Peter Christen Asbjørnsen

“ So Boots woke up the youngest of them, and it began to rub its eyes and clear the moss out of them. But when the dragon saw there was folk there, he came at them with his maw wide agape; but then the lad stood ready, and tossed into it the carcasses of beeves, and swung after them salted swine, till the dragon had got his fill, and grew a little more sensible to talk to. Then the lad begged he would wake up his fellows, and ask them to be so good as to get out of the way, so that he might get into the castle ”

“ As for Boots, he thought it was very kind of her to say that; but he could not bear to be without the painting; so he took it under his arm, and rolled the ball of wool before him, and it was not long before he came to the king's grange, where his brothers served. There he, too, begged for a place, but all the answer he got was, they had nothing to put him to, for they had just got two new serving-men. But as he begged so prettily, at last he got leave to be with the coachman, and learn how to groom and handle horses. ”

“ But the lads only laughed at her, and ate on, and told her as she had lived so long on nothing, she might very well hold out the rest of her life, even though she did not eat up their scanty fare, for they had little to eat, and nothing to spare. ”

“ Mind you take nothing else but the little grey ass, which stands behind the stable door."
Then the raven took Boots on his back and flew up on the hill with him, and put him off there. When he had gone about on it a bit, he heard the baby Troll howling and whining, because it couldn't get down again. So the lad talked kindly to it, and they got the best friends in the world, and he said he would help it down and guide it to the old Troll's house, that it mightn't lose itself on the way back. ”

“ So after a long, long time they came up to where the castle hung in the air, but the worm lay underneath it and stopped the way. So the lad gave the dragons a good meal of beeves and salted swine, that they might help him, and they spread over the worm heaps of boughs and wood, and laid between them layers of nails and brads, till they had used up the three hundred chests ”