with a single room, mud floor, an open fireplace without chimney, and
a few pieces of rough furniture. Sheds and pens surround the hut, and
there are patches of enclosed ground where hay is made and where the
younger members of the flock are protected. The cattle are called at
night by a horn made of birch bark. When blown lustily, it gives a
clear note not unlike the cornet, and the cattle invariably respond to
its sound.

There is a good deal of romance about _saeter_ life in books, but I
should say that there is very little in actual experience. Many of the
charming fairy stories in Norwegian literature have their scenes in
those mountain dairies. The _saeter_ girls (_saeterjenter_ they are
called), have a peculiar and melodious cattle call, known as
the _Huldrelok_, which is said to have been inherited from the
_Huldre-folk_, a species of fairy that are very pretty, but
unfortunately have tails. Usually a young farmer falls in love with
one of the girls, and when he discovers that she has a tail, is so
shocked and disappointed that he throws himself over a precipice; or
perhaps the _Huldre-folk_ gobble him up and carry him off into the
mountains of the _Josteldalsbrae_ and keep him there, while the girl
he left behind him grieves herself to death because of his desertion.

The dairy maids are supposed to have a peculiar costume, and
photographs are often seen of them arrayed in picturesque dress, but I
never saw them worn. In all the _saeters_ I visited the clothes worn
were very plain and ordinary, and seemed to have been selected for
wear and not for looks.

We visited a _saeter_ one day and found two young people in charge, a
boy and a girl, neither of them over seventeen, we should judge from