Frau Holle

Mother Holle

A widow loves her own ugly, lazy daughter and makes her beautiful, hard-working stepdaughter do all the work and spin by a well until her fingers bleed. When the bloody spool falls into the well, the stepmother orders her to fetch it, and the girl jumps in. She wakes in a sunny meadow, takes the burning loaves out of an oven, shakes the ripe apples from a tree, and serves old Frau Holle, whose bed she shakes so the feathers fall as snow in the world. Homesick at last, she is led through a gate where gold rains down on her, and the rooster on the well crows for the golden maiden. The mother sends the lazy daughter the same way: she leaves the bread and the apples, works for Frau Holle one day and then lazes, and under the gate a kettle of pitch pours over her; the rooster crows for the dirty maiden, and the pitch never comes off as long as she lives.

Retold from Kinder- und Haus-Märchen, Band 1, 7. Auflage (Ausgabe letzter Hand, 1857), KHM 24 by Brüder Grimm (public domain).