The first flakes of snow usher in the beginning of winter, and according to old Germanic folklore, they are the feathers from the featherbeds of Old Mother Goose. According to the Brothers Grimm, she may have been a goose herself, or shapeshifting between an elderly woman and a snow goose, because in some versions of the story she has a one large foot, like that of a goose, perhaps a splayed foot from pressing the treadle of her spinning wheel. Due to her shapeshifting nature between a white goose and an elderly woman, she represents both maiden and crone, as well as the transition between life and death, lightness and darkness, representing this transitional time of the year: the Winter Solstice.