Coat of Rushes

There lived a rich lord once in the east country who had three daughters of whom he was greatly proud. He was kind and generous to them, but he was also selfish and conceited, and delighted in nothing so much as flattery and praise.

One day, being anxious to feed his vanity still higher, he called his three daughters and said to the eldest: "My child, how greatly do you love me?"

"Why," she replied, "I love you as I love my life." The father was pleased. He then asked the second daughter, who replied, "I love you better than all the world."

Then turning to his third daughter, whom he loved best of all, he asked: "My child, how greatly do you love me?" And she, refusing to flatter his vanity by speaking anything but the exact truth, answered simply: "Why, I love you as our need is, which is even as fresh meat loves salt."

At this her father was exceedingly angry, for never had he been spoken to in such terms. "Since you do not love me at all," he cried, "you shall stay no longer in my house." And so he drove her out there and then, and shut the door after her.

The poor girl wandered away and away, by forest and mountain, till she came to a country of fens; and there she gathered rushes and made them into a coat with a hood to go over her head and keep her from the cold. Then she went on her way until she came to the palace of the King, and begged for work in the kitchen.