The Three Aunts

"The Three Aunts" is a Norwegian fairy tale collected by Peter Christen Asbjørnsen and Jørgen Moe in Norske Folkeeventyr.

[1] A poor hunter loses his wife, and their pretty daughter decides to go seek her fortune as a servant.

The other maids, jealous, tell the queen that the girl claims to be able to spin a pound of flax in twenty-four hours.

Then maids, still envious, now hold the girl can sew all the fabric into shirts in twenty-four hours, and a third old woman comes to help her for the same price.

The prince wonders how his beautiful bride can have such ugly relatives, and the "aunts" explain that it is the strain of long lives of constant handiwork: the spinner has an extremely long nose, the weaver has a massively broad behind and the sewer has enormous watery eyes.