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Updated: May 27, 2025
"Come, make haste!" said grandpapa, up on the hill; and Marit rose, and walked with reluctant feet upwards. "You are not forgetting your garter?" Oeyvind cried after her. She turned around, and looked first at the garter and then at him. At last she came to a great resolution, and said, in a choked voice: "You may keep that." He went over to her, and, taking her hand, said: "Thank you!"
"What do the birds say?" asked Oeyvind, laughing. "'Dear Lord, how pleasant is life, For those who have neither toil nor strife, say the birds." And she told him what they all said, down to the ant who crawled in the moss, and the worm who worked in the bark. That same summer, one day, his mother came in and said to him, "To-morrow school begins and then you are going there with me."
He changed his place, and then she recited a little piece of a song three or four times over so that the little boy learned it, and that was the first he learned at school. Then the children sang, and Oeyvind stood with Marit by the door. All the children stood with folded hands and sang. Oeyvind and Marit also folded their hands, but they could not sing. And that was the first day at school.
After that they lived together for a long, long time, and were very, very happy. Oeyvind and Marit 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. Oeyvind did not see him when he came out after dinner, and thought immediately of the fox. He grew hot all over, looked round about, and called, "Killy-killy-killy-goat!"
"No, the goat is mine," she said, and threw her arms round its neck, loosened one of her garters, and fastened it round. Oeyvind looked up. She got up, and began pulling at the goat. It would not follow, but twisted its neck downward to where Oeyvind stood. "Bay-ay-ay," it said.
Oeyvind looked at the mountain, the trees, the sky, and had never really seen them before. The cat came out at that moment, and lay down on the stone before the door in the sunshine. "What does the cat say?" asked Oeyvind, pointing. His mother sang: "'At evening softly shines the sun, The cat lies lazy on the stone.
"I shall sit here," said Oeyvind quickly, seating himself at her side, and then she laughed and he laughed too. "Is it always like this here?" he whispered to Marit. "Yes, just like this; I have a goat now," she said. "Have you?" "Yes; but it is not so pretty as yours." "Why don't you come oftener up on the cliff?" said he. "Grandpapa is afraid I shall fall over." "But it is not so very high."
"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?" Oeyvind came of poor people, and had eaten butter-cake only once in his life; that was when grandpa came there, and anything like it he had never eaten before or since.
"Bay-ay-ay," said the goat, from the brow of the hill, as he cocked his head on one side and looked down. But beside the goat there kneeled a little girl. "Is it yours this goat?" she asked. Oeyvind stood with eyes and mouth wide open, thrust both hands into the breeches he had on, and asked, "Who are you?"
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