Fairy Tales from the Brothers Grimm: A New English Version Read online

  One day her mother said to her: ‘Little Red Riding Hood, I’ve got a job for you. Your grandmother isn’t very well, and I want you to take her this cake and a bottle of wine. They’ll make her feel a lot better. You be polite when you go into her house, and give her a kiss from me. Be careful on the way there, and don’t step off the path or you might trip over and break the bottle and drop the cake, and then there’d be nothing for her. When you go into her parlour don’t forget to say, “Good morning, Granny,” and don’t go peering in all the corners.’

  ‘I’ll do everything right, don’t worry,’ said Little Red Riding Hood, and kissed her mother goodbye.

  Her grandmother lived in the woods, about half an hour’s walk away. When Little Red Riding Hood had only been walking a few minutes, a wolf came up to her. She didn’t know what a wicked animal he was, so she wasn’t afraid of him.

  ‘Good morning, Little Red Riding Hood!’ said the wolf.

  ‘Thank you, wolf, and good morning to you.’

  ‘Where are you going so early this morning?’

  ‘To Granny’s house.’

  ‘And what’s in that basket of yours?’

  ‘Granny’s not very well, so I’m taking her some cake and some wine. We baked the cake yesterday, and it’s full of good things like flour and eggs, and it’ll be good for her and make her feel better.’

  ‘Where does your granny live, Little Red Riding Hood?’

  ‘Well, I have to walk along this path till I come to three big oak trees, and there’s her house, behind a hedge of hazel bushes. It’s not very far away, about fifteen minutes’ walk, I suppose. You must know the place,’ said Little Red Riding Hood.

  The wolf thought, ‘Now, this dainty young thing looks a very tasty mouthful. She’ll taste even better than the old woman, but if I’m careful I’ll be able to eat them both.’

  So he walked along a while with Little Red Riding Hood, and then he said, ‘Look at those flowers, Little Red Riding Hood! Aren’t they lovely? The ones under the trees over there. Why don’t you go closer so you can see them properly? And you seem as though you’re walking to school, all serious and determined. You’ll never hear the birds if you go along like that. It’s so lovely in the woods – it’s a shame not to enjoy it.’

  Little Red Riding Hood looked where he was pointing, and when she saw the sunbeams dancing here and there between the trees, and how the beautiful flowers grew everywhere, she thought, ‘I could gather some flowers to take to Granny! She’ll be very pleased with those. And it’s still early – I’ve got time to do that and still be home on time.’

  So she stepped off the path, and ran into the trees to pick some flowers; but each time she picked one she saw an even prettier one a bit further away, so she ran to get that as well. And all the time she went further and further into the wood.

  But while she was doing that, the wolf ran straight to the grandmother’s house and knocked on the door.

  ‘Who’s there?’

  ‘Little Red Riding Hood,’ said the wolf. ‘I’ve got some cake and wine for you. Open the door!’

  ‘Just lift the latch,’ said the grandmother. ‘I’m feeling too weak to get out of bed.’

  The wolf lifted the latch and the door opened. He went inside, looked around to see where she was, and then leaped on the grandmother’s bed and ate her all up in one big gulp. Then he put on her clothes and put her nightcap on his head, and pulled the curtains tight shut, and got into bed.

  All that time, Little Red Riding Hood had been wandering about picking flowers. Once she had gathered so many that she couldn’t hold any more, she remembered what she was supposed to be doing, and set off along the path to her grandmother’s house. She had a surprise when she got there, because the door was open and the room was dark.

  ‘My goodness,’ she thought, ‘I don’t like this. I feel afraid and I usually like it at Granny’s house.’

  She called out, ‘Good morning, Granny!’ but there was no answer.

  She went to the bed and pulled open the curtains. There was her grandmother, lying with her cap pulled down and looking very strange.

  ‘Oh, Granny, what big ears you’ve got!’

  ‘All the better to hear you with.’

  ‘Granny, what big eyes you’ve got!’

  ‘All the better to see you with.’

  ‘And Granny, what big hands you’ve got!’

  ‘All the better to hold you with.’

