I was in the London Library yesterday, which is the most magical building in London. Up on the fifth floor, at the top of the literature stacks, three floors above English literature, two floors above the French, the Latin, and the Greek, there is a Swedish section where I have not been for years. Because I shall be off in a Norwegian forest for the first ten days of August, I came wandering up there with previous plunder (an 1893 volume of Coleridge's essays, Yeats' autobiographical novel The Speckled Bird, and his 1935 Collected Poems). And there I found a collection of Selma Lagerl�f's short stories, Troll och M�nniskor, or Trolls and Humans. Here's how one starts.
A Troll woman was walking through the woods with her child in a birchbark papoose on her back. He was big and ugly, with bristly hair, teeth sharp as needles and a claw on his little finger; of course the troll woman thought that no baby could be lovelier.After a while she came to a place where the woods thinned out a little. There was a road here, pitted and slippery with tree roots, and on this road a peasant and his wife came riding.
The moment the troll woman caught sight of them she wanted to slip back into the trees so they wouldn't see her, but then she noticed that the peasant wife had a child in her arms, and she changed her mind. 'I want to see if the human child is as beautiful as my own', she thought, and hunched up behind a big hazel bush which grew close to the roadside.
But when they rode past her, she looked out too far in her eagerness and the horses caught sight of her big, black troll's head. They reared and bolted. Both the peasant and his wife were nearly thrown. They gave a cry of horror, bent forward over their reins, and in the next moment, they had vanished.
The troll woman whimpered with frustration, because she had hardly caught a glimpse of the human baby. But she was immediately delighted again, for there was the child, lying on the ground at her feet ....
Here you are, then, Quinn:
It had fallen out of the mother's arms when the horses reared, but with great good fortune had dropped into a heap of dry leaves and was quite unharmed. It shrieked with fear at the fall, but when the troll woman leant over, it was so surprised and excited that it stopped at once and reached up its hands to tug at her black beard.The troll woman stood dumbfounded and looked at the human baby. She saw the narrow fingers with rose pink nails, the clear, blue eyes and the little red mouth She felt the soft hair, stroked her hand over the cheeks, and grew more and more surprised. She just couldn't understand how a child could be so pink and soft and wonderful.
Suddenly the troll woman pulled the birchbark papoose from her back, hoisted out her own child and sat it down beside the human baby, And when she now saw what a difference there was between them, she could no longer control herself and started to bawl her eyes out.
Meanwhile, the peasant and his wife had brought their horses back under control, and now they turned back to look for their baby. The troll woman heard they were approaching, but she had not seen enough of the human baby; she stayed sitting beside it until the riders were almost in sight. Then she made a sudden decision. She left her own child by the side of the road, but she stuffed the human baby in the birch bark papoose, threw it on her back, and ran off into the woods.
Lagerl�f won a Nobel Prize in 1909 for G�sta Berlings Saga, I think. She's mostly remembered now as a children's writer, which is quite unfair. I'm quoting this partly to show how much better good writers are than bad ones at telling simple stories. I can't promise to translate the whole thing, and I don't know if it's anywhere in English.
Scarcely had she vanished when the riders came into view. They were substantial farmers, rich and respected, the owners of a large farm in the fertile valley below the mountains. They had already been married for many years, but they had only had this one child, so you will understand that they were eager to get him back.The wife rode a few lengths ahead of the husband and was the first to catch sight of the baby which lay by the side of the road. It was howling at the top of its voice for its mother, and the wife should have realised just from the terrible noise what sort of a child it was, but she was so frightened that the little one had been killed when it fell from her horse that her only thought was "Thank God he's alive!" "Here he is!" she called to her husband, as she slipped down from her saddle and ran to the troll child.
When her husband reached her, she was sitting on the ground looking as if she could not believe the evidence of her sense. "My child didn't have teeth like needles", she said, turning the troll baby round in her hands. "My child didn't have hair like a pig's bristles", she lamented. Her voice filled with fear. "My child had no talon on his little finger."
