There was once a man who owned a little farm, as fine and fruitful as
you would care to see. He had always tended it himself, too, driving
his own plow in the spring, and taking his two-wheeled cart to market
in the fall with a load of apples, potatoes, and carrots.
All of a sudden, though, things began to go badly with the farmer. His
milk curdled in the dairy and his horse kicked the traces on market
day, spilling the load and laming herself into the bargain. The eggs
were addled, and weeds choked and overran his garden, faster than he
could pull them out.
"A troll is at the bottom of this," said the farmer's wife, and to
prove it she led him to the dairy. There, on the white floor, were the
prints in mud of tiny, tiny hob-nailed shoes. The same foot prints
could be seen in the barn near the horse's stall, and that night the
farmer saw a bright little light skipping about in the dusky garden.
Of course he knew what that was, the one shining eye of a troll. So
that was the cause of all his trouble. A troll had come to live on his
farm.
Ordinarily a troll who selects a quiet place like a farm for his home
is a peacefully inclined little man. He wants nothing but a bowl of
porridge set out for him on the cellar steps once in a while, and a
chance to creep in the house and curl up in a chimney corner of a cold
evening, winking and blinking at the fire with his one eye. When a
troll gets into mischief about a place, it is a sure sign that
something has been done to displease him. So the farmer set out to try
to find what he had done to vex the little man.
But look as high and as low as he could, he could find nothing, until
one fine day in the spring he was plowing a nice little hill to plant
a patch of potatoes. Suddenly his horse kicked the plow over, and the
farmer heard a grumbling, growling little voice coming up through the
earth.
"There you go again," said the voice, "tearing up my roof just as you
did a year ago in the spring. Don't you know that this is my hill, and
that I live down here under it?" It was the troll that spoke.
Well, the farmer was much put out to know that he had plowed up the
roof of the troll's house and he did not know what to do about it, for
it was his hill, also, and a fine, sunny slope for raising a crop. At
last, though, he thought of a plan and he called down through the hill
to the troll.
"Well, now, little master, I am sorry indeed to have disturbed you so
and I am ready to make any recompense that I can. What do you say to
this? I will plow, sow, and reap the hill each year, doing every bit
of the work myself, mind you, and we will have the crops, turn and
turn about. One year you shall have everything that grows above the
ground and I will take only what grows below the ground; the next year
you shall have what lies below, while my share will be what grows
above. That is a fair bargain, is it not?"
"Very good," said the troll. "I am perfectly well satisfied. And this
year I would like whatever grows above the ground."
The farmer chuckled to himself. That satisfied him, too, for he was
planting potatoes. But when they had sprouted and grown, up through
the hill came the troll with a little scythe over his shoulder and cut
all the potato tops, taking them home with him. A fine harvest he
thought he had gathered.
The next season it was the troll's turn to have what grew below
ground, so the farmer sowed the hill with corn. When the corn was ripe
the troll did not appear at all. He was down under the hill busily
cutting the roots of the corn, well content with this share of the
harvest. So the farmer was crafty in his planting. The next season it
was carrots, and the next, beans. The troll gathered his carrot tops
and his bean roots, and laid them away carefully for the winter.
Which goes to show how easily you can satisfy a troll, but what a poor
farmer he is.