[7] The first edition of Grimm's Fairy Tales contained a much shorter variant, "Hateful Flax Spinning", but it is "The Three Spinners" that became well-known.

The first edition (1812) contained a shorter variant titled "Hateful Flax Spinning" (Von dem bösen Flachsspinnen), based on Jeanette Hassenpflug's account.

When they appear, the prince asks how they came to have such deformities, and the three explain that they come from their years of spinning-the foot from treading, the lip from licking, and the thumb from twisting thread.

While the mother beats her for her gluttony, a passing merchant asks the reason, and the woman replies that her daughter is ruining her health by working too hard.

The women helpers in this version – who also are deformed from their years of spinning – instruct the girl to invite them to her wedding by calling their names.

The merchant sees the three women cavorting in the forest and hears them call out their names, similar to the scene in Rumpelstiltskin; he describes this to his bride in hopes of amusing her and getting her to agree to a wedding date.

[9] A Scottish variant of Whuppity Stoorie is very similar to this tale: the wife of a gentleman or a rich man finds six little women clad in green, who agree to do her household chores with the condition she invites them for dinner.

[10] An Irish variant, entitled The Lazy Beauty and her Aunts, was published in The fireside stories of Ireland,[11] and translated into French by Loys Brueyre, with the name La Paresseuse et ses Tantes.

[21] A Czech variant has been collected by Karel Jaromír Erben, named O trech pradlenach[22] and translated into French (Les Trois Fileuses).

[23] French author Edouard Laboulaye included a "Dalmatian" version named The Spinning Queen in his book Last Fairy Tales.

The story was given a literary treatment, with the name The three little Crones, each with Something big, where the lazy spinster is a princess, who is trapped in a tower by her own mother in order that she should learn how to spin flax.

Instead, the wife attempts to both eat and spin at the same time, which is seen by a passing prince suffering from a bone stuck inside his throat.

[26] A related Armenian tale has the wife lose the flax but find a gold nugget, which she claims to her husband was given to her for the quality work.

[27] Two versions collected from England 'The Gypsy Woman' from Suffolk (The Watkins Book of English Folktales by Neil Philip pp.