“Why are you wearing such an absurd wreath on a rainy night like this?” The stepmother remarked angrily, and she pulled off the wreath from the head of the girl in her envy.
She put the wreath on her own daughter's head. When she did that the roses of the wreath became withered and brown and the singing birds flew out of the window.
The stepmother longed for her own daughter to have a wreath and she was very angry with the other daughter for getting something like this.
It so happened that another evening the father who had been working alone in the forest came back without his axe. This time the stepmother gladly sent her own daughter.
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However, this time when the other daughter was sent into the woods she was very unhappy that her mother had sent her out at night. When she saw the axe in the middle of the forest, she saw three little doves, which were hungry and sad and sitting on the handle of the axe.
“You dirty creatures!” She cried at the birds. “Get away or I will throw stones at you.”
The doves spread their wings and flew on the top of the tree.
“She is so rude,” the first dove remarked angrily. “We need to punish her for ill treating us!”
"All she will be able to say is ‘dirty creatures’ after this,” the second dove said looking even more angry.
The third dove accepted that this was the right thing, and all the three of them flew away from there.
The other daughter slowly took the axe and reached her own home.
“Did you get the wreath?” The mother asked her own daughter eagerly.
“Dirty creatures!” the daughter said.
The stepmother was shocked because she realized that her daughter could say nothing else other than this word.
The woman became very angry with her step daughter and after this she started ill treating the other daughter no sooner than the man had left the hut.
This was made worse because the doves came and placed the wreath back in the other daughter's head.
Adapted from Scandinavian Folk Tales
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