Once upon a time, a man died of his wife and a woman died of her husband. Both the man and the woman had a daughter each. The two little girls knew each other and often went out for walks.
One day, after their walk, they came to the woman's house, and the woman said to the man's daughter, "Listen, tell your father that I am willing to marry him, and that from now on you will be able to wash your face every morning with milk, and to drink wine, while my own daughter will be able to wash her face only with water, and will be able to drink only clear water." The little girl returned home and told her father what the woman had said.
The man said, "What shall I do? Marriage is a joyous event, but it also brings pain." He hesitated to make up his mind, but finally took off a boot and said, "This boot has a hole in the sole. You carry it up to the attic, hang it on a big nail, and pour some water into it. If the water doesn't leak out, I'll take another wife, and if it leaks out, I won't." The girl did as her father said. The water made the hole swell together, and the boot was filled with water, not a drop of which leaked out. She ran, and told the result to her father, who came up again in person to inspect it, and when he saw that it was so, he went and asked the widow for her hand in marriage, and the marriage took place.
On the first morning, when the two girls arose, there was indeed before the man's daughter milk to wash her face and wine to drink, while before the woman's daughter there was only fresh water to wash her face and fresh water to drink. The next morning, both the man's daughter and the woman's daughter had fresh water for washing their faces and fresh water for drinking in front of them. On the third morning, the man's daughter had the water for washing her face and the water for drinking in front of her, while the woman's daughter had the milk for washing her face and the wine for drinking in front of her. And so it was every day after that. And the woman became the worst enemy of the man's daughter, and she treated her worse and worse every day, and she was jealous of the man's daughter because she was beautiful and lovely, while her own daughter was ugly and disgusting.
Winter came, and everything was frozen as hard as stone, and the tops of the mountains and the valleys were covered with a thick blanket of snow. One day the woman made a dress out of paper, called her stepdaughter over to her, and said, "Listen, you put on this dress and go into the forest and pick me a basket of strawberries."
"My God!" The girl said, "How can there be strawberries in winter? The ground is frozen, the snow covers everything, and besides, how can I go out in these paper clothes? It's so cold out there that even the breath you exhale can freeze. The wind would blow into this dress, and the thorns would scrape it."
"You dare talk back to me?" The stepmother said, "Get on with it! If you don't pick a basket of strawberries, you're not coming back!" Then she gave the girl a small piece of crusty bread and said, "This is your ration for the day." In her heart, she was thinking, "You'll die of hunger if you don't freeze to death out there, and don't even think about coming back to bother me."
The girl had to obediently put on her paper clothes and walked out with her basket. It was freezing outside, and there wasn't even a green blade of grass to be found. She came into the forest and saw a small house with three dwarfs looking out. She greeted them, and the dwarfs asked her to come inside, so she went in and sat on a bench by the stove to make a fire and eat her breakfast. The dwarfs said, "Can you share some of your bread with us?"
"Yes." With that she broke the bread in half and gave them their half. They asked, "What are you doing in the forest in the middle of winter in these thin clothes!"
"Alas," she replied, "I had to pick a basket of strawberries or I would not be able to return home." When she had finished her bread, they handed her a broom and said, "Go and help us sweep the snow off the back door."
When she had gone out, the three dwarfs talked it over, "She's so sweet, and she's sharing her bread with us, what shall we give her?"
The first dwarf said, "My gift to her is that she grows more beautiful every day."
The second dwarf said, "My gift to her is: she spits out gold when she speaks."
The third dwarf said, "My gift to her is: a king to marry her as his queen."
The girl was by this time sweeping the snow off the back of the hut with a broom, as they had told her. What did she see? Red strawberries were revealed under the snow! She was so happy that she hurriedly filled a basket full of them, thanked the dwarfs, and shook hands with each of them to say goodbye, and then ran home with what her stepmother had coveted. Who knows, she entered the door just said "good evening", mouth fell out of a piece of gold! So she told the story of what had happened to her in the forest, and with every word, a piece of gold fell out of her mouth, so that a mountain of gold soon appeared in her house.
"Suell her that way!" The woman's daughter yelled, "Just throwing gold around like that!" She was so jealous in her heart that she longed to go to the forest and pick strawberries, too. But her mother said, "No, my good daughter, it's too cold out there, you'll freeze to death." But her daughter persisted, and she finally gave in. She sewed her daughter a fur coat and insisted that she put it on, and then she brought her buttered machine bread and cakes to take with her for the journey.
