"Yes, wife, and straightway she said: 'Rise, my friend. I have a gift for you. Choose what you will to carry to your wife as a gift from Holda.'"
"Did you choose pearls or diamonds?"
"I looked about the place, and it was all so sparkling that I closed my eyes. 'Choose your gift,' she said. I looked into her face, and then I knew that it was indeed the goddess Holda, queen of the sky. When I looked at her, I could not think of precious stones, for her eyes were more sparkling than diamonds, and I said: 'O goddess Holda, there is no gift in all your magic hall that I would so gladly bear away to my home as the little blue flower in your lily-white hand.'"
"Well!" cried the wife, "and when you might have had half the pearls and emeralds in the place, you chose a little faded blue flower! I did think you were a wiser man."
"The goddess said I had chosen well," said the hunter. "She gave me the flower and the seed of it, and she said, 'When the springtime comes, plant the seed, and in the summer I myself will come and teach you what to do with the plant.'"
In the spring the little seeds were put into the ground. Soon the green leaves came up; then many little blue flowers, as blue as the sky, lifted up their heads in the warm sunshine of summer. No one on the earth knew how to spin or to weave, but on the brightest, sunniest day of the summer, the goddess Holda came down from the mountain to the little house.
"SHE GAVE ME THE FLOWER"
"Can you spin flax?" she asked of the wife.