The Three Spinners

A lazy girl who despised spinning flax was scolded so relentlessly by her mother for refusing the chore that, when a passing queen overheard the commotion and asked what the trouble was, the mother, embarrassed, lied and claimed her daughter loved spinning so much she couldn't be made to stop. The queen, delighted, took the girl to the palace and set her before an enormous mound of flax to spin, promising a royal marriage if she finished it all.

Overwhelmed and unable to spin at all, let alone so much, the girl wept until three strange old women appeared at her window — one with an enormously flat foot from years of treadling, one with a hugely swollen lower lip from constantly wetting thread, one with an enormous thumb from endless twisting. They offered to spin the entire mound for her secretly, on one condition: she must invite them to her wedding and introduce them proudly as her aunts.

The girl agreed gladly, and the flax was spun into flawless thread by morning, astonishing the queen and securing the promised marriage to her son. True to her word, the girl invited the three strange women to the wedding feast and introduced them warmly as her aunts, and when the prince, startled by their trade-deformed appearances, asked how she came to have such relatives, each woman in turn explained exactly how a lifetime of endless spinning had ruined her foot, her lip, and her thumb. Horrified at the thought of his new bride ever ending up the same way, the prince declared she must never spin again for the rest of her life — freeing her forever from the very chore she'd always hated, through nothing but three clever strangers and a small, harmless lie that turned out to serve everyone rather well.