Gilitrutt

Once a couple lived on a farm in a valley where the sheep were many and the work never done. The farmer was a hardworking man who liked everything in order. His wife was young and pretty, but not much given to wool-work. She knew many things, and had a good heart, but when it came to the spinning wheel and the spindle, she grew tired before she began.

One day the farmer came in with a great sack of wool. "Now it must be carded, spun, and worked," he said. "Winter comes sooner than one thinks."

The wife looked at the wool and felt it grow before her eyes. "Yes," she said. "I'll start tomorrow."

But tomorrow came, and water needed fetching. The next day the fire needed tending. Then a needle had to be found. Then she was tired. And the wool lay untouched in the corner, white and silent, as if it knew no one would touch it.

Each evening the farmer asked: "How goes it with the wool?" And the wife answered: "It's coming, it's coming." But nothing came.

One day when the farmer was away, the wife sat alone in the hall looking at the wool. She had grown afraid to tell the truth. Then she heard a knock at the door.

In came a small, strange woman. She was neither old nor young, neither pretty nor plain, but her eyes were sharp as if she saw through walls. She held a small spindle in her hand.

"You have work you don't care to do," she said.

The wife blushed. "Perhaps."

"I can do it for you," said the little woman. "I'll card, spin, and finish it all before your husband comes home."

The wife could hardly believe her. "And what do you want for it?"

The little woman smiled. Her teeth were small and white. "If you can tell me my name before I come again, you get the work for free. If you cannot, then I shall have the child you will one day have."

The wife went cold inside. But she had no child, and the wool was so much, and her fear of her husband was so near.

"Yes," she said at last. "I agree to it."

The little woman sat at the spinning wheel. Then everything began to turn. The wool flew through her fingers, the thread grew even and soft, the spindle sang, the wheel hummed, and before evening the whole work lay finished, beautiful and well made.

"Remember our bargain," said the little woman and vanished out the door.

The farmer came home and was glad. "This is well done," he said. "I knew you could do it."

The wife smiled, but the smile did not reach her eyes.

Time passed. She had a child, a little boy with soft hands and bright eyes. Then she remembered the bargain. Joy mixed with dread, and in the evenings she sat by the cradle trying to think of every name there was.

Sigríður. Guðrún. Þórunn. Katrín. None of the names seemed right.

The day was drawing near when the little woman was to come.

The wife grew pale and weak with worry. Her husband noticed. "What troubles you?" he asked.

At last she told him everything.

The farmer's face grew grave, but he did not scold her. He took his cloak and went out into the night. "I'll go looking," he said.

He walked a long time through hillsides and ravines, past rocks and brushwood. The moon was half full, and the snow glittered in the hollows. Then he heard a sound from a deep gully.

It was singing.

He crept closer and looked down. There sat the little woman by a fire, spinning her spindle and dancing around it. She sang with a shrill voice:

"Ha, ha, and tra-la-la, tomorrow I'll come to the farm. No one knows what I am called, Gilitrutt is my name."

The farmer fixed the name in his mind. Then he turned home quietly, so she would not see him.

The next morning the little woman came. She walked straight to the cradle and smiled. "Now, good wife," she said. "Do you know what I am called?"

The wife pretended to think. "Are you perhaps Sigríður?"

"No."

"Are you Þórdís?"

"No."

"Are you, then... Gilitrutt?"

At that the little woman looked as though she had been struck. Her face twisted with rage. She stamped her foot so the floorboards shook.

"Who told you that?" she hissed.

The wife said nothing.

Gilitrutt let out a shriek, snatched up her spindle, and fled. Some say she ran into the mountain and never again could bear to hear her own name spoken.

After this, the wife often sat at the spinning wheel herself. She never became the swiftest of workers, but she did her own work with her own hands. And when her child cried in the cradle, she remembered that some things which seem easy on one day can grow more costly than one understands.

But in the gully above the farm, on dark evenings, a small sound of spinning was sometimes heard among the stones. Then people shut their doors well and did not speak her name too loud.