Tales from the Brothers Grimm: Selected and Illustrated by Lisbeth Zwerger

by Brothers Grimm; Zwerger, Lisbeth

  He put the slice of bread down beside him and went on sewing, taking bigger and bigger stitches in his delight. Meanwhile, the smell of the sweet jam rose up the wall, where a great many flies had settled, enticing them to come down and settle on it in swarms. “Hey, who invited you?” said the tailor, shooing his unwanted guests away. However, the flies, who didn’t speak his language, were not to be deterred, and they came back, more and more of them. In the end the tailor lost his temper, went to his broom cupboard and found a cloth. “You just wait, I’ll show you!” said he, bringing it mercilessly down on the flies. When he took it away and counted the flies on it, no fewer than seven lay there dead before him with their legs in the air.

  Well, what a fine fellow you are! he told himself, admiring his own courage. The whole town shall hear of this! And in haste the tailor cut out a belt for himself, sewed it together, and embroidered the words “Seven At A Blow” on it in large letters. The town, did I say? he went on. No, the whole world shall hear of it! And his heart hopped for joy like a lamb wagging its tail. The tailor put the belt around his waist and prepared to set out into the world, because he thought his workshop too small for a man so bold. Before he left, he searched the house to see if there was anything he could take with him, but all he found was an old cheese, which he put in his pocket. Outside the gate he noticed a bird caught in a bush, and the bird went into his pocket with the cheese.

  Now he strode bravely along the road, and as he was light on his feet and agile he did not feel tired. The road led to a mountain, and when he had reached the highest peak of it he found a mighty giant sitting there, looking around at his ease. The little tailor went cheerfully up to him and spoke to him, saying, “Good day, comrade. Am I right in thinking that you’re sitting there looking at the whole wide world? I’m on the way there myself to try my luck. Would you like to go along with me?”

  The giant looked scornfully at the tailor and said, “You scoundrel! You miserable little fellow!”

  “What a thing to say!” replied the tailor, unbuttoning his coat and showing the giant his belt. “Read that, and you’ll see what kind of a man I am.”

  The giant read “Seven At A Blow”, and thinking it meant that the tailor had killed seven men with a single blow he felt some respect for the little fellow. But he wanted to test him first. So he picked up a stone and squeezed it in his hand until water dripped out.

  “You do that too,” said the giant, “if you’re really so strong.”

  “Is that all?” said the tailor. “It’s child’s play to the likes of me.” With these words he put his hand into his pocket, took out the soft cheese, and pressed it until the whey ran out. “That was rather better, don’t you agree?”

  The giant didn’t know what to say, and he didn’t really believe in the little man. So he took a stone and threw it so high in the air that it almost disappeared from view.

  “Now then, you dwarf, do that too.”

  “Well thrown,” said the tailor, “but the stone will have fallen to earth again somewhere. I’ll throw one so high that it never comes back at all.” So saying, he put his hand in his pocket, took out the bird and threw it up in the air. Glad to be free, the bird rose in the air, flew away and didn’t come back. “How do you like that trick, comrade?” asked the tailor.

  “You can throw well,” said the giant, “but now let’s see if you can carry a good weight.” And he led the little tailor to a mighty oak tree that had been felled and was lying on the ground. “If you’re strong enough,” he said, “help me to carry this tree out of the wood.”

  “Happily,” said the little man. “You just take the trunk on your shoulder, and I’ll pick up the branches with all their twigs and carry them. They’re the heaviest part.”

  So the giant took the trunk on his shoulder, but the tailor sat on a branch, and the giant, who couldn’t see behind him, had to carry the whole tree and the tailor into the bargain. As for the tailor, he sat there behind his companion in great good spirits, whistling the tune of “Three Tailors Went Riding Away From The Gate”, as if carrying a tree were child’s play. After the giant had carried the heavy weight of the tree some way further, he could not go on, and called, “Listen, I’ll have to drop this tree.” The tailor nimbly jumped down, flung his arms round the tree as if he had been carrying it, and said to the giant, “What, a great big fellow like you, and you can’t even carry a tree?”

