A Riddling Tale is a German fairy tale collected by the Brothers Grimm in Grimm's Fairy Tales.^[1] A fairy tale is a story, either told to children or as if told to children, concerning the adventures of mythical characters such as fairies, goblins, elves, trolls, giants, and others. ... Wilhelm (left) and Jacob Grimm (right) from an 1855 painting by Elisabeth Jerichau-Baumann The Brothers Grimm were Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, German professors who were best known for publishing collections of folk tales and fairy tales,[1] and for their work in linguistics, relating to how the sounds in... Frontispiece of first volume of Grimms Kinder- und Hausmärchen (1812). ...

It is Aarne-Thompson type 407, the girl as a flower. Antti Amatus Aarne (1867 - 1925) was a Finnish folklorist, who developed the initial version of what became the Aarne-Thompson classification system of classifying folktales, first published in 1910. ...

Synopsis

Story and riddle

Three women were changed to identical flowers. One was allowed home at night and told her husband to pick and free her. He did so. Shapeshifting, transformation , transmogrification or morphing is a change in the form or shape of a person, especially: a change from human form to animal form and vice versa a change in appearance from one person to another Shapeshifting is not considered scientifically or medically possible for humans (and animal shapeshifting...

How did he recognize her?

Answer

The other flowers, having been in the field all night, had dew on them; the wife did not.

References