ASHIEPATTLE: OR HANS SEEKS HIS LUCK 63 



her kingdom is to be won in good matriarchal style by 

 a riddle -contest. In all these cases we have the little 

 forest-clearing and the hut, which is the characteristic 

 dwelling-place of the witch. In Frau Holle we meet a 

 well-dwelling old woman, who controls the weather and 

 represents rather the goddess herself than her servant. 

 She is associated with loaves and apples, and is friendly 

 to the good and kindly maiden. She punishes the rude 

 and unkindly, just as the goddess -witch Frau Trude 

 punishes disobedient children. 



In Die seeks Schwdne * we have the usual type of 

 witch living in a hut in the forest-clearing. She is not 

 exactly hostile to the king's son, but marries her daughter 

 to him. This daughter, as we are so often told, had learnt 

 from her mother the Hexenkunste. She is opposed by 

 the 'wise woman,' who assists the step-children. The 

 story is really from the transition period, for while the 

 king takes his bride home, we find his mother (as in 

 many other tales) the real person in authority there. 

 In Sneewittchen, Der liebste Roland, and Die zwei 

 Bruder the witches are all workers of ill ; but in the 

 first the bridegroom says to the bride, " Komm mit mir 

 in meines Vaters Schloss " ; in the second Eoland cries, 

 " Nun will ich zu meinem Vater gehen, und die Hochzeit 

 bestellen " ; and in the third the hostility of the witch 

 appears to be especially directed against the hunter. In 



1 Die seeks Schwdne is one of a series of Marchen, like Die zwolf Bruder, 

 Bruder chen und Schwesterchen, Jorinde und Joringel, etc., which points to the 

 closeness of the feeling between brothers and sisters at the time when these 

 Marchen originated. There was a strong kinship spirit, which, like that of the 

 Norse Gudrun, often obscured the relation of man and wife. Indeed, we occa- 

 sionally find what are apparently fossils of a kindred group-marriage in the 

 sister tending the hut of a group of brothers. 



