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 ‘Alas, dear Hans!’ said Elsa, ‘if we marry and have a child, and we send it to draw beer when it is big enough, it may be killed if that pickaxe left hanging there were to fall on its head. Have we not cause to lament?’

‘Well,’ said Hans, ‘more wits than this I do not need; and as you are such a Clever Elsa I will have you for my wife.’

He took her by the hand, led her upstairs, and they celebrated the marriage.

When they had been married for a while, Hans said: ‘Wife, I am going to work to earn some money; do you go into the fields and cut the corn, so that we may have some bread.’

‘Yes, my dear Hans; I will go at once.’

When Hans had gone out, she made some good broth and took it into the field with her.

When she got there, she said to herself: ‘What shall I do, reap first, or eat first? I will eat first.’

So she finished up the bowl of broth, which she found very satisfying, so she said again: ‘Which shall I do, sleep first, or reap first? I will sleep first.’ So she lay down among the corn and went to sleep.

Hans had been home a long time, and no Elsa came, so he said: ‘What a Clever Elsa I have. She is so industrious, she does not even come home to eat.’

But as she still did not come, and it was getting dusk, Hans went out to see how much corn she had cut. He found that she had not cut any at all, and that she was lying there fast asleep. Hans hurried home to fetch a fowler’s net with little bells on it, and this he hung around her without waking her. Then he ran home, shut the house door, and sat down to work.

At last, when it was quite dark, Clever Elsa woke up, and when she got up there was such a jangling, and the bells jingled at every step she took. She was terribly frightened, and wondered whether she really was Clever Elsa or not, and said: ‘Is it me, or is it not me?’