Cast down from heaven for a single lie, a girl finds that her whole dwelling is the inside of a tree. In Grimm's Household Tales (collected 1812–1857), the wood-cutter's daughter is raised in heaven by the Virgin Mary and forbidden one of thirteen doors; she opens it, touches the light of the Trinity so that her finger turns "quite golden", and three times denies the deed. For that she is set down "in the midst of a wilderness", hedged about with thorns, and struck dumb.

There the tree becomes her house. In the desert stood a hollow tree, "and this had to be her dwelling-place". Into it "she crept when night came", slept, and found "a shelter from storm and rain". Roots and wild berries were her food; in autumn she carried the fallen nuts and leaves into the hole against the winter, and crept "amongst the leaves like a poor little animal" so that she might not freeze. When the sun came warm again she "sat in front of the tree", and "her long hair covered her on all sides like a mantle". Year after year she lived so, until a hunting king tore through the thicket, found her wordless beneath the tree, and carried her home to be his queen.

Only this German witness is wired to served text; the Missouri French and the several Hindu authorities filed alongside it wait unread. What does the record mean by returning its exiles not to a house or a cave, but to the living wood of a tree?