and then she grew sad and ill. A little while later she called her
husband, and said to him, weeping. 'If I die, bury me under the
juniper-tree.' Then she felt comforted and happy again, and before
another month had passed she had a little child, and when she saw that
it was as white as snow and as red as blood, her joy was so great that
she died.

Her husband buried her under the juniper-tree, and wept bitterly for
her. By degrees, however, his sorrow grew less, and although at times
he still grieved over his loss, he was able to go about as usual, and
later on he married again.

He now had a little daughter born to him; the child of his first wife
was a boy, who was as red as blood and as white as snow. The mother
loved her daughter very much, and when she looked at her and then
looked at the boy, it pierced her heart to think that he would always
stand in the way of her own child, and she was continually thinking
how she could get the whole of the property for her. This evil thought
took possession of her more and more, and made her behave very
unkindly to the boy. She drove him from place to place with cuffings
and buffetings, so that the poor child went about in fear, and had no
peace from the time he left school to the time he went back.

One day the little daughter came running to her mother in the store-
room, and said, 'Mother, give me an apple.' 'Yes, my child,' said the
wife, and she gave her a beautiful apple out of the chest; the chest
had a very heavy lid and a large iron lock.

'Mother,' said the little daughter again, 'may not brother have one
too?' The mother was angry at this, but she answered, 'Yes, when he
comes out of school.'

Just then she looked out of the window and saw him coming, and it
seemed as if an evil spirit entered into her, for she snatched the
apple out of her little daughter's hand, and said, 'You shall not have
one before your brother.' She threw the apple into the chest and shut
it to. The little boy now came in, and the evil spirit in the wife
made her say kindly to him, 'My son, will you have an apple?' but she
gave him a wicked look. 'Mother,' said the boy, 'how dreadful you
look! Yes, give me an apple.' The thought came to her that she would
kill him. 'Come with me,' she said, and she lifted up the lid of the
chest; 'take one out for yourself.' And as he bent over to do so, the
evil spirit urged her, and crash! down went the lid, and off went the
little boy's head. Then she was overwhelmed with fear at the thought
of what she had done. 'If only I can prevent anyone knowing that I did
it,' she thought. So she went upstairs to her room, and took a white
handkerchief out of her top drawer; then she set the boy's head again
on his shoulders, and bound it with the handkerchief so that nothing
could be seen, and placed him on a chair by the door with an apple in
his hand.

Soon after this, little Marleen came up to her mother who was stirring
a pot of boiling water over the fire, and said, 'Mother, brother is
sitting by the door with an apple in his hand, and he looks so pale;
and when I asked him to give me the apple, he did not answer, and that
frightened me.'

'Go to him again,' said her mother, 'and if he does not answer, give
him a box on the ear.' So little Marleen went, and said, 'Brother,
give me that apple,' but he did not say a word; then she gave him a
box on the ear, and his head rolled off. She was so terrified at this,
that she ran crying and screaming to her mother. 'Oh!' she said, 'I
have knocked off brother's head,' and then she wept and wept, and
nothing would stop her.

'What have you done!' said her mother, 'but no one must know about it,
so you must keep silence; what is done can't be undone; we will make
him into puddings.' And she took the little boy and cut him up, made
him into puddings, and put him in the pot. But Marleen stood looking
on, and wept and wept, and her tears fell into the pot, so that there
was no need of salt.

Presently the father came home and sat down to his dinner; he asked,
'Where is my son?' The mother said nothing, but gave him a large dish
of black pudding, and Marleen still wept without ceasing.

The father again asked, 'Where is my son?'

'Oh,' answered the wife, 'he is gone into the country to his mother's
great uncle; he is going to stay there some time.'

'What has he gone there for, and he never even said goodbye to me!'

'Well, he likes being there, and he told me he should be away quite
six weeks; he is well looked after there.'

'I feel very unhappy about it,' said the husband, 'in case it should
not be all right, and he ought to have said goodbye to me.'

With this he went on with his dinner, and said, 'Little Marleen, why
do you weep? Brother will soon be back.' Then he asked his wife for
more pudding, and as he ate, he threw the bones under the table.

Little Marleen went upstairs and took her best silk handkerchief out
of her bottom drawer, and in it she wrapped all the bones from under
the table and carried them outside, and all the time she did nothing
but weep. Then she laid them in the green grass under the juniper-
tree, and she had no sooner done so, then all her sadness seemed to
leave her, and she wept no more. And now the juniper-tree began to
move, and the branches waved backwards and forwards, first away from


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