Legends From River and Mountain by Carmen Sylva

There was once a beautiful maiden, Viorica by name; she had hair like / gold, and eyes like the blue sky, and cheeks like carnations, and lips / like cherries, and her body was as lithe as the rushes that sway by the / riverside. All men rejoiced when they beheld this fair maiden, yet not / so much on account of her beauty as because of her wondrous diligence. / When she went to the spring with her pitcher on her head she carried / her distaff in her girdle and spun the while. She could weave too, / and embroider like a fairy. Her shifts were the finest in the whole / village, wrought with black and red stitches, and with wide seams of / broidery on the shoulders. She had adorned her petticoat, and even her / Sunday hose, with flowers wrought in the same way. In short, it seemed / as though the little hands could never rest; in field and meadow she / did as much work as in the house; and all the lads turned their eyes / upon the fair Viorica, who should one day be such a notable housewife. / But she never turned her eyes toward them; she would hear no talk of / marriage; there was plenty of time for that, she said, and she had to / care for her old mother. Thereupon the mother would bend her brows, and / say that, for her part, she thought a stalwart son-in-law would be but / a prop the more. But this troubled the little daughter, who would ask / whether she were of no more use at all, that the mother should be so / set upon having a man into the house.

"The men do but make a deal more work for us," said she; "for we must / spin and stitch and weave for them as well as ourselves, and then we / never find time to get the field-labor done."