Mother Holle's Well

A widow had two daughters — her own, lazy and favored, and her stepdaughter, hardworking and kind but endlessly mistreated. One day, spinning thread by a well, the stepdaughter pricked her finger, dropped her spindle into the water, and was ordered by her stepmother to climb down and fetch it, which she obediently did, falling through into a strange, magical world below.

There, she found an oven of bread begging to be taken out before it burned, and did so gladly; an apple tree begging to be shaken free of its ripe fruit, and did so gladly; and finally the home of an old woman named Mother Holle, whose enormous teeth frightened her at first, but who offered her a place as a housemaid if she would shake out the featherbeds properly each day, since that was what made it snow in the world above. The girl worked diligently and cheerfully for as long as she was needed, and when homesickness set in, Mother Holle walked her to a gate and showered her with gold as she passed through, returning her home rich and transformed.

The jealous stepmother, seeing this, sent her own lazy daughter down the same well to seek the same fortune. But this daughter ignored the pleading bread, ignored the apple tree, and did the housework for Mother Holle so carelessly and reluctantly that after only one day, she was sent home again — showered not with gold, but with a pot of thick, sticky pitch that clung to her for the rest of her life, a lasting mark of the difference between genuine effort and grudging, careless work.