The Magic Scythe
A scythe in Swedish folktales that cuts grain by itself, without a hand to swing it. In the tale of the magic scythe, the wonderful tool performs the harvest work of many men, sparing its owner the labour of mowing. The self-working scythe belongs to a family of Swedish wonder-tools in which ordinary farm implements act on their own. In the best-known telling the scythe is a loan from the hidden people: an elf of the huldufólk gives a poor farmer a blade that mows his grain by itself while he rests, on the single condition that it be returned to the elf's clearing each evening. When the farmer