Page:The collected works of Henrik Ibsen (Heinemann Volume 4).djvu/319

 "Will you have a sausage, white pussy?" said one of the Trolls, and threw a red-hot frog right into the bear's jaws.

"Claw and smite Bruin!" said Peer Gynt.

And then the bear got into such a rage that he rushed at the Trolls and smote and clawed them all, and Peer Gynt took the other handspike and hammered away at them as if he wanted to beat their brains out. So the Trolls had to clear out, and Peer stayed and enjoyed himself on the Christmas cheer the whole feast-time. After that the Trolls were not heard of again for many years. The farmer had a light-coloured mare, and Peer advised him to breed from her, and let her foals in their turn run and breed among the hills there.

Many years afterwards, about Christmas-time, the farmer was out in the forest cutting wood for the feast-time, when a Troll came towards him and shouted—

"Have you got that big white pussy of yours yet?"

"Yes, she's at home behind the stove," said the farmer; "and she's got seven kittens now, much bigger and fiercer than herself."

"We'll never come to you any more, then," shouted the Troll.

"That Peer Gynt was a strange one," said Anders. "He was such an out-and-out tale-maker and yarn-spinner, you couldn't have helped laughing at him. He always made out that he himself had been mixed up in all the stories that people said had happened in the olden times."