The Complete Grimm's Fairy Tales

by Jacob Grimm

  When, however, the pieces of the moon had united themselves together again in the world below, where darkness had always prevailed, it came to pass that the dead became restless and awoke from their sleep. They were astonished when they were able to see again; the moonlight was quite sufficient for them, for their eyes had become so weak that they could not have borne the brilliance of the sun. They rose up and were merry, and fell into their former ways of living. Some of them went to the play and to dance, others hastened to the public-houses, where they asked for wine, got drunk, brawled, quarreled, and at last took up cudgels, and belabored each other. The noise became greater and greater, and at last reached even to heaven.

  Saint Peter, who guards the gate of heaven, thought the lower world had broken out in revolt and gathered together the heavenly hosts, which were employed to drive back the Evil One when he and his associates storm the abode of the blessed. As these, however, did not come, he got on his horse and rode through the gate of heaven, down into the world below. There he reduced the dead to subjection, bade them lie down in their graves again, took the moon away with him, and hung it up in heaven.

  The Duration of Life

  WHEN GOD created the world and was about to fix the length of each creature’s life, the ass came and asked: “Lord, how long shall I live?” “Thirty years,” replied God; “does that content you?” “Ah, Lord,” answered the ass, “that is a long time. Think of my painful existence! To carry heavy burdens from morning to night, to drag sacks of corn to the mill that others may eat bread, to be cheered and refreshed with nothing but blows and kicks. Relieve me of a portion of this long time.” Then God had pity on him and relieved him of eighteen years. The ass went away comforted, and the dog appeared. “How long would you like to live?” said God to him; “thirty years are too many for the ass, but you will be satisfied with that.” “Lord,” answered the dog, “is that thy will? Consider how I shall have to run, my feet will never hold out so long, and when I have once lost my voice for barking, and my teeth for biting, what will be left for me to do but run from one corner to another and growl?” God saw that he was right, and released him from twelve years of life. Then came the monkey: “You will certainly live thirty years willingly?” said the Lord to him; “you have no need to work as the ass and the dog have to, and will always enjoy yourself.” “Ah! Lord,” he answered, “it may seem as if that were the case, but it is quite different. When it rains millet-porridge I have no spoon. I am always to play merry pranks, and make faces which force people to laugh, and if they give me an apple, and I bite into it, why, it is sour! How often sadness hides itself behind mirth! I shall never be able to hold out for thirty years.” God was gracious and took off ten.

  At last man appeared, joyous, healthy and vigorous, and begged God to appoint his time for him. “Thirty years shall you live,” said the Lord. “Is that enough for you?” “What a short time,” cried man, “when I have built my house and my fire burns on my own hearth; when I have planted trees which blossom and bear fruit, and am just intending to enjoy my life, I am to die! O Lord, lengthen my time.” “I will add to it the ass’s eighteen years,” said God. “That is not enough,” replied the man. “You shall also have the dog’s twelve years.” “Still too little!” “Well, then,” said God, “I will give you the monkey’s ten years also, but more you shall not have.” The man went away, but was not satisfied.

  So man lives seventy years. The first thirty are his human years, which are soon gone; then is he healthy, merry, works with pleasure, and is glad of his life. Then follow the ass’s eighteen years, when one burden after another is laid on him, he has to carry the corn which feeds others, and blows and kicks are the reward of his faithful services. Then come the dog’s twelve years, when he lies in the corner, and growls and has no longer any teeth to bite with, and when this time is over the monkey’s ten years form the end. Then man is weak-headed and foolish, does silly things, and becomes the jest of children.

