FIRESIDE STORIES. 487

 

DCCXCITI.
THE MAIDEN AND THE FROG.*

MANY years ago there lived on the brow of a mountain, in the
north of England, an old woman and her daughter. They were
very poor, and obliged to work very hard for their living, and the
old woman’s temper was not very good, so that the maiden, who
was very beautiful, led but an ill life with her. The girl, indeed,
was compelled to do the hardest work, for her mother got their
principal tneans of subsistence by travelling to places in the neigh-
bourhood with small articles for sale, and when she came home
in the afternoon she was not able to do much more work. Nearly
the whole domestic labour of the cottage devolved, therefore, on
the daughter, the most wearisome part of which consisted in the
necessity of fetching all the water they required from a well on
the other side of the hill, there being no river or spring near their
own cottage.

It happened one morning that the daughter had the misfortune,
in going to the well, to break the only bottle they possessed, and

* This tale of the frog lover is known in every part of Germany, and is alluded to by
several old writers of that country. It is the tale ‘‘ Der Froschk6nig, oder der Eiserne
Heinrich,” in Grimm. ‘‘ These enchanted frogs,” says Sir W. Scott, ‘‘have migrated
from afar, and we suspect that they were originally crocodiles : we trace them in a tale
forming part of a series of stories entitled the Relations of Saidi Kur, extant amongst
the Calmuck Tartars.”” Mr. Chambers has given a Scotch version of the tale, under
the title of ‘‘The well o’ the warld’s end,” in his Popular Rhymes, p. 236. The
rhymes in the copy given above were obtained from the north of England, without,
however, any reference to the story to which they evidently belong. The application,
however, is so obvious to any one acquainted with the German and Scotch tales, that
the framework we have ventured to give them cannot be considered incongruous ;
although it need not be added how very desirable it would be to procure the traditional

tale as related by the English peasantry. Perhaps some of our readers may be enabled
to supply it,