In the old days, there were still many dwarves in the Seeland. They lived in the forest in little caves, and were therefore also called ‘earth folk’ or ‘wood folk’, because they ate from little wooden bowls; the dwarf women, who were knowledgeable about herbs, were called ‘wood mothers’.

Back then, a poor day labourer lived in a simple hut near the Great Moor. He was so poor that his many children were always hungry, and that very night his wife was due to give birth to yet another child. The poor day labourer could not afford a midwife, so he ran towards the forest to ask one of the Wood Mothers for help. The old dwarf woman went with him to the day labourer’s hut. Skillfully, she helped the poor day labourer’s wife until the youngest child was born. Then she asked the day labourer to accompany her back home. When they had reached the forest, she untied his apron, placed something heavy from her cave inside it, and pressed it into the man’s hand. “Here, take this apron as a gift,” she said to him, “you have a hard time with so many children, now that everything has become so expensive. It will help you.”

The man thanked her and set off for home. The apron seemed very heavy to him. “There must be bricks in there,” he thought, reaching into the fabric in the dark and letting individual pieces fall out. But the Wood Mother had seen this and called out:

“The more you shake it, the less you’ll have!”

The man was startled and now carried the heavy apron home. How astonished he was when he looked inside the apron the next morning and found it full of gold coins. From that day on, his family’s fortunes improved and the children never went hungry again. 

But the dwarves are no longer to be found in the Seeland. It is said they did not like the fact that people had grown ever greedier. They have gone away; nobody knows where.