* * * * *
The adventures of Silly Matt, the Norwegian counterpart of our typical
English booby, as related in Asbjornson's collection of Norse
folk-tales, furnish some curious examples of the transmission of popular
fictions:
The mother of Silly Matt tells him one day that he should build a bridge
across the river and take toll of every one who wished to go over it; so
he sets to work with a will, and when the bridge is finished, stands at
one end--"at the receipt of custom." Three men come up with loads of
hay, and Matt demands toll of them, so they each give him a wisp of hay.
Next comes a pedlar, with all sorts of small wares in his pack, and Matt
gets from him two needles. On his return home his mother asks him what
he has got that day. "Hay and needles," says Matt. Well! and what had he
done with the hay? "I put some of it in my mouth," quoth he, "and as it
tasted like grass, I threw it into the river." She says he ought to have
spread it on the byre-floor. "Very good," replies the dutiful Matt;
"I'll remember that next time." And what had he done with the needles?
He stuck them into the hay. "Ah," says the mother, "you should rather
have stuck them in and out of your cap, and brought them home to me."
Well! well! Matt will not forget to do so next time. The following day a
man comes to the bridge with a sack of meal and gives Matt a pound of
it; then comes a smith, who gives him a gimlet: the meal he spread on
the byre-floor, and the gimlet he stuck in and out of his cap.
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