Grimm's Household Tales

There was once a poor shepherd boy whose father and mother were dead, and the authorities placed him in the house of a rich man, who was to feed him and bring him up. The man and his wife, however, had bad hearts. They were greedy and anxious about their riches, and they were vexed whenever anyone put a morsel of their bread in his mouth. Whatever the poor young fellow did, he got little to eat and only more blows.

One day he had to watch a hen and her chickens, but she ran through a thorn hedge with them, and a hawk darted down at once and carried her off through the air. The boy shouted, “Thief! Thief! Rascal!” with all his strength. But what good did that do? The hawk did not bring its prey back. The man heard the noise and ran to the spot, and as soon as he saw that his hen was gone, he flew into a rage and gave the boy such a beating that the boy could not move for two days. Then the boy had to take care of the chickens without the hen, but now his difficulty was greater, for one ran here and another ran there. He thought he was doing something very wise when he tied them all together with a string, because then the hawk would not be able to steal any of them away from him. But he was very much mistaken. After two days, worn out from running about and from hunger, he fell asleep. The bird of prey came and seized one of the chickens, and because the others were tied fast to it, it carried them all off together, perched in a tree, and devoured them. The farmer was just coming home, and when he saw the misfortune, he became angry and beat the boy so mercilessly that the boy was forced to lie in bed for several days.

When he was on his feet again, the farmer said to him, “You are too stupid for me. I cannot make a herdsman of you; you must go as an errand boy.” Then the farmer sent him to carry a basketful of grapes to the judge and gave him a letter as well. On the way, hunger and thirst tormented the unhappy boy so violently that he ate two of the bunches of grapes. He took the basket to the judge, but when the judge had read the letter and counted the bunches, he said, “Two clusters are missing.” The boy confessed quite honestly that, driven by hunger and thirst, he had devoured the two that were missing. The judge wrote a letter to the farmer and asked for the same number of grapes again. The boy also had to take these to the judge with a letter. Since he was again so extremely hungry and thirsty, he could not help it and again ate two bunches. But first he took the letter out of the basket, put it under a stone, and sat down on it so that the letter could not see and betray him. The judge, however, again made him account for the missing bunches. “Ah,” said the boy, “how have you learned that? The letter could not know about it, for I put it under a stone before I did it.” The judge could not help laughing at the boy’s simplicity, and he sent the man a letter in which he cautioned him to take better care of the poor boy, not to let him go without food and drink, and also to teach him what was right and what was wrong.

“I will soon show you the difference,” said the hard man. “If you want to eat, you must work, and if you do anything wrong, you will be taught quite sufficiently by blows.”

The next day the farmer set him a hard task. He was to chop two bundles of straw into fodder for the horses, and then the man threatened him: “In five hours,” he said, “I will be back, and if the straw is not cut to chaff by that time, I will beat you until you cannot move a limb.” The farmer went to the yearly fair with his wife, the manservant, and the maid, and left nothing behind for the boy but a small bit of bread. The boy sat down on the bench and began to work with all his might. As he got warm, he took off his little coat and threw it on the straw. In his terror that he would not finish in time, he kept cutting constantly, and in his haste, without noticing it, he chopped up his little coat along with the straw. He became aware of the misfortune too late; there was no repairing it. “Ah,” he cried, “now all is over with me! The wicked man did not threaten me for nothing. If he comes back and sees what I have done, he will kill me. Rather than that, I will take my own life.”

The boy had once heard the farmer’s wife say, “I have a pot with poison in it under my bed.” She, however, had said that only to keep greedy people away, for there was honey in it. The boy crept under the bed, brought out the pot, and ate everything that was in it. “I do not know,” he said, “people say death is bitter, but it tastes very sweet to me. It is no wonder that the farmer’s wife has so often longed for death.” He sat down in a little chair and was prepared to die. But instead of becoming weaker, he felt himself strengthened by the nourishing food. “It cannot have been poison,” he thought, “but the farmer once said there was a small bottle of poison for flies in the box where he keeps his clothes. That, no doubt, will be the true poison and will bring death to me.” It was not poison for flies, however, but Hungarian wine. The boy got out the bottle and emptied it. “This death tastes sweet too,” he said, but shortly afterward, when the wine began to rise to his head and stupefy him, he thought his end was drawing near. “I feel that I must die,” he said. “I will go to the churchyard and look for a grave.” He staggered out, reached the churchyard, and lay down in a newly dug grave. He lost his senses more and more. In the neighborhood was an inn where a wedding was being celebrated. When he heard the music, he imagined he was already in Paradise, until at last he lost all consciousness. The poor boy never woke again; the heat of the strong wine and the cold night dew deprived him of life, and he remained in the grave where he had lain down.

When the farmer heard the news of the boy’s death, he was terrified and afraid of being brought to justice. Indeed, his distress took such a powerful hold of him that he fell to the ground in a faint. His wife, who was standing at the hearth with a pan of hot fat, ran to help him. But the flames darted against the pan, and the whole house caught fire. In a few hours it lay in ashes, and they spent the rest of their lives in poverty and misery, tormented by the pangs of conscience.