Where had my grandson gone? I searched for him everywhere. While I was searching, I went to Mink’s cottage to buy some sea urchins’ eggs. As soon as I got inside, I saw the wolf skin which I guessed belonged to my grandson. “I knew he was dead – I knew it! I knew it!”...
I loved my husband but I couldn’t conceive a child. We never talked about it, but when we watched other people play with their children, we couldn’t hide our sadness. Then one day I went into the park near the castle, and sat alone by a waterfall. I...
I left home with a sore heart. I would have stayed with my mother after my father died, but she didn’t want me. She said there wasn’t enough work for me to do in the house. My brothers Martin and Michael took everything she had in her larder, but they...
I was much loved by my mother and father, and I grew up tall and strong and handsome. I learned to run and shoot, and I could swim and dive better than any lad my age in the isles of the west. I knew how to sail, I sang with the harp, and I liked nothing better than...
My three daughters were as beautiful as they were kind, and much loved by people throughout the isles of the West. Then one day, as they sat on the rocks on the edge of the sea, dipping their feet in the water, a great beast arose from under the waves and swept them...
After a desperate search for work, my maid and I were given positions as scullery maids. We worked in the kitchen of a castle where a wedding was taking place. The bride took her meals in her room, and I brought them to her, so I knew what she looked like. The poor...
There was a great crevasse in the king’s glass mountain, and he declared that anyone who could cross it without falling into the void would be able to marry his daughter. Well, I loved his daughter already, and I was prepared to do anything for her. When the...
We tried to have a child for years, and at last we were blessed with a little boy. One day, at the height of a most intoxicating summer, when my son was sleeping in the garden in his golden cradle, and the king and I were absorbed in planning his future, a dark shadow...
When she came to my door, I said the same thing to her as the Sun had said. “I have seen you in your cottage, and I have seen you in your palace. I have seen you everywhere you are.” Then I asked her, “Do you, rich as you are, need help?”...
My mother and father wanted a child so much that they made me out of snow, and I came to life. They called me Snowflake. Spring has arrived. The fields are full of flowers. Nightingales sing in the trees, and my friends are playing outside and shouting with glee. The...