  ‘And oh, Granny, what a great grim ghastly mouth you’ve got—’

  ‘All the better to eat you with!’

  And as soon as the wolf said that, he leaped out of bed and gobbled up Little Red Riding Hood. Once he’d swallowed her he felt full and satisfied, and since the bed was so nice and soft, he climbed back in, fell deeply asleep, and began to snore very loudly indeed.

  Just then a huntsman was passing by.

  ‘The old woman’s making such a noise,’ he thought, ‘I’d better go and see if she’s all right.’

  He went into the parlour, and when he came near the bed he stopped in astonishment.

  ‘You old sinner!’ he thought. ‘I’ve been looking for you for a long time. Found you at last!’

  He raised his rifle to his shoulder, but then he put it down again, because it occurred to him that the wolf might have eaten the old lady, and he might be able to rescue her. So he put down the rifle and took a pair of scissors, and began to snip open the wolf’s bulging belly. After only a couple of snips he saw the red velvet cap, and a few snips later the girl jumped out.

  ‘Oh, that was horrible!’ she said. ‘I was so frightened! It was so dark in the wolf’s belly!’

  And then the grandmother began to clamber out, a bit out of breath but not much the worse for her experience. While the hunter helped her to a chair, Little Red Riding Hood ran outside to fetch some heavy stones. They filled the wolf’s body with them, and then Little Red Riding Hood sewed him up very neatly, and then they woke him up.

  Seeing the hunter there with his gun, the wolf panicked and ran outside, but he didn’t get very far. The stones were so heavy that soon he fell down dead.

  All three of them were very happy. The hunter skinned the wolf and went home with the pelt, Granny ate the cake and drank the wine, and Little Red Riding Hood thought, ‘What a narrow escape! As long as I live, I’ll never do that again. If mother tells me to stay on the path, that’s exactly what I’ll do.’

  ***

  Tale type: ATU 333, ‘Little Red Riding Hood’

  Source: a story told to the Grimm brothers by Jeanette and Marie Hassenpflug

  Similar stories: Italo Calvino: ‘The False Grandmother’, ‘The Wolf and the Three Girls’ (Italian Folktales); Charles Perrault: ‘Little Red Riding Hood’ (Perrault’s Complete Fairy Tales)

  I suppose that this and ‘Cinderella’ are the two best-known fairy tales (in Britain, at any rate), and they both owe a great deal of their popularity to Charles Perrault (see the note to ‘Cinderella’). His version differs from Grimm mainly in that it ends with the wolf eating Little Red Riding Hood. There is no rescue by a brave huntsman; instead, a moralistic verse warns that not all wolves are wild – some of them are smooth-talking seducers.

  The huntsman is an interesting detail. The German forests were not just wildernesses, belonging to no one: their owners were often of princely rank, and after the great demand for ship-building timber and the destruction of the forests to make way for crops and cattle to feed the armies of the Thirty Years War, what they wanted most from their woods was pleasure and recreation: hunting, in a word. As John Eliot Gardiner says in his forthcoming work on J. S. Bach: ‘In terms of influencing the way their [i.e. the princely owners’] woods were managed, the huntsman eclipsed the trained forester (just as the pheasant and the gamekeeper today so often has more s
way than the woodman).’

  Perhaps a forester, being less confident with wild animals than a huntsman, and less likely to carry a gun, too, would have tiptoed away carefully from the sleeping wolf and left Little Red Riding Hood and her grandmother to be digested.

  Whatever the likelihood of that, both Perrault and Grimm reinforce the moral of bourgeois respectability. Little Red Riding Hood, in the Grimms’ version, has no need of a moralistic reminder not to leave the path – she’s learned her lesson. (During the panic about paedophilia, it was common to hear this story used to remind children of ‘stranger danger’.) She’ll never leave the path again.

  Gustave Doré’s famous engraving, published in 1863 to illustrate an edition of Perrault’s version, showing Little Red Riding Hood actually in bed with the wolf reminds us of part of this story’s power: wolves are sexy. And so are foxes, as Beatrix Potter knew when creating and drawing the suave ‘gentleman with the sandy-coloured whiskers’ in The Tale of Jemima Puddle-Duck (1908), her own variation on the Little Red Riding Hood story. Perrault would have recognized him at once.

