“Nobody had ever known such Nettles before.”
Such nettles! such fearful nettles! with prickles as large as needles. But Ellaleen did not hesitate, she took off her shoes and stockings, and bared her white arms, and singing, stepped into the mass of horrid weeds.
How loudly she sang! If she had not done so she must have cried out in agony, for the cruel nettles tore her poor arms and legs and feet. She had never known such nettles as these; nobody had ever known such nettles as these! She thought that she must really give up in despair, but she did not. She sang on, and she worked on, and she gathered those nettles near the roots, and wove them, with her poor hands, into seven plaits. Then wearily and slowly, but indeed happily, she went back the way she came, and to the Blue Mountain, and to the lake on its summit.
Ellaleen threw the plaits of nettles one by one into the lake, and as each one touched the water great waves arose, and there were sounds like peals of terrific thunder. As the last rumble died away, Ellaleen turned her back upon the lake, and dragged her poor body home and waited to see what was going to happen next.
“Dear me, isn’t it wonderful? isn’t it delicious?” everybody exclaimed. Then everybody had some more.
It was the water they were talking about. It had suddenly acquired the most exquisite flavour. Everybody, including the King, drank it, and nothing else. Even at the village inn, water was asked for, and only water. It was really more than marvellous.
Then something still more marvellous happened.
Everybody began to feel very drowsy, and before twenty-four hours had passed everybody fell fast asleep, not only every living soul in the country, but every animal, just as in the Sleeping Beauty story.
And they slept on and on and on, during the spring, the summer, autumn, and the winter, through another spring and through another summer. And while they slept there appeared to everyone in Dreamland a little old woman dressed in red, who told them what Ellaleen had done, and how she suffered for her country’s good.