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Life had lessened in value, now that the most sacred life of all was gone; death had no terrors for the lowly since the anointed head was not spared. With the fury of lions the Upland, Smaland, Finland, East and West Gothland regiments rushed a second time upon the left wing of the enemy, which, already making but feeble resistance to General Horn, was now entirely beaten from the field.
"Only so I could sit by a fire for a moment, and get a little food. I could go back to the wild geese before sunrise." He crept from under the wing and slid down to the ground. He didn't awaken either the goosey-gander or any of the other geese, but stole, silently and unobserved, through the morass. He didn't know exactly where on earth he was: if he was in Skåne, in Småland, or in Blekinge.
"Småland is a tall house with spruce trees on the roof," said the teacher, "and leading up to it is a broad stairway with three big steps; and this stairway is called Blekinge. It is a stairway that is well constructed.
It stretches forty-two miles along the frontage of Småland house, and anyone who wishes to go all the way down to the East sea, by way of the stairs, has twenty-four miles to wander. "A good long time must have elapsed since the stairway was built.
In Smaland a parallel legend is current, according to which the ancestress of a certain family was an elf-maid who came into the house with the sunbeams through a knot-hole in the wall, and, after being married to the son and bearing him four children, vanished the same way as she had come.
For one must realise that when it rains on the roof of the big Småland house, or when the snow melts up there, the water has to go somewhere; and then, naturally, a lot of it is spilled over the big stairway.
"It happened that our Lord was just then creating Småland. It wasn't even half-ready but it looked as though it would be an indescribably pretty and fertile land. It was difficult for our Lord to say no to Saint Peter, and aside from this, he thought very likely that a thing so well begun no one could spoil.
It must also be told that up in the big house in Småland there lived once upon a time a giant, who had grown very old. And it fatigued him in his extreme age, to be forced to walk down that long stairway in order to catch salmon from the sea. To him it seemed much more suitable that the salmon should come up to him, where he lived.
He was walking on a stubble-field, in West Vemminghög, tending a goose-flock; and beside him, on the field, walked those same Småland children, with their geese. As soon as he saw them, he ran up on the stone-hedge and shouted: "Oh, good-day, Osa goose-girl! Oh, good-day, little Mats!"
The wedge was perfect, the speed good, and the wing strokes strong and certain. The boy felt such a yearning for his departing comrades that he almost wished he were Thumbietot again and could travel over land and sea with a flock of wild geese. The final e is sounded in Skåne, Sirle, Gripe, etc. The å in Skåne and Småland is pronounced like o in ore. j is like the English y.
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