  Perhaps Charles Dickens’s comment sums up the attraction of the heroine most vividly. ‘Little Red Riding Hood was my first love,’ Bruno Bettelheim quotes him as saying. ‘I felt that if I could have married Little Red Riding Hood, I should have known perfect bliss’ (The Uses of Enchantment, p. 23).

  SEVENTEEN

  THE MUSICIANS OF BREMEN

  Once there was a man who had a donkey, and for years this donkey had carried sacks of grain to the mill without a word of complaint; but now his strength was running out, so he couldn’t work as hard as he used to, and his master thought it was time to stop feeding him. The donkey noticed this, and didn’t like it a bit, so he ran away and looked for the road to Bremen. His plan was to become a town musician.

  When he’d gone a little way he came across a hunting hound lying in the road. The dog was panting as if he’d just run for miles.

  ‘What are you panting for, Grabber?’ said the donkey.

  ‘Well, I’m getting old, you see,’ explained the hound, ‘and I can’t run as far as I used to. My master reckons I’m no good any more, and he wanted to kill me, so I ran away; but I don’t know how to earn my living in any other way, and I’m getting hungry.’

  ‘Well, I tell you what,’ said the donkey, ‘I’m in more or less the same position, but I’ve got a plan. I’m going to Bremen, because they pay their town musicians a decent wage there. Come with me and take up music. I’m going to play the lute – it doesn’t look very difficult – and you can play the drums.’

  ‘That’s a very good idea,’ said the dog, and joined up with the donkey.

  They walked on a little way, and then they saw a cat sitting at the roadside who looked as if he’d lost a pound and found a penny.

  ‘What’s the trouble, old Whisker Wiper?’ said the donkey.

  ‘Dear oh dear,’ said the cat, ‘I’m in a dreadful pickle. I’m getting on a bit – I don’t expect you noticed, but I’m not as young as I was, and my teeth are getting blunt. I used to catch mice, rats, any sort of vermin, you name it, but I’d rather sit by the stove and snooze these days. My mistress was going to drown me, but I ran away. I haven’t a clue what to do now. You got any ideas?’

  ‘Come with us to Bremen,’ said the donkey. ‘We’re going to join the town musicians. You know how to sing – I’ve heard your sort singing very sweetly at night – come along with us.’

  The cat thought this was a very good idea, and they all went along together. Presently they came to a farmyard. Standing on the roof was a cockerel, crowing with all his might.

  ‘What are you crowing for?’ said the donkey. ‘It’s long past daybreak.’

  ‘I’m forecasting the weather,’ said the cockerel. ‘It’s Our Lady’s Day, when she washes the Christ Child’s shirts and hangs them out to dry. I’m telling the family it’s going to be dry and sunny, and you’d think they’d be grateful, but not a bit of it. They’ve got guests coming tomorrow, and they want to eat me, so the farmer’s wife has told the cook that this evening she’s going to chop my head off. I’m going to crow and crow while I’ve still got some breath in my lungs.’

  ‘Well, that’s a poor show,’ said the donkey. ‘Why don’t you come with us to Bremen? We’re going to be musicians. You’ve got a lovely voice, and when we all make music together, we’ll be irresistible.’

  The cockerel agreed. Off they went, but they couldn’t reach the city of Bremen in one day, and in the evening they decided to look for shelter in the forest where they happened to find themselves. The donkey and the dog lay down under a big tree, the cat took to the branches, and the cockerel flew right to the top. Presently he came all the way down again with some news. Before falling asleep he’d looked all around, north, south, east, and west, and he thought there must be a house not far away, because he’d seen a light shining.

  ‘Well, let’s go there,’ said the donkey. ‘It can’t be worse than this.’

  ‘And if there’s a house,’ said the dog, ‘there might be a few bones with a bit of meat on them.’

  So they set off in the direction of the light, and soon they saw it glowing through the trees. It became larger and larger, and then they were right in front of it. The donkey, being the tallest of them, went up to the window and looked in.

