Page:Grimm's Household Tales, vol.1.djvu/453

Rh enough to throw her in after it. She falls deep down, but comes into a magnificent garden and to a house in which there is no one. In the kitchen, the soup is just boiling over, the roast meat just going to burn, and the cakes in the oven are just going to turn black. She quickly takes the soup off the fire, pours water on the roast meat, draws the cakes out of the oven, and puts everything right, and though very hungry, takes nothing but a few crumbs which have fallen off while she was trimming the cakes.

But now comes a water-nixie with frightful hair which has certainly not been combed out for a year, and desires the girl to comb it without twitching it, or pulling a single hair out, which at length, with much dexterity, she accomplishes. The nixie now says that she would much like to keep the girl with her, but cannot do so because she ate the two or three crumbs, but she gives her a ring and other things, and says if at night she turns the ring round she will come to her. The other daughter likewise has now to go to the nixie, and is thrown into the well, but she does everything wrong, does not restrain her hunger, and therefore comes back with evil gifts.

W. Reynitzsch gives a sixth story from Thuringia in his book, Ueber Truhten und Truhtensteine (Gotha, 1802), pp. 128-131. The pretty sister, whose distaff has fallen into the well, is pushed down by the wicked ugly one (aischliche). She comes into a wide open country. A little white man goes with her into a green meadow in which a minstrel with his fiddle meets her, receives her singing, and accompanies her. A red cow begs to be milked in order that her udder may not burst; the girl does it. At last they reach a magnificent town; the little man asks by which gate she will enter—the golden gate, or the pitch gate? She chooses the latter out of humility, but is led through the first, where everything is dropping with gold, and her face and clothes become gilded. A maiden asks her where she will live; in the white house, or in the black one? She again says, "In the black one," but is conducted to the white one. Another asks her whether she would prefer to spin gold flax with pretty spinning-girls and have her meals with them, or with cats and snakes. The girl is terrified, but is taken to the golden spinners and eats roast meat with them, and drinks beer and mead. After she has led a delightful life there for some time she is taken back through a golden gate by another little man, and reaches home covered with golden garlands. On her arrival the yellow cock crows "Cock a doodle doo! Cock a doodle doo!" and every one cries, "Here comes Golden Mary." The ugly sister now also lets herself be pushed into the well. Everything happens quite contrariwise with her. A little black man guides her, she passes