The Bondman

The central date of this story (a Saga in the only sense accepted among Icelanders) is 1800, when Iceland, in the same year as Ireland, lost the last visible sign of her ancient independence as a nation.  There is a beautiful Northern legend of a man who loved a good fairy, and wooed her and won her for his wife, and then found that she was no more than a woman after all. Grown weary, he turned his back upon her and wandered away over the mountains; and there, on the other side of a ravine from where he was, he saw, as he thought, another fairy, who was lovely to look upon and played sweet music and sang a sweet song.