  ‘What can you see, Grey Face?’ asked the cockerel.

  ‘I can see a table covered with good things to eat and drink, but . . .’

  ‘But what?’

  ‘Sitting around the table are a dozen robbers, all tucking in as hard as they can.’

  ‘If only that were us!’ said the cockerel.

  They discussed how they could drive the robbers away, and finally they agreed on a plan: the donkey would stand with his front feet on the windowsill, the dog would stand on his back, the cat would stand on the dog, and the cockerel would perch on the cat, and then they’d make some music. So they got themselves ready, and after the donkey had counted them in, they all started singing together as loud as they could: the donkey brayed, the dog barked, the cat miaowed and the cockerel crowed. When they’d finished they all jumped through the window, shattering the glass and making a terrible noise.

  The robbers all leaped up at once, thinking it was the Devil, or at least a ghost, and fled into the woods in terrible fear. The four musicians sat themselves down and ate freely of the food that was left, guzzling as if they might not get any more food for a month.

  When they’d finished they felt tired, because they’d had a long day, so they lay down to sleep, each finding the place he liked best: the donkey lay by the dung heap outside, the dog curled up behind the door, the cat stretched out on the hearth next to the fire, and the cockerel perched on the roof-beam.

  At midnight the robbers, who were watching from some way off, saw that the light had gone out.

  ‘We shouldn’t have let ourselves be chased away like that,’ said the chief. ‘That’s not very brave, is it? Here, Lefty, go back and have a look. See what’s going on.’

  Lefty crept back to the house. He could hear nothing, so he tiptoed into the kitchen and looked around. There was nothing to see but the cat’s fiery eyes. Lefty thought these were live coals, so he struck a match to make them blaze up again, and touched it to the cat’s nose.

  Naturally, the cat didn’t like that. He leaped up, spitting and shrieking, and clawed at the robber’s face.

  ‘Eeeek!’ yelled Lefty, and ran towards the door. He stumbled over the dog, who bit him hard in the leg.

  ‘Yeowh!’ cried Lefty, and ran out into the yard. The donkey woke up and kicked him hard on the backside.

  ‘Aaagghh!’ shrieked Lefty, and that woke up the cockerel, who crowed, ‘Cock-a-doodle-doo!’

  ‘Nohhh!’ bellowed Lefty, and ran for the woods in terror
of his life.

  ‘What is it? What is it?’ said the robber chief.

  ‘We can’t go back there!’ said Lefty. ‘There’s a horrible witch in the kitchen, and she scratched me with her nails. And there’s a man with a knife behind the door, and he stabbed me in the leg. And there’s a brute with a club outside, and he whacked me so hard I think he broke my fundament. And the judge is sitting on the roof, and he called out, “Bring the prisoner here!” So I ran and ran and ran.’

  From then on, the robbers didn’t dare go back to the house. The four musicians of Bremen, on the other hand, liked it so much that they never left. They’re living there still, and as for the last person who told this story, his lips are still moving.

  ***

  Tale type: ATU 130, ‘The Animals in Night Quarters’

  Source: stories told to the Grimm brothers by the von Haxthausen family and Dorothea Viehmann

  Similar stories: Katharine M. Briggs: ‘The Bull, the Tup, the Cock and the Steg’, ‘How Jack Went to Seek His Fortune’ (Folk Tales of Britain)

  The poor old superannuated animals, with their fond ideas of playing music in the city of Bremen, come out on top in the end, and a good thing too. I’m fond of this tale because of the simplicity and power of its form. When a tale is shaped so well that the line of the narrative seems to have been able to take no other path, and to have touched every important event in making for its end, one can only bow with respect for the teller.

  EIGHTEEN

  THE SINGING BONE

  In a certain country at one time, many people were concerned about a wild boar that was churning up the farmers’ fields, killing the cattle, and ripping the life out of people with its tusks. The king proclaimed that whoever could rid the land of this brute would receive a great reward, but the animal was so huge and strong that no one dared go near the forest where it lived. In the end the king announced that anyone who could kill or capture it should have his only daughter for wife.