3-070-983 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Illustrations from new books - The Big Billy-Goat and the Troll: from "Round The Yule Log:" Norwegian Folk and Fairy Tales, 1881. Engraving from '...a volume of Norwegian Folk and Fairy Tales, collected under the Christmas title, "Round the Yule Log," published by Messrs. Sampson Low and Co...The Norwegian writer of these racy little stories, most of which have been current for ages in the oral traditions of the country people, is Peter Christen Asbjörnsen, assisted at the beginning by Jorgen Moe, now Bishop of Christiansand...Some of the engravings, which are of foreign design and execution, must be pronounced superior to the average of book-illustrations; but those we have selected may bear witness to their own merit...With regard to the three Billy-goats, and their encounter with the malicious Troll, who is a species of Norse Ogre, we will merely observe that the last and biggest of the three, after the two smaller had passed over the bridge, was enabled to overcome their formidable foe, and to slay him in the bed of the mountain stream. All three went up safely to the fat grassy pasture, and fed there till they grew fatter than goats ever were before'. From "Illustrated London News", 1881.