Fiddler Ole Haugen was a poor cottar high among the mountains. He had
a daughter, Aslaug, who had inherited his cleverness. Though she could
not play his fiddle, there was music in everything she did--in her
talk, her singing, her walk, her dancing.

At the great farm of Tingvold, down in the valley, a young man had
come home from his travels. He was the third son of the rich peasant
owner, but his two elder brothers had been drowned in a flood, so the
farm was to come to him. He met Aslaug at a wedding and fell in love
with her. In those days it was an unheard-of thing that a well-to-do
peasant of old family should court a girl of Aslaug's class. But this
young fellow had been long away, and he let his parents know that he
had made enough out in the world to live upon, and that if he could
not have what he wanted at home, he would let the farm go. It was
prophesied that this indifference to the claims of family and property
would bring its own punishment. Some said that Ole Haugen had brought
it about, by means only darkly hinted at.

So much is certain, that while the conflict between the young man and
his parents was going on, Haugen was in the best of spirits. When the
battle was over, he said that he had already made them a Bridal March,
one that would never go out of the family of Tingvold--but woe to the
girl, he added, whom it did not play to church as happy a bride as the
cottar's daughter, Aslaug Haugen! And here again people talked of the
influence of some mysterious evil power.

So runs the story. It is a fact that to this day the people of that
mountain district have a peculiar gift of music and song, which then
must have been greater still. Such a thing is not kept up without some
one caring for and adding to the original treasure, and Ole Haugen was