  They went on together, and as they were passing a cherry tree the giant took hold of the crown, where the earliest ripe fruits hung, bent it down, put it in the tailor’s hand and told him to enjoy the cherries. However, the tailor was far too weak to hold the tree down, and when the giant let go the tree-top shot up in the air again, taking the tailor with it. When he had dropped back to the ground without suffering any injury, the giant said, “What is it? Aren’t you strong enough to hold that weak little shoot down?”

  “Oh, I’m not short of strength,” said the little tailor. “Do you think that would be any problem for a man who has killed seven at a blow? No, I jumped over the tree because there are huntsmen firing guns in the bushes down there. You jump over it yourself if you can.”

  The giant tried, but he couldn’t leap over the tree, and stuck fast in the branches, so once again the little tailor got the better of him.

  Then the giant said, “If you’re such a bold fellow, come and spend the night in our cavern with us.”

  The little tailor agreed to that, and followed him. When they reached the cavern some more giants were sitting by the fire, each eating a whole roast sheep that he held in his hands. The tailor looked around and thought: this is a much more spacious place than my workshop at home.

  The giant showed him a bed and told him to lie down in it and have a good sleep. But the bed was too big for the little tailor, and he didn’t lie down there but crept into a corner. At midnight, when the giant thought the little tailor must be fast asleep, he got up, took a big iron bar, struck the bed in half with a single blow, and thought he had put an end to that annoying little grasshopper the tailor.

  Early in the morning the giants went into the woods, forgetting all about the tailor, when all of a sudden he came strolling boldly and cheerfully along. The startled giants were afraid he would strike them all dead, and they ran away as fast as they could go.

  The little tailor went on, always following his pointed nose. When he had walked for a long time, he came to a royal palace, and as he felt tired he lay down on the grass in the courtyard and fell asleep. While he was lying there some courtiers came along, looked at him from all sides, and read what it said on his belt. “Seven At A Blow.”

  “What can this heroic warrior be doing here in peace-time?” they said. “He must be a mighty lord.”

  They went and told the king, saying that if war happened to break out, this would be an important and useful man, and they ought to keep him with them at all costs. The king liked this advice, and he sent one of the courtiers off to see the little tailor when he woke up, and offer him service in any wars.

  The king’s envoy stood beside the sleeping tailor, waited until he stretched and opened his eyes, and then made his offer.

  “That’s the very reason why I came here,” replied the little tailor. “I’m ready and willing to enter the service of the king.” So he was welcomed with honor, and given special apartments of his own.

  However, the king’s soldiers didn’t like the idea of the little tailor, and wished him a thousand miles away.

  “What’s going to happen,” they said to each other, “if we argue with him and he fights us? Seven of us will fall at every blow! We can’t stand up to losses like that.”

  So they came to a decision, went to the king together, and asked to be dismissed from the army. “We can’t compete with a man who kills seven at a blow,” they said.

  The king was very sorry to think of losing all his faithful servants for the sake of a single man. He wished he had never set eyes on the hero, and would h
ave liked to be rid of him again. But he didn’t trust himself to dismiss the great warrior, being afraid the tailor might kill him and all his people and seize the throne for himself. He thought long and hard, and at last he had an idea. He sent a message to the tailor to say that as he was such a heroic warrior, he, the king, would make him an offer. There were two giants at large in a forest in his country, doing great damage, robbing, murdering, burning and laying the countryside waste. No one could get near them without putting himself in deadly danger. If he could overcome and kill those two giants, said the king, he would give him his only daughter as his wife, and half the kingdom as her dowry. He could also have a hundred horsemen to go with him and give him their aid.

  That would be a fine thing for a man like me, thought the little tailor. You don’t get offered a king’s beautiful daughter and half his kingdom every day of the week.

