They were from Sunnerbo township, in Smaland, and
had once lived with their parents and four brothers and sisters in a
little cabin on the heath.
While the two children, Osa and Mats, were still small, a poor, homeless
woman came to their cabin one night and begged for shelter. Although the
place could hardly hold the family, she was taken in and the mother
spread a bed for her on the floor. In the night she coughed so hard that
the children fancied the house shook. By morning she was too ill to
continue her wanderings. The children's father and mother were as kind
to her as could be. They gave up their bed to her and slept on the
floor, while the father went to the doctor and brought her medicine.
The first few days the sick woman behaved like a savage; she demanded
constant attention and never uttered a word of thanks. Later she became
more subdued and finally begged to be carried out to the heath and left
there to die.
When her hosts would not hear of this, she told them that the last few
years she had roamed about with a band of gipsies. She herself was not
of gipsy blood, but was the daughter of a well-to-do farmer. She had run
away from home and gone with the nomads. She believed that a gipsy woman
who was angry at her had brought this sickness upon her. Nor was that
all: The gipsy woman had also cursed her, saying that all who took her
under their roof or were kind to her should suffer a like fate.
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