  Death’s Messengers

  IN ANCIENT times a giant was once traveling on a great highway, when suddenly an unknown man sprang up before him, and said: “Halt, not one step farther!” “What!” cried the giant, “a creature whom I can crush between my fingers, wants to block my way? Who are you that you dare to speak so boldly?” “I am Death,” answered the other. “No one resists me, and you also must obey my commands.” But the giant refused, and began to struggle with Death. It was a long, violent battle, in which at last the giant got the upper hand, and struck Death down with his fist, so that he collapsed by a stone. The giant went his way, and Death lay there conquered, and so weak that he could not get up again. “What will be done now,” said he, “if I stay lying here in a corner? No one will die in the world, and it will get so full of people that they won’t have room to stand beside each other.” In the meantime a young man came along the road, who was strong and healthy, singing a song, and glancing around on every side. When he saw the half-fainting one, he went compassionately to him, raised him up, poured a strengthening draught out of his flask for him, and waited till he regained some strength. “Do you know,” said the stranger, whilst he was getting up, “who I am, and who it is whom you have helped on his legs again?” “No,” answered the youth, “I do not know you.” “I am Death,” said he. “I spare no one, and can make no exception with you,—but that you may see that I am grateful, I promise you that I will not fall on you unexpectedly, but will send my messengers to you before I come and take you away.” “Well,” said the youth, “it is something gained that I shall know when you come, and at any rate be safe from you for so long.” Then he went on his way, and was light-hearted, and enjoyed himself, and lived without thought. But youth and health did not last long. Soon came sicknesses and sorrows, which tormented him by day, and took away his rest by night. “Die, I shall not,” said he to himself, “for Death will send his messengers before that, but I do wish these wretched days of sickness were over.” As soon as he felt himself well again he began once more to live merrily. Then one day someone tapped him on the shoulder. He looked round, and Death stood behind him, and said: “Follow me, the hour of your departure from this world has come.” “What,” replied the man, “will you break your word? Did you not promise me that you would send your messengers to me before coming yourself? I have seen none!” “Silence!” answered Death. “Have I not sent one messenger to you after another? Did not fever come and smite you, and shake you, and cast you down? Has dizziness not bewildered your head? Has not gout twitched you in all your limbs? Did not your ears sing? Did not tooth-ache bite into your cheeks? Was it not dark before your eyes? And besides all that, has not my own brother Sleep reminded you every night of me? Did you not lie by night as if you were already dead?” The man could make no answer; he yielded to his fate, and went away with Death.

  Master Pfriem*

  MASTER PFRIEM was a short, thin, but lively man, who never rested a moment. His face, of which his turned-up nose was the only prominent feature, was marked with smallpox and pale as death; his hair was gray and shaggy, his eyes small, but they glanced perpetually about on all sides. He saw everything, criticized everything, knew everything best, and was always in the right. When he went into the streets, he moved his arms about as if he were rowing; and once he struck the pail of a girl so high in the air that he himself was wetted all over by the water she was carrying. “Idiot!” cried he to her, shaking himself, “could you not see that I was coming behind you?” By trade he was a shoemaker, and when he worked he pulled his thread out with such force that he drove his fist into everyone who did not keep far enough off. No apprentice stayed more than a month with him, for he had always some fault to find with the very best work. At one time it was that the stitches were not even, at another that one shoe was too long, or one heel higher than the other, or the leather not cut large enough. “Wait,” said he to his apprentice, “I will soon show you how we make skins soft,” and he brought a strap and gave him a couple of lashes ac
ross the back. He called them all sluggards. He himself did not turn much work out of his hands, for he never sat still for a quarter of an hour. If his wife got up very early in the morning and lighted the fire, he jumped out of bed, and ran barefooted into the kitchen, crying: “Will you burn my house down for me? That is a fire one could roast an ox by! Does wood cost nothing?” If the servants were standing by their wash-tubs and laughing, and telling each other what they knew, he scolded them, and said: “There stand the geese cackling, and forgetting their work, to gossip! And why fresh soap? Disgraceful extravagance and shameful idleness into the bargain! They want to save their hands, and not rub the things properly!” And out he would run and knock a pail full of soap and water over, so that the whole kitchen was flooded. Someone was building a new house, so he hurried to the window to look on. “There, they are using that red sand-stone again that never dries!” cried he. “No one will ever be healthy in that house! and just look how badly the fellows are laying the stones! Besides, the mortar is good for nothing! It ought to have gravel in it, not sand. I shall live to see that house tumble down on the people who are in it.” He sat down, put a couple of stitches in, and then jumped up again, unfastened his leather-apron, and cried: “I will just go out, and appeal to those men’s consciences.” He stumbled on the carpenters. “What’s this?” cried he, “you are not working by the line! Do you expect the beams to be straight?—one wrong will put all wrong.” He snatched an axe out of a carpenter’s hand and wanted to show him how he ought to cut; but as a cart loaded with clay came by, he threw the axe away, and hastened to the peasant who was walking by the side of it: “You are not in your right mind,” said he; “who yokes young horses to a heavily-laden cart? The poor beasts will die on the spot.” The peasant did not give him an answer, and Pfriem in a rage ran back into his workshop. When he was setting himself to work again, the apprentice reached him a shoe. “Well, what’s that again?” screamed he, “haven’t I told you you ought not to cut shoes so broad? Who would buy a shoe like this, which is hardly anything else but a sole? I insist on my orders being followed exactly.” “Master,” answered the apprentice, “you may easily be quite right about the shoe being a bad one, but it is the one which you yourself cut out, and yourself set to work at. When you jumped up a while ago, you knocked it off the table, and I have only just picked it up. An angel from heaven, however, would never make you believe that.”

