Page:Popular tales from the Norse (1912).djvu/175

Rh for if any wife should point with indignation at such a tale as "Not a Pin to choose between them," p. 173, where wives suffer; she will be amply avenged when she reads "The Husband who was to mind the House," p. 269, where the husband has decidedly the worst of the bargain, and is punished as he deserves.

Of particular characters, one occurs repeatedly. This is that which we have ventured, for want of a better word, to call "Boots," from that widely-spread tradition in English families, that the youngest brother is bound to do all the hard work his brothers set him, and which has also dignified him with the term here used. In Norse he is called "Askefis," or "Espen Askefjis." By M. Moe he