The Maid of Brakel

A girl from Brakel once went to St. Anne's Chapel at the foot of the Hinnenberg, and as she wanted to have a husband, and thought there was no one else in the chapel, she sang,

"Oh, holy Saint Anne!

Help me soon to a man.*

Thou know'st him right well,

By Suttmer gate does he dwell,

His hair it is golden,

Thou know'st him right well."

The clerk, however, was standing behind the altar and heard that, so he cried in a very gruff voice, "Thou shalt not have him! Thou shalt not have him!" The maiden thought that the child Mary who stood by her mother Anne had called out that to her, and was angry, and cried, "Fiddle de dee, conceited thing, hold your tongue, and let your mother speak!"

* Husband.

From Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, Household Tales, trans. Margaret Hunt (London: George Bell, 1884)