Part Four of Folk Tales of Denmark turns to Funen, and to a tale from the second gathering of Svend Grundtvig's Gamle danske Minder i Folkemunde. (The Danish tales are read here part by part, tale by tale — this is not the whole of either collector's great gathering, and no completeness is claimed beyond what is read here.)
Disclosure: this performance is narrated by AI-generated voices.
Trillevip — a girl from Nørre Esterbølle, walking home from church through the Sandagergaard wood, is overheard by the manor's son as she counts to twenty: the spindles of yarn she tells him, in her embarrassment, that she could spin in an evening. His mother sends for her at once, and that night the wool for twenty spindles is laid before her. She spins and weeps towards midnight, not half done, when a little fellow in a red cap steps in and offers his help — if she will be his sweetheart, and afterwards his wife. One, two, three, the work stands finished, and it is finished every evening after; and the mistress is so pleased that the girl is to have her son. But the promise stands between her and the wedding, until the little helper himself offers her a way out: guess his name. A huntsman, out after game for the wedding, has heard the hill-folk dancing in their mound, and a certain little singer running and singing the name that must not be told. On the wedding day three old women come to the table, and the bride knows what she must call them. The tale is read here whole, exactly as Grundtvig printed it, in our own translation from the Danish.
Chapters:
00:12 — Trillevip
Source: Svend Grundtvig, Gamle danske Minder i Folkemunde (Old Danish Memories in the Mouths of the Folk), vol. II (Copenhagen, 1857), no. 309, "Trillevip" — from Funen, recorded by schoolteacher K. Sørensen of Jellinge. The English here is our own translation from the Danish, made for this shelf. Music: gentle instrumental bed under the narration.
Thank you for listening — Part 5 of the Danish tales follows on this shelf.
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