{"collection":"Northern European Mythology","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/browse/neu/hoe/hoe2-20.htm","path":"neu/hoe/hoe2-20.htm","source_url":"https://sacred-texts.com/neu/hoe/hoe2-20.htm","text":"VERSIONS of this story are common in Finland as well as in Esthonia. One of the latter is \u201cR\u014dugutaja\u2019s Daughter\u201d (Kreutzwald). Old R\u014dugutaja1 lived with his wife and daughter in a wood. The daughter had a beautiful face, but it was reported that her skin was of bark, and she could find no suitors. At last the mother contrived to inveigle a youth into marrying her daughter by means of a love-philtre, but on the first night be ran away, and shortly afterwards married another bride. On the birth p. 46 of a child, the witch-mother transforms the young mother into a wolf, and substitutes her own daughter. The nurse is ordered to take the crying child for a walk; she meets the wolf; the deceit is discovered, and the husband inveigles the witch-mother and daughter into the bathhouse, and burns it down.\nThere is little in this story except the bark-skin of the witch-bride to distinguish it from the numerous variants among other peoples.\n1 See vol. i. p. 22.","title":"THE WITCH-BRIDE.","type":"page"}