Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 20, 1909.djvu/378

324, the belief in "underground" folk, huldre, jutuler (giants), or, as they are also called in Sundalen, Bobber, as well as the belief in ghosts, remain to the present day.

Aged dairywomen have a great deal to relate of what has been seen and heard in the remote sæter valleys, concerning horses, oxen, and cows, belonging to the huldre-folk. If one caught sight of such animals when one had steel in one's possession, one might capture some of them, but it was a difficult matter to come near enough to the huldre-folk, for, however much one strove to approach them, they always seemed as far off as ever.

When the peasants in the autumn returned from the sæters to their dwellings in the valley, the huldre-folk would flock in again with their animals, and many maintain that they have seen such a fairy procession approaching the sæters.

The following tales are told about the huldre-folk:

1. A man of the name of Hans, called Skindfeldhans, for he was a Skindfeld maker, was once in the autumn fishing in a distant lake. The fish were biting exceptionally well that day, but, as he stood there, his eye fell on a number of animals that came down to the lake on the same side as himself followed by a man and a woman. On the other side of the lake there lay a sæter which had just been left by the farm people. Hans understood at once that these might be huldre-folk