Now when she was grown up, she was so beautiful that the king’s son would have her to wife. As the wedding-day drew near, her mother and her friends chided her because she delayed to make her wedding dress; but she was idle and heeded not. Soon came the eve of the wedding, and she wept because the prince would learn of her idleness and refuse to take her to wife. Now the Fates loved her, and saw her tears and pitied her. Therefore they came suddenly before her, and asked why she wept; and she told them all. Then sat they down there and spun and weaved and embroidered all that night, and in the morning they arrayed her in a bridal dress decked with gold and pearls such as had never been seen. Presently came the prince, and there was much feasting and dancing, and she was far the most beautiful of all the company. And because he saw her lovely dress and knew how much toil it must have cost her to array herself thus for him, he granted her the favour of doing no more work all her days[279].’ This story, besides illustrating well the finality of every word pronounced by the Fates and the means which they may employ to mitigate their own severity, is typical too of the ideas generally accepted concerning the Fates. Their number is three[280], and they are seen in the shape of old women, one of whom at least is always engaged in spinning. Of the remaining two, one is sometimes seen bearing a book wherein to record in writing the decrees which the three jointly utter, while the other carries a pair of scissors wherewith to cut the thread of life at the appointed time; or again sometimes these two also are spinning, one of them carrying a basket of wool or a distaff and the other fashioning the thread. This association of the Fates with spinning operations is commemorated in certain popular phrases by the comparison of man’s life to a thread. ‘His thread is cut’ or ‘is finished’ (κόπηκε or σώθηκε ἡ κλωστή του) is a familiar euphemism for ‘he is dead’: and again, with the same ultimate meaning but a somewhat different metaphor, the people of Arachova use the phrase μαζώθηκε τὸ κουβάρ’ του[281], ‘his spindle is wound full,’--an expression which seems to imply the idea that the Fates apportion to each man at birth a mass of rough wool from which they go on spinning day by day till the thread of life is completed.