A long time ago, there lived in Hilton Hall a brownie, that is, a brownie, the most mischievous of all the brownies in the world. At night, when the servants went to bed, he turned everything upside down. He poured sugar into salt shakers, threw pepper into beer, overturned chairs, put tables upside down, raked hot coals out of fireplaces - in a word, he did as much mischief as he could. But sometimes he was in a good mood, and that’s it!..
- Wait, who is this, the brownie? – you ask.
Brownie, he’s like an unclean spirit, only not as insidious as the devil... Don’t you really know what an “unclean spirit” and “devil” are? Oh my God! What's going on in this world! So know, a brownie is a funny tiny creature, half-man, half-elf, all hairy and with pointy ears.
Where did I stop? Oh yes, I started telling how the brownie from Hilton Hall did God knows what. But if the maids left him a bowl of cream or a honey cake, the brownie, in gratitude, cleared the table for them and put the whole kitchen in order.
One day, late at night, the maids did not go to bed for a long time and suddenly heard a noise in the kitchen. They looked there and saw a brownie swinging on a spit chain and saying: Oh, woe is me! Woe! The acorn did not fall from the branch, That will become an oak tree, That will go to the cradle, Where the child will fall asleep, That will become a man, That will fire me! Oh, woe is me! woe!
The maids took pity on the poor fellow and asked the henkeeper how they could “fire” Brownie, that is, make sure he could leave this house.
“Simply as simple as that,” answered the birdwoman. “Give a brownie something good and durable for his efforts, and he will immediately disappear.”
So the maids sewed a cloak with a hood from the best green cloth and laid it by the fireplace, while they themselves began to wait to see what would happen. And suddenly they look: the brownie came up to the fireplace, saw a cloak with a hood, put it on himself and began to jump around the room on one leg. He himself jumps, he himself says: I take the cloak with a hood, And from now on it will be mine. Now the Hilton brownie will not help you!
The brownie said this and disappeared. And he was never seen again.
Translated from Russian · original on wisdomlib.ru