Briar Rose's Spinning Wheel
The spinning wheel in the Grimms' fairy tale 'Briar Rose' (Dornröschen, KHM 50) is the instrument of the sleeping curse: the princess pricks her finger on its spindle, and the whole castle falls asleep for a hundred years. The king had ordered every spindle in the land burned to cheat the witch's prophecy, but an old woman in a forgotten tower still spins, and curiosity leads the princess to the fatal prick. When the prince at last cuts through the hedge of thorns and wakes the princess with a kiss, the spindle's curse is undone and the castle stirs back to life. The tale is the German form of