Fairy Tales

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: The Elf-Hill Some lizards were nimbly running in and out of the clefts in an old tree. They understood each other very well, for they all spoke lizard language. What a rumbling and grumbling is going on inside the old Elf-hill, said one of the lizards. I have not closed my eyes for the last two nights for...
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Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: The Elf-Hill Some lizards were nimbly running in and out of the clefts in an old tree. They understood each other very well, for they all spoke lizard language. What a rumbling and grumbling is going on inside the old Elf-hill, said one of the lizards. I have not closed my eyes for the last two nights for the noise. I might just as well be having toothache, for all the sleep I get There is something up inside, said the other lizard. They propped up the top of the hill on four red posts till cockcrow this morning, to air it out thoroughly; and the elf maidens had been learning some new dancing steps, which they are always practising. There certainly must be something going on. Yes, I was talking to an earthworm of my acquaintance about it, said the third lizard. He came straight up out of the hill, where he had been boring into the earth for days and nights. He had heard a good deal, for the miserable creature can't see, but it can feel its way, and plays the part of eavesdropper to perfection. They are expecting visitors in the Elf-hill, grand visitors; but who they are the earthworm refused to say or perhaps he did not know. All the will-o'-the-wisps are ordered for a procession of torches, as it is called; and the silver and gold plate, of which there is any amount in the hill, is all being polished up and put out in the moonlight. Whoever can the strangers be ? said all the lizards together. What on earth is happening ? Hark what a humming and buzzing ? At this moment the Elf-hill opened, and an elderly elf- maiden tripped out. She was hollow behind,1 but otherwise quite attractively dressed. She was the old elf-king's house- 1 According to a superstition these elf-maidens are hollow, like the inside of a mask. keeper, and...