  One night Master Pfriem dreamed he was dead, and on his way to heaven. When he got there, he knocked loudly at the door. “I wonder,” said he to himself, “that they have no knocker on the door,—one knocks one’s knuckles sore.” The apostle Peter opened the door, and wanted to see who demanded admission so noisily. “Ah, it’s you, Master Pfriem,” said he; “well, I’ll let you in, but I warn you that you must give up that habit of yours, and find fault with nothing you see in heaven, or you may fare ill.” “You might have spared your warning,” answered Pfriem. “I know already what is seemly, and here, God be thanked, everything is perfect, and there is nothing to blame as there is on earth.” So he went in, and walked up and down the wide expanses of heaven. He looked around him, to the left and to the right, but sometimes shook his head, or muttered something to himself. Then he saw two angels who were carrying away a beam. It was the beam which someone had had in his own eye whilst he was looking for the splinter in the eye of another. They did not carry the beam lengthways, however, but obliquely. “Did anyone ever see such a piece of stupidity?” thought Master Pfriem; but he said nothing, and seemed satisfied with it. “It comes to the same thing after all, whichever way they carry the beam, straight or athwart, if they only get along with it, and truly I do not see them knock against anything.” Soon after this he saw two angels who were drawing water out of a well into a bucket, but at the same time he observed that the bucket was full of holes, and that the water was running out of it on every side. They were watering the earth with rain. “Hang it,” he exclaimed; but happily recollected himself, and thought: “Perhaps it is only a pastime. If it is an amusement, then it seems they can do useless things of this kind especially here in heaven, where people, as I have already noticed, do nothing but idle about.” He went farther and saw a cart which had stuck fast in a deep hole. “It’s no wonder,” said he to the man who stood by it; “who would load so unreasonably? what have you there?” “Good wishes,” replied the man. “I could not get on the right way with it, but still I have pushed it safely up here, and here they won’t leave me stuck.” In fact an angel did come and harness two horses to it. “That’s quite right,” thought Pfriem, “but two horses won’t get that cart out, it must at least have four to it.” Another angel came and brought two more horses; she did not harness them in front of it, however, but behind. That was too much for Master Pfriem: “Clumsy creature,” he burst out, “what are you doing there? Has any one ever since the world began seen a cart drawn in that way? But you, in your conceited arrogance, think that you know everything best.” He was going to say more, but one of the inhabitants of heaven seized him by the throat and pushed him forth with irresistible strength. Beneath the gateway Master Pfriem turned his head round to take one more look at the cart, and saw that it was being raised into the air by four winged horses.