  “Why, certainly,” he replied. “I’ll deal with the giants, and I don’t really need the hundred horsemen. A man who can kill seven at a blow will hardly be afraid of two.”

  So the little tailor set out, and the hundred horsemen followed him. When he came to the outskirts of the forest, he said to his companions, “You can stay here and leave the giants to me.”

  Then he leaped into the forest, looking to right and left as he went. After a while he saw the two giants. They were lying asleep under a tree, snoring so hard that the branches swayed up and down. The little tailor, wasting no time, filled both his pockets with stones and climbed the tree. When he was in the middle of the crown, he slid along a branch until he was sitting just above the sleeping giants, and he dropped stones, one after another, on the first giant’s chest. For some time the giant felt nothing, but at last he woke up, nudged his companion and said, “Hey, why are you hitting me?”

  “You’re dreaming,” said the other giant. “I never hit you.”

  They lay down to go back to sleep, and then the tailor threw a stone down on the second giant.

  “What’s the idea?” asked the second giant. “Why are you throwing stones at me?”

  “I’m not throwing anything at you,” growled the first giant in reply.

  They argued for a while, but since they were tired they let the subject drop, and their eyes closed again. The little tailor began his game again from the beginning. He chose his biggest stone and threw it as hard as he could at the first giant’s chest.

  “Oh, this is too bad!” cried the giant, jumping up like a madman, and he pushed his companion up against the tree so hard that its trunk shook. The second giant repaid him in the same coin, and they fell into such a rage that they tore up tree after tree and hit out at each other until at last they both fell down dead.

  Now the little tailor jumped down.

  “What luck,” he said, “that they didn’t uproot the tree where I was sitting, or I’d have had to jump to another like a squirrel. But a man like me is quick on his feet.” He drew his sword and drove it hard a couple of times into both the giants’ chests, and then he went back to the horsemen and said, “The job’s done. I’ve put an end to both those giants, but it was a hard fight. In their desperation they tore up trees to defend themselves, but that’s no use against a man like me who can kill seven at a blow.”

  “Aren’t you wounded at all?” asked the horsemen.

  “Not a bit of it,” replied the tailor. “They never hurt a hair of my head.”

  The horsemen couldn’t believe him, and rode into the wood, where they found the giants lying in their own blood, with uprooted trees lying around them.

  Now the tailor asked the king for the promised reward. The king, however, regretted his promise, and once again he wondered how he could rid himself of the hero.

  “Before you get my daughter and half the kingdom,” he said, “you must do one more heroic deed. There’s a unicorn running wild in the forest, doing a great deal of damage. First you must catch the unicorn.”

  “I’m even less afraid of a unicorn than of two giants. Seven at a blow is all in the day’s work for me.” So saying, he took a rope and an axe with him, went out into the forest, and told the men who were escorting him to stay behind. He didn’t have to search for long before the unicorn appeared, racing straight towards the tailor as if to impale him on its horn.

  “Take it easy,” he said. “You’re going about this too fast.” He stood there and waited until the animal was very close, and then dodged nimbly behind the tree. The unicorn ran at the tree with all its might, burying its horn so firmly in the tree trunk that it didn’t have the strength to pull it out again, and so the tailor caught it. “I have you now, birdie,” he said, coming out from behind the tree. First he put his rope around the unicorn’s neck, then he hacked the horn out of the tree with his axe, and when all that was done he led the animal away and took it to the king.

  But the king still didn’t want to give him the promised reward, and he made a third condition. Before the wedding, he said, the tailor must catch a wild boar that was ravaging the forest, doing a great deal of damage. The court huntsmen, he told the tailor, would be with him to lend him their aid.

  “Willingly,” said the tailor. “That’s child’s play.”

  He didn’t take the huntsmen into the forest with him, and they were heartily glad of that, because the wild boar had faced them so fiercely several times before that they did not in the least want to hunt the creature.

