Tatterhood by Margrete Lamond

sweetheart at last that he lavished on her the finest of everything – gowns and blouses; braid, embroidery and buttons, buckles on her shoes, and brooches so heavy with disks that she tinkled every time she moved.
    But for all his gifts the troll couldn’t give her peace of mind – not with her sisters’ heads apart from their bodies and them lying in the dark while she sat about in fine clothes.
    No, she couldn’t feel entirely grateful.
    There came a day, after she had been there for a while, when she was more moping and thoughtful than usual.
    â€˜What’s fretting you?’ said the troll, who was more than anxious to keep her sweet.
    â€˜Aw,’ said the girl, foxy and sly, ‘it’s because I can’t get home to my ma. She’s all alone, and hungry and thirsty, too, with no one to know if she starves or not.’
    â€˜Well, going home is out of the question,’ said the hill-troll, ‘but if you put some food in a sack, I’ll carry it along to her, no trouble at all.’
    â€˜You’re a good troll, underneath,’ she said, but she didn’t mean a word because she filled the sack near to the brim with silver and gold, with only a skimming of food across the top. Then she gave it to the troll to carry.
    â€˜But don’t go snooping inside, mind,’ she told him. ‘I’ll know the moment you do.’
    â€˜I won’t, I promise I won’t,’ said the troll.
    But the girl climbed up the inside of a vault to watch him through a chink in the mountain wall as he lumbered off through the night with his load.
    And – as the girl had guessed – it wasn’t long before curiosity got the better of the troll.
    â€˜It’s devilish heavy,’ he said to himself. ‘I wouldn’t mind knowing what’s inside,’ and setting the sack down, he loosened it to peek.
    â€˜I see you, I see you!’ shouted the girl, and her voice echoed in and out of the mountainside, bouncing off the cliffs all around.
    â€˜Those are devils of eyes you’ve got in your head,’ muttered the troll, and he dared not try it again.
    When he reached the widder-woman’s house, tucked up and alone under the hillside, he hurled the sack in through the door.
    â€˜There’s some food from that daughter of yours,’ he shouted after it, then added, ‘Things don’t weigh as heavy on her as they do on some folks, for sure.’ And with that he mopped his brow and lumbered home before the sun rose.
    Well, when the youngest daughter had lived in the mountain a good while longer, watching, waiting and biding her time, it happened that a billy-goat came too close to the cliff-side, trod on thin air and came tumbling down into the hill-troll’s halls.
    â€˜And who asked you?’ yelled the troll, bad-tempered and sour. He grabbed the goat, wrenched off its head and threw it into the cellar.
    â€˜Why did you do that?’ said the girl. ‘I could have kept that goat and played with it, bored as I am down here.’
    â€˜No need to fret,’ said the troll who – despite his bad temper – was anxious to keep the girl good-natured. ‘I can quick enough stick life back into a billy-goat.’
    With that he took a pitcher that hung on the wall, sat the head back on the goat, smeared on ointment from the pitcher and set the goat on its feet, as good as any.
    â€˜Aha!’ thought the girl.
    And she kept her eye on the pitcher and bided her time.
    She bided it for quite a while – and then a good while longer – but the time came at last when the hill-troll was away long enough for the girl to open the cellar, drag out her eldest sister, sit the head back on its neck and salve it from the pitcher, just as the troll had done with the goat. Straight away, the sister was as good as new. Then the girl put her sister in the sack and, whispering some words of advice, covered her over with