Silly Peyco
Once upon a time, there was a troll called Peyco. No one knew where he came from. Some said that Peyco was such a ruler of nature, as Vellamo the Mistress of the Sea, like the forest tsar Tapio, others thought that Peyco was an ordinary man, living in the woods. In short, no one could say anything about him. They knew one thing: Peyco was taller and stronger than the tallest men, his face was overgrown, his hair was shaggy, and his arms and legs were thick, as if they had been cut out of a log.
Peyco was old, rich, and silly, they say.
Whenever Peyco came to the village, the villagers would make fun of him, and young Matti was the first among them.
And one day Peyco came to the village and started arguing with Matti that he could outlast him in the steam room, any steam he could stand. Well, they flooded the bathhouse and went for a steam bath.
Matti cut a hole in the wall and peeked out into the street unnoticed.
Peyco heated the stones and poured boiling water over them. The furnace hissed like a hundred cats, but Matti kept asking for more steam. Indeed! He was standing by the hole in the wall, breathing in the fresh air!
Peyco couldn't stand the heat in the steam room, so he ran outside and put a burning log under the bathhouse. The bathhouse burst into flames and instantly burned to the ground, one stove stood untouched.
Matti, meanwhile, crawled through a hole in the courtyard and escaped the fire.
The next day Matti and the villagers went to see the fire, and Peyco was there.
“Did you have a good sweat last night?” Peyco was angry.
“It wasn't that good! You didn't heat the bathhouse well. I didn't get any steam.”
Another time, Matti and Peyco met in the winter and fought again.
“It's a bitter winter these days,” Peyco muttered.
“Is it?” Matti was surprised.
“Of course it is! No work can get done in this frosty weather.”
“No way! There's no frost like this that I can't endure. Wanna bet?”
“I bet!” Peyco got excited, and then he gave Matti a freezing cold and a frosty wind.
Matti gritted his teeth and waved his axe - the logs bounced right off the log!
Peyco couldn’t get a tooth on a tooth, he didn’t know how to get away from the cold.
“Isn't the frost too hard these days?” He asks.
“Maybe not, but the wind warms up pretty well,” Matti said.
Peikko was surprised: why would Matti be warm?
He stopped the wind and the frost, but they were of no use anyway. Once again Matti overpowered him.
Then Peikko persuaded Matti to fight in jumps — who would go deeper into the ground. Matti agreed. “Let's jump off the cliff,” he says. And at night he dug a deep hole at the foot of the mountain, filled it with brushwood and covered it with needles.
In the morning they stood on the edge of the cliff, and now they would start jumping. Peyco jumped - he was in the ground up to his knees. Matti jumped - no sign of him, no head in sight. Peyco opened his mouth in surprise and stood there with his mouth open until Matti came out of the hole.
“You must be a sorcerer,” sighed Peyco, “how else could you hit the ground?”
“I am not a sorcerer,” Matty replied, “but a real man, and much smarter and cleverer than you.”