  When the boar saw the tailor, it ran at him, foaming at the mouth and whetting its tusks, intending to throw him to the ground. However, our nimble hero leaped into a nearby chapel and straight out of the window again with a single bound. The wild boar had run into the chapel after him, but the tailor hurried round outside and slammed the door. The furious animal, being much too heavy and clumsy to jump out of the window itself, was trapped. Now the tailor called to the huntsmen to come and see the captive boar with their own eyes. Meanwhile the hero himself went to the king who now, like it or not, had to keep his promise and give the tailor his daughter and half the kingdom. If he had known that a little tailor and not a heroic warrior stood there before him, he would have regretted it even more. So the wedding was celebrated with great magnificence but little joy, and the tailor became a king.

  After some time the young queen heard her husband talking in his sleep by night, when he was dreaming. “Boy,” said he, “finish that doublet and mend my trousers or I’ll break my yardstick over your head.” That told her where the young gentleman came from, and next morning she complained to her father, asking him to rid her of a husband who was nothing but a tailor. The king comforted her, and said, “Leave your bedroom door unlocked tonight. My servants will be posted outside, and when your husband is asleep they will go in, bind him hand and foot, and put him on board a ship that will take him out into the wide world.”

  The tailor’s wife was satisfied with that, but the king’s armor-bearer, who liked his young master, had overheard it all and told him about the plot.

  “I’ll soon put a stop to that,” said the little tailor, and that evening he lay down in bed with his wife at the usual time. When she thought he had gone to sleep, she got up, unlocked the door and lay down again. The little tailor, who was only pretending to be asleep, began calling out in a loud voice, “Boy, finish that doublet and mend my trousers or I’ll break my yardstick over your head. I’ve struck down seven at a blow, I’ve killed two giants, led a unicorn out of the forest and caught a wild boar, and am I going to be afraid of the men standing outside this bedroom?”

  When the king’s servants heard the tailor talk like that, they were terrified and ran as if the wild hunt were after them. And no one ever dared try to harm him again.

  So now the tailor was a king, and a king he remained for the rest of his days.

  THE SEVEN RAVENS

  There was once a man who had seven sons but no daughter yet, however dearly he wished for one. At last his wife gave him good reason to hope for another child, and when the baby was born it was a gi
rl. The couple were overjoyed, but the child was small and sickly, and had to be given immediate baptism because she was so weak. Her father sent one of the boys in haste, to fetch water from the well for her baptism; the other six brothers went with him, and because each of them wanted to be the first to draw water they were jostling each other, and the jug they had brought fell into the well.

  So there they stood, and didn’t know what to do. None of them dared to go home. When they didn’t come back their father was impatient, and said, “I’m sure those godless boys have been playing some game and forgotten about the water.” He was afraid that the little girl would die unbaptised, and he cried in anger, “I wish those boys were all turned into ravens!” As soon as he had spoken those words, he heard a whirring in the air above his head, looked up, and saw seven pitch-black ravens rise from the ground and fly away.

  The parents couldn’t undo the wish now, and sad as they were to lose their seven sons they found some comfort in their dear little daughter, who quickly recovered her health and grew up to be more beautiful every day. For a long time she didn’t even know that she had ever had brothers, because her mother and father were careful not to mention them, until one day, by chance, she overheard people talking about her, saying that she was certainly a beautiful girl, but her seven brothers’ misfortune was really her fault. Then she was very sad, went to her father and mother and asked if she had ever had brothers, and what had become of them. Now her parents couldn’t keep the secret any longer, but they told her it was Heaven’s will, and her birth had been only the innocent cause of it. However, the story weighed on the girl’s mind every day, and she decided that she must break the spell on her brothers. She could not rest until she set off in secret to go out into the wide world, track down her brothers wherever they might be, and break the spell on them at any price. She took nothing with her but a little ring as a memento of her parents, a loaf of bread to satisfy her hunger, a jug of water to quench her thirst, and a little chair to sit on when she felt tired.