The Nis Removing

THE NIS REMOVING [a]

IT is very difficult, they say, to get rid of a Nis when one wishes it. A man who lived in a house in which a Nis carried his pranks to great lengths resolved to quit the tenement, and leave him there alone. Several cart-loads of furniture and other articles were already gone, and the man was come to take away the last, which consisted chiefly of empty tubs, barrels, and things of that sort. The load was now all ready, and the man had just bidden farewell to his house and to the Nis, hoping for comfort in his new habitation, when happening, from some cause or other, to go to the back of the cart, there he saw the Nia sitting in one of the tubs in the cart, plainly with the intention of going along with him wherever he went. The good man was surprised and disconcerted beyond measure at seeing that all his labour was to no purpose; but the Nis began to laugh heartily, popped his head up out of the tub, and cried to the bewildered farmer, "Ha! we 're moving to-day, you see. " [b]

[a] The places mentioned in the following stories are all in Jutland. It is remarkable that we seem to have scarcely any Nis stories from Sweden.

[b] This story is current in Germany, England, and Ireland. In the German story the farmer set fire to his barn to burn the Kobold in it. As he was driving oft', he tuned round to look at the blaze, and, to his no small mortification, saw the Kobold behind him in the cart, crying "It was time for us to come out--it was time for us to come out!"