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Grimms' Fairy Tales
The
Water Nix
A little brother and sister were once playing
by a well, and while they were thus playing, they both fell
in. A water-nix lived down below, who said, "Now I
have got you, now you shall work hard for me!" and
carried them off with her. She gave the girl dirty tangled
flax to spin, and she had to fetch water in a bucket with
a hole in it, and the boy had to hew down a tree with a
blunt axe, and they got nothing to eat but dumplings as
hard as stones. Then at last the children became so impatient,
that they waited until one Sunday, when the nix was at church,
and ran away. But when church was over, the nix saw that
the birds were flown, and followed them with great strides.
The children saw her from afar, and the girl threw a brush
behind her which formed an immense hill of bristles, with
thousands and thousands of spikes, over which the nix was
forced to scramble with great difficulty; at last, however,
she got over. When the children saw this, the boy threw
behind him a comb which made a great hill of combs with
a thousand times a thousand teeth, but the nix managed to
keep herself steady on them, and at last crossed over that.
Then the girl threw behind her a looking-glass which formed
a hill of mirrors, and was so slippery that it was impossible
for the nix to cross it. Then she thought, "I will
go home quickly and fetch my axe, and cut the hill of glass
in half." Long before she returned, however, and had
hewn through the glass, the children had escaped to a great
distance, and the water-nix was obliged to betake herself
to her well again.
From Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, Household Tales, trans. Margaret
Hunt (London: George Bell, 1884), 1:310. |
