Page:Grimm's Household Tales, vol.1.djvu/454

372 by a gate of pitch into a misty abode of snakes and toads, where she is not allowed to eat so much as she wants, and has no rest day or night. In the Naubert collection (1. 136-179) the story is on the whole treated in the same way as in the fourth tale from Hesse, and in the same manner as the rest, but it is very pleasantly amplified. There is another method of treatment in Mad. Villeneuve's stories, of which in 1765 a translation appeared in Ulm, under the title, Die junge Amerikanerin. The Marmot (Liron), so the step-child is called, has to perform the coarsest work, keep the sheep, and at the same time bring back home with her an appointed quantity of spun thread. The maiden frequently seats herself on the edge of a well, and one day when she is about to wash her face, she falls in. When she comes to herself again, she finds herself in a crystal globe in the hands of a beautiful nixie, whose hair she is obliged to comb, for which she receives a magnificent dress, and whenever she lets down her hair and combs it, bright flowers are to fall from it, and whenever she is in trouble she is to plunge into the well and seek help from the nixie. The nixie likewise gives her a shepherd's crook which will keep off wolves and robbers; a spinning-wheel and distaff, which spin of their own accord, and lastly, a tame beaver able to perform many services. When Marmot comes home one evening with these things, the other daughter also is to get some like them for herself, and she jumps down the well. She falls however, into a morass, and because of her pride receives the gift, that stinking weeds and rushes shall grow out of her head, and that if she pulls one out still more shall grow. Marmot alone can remove the hateful decoration for a day and a night if she combs her, and now she is always obliged to do it. Then follows the further history of Marmot for which other stories are used; she always has to perform something which is dangerous, but by the aid of her magical gifts she does everything safely. In Hesse they say when it snows, "Frau Holle is making her bed;" in Holstein, "St. Peter is shaking up his bed;" or "The angels are picking feathers and down," vide Müllenhoff, p. 583. In Swabian, see Meier, 77. Kuhn, No. 9. Holstein, see Müllenhoff, No. 31, 51. There is a story from Alsace, in Stöber's Volksbuch, p. 113. In Norwegian in Asbjörnsen, p. 86. Roumanian, from the Bukowina, in Wolf's Zeitschrift für Mythologie, 1. 42. In the Pentamerone, The two Cakes (4, 7). The first story in the Brunswick Collection has some affinity. The proud wild Fir-tree (Stolze Föhre) in Ziska, p. 38, is allied to this; also two Servian tales in Wuk, No. 34, 36. Compare the stories of Frau Holle in our Deutsche Sagen, vol. ii, and Panzer's German Mythology, i. 125, 190. For Norse stories see P. E. Müller's Sagabibliothek, i, 274–275.