es which the Mother sings to Oeyvind bring in the
fairy element of the talking animals. In the form of this tale, the
perfect fidelity with which the words fit the meaning is
apparent--nothing seems superfluous. When Oeyvind asked Marit who she
was, she replied:--

"I am Marit, mother's little one, father's fiddle, the elf in the
house, granddaughter of Ole Nordistuen of the Heidi farms, four years
old in the autumn, two days after the frost nights, I!"

And Oeyvind replied:--

"Are you really?"--and drew a long breath which he had not
dared to do so long as she was speaking.

The story is full of instances illustrating precision, energy, and
delicacy. In fact, almost any passage exemplifies the general
qualities of form and the qualities of composition. The personality of
the writer has given to the tale a poetic and dramatic charm of
simplicity. Note the precision and delicacy displayed in the opening
paragraph:--

Oeyvind was his name. A low barren cliff overhung the house
in which he was born; fir and birch looked down on the roof,
and wild cherry strewed flowers over it. Upon this roof
there walked about a little goat, which belonged to Oeyvind.
He was kept there that he might not go astray; and Oeyvind
carried leaves and grass up to him. One fine day the goat
leaped down, and away to the cliff; he went straight up and
came where he never had been before.

Energy is apparent in the following passage:--

"Is it yours, this goat?" asked the girl again.

"Yes," he said, and looked up.

"I have taken such a fancy to the goat. You will not give it
to me?"

"No, that I won't."

She lay kicking her legs and looking down at him, and then
she said, "But if I give you a butter-cake for the goat, can
I have him then?"

The justness of expression, the sincerity, is especially impressive
when Oeyvind's Mother came out and sat down by his side when the goat
no longer satisfied him and he wanted to hear stories of what was far
away. There is emotional harmony too, because the words suggest the
free freshness of the mountain air and the landscape which rose round
about the Boy and his Mother.

So she told him how once everything could talk: "The
mountain talked to the stream, and the stream to the river,
the river to the sea, and the sea to the sky."--But then he
asked if the sky did not talk to any one: