A Selection from the Norse Tales for the Use of Children

“Dear friend,” she said to the Man o’ the Hill, “you really must run home to my mother with a little food again; and mind you don’t look into the sack.”

So when they got to the trunk, the eldest foal took and pushed it on one side, and then they saw a door where it had stood, and inside the door was a little room, and in the roo...

“Now we have done wrong,” said the lad; “this can cost us all our lives;” and then he asked his sailors if they were men enough to sail to Arabia in four and twenty hours, if th...

“Oh! only so so,” answered Gudbrand; “not much to brag of. When I got to the town there was no one who would buy the cow, so you must know I swopped it away for a horse.”

“If you will only get me the best shoes you can for my horse, and the grandest saddle and bridle that are to be found,” said the lad, “you may have my twelve mares that graze up...

The next night ’twas the same story over again, only this time the Troll had six heads and six rods, and he whipped him far worse than the first; but when he went out next morni...

Now, you must know that the king of the country where Boots lived had a daughter, whom he would only give to the man who could ride up over the hill of glass, for there was a hi...

But just as he reached the spot where the Princess sat, what should come but the Ogre tearing along in his ship, so that the wind roared and howled after him. He was so tall and...

ONCE on a time there was a man whom they called Rich Peter the Pedlar, because he used to travel about with a pack, and got so much money, that he became quite rich. This Rich P...

So he got the rye and the wheat, and put them into the kneading trough he had brought with him from home, got in, and rowed across the lake. When he reached the other side he be...

As for the Prince and Princess, they set free all the poor Christian folk who had been carried off and shut up there; and they took with them all the silver and gold, and flitte...

Now, when he had gone a bit further, he came to a brook, and in the brook lay a great Salmon, which had got upon a dry place and dashed itself about, and could not get into the...

Then they soon found out it must be he whom they had rowed out the day before who had brought the beggars on the island all this state and bravery; and as soon as they got back...

Yes! the woman’s daughter made up her mind to go out to serve too, that she might get just such another gold casket. So they sat down to spin again, and now the woman’s daughter...

But when she had got over that, if a third head didn’t pop out of the pool, and this was far more ugly and loathsome than both the others put together.

IT was said by one of old time that a child’s heart is a holy place, and Scripture in awful words has uttered woe on him who wounds the feelings “of one of these little ones.” S...

“The loves and feuds of the Powers of Nature, after they had been told, first of gods, then of heroes, appear in the tales of the people as the flirting and teasing of fairies a...

“It may seem high praise, when we state that sometimes, in the freshness, breadth, and definiteness of the author’s thinking, we have been reminded of the posthumous lecture of...