The farmer could only suppose his wife had lost her wits, and he jumped down from his horse. "Look at the baby" cried his wife: "See is you can work out why he looks so strange!" and she held it out to him. He took it from her hands, but scarcely had he glanced at the child before he spat three times and threw the baby to the ground. "It is a troll child", he said. "This isn't our son." The wife sat still as ever by the side of the road. Her mind worked slowly, and she could not comprehend what had happened. "What are you doing to the child?" she cried. "Can't you see it's a changeling?" asked the man. The trolls have seized their moment when our horses panicked. They have stolen our child and left one of their own here." "But where is my child?" cried the wife. "Away with the trolls is where our child is" said her husband.
At this, the knowledge of catastrophe overwhelmed his wife. She went so pale that her husband thought she would die on the spot.
"Our baby can't be far from here", he said, and gentled her. "We shall go into the woods and look for him".
At this he tied his horse to a tree at the side of the track and set off into the undergrowth. His wife rose to her feet to follow him, but as she did so, she noticed that the troll child was lying where it might at any moment be kicked by the horses, who were uneasy bbecasue it was near. Just the thought of touching the changeling made her shudder; none the less, she moved it a little to the side out of range of the horses' hooves."Here's the rattle our boy was holding when you dropped him" called her husband from within the woods, "So I'm sure that I'm on the trail." She hurried after him, and they walked for a long time in the forest, searching. But neither troll nor child did they find, and when the night drew in, they had to return to the horses.
The wife wept and wrung her hands. Her husband walked with his jaw clenched tightly and gave her no word of comfort. He came from a good and long-established family, which would have died out had he not got a son. Now he was filled with anger at his wife because she had let the child fall to the ground. "She should have held on to the child whatever happened", he thought. But when he saw how she despaired, he did not have the heart to reproach her out loud.
He had already helped her up into the saddle when she remembered the changeling. "What shall we do about the troll child?" she said.
"Yes, where's it gone?" he asked.
"He's over there, under the bushes."
"Well, that's the right place for him", said her husband, with a bitter laugh.
"We'll have to take it with us though. We can't leave it lying in the wilderness."
"Oh can't we?" said her husband, and put one foot in his stirrup.
She thought, really, that her husband was right. They had no need to take up the troll's child; and so she let the horse take a couple of steps until it was suddenly impossible for her to ride on. "It is a child, in any case" she said. "I can't let it lie here as food for the wolves. You must give me the baby." "I most certainly won't", replied her husband. "It's fine where it is."
"If you don't give him to me now, I know I will have to return this evening and fetch him", said the wife.
"I don' t believe this", muttered the husband. "The trolls have not only stolen my child: they have stolen my wife's wits away". But he picked up the child anyway, and handed it to his wife, for he loved her dearly, and was used to letting her have her way in everything.The next day, the news of their tragedy was all over the parish, and all the wise and experienced neighbours hurried to the farm to advise them, and to warn them. "If you have been given a changeling, you must beat it with a heavy stick" said an old woman.
"Why should you be so hard on him?" asked the wife. "I know he's ugly, but he hasn't done anything wrong."
"Well, if you beat the troll child until the blood runs down its back, then the troll mother will come running, throw you your child, and take her own away. I know many people who have recovered their children like that."
"Yes, but those children were no longer alive", interrupted another old woman, and the wife thought to herself that this was not a method she could use.Toward evening, she was sitting alone in the farmhouse with the changeling when she felt such a violent and terrible longing for her own child that she could hardly bear it. "Perhaps I should do what the old woman advised me", she thought; but she could not bring herself to do it.
Just then her husband entered the house. He had a cudgel in his hand, and asked for the changeling. The wife understood that he wanted to follow the wise woman's advice and beat the troll child to get his own son back. "It's just as well that he does it", she though. "I am so foolish. I could never beat an innocent child."
Turns out to be online here. Thanks to Quinn for finding that. It seems form the same site that someone has translated the story professionally and published it but I've not tracked that down. Anyway, it would spoil the fun. I'm almost half way through.
But her husband had scarcely given the troll child a single blow when she rushed forward and clutched his arm. "No, don't hit him, don't hit him!" she cried. "You don't want your child back, do you?" he said, pulling his arm free.
