Now let us see in what respect Frau Holle or Holla reminds us of the good goddess.
At certain periods of the year, especially at Christmas, Frau Holle leaves her marshy island in order to inspect the world. All who work in linen, spinning, weaving, embroidery, or starching, are by turns visited by the good lady. Their idleness and their carelessness are severely punished. If one fine morning Annie finds her wheel or Kate her loom covered with green slime, if Bertha notices her work torn in the place which she repaired only the night before, or if the water has over night turned greasy and looks discolored, the poor girls may be sure that Frau Holle has been on her round of inspection.
If she is pleased, on the other hand, the ribbon around the distaff holds a pretty marshflower, a lily, an iris, or a gladiolus; on the lace cushion or on the seamstress’s work a little golden needle is stuck, and on the heap of specially well washed and well folded linen lies a cake of perfumed soap, which fills the whole house with its sweet odor.
Sometimes Frau Holle finds her way mysteriously to a garret, where a poor woman is lying sick with fever, the result of overwork. Then she finishes herself the work that had been begun, and when she leaves she puts a few florins under the pillow of the sleeping sufferer.
Blessings be upon you, good Dame Holle! Even if you were really once a goddess of the first rank, you need not blush at your present condition. Still, we cannot help asking, with a slight tremor of fear, how it can have come about, that the noble Frigg, the all powerful Hertha, should have been reduced to play the lady patroness of washerwomen and seamstresses? How has this island in the ocean, with its sacred forest, become a wretched marsh, fetid and ill reputed? There is but one answer to such a question: Frigg has been unfortunate.
But the spinners and seamstresses, the clear-starchers and embroiderers are not the only ones who are honored by kind attentions from the supernatural world. The brothers Grimm say:—
