The Hurds

Once upon a time there was a girl who was beautiful, but lazy and negligent. When she had to spin she was so ill tempered that if there was a little knot in the flax, she at once pulled out a whole heap of it, and scattered it about on the ground beside her. Now she had a servant who was industrious, and who gathered together the discarded flax, cleaned it, spun it well, and had a beautiful dress woven out of it for herself.

A young man had courted the lazy girl, and the wedding was about to take place. On the eve of the wedding, the industrious girl was dancing merrily about in her beautiful dress, and the bride said,

The bridegroom heard this, and asked the bride what she meant by it. So she told him that the girl was wearing a dress made from the flax which she had thrown away. When the bridegroom heard this, and saw how lazy she was, and how industrious the poor girl was, he gave her up and went to the other girl, and chose her as his wife.

• Source: Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, Die Schickerlinge, Kinder- und Hausmärchen (Children's and Household Tales -- Grimms' Fairy Tales), no. 156.

• Translated by Margaret Hunt (1884). Translation revised and corrected by D. L. Ashliman. © 2000.

• This tale was added to the Grimms' collection with the second edition (1819).

• The Grimms' precise source of this tale is not know, only that it came from Mecklenburg.

• Aarne-Thompson type 1451.

• Hurds, as evident from the tale's context, are bits of flax wasted in the spinning process.

Related links

• Choosing a Bride. Another tale by the Grimm brothers about selecting a bride.

• Bride Tests. Additional tales about using household tests to select a bride.

• D. L. Ashliman's folktexts, a library of folktales, folklore, fairy tales, and mythology.

• The Grimm Brothers' Home Page.

• The Grimm Brothers' Children's and Household Tales (Grimms' Fairy Tales).