Not far from one farm there was a hill, and the Huldra lived on that hill. People from the farm knew about this and tried to be good neighbors to the “underground people.” The owners always left food and drink for the huldras in the same place at night, and in exchange for this, when people were sleeping, they visited the barnyard and went after the cattle. The calves on this farm grew quickly, the cows were milked well - and all because the huldras took care of them. At Christmas, the owners of the farm always went to visit relatives and left their house at the disposal of the “underground people” for all holidays.
When the owners returned, the cattle were always well-groomed and fed, and somewhere in the house there was silver or jewelry that the huldras used to pay for the fact that they had lived in the house all this time.
And then the farm passed to new owners. The peasant who bought it believed that he was the master of the house and did not leave for Christmas. Instead, on Christmas night he hid behind the door, and when the Huldra entered the house, he hit one of their old men hard. From that very day on, all sorts of misfortunes rained down on the farm. The cows began to be milked with blood, the calves got sick, the horses became emaciated and looked like bags of bones: at night the huldras carried all sorts of weights on them, and in the morning the animals stood in the barn covered in foam, exhausted from hard work. And one day a fire broke out on the farm. It started in the hayloft, and when the flame spread to the house and shot up over the roof with a scarlet tongue, everyone who was in the yard heard the huldra laughing and laughing inside their hill.
Translated from Russian · original on wisdomlib.ru