‘Oh, with all my heart!’ replied the witch. ‘Here is a barley-corn for you; it is not exactly of the same sort as those that grow on the farmer’s fields, or that are given to the fowls in the poultry yard, but do you sow it in a flower-pot, and then you shall see what you shall see!’ ‘Thank you, thank you!’ cried the woman, and she gave the witch a silver sixpence, and then having returned home sowed the barley-corn as she had been directed, whereupon a large and beautiful flower immediately shot forth from the flower-pot. It looked like a tulip, but the petals were tightly folded up; it was still in bud. ‘What a lovely flower!’ exclaimed the peasant-woman, and she kissed the pretty red and yellow leaves, and as she kissed them the flower gave a loud report and opened. It was indeed a tulip, but on the small green pointal in the centre of the flower there sat a little tiny girl, so pretty and delicate, but her whole body scarcely bigger than the young peasant’s thumb. So she called her Tommelise. A pretty varnished walnut-shell was given her as a cradle, blue violet leaves served as her mattresses, and a rose-leaf was her coverlet; here she slept at night, but in the daytime she played on the table. The peasant-wife had filled a plate with water, and laid flowers in it, their blossoms bordering the edge of the plate, while the stalks lay in the water; on the surface floated a large tulip-leaf, and on it Tommelise might sit and sail from one side of the plate to the other, two white horse hairs having been given her for oars. That looked quite charming! And Tommelise could sing too, and she sang in such low sweet tones as never were heard before. One night, while she was lying in her pretty bed, a great ugly toad came hopping in through the broken window-pane. The toad was such a great creature, old and withered-looking, and wet too; she hopped at once down upon the table where Tommelise lay sleeping under the red rose petal. ‘That is just the wife for my son,’ said the toad; and she seized hold of the walnut-shell, with Tommelise in it, and hopped away with her through the broken pane down into the garden. Here flowed a broad stream; its banks were muddy and swampy, and it was amongst this mud that the old toad and her son dwelt. Ugh, how hideous and deformed he was! just like his mother. ‘Coax, coax, brekke-ke-kex!’ was all he could find to say on seeing the pretty little maiden in the walnut-shell. ‘Don’t make such a riot, or you’ll wake her!’ said old mother toad. ‘She may easily run away from us, for she is as light as a swan-down feather. I’ll tell you what we’ll do; we’ll take her out into the brook, and set her down on one of the large water-lily leaves; it will be like an island to her, who is so light and small. Then she cannot run away from us, and we can go and get ready the state-rooms down under the mud, where you and she are to dwell together.’