ll ask from you is that you tell me my name
within a week from this day."

"It will be easy to find out her name within a week," said
Bloom-of-Youth to herself. She took the bundle of wool out of the
basket and gave it to her. The black and crooked woman put the wool
under her arm and then she lifted up her stick and shook it at
Bloom-of-Youth.

"And if you don't find out my name within a week you will have to give
me your heart's blood--a drop of heart's blood for every ball of wool
I spin for you." The hag went away then. Bloom-of-Youth was greatly
frightened, but after a while she said to herself "I need not be
afraid, for in a week I'll surely find out the name of the black and
crooked woman who can't live far from this."

The next day the hag came to the door and left twelve balls of wool on
the bench outside the house. "In a week, in a week," said she, "you'll
have my name or I'll have twelve drops of your heart's blood to make
the leaves of my Elder Tree fresh and fine."

Bloom-of-Youth went with the twelve balls of wool to her step-mother's
house, and every person she met on the way she asked if he or she knew
the name of the black and crooked woman. But no one could tell her the
hag's real name. All they could tell was that she was the Witch of the
Elders and that she lived beside the Big Stones that were at the other
side of the wood.

Bloom-of-Youth was afraid: her face lost its color and her eyes grew
wide and her heart would beat from one side of her body to the other.
And every day the Witch of the Elders would come to the door and say
"Have you my name yet, Bloom-of-Youth, have you my name yet? Two days
gone, five to come on; three days gone, four to come on; four days
gone, three to come on; five days gone, two to come on." Six days went
by and on the seventh she would have to go to the Big Stones at the
other side of the wood and let the Witch of the Elders take twelve
drops of her heart's blood.

The night before the week's end her husband, when he sat down by the
fire said "I saw something and I heard something very strange when I
was at the other side of the wood this evening." "What was it you
saw?" said Bloom-of-Youth. "Lights were all round the Big Stones and
there was a noise of spinning inside the ring they make. That's what I
saw." "And what was it you heard?" said Bloom-of-Youth. "Someone
singing to the wheels," said her husband. "And this is what I heard
sung.--

Spin, wheel, sp