Mother Hulda
HERE was once a widow who had two daughters; one of them was beautiful and industrious, the other was ugly and lazy. She liked the ugly, lazy one best, because she was her own daughter. The other one had all the rough work, and was made the Cinderella at home. The poor girl had to sit in the street by a well, spinning till her fingers bled.
Now one day her bobbin got some blood upon it, and she stooped down to the well to rinse it, but it fell out of her hand into the water. She cried, and ran to tell her stepmother of her misfortune.
Her stepmother scolded her violently and without mercy, and at last said, ‘If you have let the bobbin fall into the water, you must go in after it and fetch it out.’
The maiden went back to the well and did not know what to do, and in her terror she sprang into the water to try and find the bobbin.
She lost consciousness, and when she came to herself she was in a beautiful meadow dotted with flowers, and the sun was shining brightly. She walked on till she came to a baker’s oven full of bread; the Loaves called out to her, ‘Oh, draw us out, draw us out, or we shall burn! We are over-baked already!’
So she went up and drew them out one by one with a baker’s shovel.
Then she went a little further, and came to an Apple-tree covered with apples, which called out to her. ‘Oh, shake us down, shake us down, we are over-ripe!’
So she shook the tree, and the apples fell like rain. She