  At this moment Master Pfriem awoke. “Things are certainly arranged in heaven otherwise than they are on earth,” said he to himself, “and that excuses much; but who can see horses harnessed both behind and before with patience; to be sure they had wings, but who could know that? It is, besides, great folly to fix a pair of wings to a horse that has four legs to run with already! But I must get up, or else they will make nothing but mistakes in my house. It is a lucky thing though, that I am not really dead.”

  * Pfriem: a cobbler’s awl.

  The Goose-Girl at the Well

  THERE WAS once upon a time a very old woman, who lived with her flock of geese in a remote clearing in the mountains, and there had a little house. The clearing was surrounded by a large forest, and every morning the old woman took her crutch and hobbled into it. There, however, she was quite active, more so than any one would have thought, considering her age, and collected grass for her geese, picked all the wild fruit she could reach, and carried everything home on her back. Anyone would have thought that the heavy load would have weighed her to the ground, but she always brought it safely home. If anyone met her, she greeted him quite courteously. “Good day, dear countryman, it is a fine day. Ah! you wonder that I should drag grass about, but everyone must take his burden on his back.” Nevertheless, people did not like to meet her if they could help it, and took by preference a round-about way, and when a father with his boys passed her, he whispered to them: “Beware of the old woman. She has claws beneath her gloves; she is a witch.”

  One morning, a handsome young man was going through the forest. The sun shone bright, the birds sang, a cool breeze crept through the leaves, and he was full of joy and gladness. He had as yet met no one, when he suddenly perceived the old witch kneeling on the ground cutting grass with a sickle. She had already thrust a whole load into her bundle, and near it stood two baskets, which were filled with wild apples and pears. “But, good little mother,” said he, “how can you carry all that away?” “I must carry it, dear sir,” answered she, “rich folk’s children have no need to do such things, but with the peasant folk the saying goes: ‘Don’t look behind you, you will only see how crooked your back is!’

  “Will you help me?” she said, as he remained standing by her. “You have still a straight back and young legs, it would be a trifle to you. Besides, my house is not so very far from here, it stands there on the heath behind the hill. How soon you would bound up thither.” The young man took compassion on the old woman. “My father is certainly no peasant,” replied he, “but a rich count; nevertheless, that you may see that it is not only peasants who can carry things, I will take your bundle.” “If you will try it,” said she, “I shall be very glad. You will certainly have to walk for
an hour, but what will that matter to you; only you must carry the apples and pears as well.” The young man felt somewhat uneasy when he heard of an hour’s walk, but the old woman would not let him off, packed the bundle on his back, and hung the two baskets on his arm. “See, it is quite light,” said she. “No, it is not light,” answered the count, and pulled a rueful face. “Verily, the bundle weighs as heavily as if it were full of cobblestones, and the apples and pears are as heavy as lead! I can scarcely breathe.” He had a mind to put everything down again, but the old woman would not allow it. “Just look,” said she mockingly, “the young gentleman will not carry what I, an old woman, have so often dragged along. You are ready with fine words, but when it comes to be earnest, you want to take to your heels. Why are you standing loitering there?” she continued; “step out. No one will take the bundle off again.” As long as he walked on level ground, it was still bearable, but when they came to the hill and had to climb, and the stones rolled down under his feet as if they were alive, it was beyond his strength. Drops of sweat stood on his forehead, and ran, hot and cold, down his back. “Mother,” said he, “I can go no farther. I want to rest a little.” “Not here,” answered the old woman, “when we have arrived at our journey’s end, you can rest; but now you must go forward. Who knows what good it may do you?” “Old woman, you are becoming shameless!” said the count, and tried to throw off the bundle, but he labored in vain; it stuck as fast to his back as if it grew there. He turned and twisted, but he could not get rid of it. The old woman laughed at this, and sprang about quite delighted on her crutch. “Don’t get angry, dear sir,” said she, “you are growing as red in the face as a turkey-cock! Carry your bundle patiently. I will give you a good present when we get home.”