Legends From River and Mountain by Carmen Sylva

Going up the Prahova valley one cannot see "Cetatea Babei," the / Witch's Castle, because it is hidden by the Bucegi Mountain. It is a / jagged peak, and looks as though it were covered with ruins. A field / of eternal snow lies between it and the Jipi. In far-off times, when / wolves guarded the flocks, and eagles and doves made their nests / together, a proud castle stood there, and within the castle busy / doings went on. From morning till night it rang with pattering, / clanging, bustling sounds, and hundreds of hasty footsteps scurried to / and fro therein. But at night-time a light shone forth from the tower, / and the humming of a mighty wheel was heard, and above the hum of the / wheel a wondrous, soft song seemed to hover, keeping time with it. Then / people would glance fearfully up toward the castle and whisper: "She / is spinning again! " And she who sat spinning there was the mistress of / the castle, a very evil witch, to whom the mountain-dwarfs brought all / the gold that they found in the depths of the earth, that she might / spin threads of gold for all the brides to wear upon their heads on / their wedding-day.[6] The gold was unloaded in heaps in her castle, / and she weighed it and chose it out -- and woe to the dwarf who did not / bring the required weight; he was thrust between the stem and bark of / a huge tree, and squeezed until he gave up the very uttermost grain of / gold; or he would be caught by the beard only in the tree, and there / he might struggle and writhe as he pleased, and cry for mercy -- the old / witch turned a deaf ear to it all. The name of _Baba Coaja_ ("Mother / Bark") had been given her, perhaps because of this cruel custom of / hers, perhaps because she was as hard as a stale crust of bread, and as / wrinkled as the stem of an old oak. She alone understood the spinning / of the golden threads, and she went on preparing them for hundreds of / years in advance.

Baba Coaja had a wondrously beautiful daughter, named _Alba_ ("The / White One"), for she was as white as the snow that covered the / mountain-tops. Her skin was like velvet, and like velvet, too, were her / brown eyes, and her hair was like the gold-threads that her mother spun.