The Husband Who Was to Mind the House
A Norwegian farmer who was sure the housework was nothing, and the day he tried it
Page 1
High up a Norwegian valley, where the fjord lay flat and silver between the mountains, there stood a little farm with grass growing on its roof.
The house was built so close against the hillside that a person could almost step off the slope onto the turf of the roof, and in summer the goats sometimes did.
In that house lived a husband and a wife and their small baby, and the husband was cross. He was cross at breakfast and cross at supper, and the thing he was crossest about was this: he was quite sure that he did all the work in the world, and that his wife did none of it.
She heard him say so, that morning, while the whole valley was out cutting hay.
Page 2
That evening the wife came up to the hayfield where he was leaning on his scythe, and she looked at the long grass still standing, and she made him an offer.
"Tomorrow we will change places," she said. "I will take the scythe and go out and mow, and you will stay at home and mind the house."
The husband thought this was the best idea he had ever heard. Minding the house! He would have it done by the middle of the morning and sit in the sun for the rest of the day.
"Gladly," he said.
So it was settled. And the wife went to bed early, because she meant to be out in the grass by sunrise, and she slept extremely well.
Page 3
In the morning the wife took the scythe over her shoulder and went off up the hill to mow, and the husband was left in the kitchen with the whole house to mind.
He decided to begin with the butter, because butter sounded the most important.
So he put the cream into the tall wooden churn and set it in the middle of the floor and took hold of the handle, and he worked it up and down, up and down, and he was very pleased with how well it was going. He thought that in a moment he would need a little water as well, so he went down toward the cellar to fetch some.
And he left the kitchen door standing wide open behind him.
Page 4
While he was gone the pig came in through the open door.
The pig walked straight to the churn and put its nose against it and pushed, and over went the churn, and all the cream ran out across the floor in a long white flood, and the pig stood in the middle of it looking extremely satisfied.
The husband came back and saw it and gave a shout that was heard in the next valley. He snatched up the broom and swept the pig out of the door and all the way across the yard, and the pig went off round the barn at a gallop, squealing, with cream on its ears, entirely unhurt and not sorry in the least.
The cream, however, was gone.
Page 5
There was nothing to be done but start again, so down he went into the cellar, where it was cool and dim and smelled of earth and ale and winter apples.
He found the last crock of cream on the shelf and took it under one arm. Then he thought that since he was down there anyway he might as well draw a jug of ale for his dinner, so he put the jug under the tap of the big barrel and turned the tap on.
And at that very moment, up above his head, he heard a thump and a scrabble on the kitchen floor — the pig, back again, and going for the cream crock he had left on the step.
He went up those stairs three at a time. He did not turn off the tap.
Page 6
He got to the top of the stairs just in time to see the pig at the crock. He drove it out of the door for the second time, and this time he shut the door and barred it.
Then he stood in the kitchen and listened, because he could hear a sound he did not like at all.
It was a soft steady running sound, coming up from under his feet.
He went back down the stairs. The jug had filled, and gone on filling, and tipped over; and the ale had run out of the barrel and across the cellar floor and in among the apples, and it was still running, and by the time he got his hand to the tap there was not enough ale left in the barrel to fill a cup.
Page 7
Now he remembered the meal. The bread could not be made without it, and the dinner could not be made without the bread.
So he set the little hand millstone going, round and round, and the flour came out, and he had just begun to feel that he was winning when he looked down and saw the baby sitting beside him on the floor in the spilled cream, patting it with both hands and eating some of it, and very pleased.
He picked the baby up with one arm and turned the millstone with the other.
And out in the barn, the cow began to bellow. She had not been milked. She had not been fed. She had not been let out to graze, and she wanted the whole valley to know it.
Page 8
The cow had to graze, and he had no time to walk her up the hill to the pasture. So he looked out of the door at the roof of his own house, with its good thick grass growing all over it, and he had an idea he thought was brilliant.
The house stood against the hillside. He led the cow up the slope, and off the slope, and out onto the turf roof, and there she was, standing on top of the house, eating the grass of it quite happily.
But it was a steep roof, and he was afraid she might walk off the edge of it. So he fetched a long rope and tied one end round the cow. Then he dropped the other end of it down the chimney.
Then he went back inside and tied that end round his own leg.
Page 9
Then he put the porridge pot on the fire, because there was still dinner to make, and he began to stir it.
And while he was stirring, the cow walked too near the edge of the roof and slipped off.
She hung there in the air down the side of the house — and the rope round his leg went tight, and up the chimney he went, and there he stuck, halfway, with his head in the soot and his legs in the air. Outside, the cow hung halfway down the wall, bellowing.
The wife, up in the hayfield, heard a cow making a noise no cow should make. She came down that hill very fast indeed. She took her scythe and cut the rope, and the cow came down safe on her four feet in the grass.
And in the kitchen, the husband came down the chimney head first, straight into the porridge pot.
Page 10
They got him out, and they got the soot off him, and they got the cow back into her stall.
The cream was gone and the ale was gone and the porridge was certainly gone, so they had flatbread and cheese instead, sitting on the step with the valley going gold in front of them and the baby asleep between them.
The husband did not say anything for a while.
Then he said that he thought, on the whole, that tomorrow he would take the scythe and go out and mow.
And his wife said that she thought that was a very good plan.
And that is the end of the story of the husband who was to mind the house.
About this story
- Audience: kids (ages 6–12)
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