Page:Grimm's Household Tales, vol.1.djvu/487

Rh spindle with which she pricks herself, and which causes her to fall into this sleep, in the Sleep-thorn with which Odin pierces Brünhild: compare Edda Saemundar, 2. 186. In the Pentamerone (5. 5) it is a bit of the beard of flax. See La belle au bois dormant, in Perrault. The sleep of Snow-white is similar. Both the Italian and French stories have the conclusion which is lacking in the German, but appears in the The Wicked Stepmother (see Fragments, Mo 5). It is remarkable that amidst the considerable variations between Perrault and Basile (who is the only one who preserves the beautiful incident of the baby sucking the spike of flax out of its sleeping mother's finger), both agree as to the proper names of the children, in so far as the twins in the Pentamerone are called Sun and Moon; and in Perrault, Day and Dawn. These names remind us of those of Day, Sun, and Moon, which also occur in juxtaposition in the genealogy of the Edda.

From the district of Schwalm in Hesse. It is also told that the cook was the wicked wife of the forester, and the question and answer are differently given, for instance, "You should just have gathered the rose, and the bush would very soon have followed you." Vossius heard the story in his youth, and gives some fragments of it in the notes to his ninth Idyll. There is a similar search for the fugitive in Rolf Krages Sage, chap. 2. In Colshorn, No 69. The story of Dearest Roland, No 56, is allied to it.

From three stories current in Hesse and the districts of the Maine and Paderborn. The last has a different beginning. There is nothing in it about the King's forcing his proud daughter to marry the first comer. A handsome musician, however, comes beneath the King's window. The King summons him upstairs, and his song pleases both the King and his daughter. The musician stays a long time at court, and lives opposite the beautiful maiden, so that he can look in at her window and she into his. Once she sees him touching a little golden wheel with his fingers whereupon beautiful sounds proceed from it; so when he comes again, she entreats him to bring the little golden wheel to her, and he has to show her how to play upon it. She learns, and asks her father to give her also such an instrument. All the goldsmiths in the kingdom are summoned together, but not one of them is able to make it. Thereupon the King's daughter is very sad; and when the musician is aware of that, he says that if she is inclined to marry him he will give her the ingenious bit of work, but she disdainfully refuses. After a while