Prevod

A little brother and sister were playing beside a well, and as they played, they both tumbled in. Down below lived a water nixie, who said, “Now I have you! Now you shall work hard for me,” and led them away with her. She gave the girl filthy, tangled flax to spin, and made her carry water into a leaky barrel, while the boy had to chop down a tree with a blunt axe. They were given nothing to eat but dumplings as hard as stone. At last the children grew so impatient that they waited until one Sunday, when the nixie was at church, and ran away. When the service was over, the nixie saw that her birds had flown, and bounded after them in great leaps. But the children caught sight of her in the distance, and the girl threw a brush behind her. It became a great mountain of bristles, with thousands upon thousands of prickles, which the nixie had to climb over with great difficulty; yet at last she made it across. When the children saw this, the boy threw a comb behind him. It became a great mountain of combs, with a thousand times a thousand teeth, but the nixie managed to cling to them and at last made it over that too. Then the girl threw a mirror behind her, and it became a mountain of glass, so smooth, so very smooth, that the nixie could not possibly get over it. Then she thought, “I will hurry home and fetch my axe and split the glass mountain in two.” But by the time she returned and had hacked through the glass, the children had long since fled far away, and the water nixie had to slink back to her well.