speak the next
morning should be the name given to it. In the early morning the Queen
awoke and looked out from her window over the wood. The first house in
the city was erected to the roof, and the builders had hung up a
great garland, glittering with tinsel, upon the rooftree. "Odin, see!"
exclaimed the Queen; and thenceforward the city was called Odensee,
which name, since then, has been changed by daily speech to Odense.

When people ask the children in Copenhagen whence they have come, they
reply, out of the Peblingsoee. The little children of Odense, who
know nothing about the Peblingsoee, say that they are fetched out of
Rosenbaek, a little brook which has only been ennobled within the few
last years, just as in Copenhagen is the case with Krystal Street, which
formerly had an unpleasant name. This brook runs through Odense, and
must, in former times, when united with the Odense River, have formed an
island where the city at that time stood; hence some people derive the
name of Odense from Odins Ei, or Odins Oe, that is, Odin's Island. Be it
then as it might, the brook flows now, and in 1810, when the so-called
Willow-dam, by the West Gate, was not filled up, it stood, especially in
spring, low and watery. It often overflowed its banks, and in so doing
overflowed the little gardens which lay on either side. It thus ran
concealed through the city until near the North Gate, where it made its
appearance for a moment and then dived again in the same street, and,
like a little river, flowed through the cellars of the old justice-room,
which was built by the renowned Oluf Bagger. [Author's Note: He was so
rich that once, when Frederick the Second visited him, he had the room
heated with cinnamon chips. Much may be found about this remarkable
man in the second collection of Thiele's Popular Danish Legends. His
descendants still live in Odense, namely, the family of the printer Ch.
Iversen, who has preserved many curiosities which belonged to him.]

It was an afternoon in the summer of 1810; the water was high in the
brook, yet two washerwomen were busily employed in it; reed-matting
was fast bound round their bodies, and they beat with wooden staves the
clothes upon their washing-stools. They were in deep conversation, and
yet their labor went on uninterruptedly.

"Yes," said one of them, "better a little with honor, than much with
dishonor. She is sentenced; to-morrow she is to go about in the pillory.
That is sure a