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484 WIGHTS AND ELVES.
of their pots ; but whatever they have taken or borrowed they
make good in some other way, not seldom by good advice. At
times they help people in their kitchen work and at washing,
but always express a great fear of the wild huntsman that pursues
them. On the Saale they tell you of a bush- grandmother and her
moss-maidens; this sounds like a queen of elves, if not like the
1 weird lady of the woods (p. 407). The little wood-wives are
glad to come when people are baking, and ask them, while they
are about it, to bake them a loaf too., as big as half a millstone,
and it must be left for them at a specified place ; they pay it back
afterwards, or perhaps bring some of their own baking, and lay
it in the furrow for the ploughmen, or on the plough, being
mightily offended if you refuse it. At other times the wood-wife
makes her appearance with a broken little wheelbarrow, and begs
you to mend the wheel ; then, like Berhta she pays you with the
fallen
chips, which turn into gold or ; if you are
knitting, she
gives you a ball of thread which you
will never have done un
winding. Every time a man twists (driebt, throws)
the stem of
a young tree till the bark flies off, a wood-wife has to die. When
a peasant woman, out of pity, gave the breast to a crying wood-
child, the mother came up and made her a present of the bark in
which the child was cradled ;
the woman broke a splinter off and
threw it in to her load of wood, but when she got home she found
it was of gold (see Suppl.).
Wood-wives, like dwarfs, are by no means satisfied with the
ways of the modern world ; but to the reasons given on p. 459
they add special ones of their own. There s never been a good
time since people took to counting the dumplings they put in the
pot, the loaves they put in the oven, to
and putting caraway-seeds in it. Hence their maxim :
Schal keinen baum, No tree ever shell,
pipping their bread
erzahl keinen traum, no dream ever tell,
back keinen kiimmel ins brofc, bake in thy bread no cummin-
seed,
so hilft dir Gott aus aller noth. and God will help in all thy
need.
The third line may be pip kein brod/ don t pip a loaf. A