Page:Tales from the Fjeld.djvu/70

48 made a flail out of it; and when the roof was just about to fall, he took a great spruce fir, branches and all, and stuck it up for a roof-tree; and then he thrashed the floor and the straw and hay altogether. He did great harm, for the grain and chaff and beard flew about together, and a cloud arose over the whole grange.

When he was nearly done thrashing, enemies came into the land, and there was to be war. So the king told him to take folk with him and go on the way to meet the foe and fight them, for he thought they would put him to death. "No! he would have no folk with him to be slain; he would fight alone, that he would," said Grumblegizzard.

"All the better; I shall be sooner rid of him," said the king.

But he must have a mighty club.

They sent off to the smith to forge a club of fifty pounds. "That might do very well to crack nuts," said Grumblegizzard. So they smithied him one of a hundred pounds. "That might do well enough to nail shoes with," he said. Well, the smith couldn't smithy it any bigger with all his men. So Grumblegizzard went off to the smithy himself, and forged a club of fifteen tons, and it took a hundred men to turn it on the anvil. "That might do," said Grumblegizzard.

Besides, he must have a scrip for food; and he made one out of fifteen ox-hides, and stuffed it full of food. And so he toddled off down the hill with his scrip at his back and his club on his shoulder.

So, when he had got so far that the enemy saw him,