Sleeping with a Forest Sprite

Collected by Levi Johansson in 1912 (Swedish).
T here was a farmer in the village named Jan Nilsson. He and a serving girl went to Finrojningen to make hay. They both slept in the barn.

One night, the girl saw a woman enter the barn and lie down beside the man. The stranger had beautiful eyes, but her back looked like the bark of a fir tree.

The next morning the girl asked the farmer who the woman was who had visited him during the night.

"Hush," he said, "today I'm going to get a great big buck."

After a while a huge bear came along and lay down on a rock just outside the barn. The man shot it without any trouble.

"There, you see? I've already been paid for sharing my bed with her," he said.

Of course it was a forest sprite he had slept with.

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MOTIF: f232.1.2