e reapers. An Icelandic legend
makes a woman set a pot containing food to cook on the fire and fasten
twigs end to end in continuation of the handle of a spoon until the
topmost one appears above the chimney, when she puts the bowl in the
pot. Another woman in a Danish tale engaged to drive a changeling out of
the house he troubled; and this is how she set about it. In his
temporary absence she killed a pig and made a black pudding of it, hide,
hair and all. On his return she set it before him, for he was a
prodigious eater. He began gobbling it up as usual; but as he ate his
efforts gradually slackened, and at last he sat quite still, eyeing it
thoughtfully. Then he exclaimed: "A pudding with hide! and a pudding
with hair! a pudding with eyes! and a pudding with bones in it! Thrice
have I seen a young wood spring upon Tiis Lake, but never yet did I see
such a pudding! The devil will stay here no longer!" And so saying he
ran off and never returned.[81]

Of these devices, however, the normal one is that of the egg-shells.
Sometimes one egg-shell only is employed, sometimes two--a dozen--or an
indefinite number. At seaside places, like Normandy and the Channel
Islands, egg-shells are sometimes replaced by shells of shell-fish.[82]
In all the stories the end is the same, namely, to excite the curiosity
and wonder of the imp to such a pitch that he gives expression to it in
language akin to that of the North German or the Danish tale just
quoted. The measure of age given in his exclamation is usually that of
the trees in the forest, or indeed the forest itself. In the instance
from Mecklenburg, Bohemian gold (_Boehmer Gold_) is made the measure, and
this runs through quite a number of Low Dutch stories. There can be
little doubt, however, that it is a corruption, and that the true form
is, as given in a Schleswig-Holstein tale, Bohemian Forest (_Behmer
Woelt_).[83] In Hesse Wester Forest (_Westerwald_) is found, and so on
in other countries, the narrator in each case referring to some wood
well known to his audience. The Lithuanian elf, or _laumes_, says: "I am
so old, I was already in the world before the Kamschtschen Wood was
planted, wherein great trees grew, and _that_ is now laid waste again;
but anything so wonderful I have never seen." In Normandy the changeling
declares: "I have seen the Forest of Ardennes burnt seven times, but I
never saw so many pots boil." The astonishment of a Scandinavian imp
expressed itself