Grimm's Household Tales

There was once a mother who had a little boy seven years old, who was so handsome and lovable that no one could look at him without liking him, and she herself worshiped him above everything in the world. Now it so happened that he suddenly became ill, and God took him to himself, and for this the mother could not be comforted and wept both day and night. But soon afterward, when the child had been buried, he appeared by night in the places where he had sat and played during his life, and if the mother wept, he wept also, and when morning came, he disappeared. Because the mother would not stop crying, however, he came one night in the little white shroud in which he had been laid in his coffin, with his wreath of flowers around his head, and stood on the bed at her feet and said, “Oh, mother, do stop crying, or I will never fall asleep in my coffin, for my shroud will not dry because of all your tears, which fall on it.” The mother was afraid when she heard that and wept no more. The next night the child came again and held a little light in his hand and said, “Look, mother, my shroud is nearly dry, and I can rest in my grave.” Then the mother gave her sorrow into God’s keeping and bore it quietly and patiently, and the child came no more but slept in his little bed beneath the earth.