The Seven Plaits of Nettles, and other stories — Story, Setting & Ideas

Movement from Poverty to Palace

The collection's structure follows a clear arc: each story begins with a state of lack—empty treasuries, barren cupboards, lost kingdoms—and moves toward a resolution that restores abundance. In "The Seven Plaits of Nettles," the bad King's extravagance empties the mint and treasury, leading to starvation. Ellaleen's quest to weave nettle plaits reverses this decline, culminating in a wedding that brings prosperity. "When Our Ship Comes Home" and "The Golden Wish" similarly hinge on sudden fortune. The pattern is so consistent that the reader can anticipate the turn, yet Vredenburg varies the agent of change: a clever girl, a magical ship, a wish-granting fish, a prince's kiss, or an act of faith.

Recurring Images of Cold and Warmth

Cold is the dominant sensory detail across the stories. In "The Three Snowflakes," Ruth shudders at the snow that melts on her brick floor, and the narrative contrasts the white landscape with the grey river. In "The Princess and the Frog," the exiled king and princess sleep in the woods, miserable and hungry. Warmth appears only as a promise: the sun breaks through snow clouds as Ruth prays, and the enchanted prince leads the princess to a beautiful country. The title story lacks winter imagery but substitutes the cold of poverty—"fires were only known in the houses of the richest." This thermal polarity gives the collection a tangible, almost physical tension between deprivation and comfort.

The Role of Small Creatures and Objects

Vredenburg repeatedly uses small, vulnerable beings as catalysts. In "The Seven Plaits of Nettles," Ellaleen's task involves nettles—prickly weeds that become the means of salvation. The frog in "The Princess and the Frog" is carried in a matchbox, suffering from cramp in his lame foot, and his release triggers the transformation. The three snowflakes themselves are not flakes but girls named Faith, Hope, and Charity, whose presence brings warmth to Ruth's frozen world. These miniature figures—nettles, a frog, snowflakes—carry disproportionate weight in the narrative, embodying the idea that the smallest or most despised elements can hold the key to change.

Movement Between Scenes: From Interior to Open Landscape

The stories shift between confined, impoverished interiors and expansive, hopeful landscapes. "The Seven Plaits of Nettles" moves from the King's empty treasury and Ellaleen's home to the open country where she gathers nettles. "The Princess and the Frog" begins in a palace, descends into a matchbox, then opens onto a pond and finally "over the blue hills" to a beautiful country. "The Three Snowflakes" contrasts Ruth's tiny cottage with the valley, river, and woods visible from the castle. This movement from enclosure to vista mirrors the emotional trajectory from despair to possibility, and Vredenburg often marks the transition with a journey—on foot, through woods, across hills—that physically enacts the change in fortune.

Readers attentive to the collection's structural repetitions will notice how Vredenburg builds each tale from the same spare materials: a desperate lack, a small agent of change, and a journey toward warmth. The stories reward comparison—the nettle plaits and the frog's tears both break spells through patient effort. The book's brevity (under 12,000 words) makes these patterns easy to trace, and the illustrations by T. Noyes Lewis, Hilda Cowham, and May Bowley likely reinforce the visual motifs of cold and transformation.

I remembered winter evenings when the pantry ran bare, and how The Seven Plaits of Nettles turned that hollow ache into something bearable—transformation arriving like a warm hand. Reading it, I thought of sitting quietly with The Stars in the Pool: A Prose Poem for Lovers — Key Ideas to Explore last spring, the same stillness settling over me, as if both books understood hunger, in one way or another, and knew exactly how to hold it.