Page:Grimm's Household Tales, vol.1.djvu/436

354 is a story with some affinity to this from Austria, Reward and Punishment, which is allied to Frau Holle (No. 24), and is to be found in Ziska, p. 47, and another in Pröhle's Märchen für die Jugend No. 5. Compare Perrault's Les Fées No. 1, and in the Pentamerone (3. 10), The three Fairies.

The punishment of being rolled in a barrel stuck full of nails is an old custom. According to the Dutch Chronicle, Gerhard van Velzen, because he had murdered Count Florens, V. of Holland (1296), was rolled in a barrel of the like kind for the space of three days. The old song says,

When he was taken out of it, and asked how he felt, he answered,

See Casp. Commelin's, Beschryving van Amsterdam i. 86-88. This punishment occurs in a Swedish, and also in a Danish Volkslied (Geyer and, 1, No. 3, and Danske viser, No. 165).

From a story from the Principality of Corvei, but it is from Hesse that we have the version with the three women, all of whom are afflicted with some peculiar defect caused by spinning. In the former there are only two extremely aged women, who have become so broad from sitting that they can hardly get into the room. They have thick lips from wetting and licking the thread; and from drawing and pulling it they have ugly fingers, and broad thumbs. The story from Hesse begins differently; for instance, that there was a King who liked nothing so much as spinning, and for that reason, on taking leave before going a journey, he left behind him for his daughters, a great chest full of flax which was to be spun by his return. In order to release them from this, the Queen invited these three misshapen women, and on the King's arrival set them before his eyes. Prätorius, in the Glückstopf, pp. 404