This young girl went off, far, far, far away. She asks in a town if they know seven brothers who work together. They tell her “No.” She goes off to a mountain and asks there too, and they tell her in what house they live. She goes to this house, and sees that all the household work is to be done, and that there is nobody at home. She makes the beds, and cleans the whole house, and puts it in order. She prepares the dinner, and then hides herself in the dust-hole. Her brothers come home, and are astonished to see all the household work done and the dinner ready. They begin to look if there is anyone in the house, but they never think of looking in the dust-hole, and they go off again to their work. Before night this young girl does all the rest of the work, and had the supper ready against the return of her brothers, and hides herself again in the dust-hole. Her brothers are astonished, and again search the house, but find nothing.
They go to bed, and this young girl takes to sewing and sews a whole shirt. She gives it to her eldest brother, and in the same way she made a shirt every night, and took it to one of her brothers. They could not understand how that all happened. They always said that they would not go to sleep, but they fell asleep as soon as they were in bed. When the turn of the youngest came to have the shirt, he said to them, “Certainly I will not fall asleep.” After he is in bed the young girl goes and says to him, thinking that he is asleep:
“Your turn has come now at last, my dearly loved brother.”
And she begins to put the shirt on him on the bed, when her brother says to her:
“You are then my sister, you?”
And he kisses her. She tells him then how she had heard that she had brothers, and how she had wished to go to them to help them. The other brothers get up and rejoice, learning that it was their sister who had done all the household work.
The brothers forbad her ever to go to such a neighbour’s, whatever might happen. But one day, without thinking about it, when she was behindhand with her work, she went running to the house to ask for some fire,[94] in order to make the supper ready quicker. She was very well received; the woman offered to give her everything she wanted, but she said she was satisfied with a little fire. This woman was a witch, and gives her a parcel of herbs, telling her to put them as they were into the footbath—that they relieved the fatigue very much.[95] Every evening the seven brothers washed their feet at the same time in a large copper. She therefore put these herbs into the copper, and as soon as they had dipped their feet in they became six cows, and the seventh a Breton cow.[96] This poor girl was in such trouble as cannot be told. The poor cows all used to kiss their sister, but the young girl always loved much best the Breton one. Every day she took them to the field, and stopped with them to guard them.
One day when she was there the son of a king passes by, and is quite astonished to see so beautiful a girl there. He speaks to her, and tells her that he wishes to marry her. The young girl says to him that she is very poor, and that that cannot be. The king says, “Yes, yes, yes, that makes no difference.”
The young girl makes as conditions that, if she marries him, he must never kill these cows, and especially this little Breton one.[97] The king promises it her, and they are married.
The princess takes these cows home with her; they were always well treated. The princess became pregnant, and was confined while the king was absent. The witch comes, and takes her out of her bed, and throws her down a precipice that there was in the king’s grounds, and the witch puts herself into the princess’ bed. When the king comes home, he finds her very much changed, and tells her that he would not have recognised her. The princess tells him that it was her sufferings that had made her thus, and, in order to cure her more quickly, he must have the Breton cow killed.