'Snaidhm ar Bundún' agus 'Leanbh an Turainn' / 'Rumpelstiltskin' and 'The Spinning-Wheel's Baby': Sníomh, scéalaíocht agus samhlaíocht / Spinning, storytelling and imagination.

This essay explores the views of women's work as portrayed in the story 'Rumpelstiltskin' or ATU500. It demonstrates the different ways the topic was handled in Irish traditional storytelling and combines these narratives with ethnographic evidence to show how spinning was viewed as a necessary skill for married women, but also as a potential threat to the fulfilment of women's duties as wives and mothers.