Aw, then she was in a great fix, and didn’t know in her senses what to do to save herself. She knew she would sup sorrow if she was found out, but she could think of nothing.
At last she bethought herself of the Giant that lived in a lonesome place up the mountain, for she had heard tell he was good to work, and the woman, she says to herself:
‘I’ve a mind to go my ways to him.’ She took the road early next morning, she and her rolls of wool, and she walked up hills, down gills, till at last she came to the Giant’s house.
‘What are thou wanting here?’ says the Giant.
‘I’m wanting thee to help me,’ says she; and she up and told him about the ball of thread and everything.
‘I’ll spin the wool for thee,’ says the Giant, ‘if thou’ll tell me my name when thou come for the balls a week from this day. Are thou satisfied?’
‘Why shouldn’t I be satisfied?’ says the woman; for she thought to herself it would be a middling queer thing if she couldn’t find out his name within a week. Well, the woman she tried every way to find out the Giant’s name, but, go where she might, no one had ever heard tell of it. The time was getting over fast, and she was no nearer to the Giant’s name. At last it came to the last day but one.
Now, as it happened, the husband was coming home from the mountain that day in the little evening, and as he neared the Giant’s house, he saw it all in a blaze of light, and there was a great whirling and whistling coming to his ears, and along with it came singing, and laughing, and shouting. So he drew near the window, and then he sees the big Giant inside sitting at a wheel, spinning like the wind, and his hands flying with the thread to and fro, to and fro, like the lightning, and he shouting to the whistling wheel: ‘Spin, wheel, spin faster; and sing, wheel, sing louder!’
And he sings, as the wheel whirls faster and faster:
‘Snieu, queeyl, snieu; ’rane, queeyl, ’rane;