The Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm (Rackham)/The Little Peasant
The Little Peasant
HERE was once a village in which there was only one poor Peasant; all the others were very well-to-do, so they called him the Little Peasant. He had not even got a single cow, far less money with which to buy one, though he and his Wife would have been so glad to possess one.
One day he said to his Wife, ‘Look here, I have a good idea: there is my Godfather, the joiner, he shall make us a wooden calf and paint it brown, so that it looks like a real one, and perhaps some day it will grow into a cow.’
This plan pleased his Wife, so his Godfather, the joiner, cut out and carved the calf and painted it properly, and made its head bent down to look as if it were eating.
Next morning, when the cows were driven out, the Little Peasant called the Cowherd in, and said: ‘Look here, I have a little calf, but it is very small and has to be carried.’
The Cowherd said: ‘All right,’ took it in his arms, carried it to the meadow and put it down in the grass.
The calf stood there all day and appeared to be eating, and the Cowherd said, ‘It will soon be able to walk by itself; see how it eats.’
In the evening, when he was going home, he said to the calf, ‘If you can stand there all day and eat your fill, you may just walk home on your own legs, I don’t mean to carry you!’
But the Little Peasant was standing by his door waiting for the calf, and when the Cowherd came through the village without it, he at once asked where it was.
The Cowherd said, ‘It is still standing there; it would not stop eating to come with us.’
The Old Man had to sit by himself, and ate his food from a wooden bowl.
So they went back together to the field, but some one had stolen the calf in the meantime, and it was gone.
The Cowherd said, ‘It must have run away.’
But the Little Peasant said, ‘Nothing of the kind,’ and he took the Cowherd up before the Bailiff, who condemned him, for his carelessness, to give the Little Peasant a cow, in place of the lost calf.
So at last the Little Peasant and his Wife had the long-wished-for cow; they were delighted, but they had no fodder and could not give it anything to eat, so very soon they had to kill it.
They salted the meat, and the man went to the town to sell the hide, intending to buy another calf with the money he got for it. On the way he came to a mill, on which a raven sat with a broken wing; he took it up out of pity and wrapped it in the hide. Such a storm of wind and rain came on that he could go no further, so he went into the mill to ask for shelter.
Only the Miller’s Wife was at home, and she said to the Little Peasant, ‘You may lie down in the straw there.’ And she gave him some bread and cheese to eat.
The Little Peasant ate it, and then lay down with the hide by his side.
The Miller’s Wife thought, ‘He is tired, and won’t wake up.’
Soon after a Priest came in, and he was made very welcome by the woman, who said, ‘My husband is out, so we can have a feast.’
The Little Peasant was listening, and when he heard about the feast he was much annoyed, because bread and cheese had been considered good enough for him.
The Woman then laid the table, and brought out a roast joint, salad, cake and wine. They sat down, but just as they were beginning to eat, somebody knocked at the door.
The Woman said, ‘Good heavens, that is my Husband!’
She quickly hid the joint in the oven, the wine under the pillow, the salad on the bed, and the cake under the bed, and, last of all, she hid the Priest in the linen chest. Then she opened the door for her Husband, and said, ‘Thank heaven you are back: the world might be coming to an end with such a storm as there is!’
The Miller saw the Little Peasant lying on the straw, and said, ‘What is that fellow doing there?’
‘Oh!’ said his Wife, ‘the poor fellow came in the middle of the storm and asked for shelter, so I gave him some bread and cheese, and told him he might lie on the straw!’
‘He’s welcome as far as I’m concerned,’ said the Man; ‘but get me something to eat, Wife, I’m very hungry.’
His Wife said, ‘I have nothing but bread and cheese.’
‘Anything will please me,’ said the Man; ‘bread and cheese is good enough.’ And his eyes falling on the Little Peasant, he said, ‘Come along and have some too.’
The Little Peasant did not wait for a second bidding, but got up at once, and they fell to.
The Miller noticed the hide on the floor in which the Raven was wrapped, and said, ‘What have you got there?’
‘I have a soothsayer there,’ answered the Little Peasant.
‘Can he prophesy something to me ?’ asked the Miller.
‘Why not?’ answered the Little Peasant; ‘but he will only say four things, the fifth he keeps to himself.’
The Miller was inquisitive, and said, ‘Let me hear one of his prophecies.’
The Little Peasant squeezed the Raven’s head and made him croak.
The Miller asked, ‘What did he say?’
The Little Peasant answered, ‘First he said that there was a bottle of wine under the pillow.’
‘That ’s a bit of luck!’ said the Miller, going to the pillow and finding the wine. ‘What next?’
The Little Peasant made the Raven croak again, and said, ‘Secondly, he says there is a joint in the oven.’
‘That ’s a bit of luck!’ said the Miller, going to the oven and finding the joint.
