most part, indeed, this voice is like the voices of wolves, yet, at the
same time, human accents are to be distinguished, and I myself have
often listened thereto on dark winter nights.

Alas! that the poor maiden should have ventured again so near the
accursed paths she had once renounced. A few steps in the backward
course, and all is lost!




THE HILL-MAN INVITED TO THE CHRISTENING.


The hill-people are excessively frightened during thunder. When,
therefore, they see bad weather coming on, they lose no time in getting
to the shelter of their hills. This terror is also the cause of their
not being able to endure the beating of a drum. They take it to be the
rolling of thunder. It is, therefore, a good recipe for banishing them
to beat a drum every day in the neighbourhood of their hills, for they
immediately pack up, and depart to some quieter residence.

A farmer lived once in great friendship and concord with a hill-man,
whose hill was in his lands. One time when his wife was about to have a
child, it gave him great perplexity to think that he could not well
avoid inviting the hill-man to the christening, which might, not
improbably, bring him into ill repute with the priest and the other
people of the village. He was going about pondering deeply, but in vain,
how he might get out of this dilemma, when it came into his head to ask
the advice of the boy that kept his pigs, who had a great head-piece,