Brownies

In ancient times, in Montier, there was a house spirit who took to visiting Uncle Chalouan's stable every night. He would groom the horses with a currycomb, comb their tails and manes, fill their troughs with feed, and give them water. The horses grew plump and shiny, but the oats in the granary were disappearing far too quickly, and no one could figure out who was stealing them. One day, Uncle Chalouan said to himself, "I must finally find out who is grooming my horses and stealing my oats!"

As soon as it grew dark, he hid in the stable. Soon, he saw the house spirit enter, wearing a little red cap. Uncle Chalouan immediately grabbed a pitchfork and shouted:

"Get out of here, you scoundrel, or I'll kill you!" And he snatched the cap off the house spirit's head.

"Give me back my little cap," cried the house spirit, "or I'll turn you into a donkey!"

But the owner didn't let go of the cap and kept shouting:

"Get out of here, you scoundrel, I'll kill you!"

Finally, the house spirit left, and Uncle Chalouan told his family what had happened and how the house spirit had threatened to turn him into a donkey for taking his red cap.

The next morning, the workers, worried that Uncle Chalouan hadn't shown up for a long time, went to the stable and were astonished to see a donkey standing by the horses. They immediately remembered the house spirit's threat. They returned the red cap, and the donkey turned back into Uncle Chalouan.

Three thousand years ago, or maybe even more, our neighbor had a lot of grain in his barn. And every morning, when he came to the barn, he found that some of the grain had already been threshed, and bundles of straw were prepared for threshing the next day. He couldn't figure out how this was happening.

One evening, hiding in a corner, he saw a tiny little man enter the barn and start threshing!

The neighbor said to himself, "I must give this little fellow a fine coat for his work." And the little man was completely naked. So the neighbor said to his wife:

"Some little man is threshing our grain; we must sew him a fine coat."

The next morning, the neighbor's wife gathered some scraps of fabric and sewed a little coat, which her husband then placed on a pile of grain.

The following night, the house spirit came again; as he began threshing, he found the little coat. Overjoyed, he started jumping around the barn, saying:

"Good service for a good master doesn't go unnoticed!"

He immediately put on the coat and found it to be absolutely wonderful!

"Now that I've been paid for my work—let someone else do the threshing!"

No sooner said than done. With these words, the little man left and never returned.

More fairy tales

• The Wolf, the Snail, and the Wasps
• The Crystal Bridge
• The Clever Thief
• The Sharing
• The Tailor and the Whirlwind