The Little Peasant again squeezed the Raven to make him prophesy, and said, ‘Thirdly, he says there is some salad in the bed.’
‘That ’s a bit of luck!’ said the Miller, finding the salad.
Again the Little Peasant squeezed the Raven to make him crook, and said, ‘Fourthly, he says there is a cake under the bed.’
‘That ’s a bit of luck!’ cried the Miller, as he found the cake.
Now the two sat down at the table together; but the Miller’s Wife was in terror. She went to bed, and took all the keys with her.
The Miller would have liked to know what the fifth prophecy could be, but the Little Peasant said, ‘We will quietly eat these four things first, the fifth is something dreadful.’
So they went on eating, and then they bargained as to how much the Miller should pay for the fifth prophecy, and at last they agreed upon three hundred thalers.
Then again the Little Peasant squeezed the Raven’s head and made him crow very loud.
The Miller said, ‘What does he say?’
The Little Peasant answered, ‘He says the devil is hidden in the linen chest.’
The Miller said, ‘The devil will have to go out’; and he opened the house door and made his Wife give up the keys. The Little Peasant unlocked the linen chest, and the Priest took to his heels as fast as ever he could.
The Miller said, ‘I saw the black fellow with my own eyes; there was no mistake about it.’
The Little Peasant made off at dawn with his three hundred thalers.
After this the Little Peasant began to get on in the world; he built himself a pretty new house, and the other Peasants said, ‘He must have been where the golden snow falls and where one brings home gold in bushels.’
Then he was summoned before the Bailiff to say where he got all his riches.
He answered, ‘I sold my cow-hide in the town for three hundred thalers.’
When the other Peasants heard this they all wanted to enjoy the same good luck, so they ran home, killed their cows, and took the hides off to get the same price for them.
The Bailiff said, ‘My maid must have the first chance.’ When she reached the town the buyer only gave her three thalers for the hide; and he did not even give the others so much, for he said, ‘What on earth am I to do with all these hides?’
Now the Peasants were enraged at the Little Peasant for having stolen a march upon them, and to revenge themselves they had him up before the Bailiff and accused him of cheating.
The innocent Little Peasant was unanimously condemned to death; he was to be put into a cask full of holes and rolled into the water. He was led out, and a Priest was brought to read a mass; and all the people had to stand at a distance.
As soon as the Little Peasant looked at the Priest, he knew he was the man who had been at the Miller’s. He said to him, ‘I saved you out of the chest, now you must save me out of the cask.’
Just then a Shepherd came by driving a flock of sheep, and the Little Peasant knew that he had long wanted to be Bailiff himself; so he called out as loud as he could, ‘No, I will not, and if all the world wished it I would not.’
The Shepherd, who heard what he said, came and asked, ‘What ’s the matter, what will you not do?’
The Little Peasant said, ‘They want to make me Bailiff if I will sit in this cask, but I won’t.’
‘If that is all,’ said the Shepherd, ‘I will get into the cask myself.’
The Little Peasant said, ‘If you will get into the cask you shall be made Bailiff.’
The Shepherd was delighted, and got in, and the Little Peasant fastened down the cover upon him. The flock of sheep he took for himself, and drove them off.
Then the Priest went back to the Peasants and told them the mass was said; so they went and rolled the cask into the water.
When it began to roll the Shepherd cried out, ‘I am quite ready to be Bailiff!’
The Peasants thought that it was only the Little Peasant crying out, and they said, ‘Very likely; but you must go and look about you down below first.’ And they rolled the cask straight into the water.
Thereupon they went home, and when they entered the village what was their surprise to meet the Little Peasant calmly driving a flock of sheep before him, as happy as could be. They cried, ‘Why, you Little Peasant, how do you come here again? How did you get out of the water?’
‘ Well,’ said the Little Peasant, ‘I sank deep, deep down till I touched the bottom; then I knocked the head of the cask off, crept out, and found myself in a beautiful meadow in which numbers of lambs were feeding, and I brought this flock back with me.’
The other Peasants said, ‘Are there any more?’
‘Oh yes, plenty,’ answered the Little Peasant, ‘more than we should know what to do with.’
Then the other Peasants planned to fetch some of these sheep for themselves; they would each have a flock.
But the Bailiff said, ‘I go first.’
They all ran together to the water; the sky just then was flecked with little fleecy clouds and they were reflected in the water. When the Peasants saw them, they cried, ‘Why, there they are! We can see the sheep below the water!’
The Bailiff pressed forward, and said, ‘I will be the first to go down to look about me; I will call you if it is worth while.’ So he sprang into the water with a great splash.
The others thought he cried, ‘Come along!’ and the whole party plunged in after him.
So all the Peasants perished, and, as the Little Peasant was the sole heir, he became a rich man.