with eyes and mouth wide open, thrust both hands into the
breeches he had on, and asked, "Who are you?"
"I am Marit, mother's little one, father's fiddle, the elf in the house,
grand-daughter of Ole Nordistuen of the Heide farms, four years old in
the autumn, two days after the frost nights, I!"
"Are you really?" he said, and drew a long breath, which he had not
dared to do so long as she was speaking.
"Is it yours, this goat?" asked the girl again.
"Ye-es," he said, and looked up.
"I have taken such a fancy to the goat. You will give it to me?"
"No, that I won't."
She lay kicking her legs, and looking down at him, and then she said,
"But if I give you a butter-cake for the goat, can I have him then?"
Oeyvind came of poor people, and had eaten butter-cake only once in his
life, that was when grandpapa came there, and anything like it he had
never eaten before nor since. He looked up at the girl. "Let me see the
butter-cake first," said he.
She was not long about it, took out a large cake, which she held in her
hand. "Here it is," she said, and threw it down.
"Ow, it went to pieces," said the boy. He gathered up every bit with the
utmost care; he could not help tasting the very smallest, and that was
so good, he had to taste another, and, before he knew it himself, he had
eaten up the whole cake.
"Now the goat is mine," said the girl. The boy stopped with the last bit
in his mouth, the girl lay and laughed, and the goat stood by her side,
with white breast and dark brown hair, looking down.
"Could you not wait a little while?" begged the boy; his heart began to
beat. Then the girl laughed still more, and got up quickly on her knees.
"No, the goat is mine," she said, and threw her arms around its neck,
loosened one of her garters, and fastened it around. Oeyvind looked up.
She got up, and began pulling at the goat; it would not follow, and
twisted its neck downward to where Oeyvind stood. "Bay-ay-ay," it said.
But she took hold of its hair with one hand, pulled the string with the
other, and said gently, "Come, goat, and you shall go into the room and
eat out of mother's dish and my apron." And then she sung,--
"Come, boy's goat,
Come, mother's calf,
Come, mewing cat
In snow-white shoes.
Come, yellow ducks,
Come out of your hiding-place;
Come, little chickens,
Who can hardly go;
Come, my doves
With soft feathers,
See, the grass is wet,
But the sun does you good;
And early, early is it in summer,
But call for the autumn, and it will come."
There stood the boy.
He had taken care of the goat since the winter before, when it was born,
and he had never imagined he could lose it; but now it was done in a
moment, and he would never see it again.
His mother came up humming from the beach, with wooden pans which she
had scoured: she saw the boy sitting with his legs crossed under him on
the grass, crying, and she went up to him.
"What are you crying about?"
"Oh, the goat, the goat!"
"Yes; where is the goat?" asked his mother, looking up at the roof.
"It will never come back again," said the boy.
"Dear me! how could that happen?"
He would not confess immediately.
"Has the fox taken it?"
"Ah, if it only were the fox!"
"Are you crazy?" said his mother; "what has become of the goat?"
"Oh-h-h--I happened to--to--to sell it for a cake!"
As soon as he had uttered the word, he understood what it was to sell
the goat for a cake; he had not thought of it before. His mother said,--
"What do you suppose the little goat thinks of you, when you could sell
him for a cake?"
And the boy thought about it, and felt sure that he could never again be
happy. He felt so sorry, that he promised himself never again to do
anything wrong, never to cut the thread on the spinning-wheel, nor let
the goats out, nor go down to the sea alone. He fell asleep where he
lay, and dreamed about the goat.
Suddenly there came something wet close up to his ear, and he started
up. "Bay-ay-ay!" it said; and it was the goat, who had come back again.
"What! have you got back?" He jumped up, took it by the two fore-legs,
and danced with it as if it were a brother; he pulled its beard, and he
was just going in to his mother with it, when he heard some one behind
him, and, looking, saw the girl sitting on the greensward by his side.
Now he understood it all, and let go the goat.
"Is it you, who have come with it?"