“You haven’t such a fine farm-yard as ours, I’ll be bound; for when two
shepherds stand, one at each end of it, and blow their ram’s horns, the
one can’t hear the other.”
“Haven’t we though!” answered Boots; “ours is far bigger; for when a cow
begins to go with calf at one end of it, she doesn’t get to the other
end before the time to drop her calf is come.”
“I daresay!” said the Princess. “Well, but you haven’t such a big ox,
after all, as ours yonder; for when two men sit, one on each horn, they
can’t touch each other with a twenty-foot rule.”
“Stuff!” said Boots; “is that all? why, we have an ox who is so big,
that when two men sit, one on each horn, and each blows his great
mountain-trumpet, they can’t hear one another.”
“I dare say!” said the Princess; “but you haven’t so much milk as we,
I’ll be bound; for we milk our kine into great pails, and carry them
in-doors, and empty them into great tubs, and so we make great, great
cheeses.”
“Oh! you do, do you?” said Boots. “Well, we milk ours into great tubs,
and then we put them in carts and drive them in-doors, and then we turn
them out into great brewing vats, and so we make cheeses as big as a
great house. We had, too, a dun mare to tread the cheese well together
when it was making; but once she tumbled down into the cheese, and we
lost her; and after we had eaten at this cheese seven years, we came
upon a great dun mare, alive and kicking. Well, once after that I was
going to drive this mare to the mill, and her back-bone snapped in two;
but I wasn’t put out, not I, for I took a spruce sapling, and put it
into her for a back-bone, and she had no other back-bone all the while
we had her. But the sapling grew up into such a tall tree, that I
climbed right up to heaven by it, and when I got there, I saw the Virgin
Mary sitting and spinning the foam of the sea into pig’s-bristle ropes;
but just then the spruce-fir broke short off, and I couldn’t get down
again; so the Virgin Mary let me down by one of the ropes, and down I
slipped straight into a fox’s hole, and who should sit there but my
mother and your father cobbling shoes; and just as I stepped in, my
mother gave your father such a box on the ear, that it made his whiskers
curl.”
“That’s a story!” said the Princess; “my father never did any such thing
in all his born days!”
So Boots got the Princess to wife, and half the kingdom besides.
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