The girl, when she had gone into the forest, went straight to the hut. The three dwarfs were again in the house looking out, but she did not greet them at all, neither looked at them nor spoke to them, and strutting into the house, sat down on her butt by the stove and ate her bread and cakes. "Share some with us!" The dwarfs said. But she replied, "I don't have enough for myself, how can I share it?" When she had finished eating, they added, "Here's a broom, help us clear the snow from the back door." She replied, "I am not your servant." Seeing that they would not give her any more gifts, she stormed out of the house on her own.
The three dwarfs discussed, "What shall we give a bad-hearted little tenderfoot like her?"
The first dwarf said, "I'll make her grow uglier every day!"
The second dwarf said, "I'll make a toad jump out of her mouth as soon as she opens her mouth to speak!"
The third dwarf said, "I'll make her die!"
The girl looked for strawberries outside the house, but couldn't find any, so she went home in a huff. She opened her mouth to tell her mother what had happened to her in the forest, but with every word she spoke, a toad jumped out of her mouth, frightening everyone.
This made her stepmother even more angry, and she tried to figure out how to torment her husband's daughter. One day she took out a pot, set it on the fire, and boiled balls of thread in it. After boiling the thread, she fished it out and put it on the girl's shoulders, then gave her an axe and told her to go to the frozen river, cut a hole in the ice, and rinse the thread in the hole. The girl obediently went to the river and walked to the center of the river to cut the ice. As she was chiseling, a magnificent carriage came up the cliff with the king sitting inside. The carriage stopped and the king asked, "Girl, what are you doing here in this cold?"
"I'm a poor girl, my stepmother made me rinse thread balls here." The king sympathized with her, and seeing how beautiful she looked, he said to her, "Will you come with me?"
"Of course I will." She replied, happy to be away from her stepmother and her stepmother's daughter.
The girl got into the king's carriage and returned to the palace with him. They were married at once, just as the three dwarfs had promised. A year later, the young queen gave birth to a son. Her stepmother, who had heard of her good fortune, brought her own daughter to the palace, pretending to come to see the queen. When they saw that the king had just gone out, and that there was no one else about, the wicked woman and her daughter lifted up the sleeping queen and threw her into the great river outside. Then the stepmother made her ugly daughter lie down on the bed and covered her tightly with a quilt. When the king came back into the room and tried to talk to his wife, the stepmother called out, "Hush, don't disturb her, she's sweating now. Don't disturb her today." The king didn't suspect a thing and waited until the next morning to come over. He spoke to his wife, and who knew that as soon as she opened her mouth, a toad jumped out of it, instead of gold falling out as before. When the king asked what was the matter, his stepmother said that it was from sweating, and that it would soon be all right.
That night the little helper in the king's palace saw a duck swimming out of the sewer, and was heard to say, "King, what is he doing? Is he asleep or awake?"
Seeing that the little helper did not answer, it added, "What are my two guests doing?"
The little helper said, "They are asleep."
The duck asked again, "What is my little baby doing?"
The little helper replied, "He is sleeping well in his cradle."
The duck became like a queen, went up and fed the baby, rocked him in his crib, tucked him in, and then became a duck again and swam away down the drain.
She came in this way two nights in a row, and on the third night she said to the little helper, "Go and tell the king to take his sword, and stand on the threshold and wave it three times over my head."
The little helper rushed off to tell the king, who came with his sword and waved it three times over the ghost's head. Just after the third dance, her wife stood before him, as healthy and beautiful as ever. The king was overjoyed, but he still hid the queen in a secret room and waited for the day of the infant's baptism on Sunday. When the baptism was over, he said, "If someone drags someone out of bed and throws them into the river, what kind of punishment should that person receive?"
The queen's stepmother said, "The best punishment for such a bad-hearted have would be to put him in a barrel with nails stuck in it and roll him down the hill into the river."
"Then," said the king, "you have passed judgment on yourself." The king ordered one such barrel to be brought in, and filled it with the queen's stepmother and her daughter, with the lid nailed shut, and rolled it down the hillside to the heart of the river.