Page:Grimm's Household Tales, vol.1.djvu/437

Rh 406, relates the story in the following way: a mother cannot induce her daughter to spin, and for this reason often beats her. A man who on one occasion sees this, asks what is the meaning of it. The mother answers, "I cannot keep her from spinning; she spins away more flax than I can procure." The man says, "Then give her to me to wife; I shall be quite satisfied with her indefatigable industry, even if she bring me nothing else." The mother is heartily delighted, and the man at once gives his betrothed a great provision of flax. At this she is secretly terrified, but she takes it and puts it in her room, and considers what she is to do. Then three women come in front of her window, one so broad with sitting that she cannot get through the door of the room, the second has an enormous nose, the third a broad thumb. They offer their services to her, and promise the bride to spin what has been given to her if, on her wedding-day, she will not be ashamed of them, but will declare that they are her aunts, and place them at her table. She agrees to this, and they spin the flax, for which the bridegroom praises the bride. So when the wedding-day comes, the three horrible women appear also, and the bride pays them great honour, and says they are her aunts. The bridegroom is astonished, and asks how she comes by such repulsive relatives. "Ah," says the bride, "they have all been made like that by spinning. One of them is so broad with sitting, the other has quite licked away her mouth, and that makes her nose stand out so, and the third has twisted the thread so much with her thumb." Thereupon the bridegroom is much troubled, and tells the bride that she shall not spin another thread so long as she lives that she may not become a monster like them.

A third story from Upper Lusatia, by Th. Pesheck, is in Büsching's Wöchentliche Nachrichten i. 355-360; on the whole it corresponds with that of Prätorius. One of the three old women has blear-eyes because the flue of the flax has gone into them, the second has a great mouth reaching from ear to ear from wetting her thread, the third is fat and unshapely with sitting so much at the spinning-wheel. A portion of the story is to be found in Müllenhoff, No 8. In Norwegian, see Asbjörnsen, p. 69. In Swedish, Cavallius, p. 214. The beginning of Ricdin-Ricdon, by Mlle. l'Héritier, resembles it, and Le sette cotenelle, in the Pentamerone, bears some affinity (iv. 4).

From different stories current in Hesse. In Swabia it is a wolf which is in the sugar-house. See in Caroline Stahl's Stories, p. 92.