"Oh God yes, I want our son back" sobbed his wife, "But not like this."
The peasant raised his arm for a fresh blow, but before he could deliver it, his wife had thrown herself across the child so that the blow, when it fell, struck her instead.
"God in Heaven!" cried the husband. "I can see now that you're going to make sure that our child must live with the trolls for the rest of his life."
He stood and waited, but she still lay there at his feet, protecting the child. At last her husband threw down his cudgel and stalked, sullen and disappointed, out of the farmhouse. He wondered afterwards why he had not simply forced his way through her resistance, but there was something about her that compelled him. He could not resist her will.More days passed, in grief and disappointment. It is hard enough for a mother to lose her child, but it is worse than anything to have it replaced by a changeling. That keeps her longing constantly alive, and never lets it rest.
"I don't know what I can give the changeling to eat" said the wife one morning to her husband. "He won't eat what I offer him"
"That's not surprising", said her husband. "Haven't you heard that trolls only want to eat frogs and mice?"
"But you can't ask me to go out to the pond and get food for him there" said the wife.
"No, certainly not." said her husband. "I think the best thing would be to let it starve to death."
The whole week passed, and still she was unable to persuade the troll child to eat anything. She placed every possible good thing in front of him, but the troll merely whimpered and spat when she pressed the delicacies on him.One evening, when it really did look as is he were dying of hunger, the cat ran into the room with a rat in its mouth. She grabbed the rat out out of the cat's mouth, threw it to the troll child, and rushed out of the room so that she wouldn't have to watch it eating.
But when her husband found out that she really was collecting frogs and spiders for the changeling, he was gripped by such a loathing for her that he could no longer hide it. He found it impossible to speak kindly to her. Yet she still retained enough of her old power that he could not leave.
This was not all. The servants, too, began to disobey and disrespect her. The husband pretended not to notice what was happening, and his wife understood that if she continued to defend the changeling, she would suffer through every day God sent. But she was a woman who had no choice: if there were anyone, whom everybody hated, she had to help the poor victim in every way she could. And the more she was made to suffer for the changeling's sake, the more faithfully she guarded him from harm.
One afternoon a few years later, the wife sat alone in the farmhouse, sewing endless patches on a child's smock. "Indeed", she thought, as she sewed, "no days are good ones when you spend your life caring for a stranger's child."She darned and darned, but the holes in the smock were so large and so many that tears came to her eyes when she saw them. "And I know one thing", she thought: "If I were mending the clothes of my own son, I wouldn't care how many holes I had to patch.
"It really is hard with the changeling", she thought, as she caught sight of yet another rip in the smock. "The best thing would be if I could just take him so far into the forest that he could never find his way home, and then just leave him there.
"But I don't really have to put myself to so much trouble to be rid of him", she thought on: "If I just let him out of my sight for a moment, he would drown himself in the well, or burn up on the fire, or be bitten by a dog, or kicked by the horses. Yes, it would be so easy to get rid of him, nasty and disobedient thing that he is, There's no one on the farm who doesn't hate him, and if I didn't keep him with me all the time, someone would be sure to take the opportunity to get rid of him."
She walked over and looked at the child sleeping in a corner of the room. It had grown even uglier than when she had first seen it. The mouth now protruded like a funnel; the eyebrows were like two shoe brushes, and its skin was completely brown.
"Just mending your clothes and watching over you would be tolerable", she thought, "But that is the least I must suffer for your sake. My husband is angry with my, the farmhands despise me and the maids laugh at me; the cat spits when he sees me; the dog growls and shows his teeth, and it's all because of you.
"But to be hated by men and animals ? that I could bear", she cried. "The worst is worse than that. It is that every time I see you, I long more than ever for my own son. Oh, my own sweet child, where are you? Are you sleeping on moss and bracken in the troll woman's house?"
The door opened, and she hurried back to her mending. It was her husband, and he seemed happy for once. He said to her ? more kindly that he had done for ages. -- "There's a fair in the village today. What do you think? Shall we walk over there?"