SAGA-BOOK - Viking Society Web Publications

A NOTE ON THE FOLKTALE MOTIF OF THE
HEADS IN THE WELL
By JACQUELINE SIMPSON
IN discussing the figure of Mimir in a previous paper, I
I had occasion to refer to two English and one Norwegian
stories in which there appear three bodiless heads
emerging from a well or river. After the completion of
this article my attention was drawn, through the kindness
of Dr K. M. Briggs, to a detailed study by Warren E.
Roberts" of the widespread folktale" of which these three
stories are examples. The basic plot is the testing of
the kindness of two girls by some supernatural being
who assigns tasks to them, and in one comparatively
small sub-group of versions the place of this being is
taken by a head or heads (usually three) which rise from
a well, river, or lake. The girl is asked to wash, comb,
kiss, or handle them gently, or (in some Swedish versions)
to feed them with apples; she is rewarded by
wealth, often in the form of gold or gems dropping from
her hair or mouth, by increased beauty, by a fortunate
marriage, or by flowers springing up in her track.
Corresponding punishments (lice in the hair, reptiles in
the mouth, monstrous ugliness, etc.) are inflicted on her
unkind step-sister.
Warren E. Roberts assigns thirty-six tales to this, his
"Heads in the Well Group"; but eleven of these" either
omit or obscure the crucial motif and are therefore in-
I 'Mimir : Two Myths or One?', Saga-Book XVI I (1962), 41-53.
2 Warren E. Roberts, The Tale of the Kind and the Unkind GII·ls
(Fabula, Supplement-Serie B: Untersuchungen Nr. I, 1958).
3 Type 480 in A. Aarne and S. Thompson, The Types of the Folktale
(1928, second revision 1961). The tale is variously known as 'The Kind
and Unkind Girls', 'The Spinning Women by the Spring', 'Frau Holle'.
or 'Toads and Diamonds'.
4 One Norwegian, two Swedish, three Danish, two German, one Finnish,
one English, and one Czech.