Collected by Johannes Jonsson Lund (b. 1804).
From Jacqueline Simpson, Icelandic Folktales and Legends (Berkeley, 1972).
wo elfin women once went to a farm to leave a changeling there. They came to where the baby they wished to take was; it was lying in a cradle, and there was nobody nearby except for another child, which was two years old.
The younger and less cautious of the elf-women goes straight up to the cradle and says:
Then the elder says:
- Let us take him, take him, do!
At that they went off without doing anything, partly because of the Cross marks which had been made over the cradle and also beneath the baby before it was laid there, and partly also because of the two-year-old child who was sitting by the cradle, and who later told everyone what had happened.
- We can't for that would harm us too:
A Cross above, beneath, they drew;
And by him sits a child of two,
And he will speak of what we do.