The farmer told everyone that he never sat still.
He mostly said so sitting down.
His farmyard was the tidiest in the region. His bread was baked before the sun came up. His tools lay clean in the rack, and his grain was threshed at a speed that made the neighbours shake their heads.
“Start early,” he would say.
He did indeed go to bed early.
The gnomes did the rest.
In the Kempen, people told of little creatures who worked on farms at night. They baked, scrubbed, churned and hauled. Above all, you were not to spy on them. Their king was called Kyrië and lived near Hoogeloon.
Our farmer lived in the area around Meerveldhoven. Every evening he left behind any work he did not personally find pleasant. In time, that turned out to be almost everything.
At first he still put out some food. Later a smaller dish. Then it occurred to him that there were always crumbs lying about in the kitchen anyway.
“I don’t want to spoil them,” he told his wife.
She looked at his feet up on the bench.
One evening he stayed up extra late. He had come up with a new system. To the left of the door he put everything that was urgent. To the right, whatever could wait until the following night. In the middle he laid things he did not know what to do with, but which the gnomes would surely understand.
He went to sleep content.
Beneath the floor came the scraping of little chairs.
That night there was no hammering.
No broom scraped across the stones. There was no splashing at the washtub. The mice, who usually had to wait until the gnomes were finished, came out early and stood on the empty floor in astonishment.
The farmer slept on. Silence was the only kind of work he had never objected to.
The next morning he stood at the barn door.
Everything was still there.
He went to the kitchen. The oven was cold. The jug was empty. In a dish lay a crust with one corner nibbled off.
“They’re late,” he said.
His wife handed him a cloth.
“Then you can make a start.”
He kept waiting.
Towards noon a neighbour came with news. The gnome king Kyrië had been hit by a hunter and had died. Everywhere the little creatures were gathering. They were going to leave.
The farmer listened open-mouthed.
“Leave?”
The neighbour nodded.
“But who’s going to make my cart then?”
His wife took the cloth back out of his hand and flung it into the wash.
That night the farmer went outside. He had heard that the gnomes would pass by the bridge. Perhaps he could stop them. He took a big bowl of porridge with him. He had put plenty of butter in it.
When he reached the bridge, he could already hear the pattering.
It was a soft sound, but it went on and on. Little feet. Little clogs. The clinking of tools against each other.
He saw the first caps appear above the grass and was suddenly afraid. He was used to gnomes who worked when he was not around. Now they were actually coming his way.
The farmer stepped back, slipped off the bank and ended up under the bridge.
The water came up to his knees.
Above him, the procession passed by.
There were men, women and old little folk leaning on sticks. They carried tools, bundles and little lamps. Further back came a small closed bier with flowers.
Nobody sang.
The farmer held up his bowl. Ditch water dripped from his sleeve into the porridge.
“I’ve got something for you,” he whispered.
Above his head, footsteps stopped for a moment.
He did not dare look to see who was standing there.
“For whom?” asked a small voice.
The farmer opened his mouth.
He did not know a single name.
The footsteps moved on.
When he got home, morning had begun. Yesterday’s work lay in the yard. The work from the day before yesterday lay in the barn.
His wife sat at the table with a slice of bread.
He picked up the broom.
It was heavier than he remembered.
At the first sweep, the handle shot out of his hand and a bucket fell over. The cat fled. His wife lifted her feet off the floor and calmly went on eating.
Later the neighbour dropped by.
“Busy?”
The farmer leaned on his broom. He had dust on his forehead, a blister on his thumb, and for the first time had done something before he started talking about it.
“Terribly,” he said.
It was a pity he had said it so often before.
Nobody believed him any more.
Provenance · Freely retold
Based on the Kempen stories about gnomes and their departure after the death of King Kyrië, collected by Stichting Historisch Erfgoed Veldhoven. The boastful farmer, his stingy reward and his last bowl of porridge are our own additions.
Gnomes — the departure after the death of Kyrië
The dialogue and comic scenes are newly written. AI illustrations depict the tale.