Note 132 — ELVES.
Reading edition
Svenska Folk-Visor, vol. iii. p. 159. There is a similar legend in Germany. A servant, one time, seeing one of the little ones very hard-set to carry a single grain of wheat, burst out laughing at him. In a rage, he threw it on the ground, and it proved to be the purest gold. But he and his comrades quitted the house, and it speedily went to decay.—Strack. Beschr. v. Eilsen, p. 124, ap. Grimm, Introd., etc., p. 90.