Grimm's Household Tales

There was once a poor woodcutter who toiled from early morning until late at night. When at last he had saved some money, he said to his boy, “You are my only child. I will spend the money that I have earned by the sweat of my brow on your education. If you learn some honest trade, you can support me in my old age, when my limbs have grown stiff and I am obliged to stay at home.” Then the boy went to a high school and learned diligently, so that his teachers praised him, and he remained there a long time. When he had worked through two classes but was not yet perfect in everything, the little pittance that the father had earned was all spent, and the boy was obliged to return home to him. “Ah,” said the father sorrowfully, “I can give you no more, and in these hard times I cannot earn a farthing more than will suffice for our daily bread.” “Dear father,” answered the son, “do not trouble yourself about it. If it is God’s will, it will turn to my advantage. I shall soon accustom myself to it.” When the father wanted to go into the forest to earn money by helping to pile and stack wood and also to chop it, the son said, “I will go with you and help you.” “No, my son,” said the father, “that would be hard for you. You are not accustomed to rough work and will not be able to bear it. Besides, I have only one ax and no money left with which to buy another.” “Just go to the neighbor,” answered the son. “He will lend you his ax until I have earned one for myself.” The father then borrowed an ax from the neighbor, and the next morning at daybreak they went out into the forest together. The son helped his father and was quite merry and brisk about it. But when the sun was right overhead, the father said, “We will rest and have our dinner, and then we shall work twice as well.” The son took his bread in his hands and said, “Just you rest, father. I am not tired. I will walk up and down a little in the forest and look for birds’ nests.” “Oh, you fool,” said the father, “why should you want to run about there? Afterward you will be tired and no longer able to raise your arm. Stay here and sit down beside me.” The son, however, went into the forest, ate his bread, was very merry, and peered in among the green branches to see whether he could discover a bird’s nest anywhere. So he went up and down to see whether he could find a bird’s nest until at last he came to a great, dangerous-looking oak, which was certainly already many hundreds of years old and which five men could not have reached around. He stood still and looked at it and thought, “Many a bird must have built its nest in that.” Then all at once it seemed to him that he heard a voice. He listened and became aware that someone was crying in a very muffled voice, “Let me out, let me out!” He looked around but could discover nothing. Nevertheless, he thought that the voice came out of the ground. Then he cried, “Where are you?” The voice answered, “I am down here among the roots of the oak tree. Let me out! Let me out!” The student began to loosen the earth under the tree and to search among the roots, until at last he found a glass bottle in a little hollow. He lifted it up and held it against the light, and then he saw a creature shaped like a frog, springing up and down in it. “Let me out! Let me out!” it cried anew, and the student, suspecting no harm, drew the cork out of the bottle. Immediately a spirit rose out of it and began to grow, and grew so fast that in a very few moments he stood before the student, a fearsome fellow as big as half the tree by which he was standing. “Do you know,” he cried in a terrifying voice, “what your wages are for having let me out?” “No,” replied the student fearlessly, “how should I know that?” “Then I will tell you,” cried the spirit. “I must strangle you for it.” “You should have told me that sooner,” said the student, “for I would then have left you shut up. But my head will stand fast in spite of all you can do. More than one person must be consulted about that.” “More persons here, more persons there,” said the spirit. “You shall have the wages you have earned. Do you think that I was shut up there for such a long time as a favor? No, it was a punishment for me. I am the mighty Mercurius. I must strangle whoever releases me.” “Wait,” answered the student, “not so fast. I must first know that you really were shut up in that little bottle and that you are the right spirit. If you can indeed get in again, I will believe it, and then you may do with me as you wish.” The spirit said haughtily, “That is a very trifling feat,” drew himself together, and made himself as small and slender as he had been at first, so that he crept through the same opening, and right through the neck of the bottle, in again. He was hardly inside when the student thrust the cork he had drawn back into the bottle and threw the bottle back among the roots of the oak into its old place, and the spirit was tricked.

And now the student was about to return to his father, but the spirit cried very piteously, “Ah, do let me out! Ah, do let me out!” “No,” answered the student, “not a second time! He who has once tried to take my life shall not be set free by me, now that I have caught him again.” “If you will set me free,” said the spirit, “I will give you so much that you will have plenty all the days of your life.” “No,” answered the boy, “you would cheat me as you did the first time.” “You are throwing away your own good luck,” said the spirit. “I will do you no harm but will reward you richly.” The student thought, “I will venture it. Perhaps he will keep his word, and in any case he shall not get the better of me.” Then he took out the cork, and the spirit rose up from the bottle as he had done before, stretched himself out, and became as big as a giant. “Now you shall have your reward,” said he, and handed the student a little bag just like a bandage and said, “If you spread one end of this over a wound, it will heal, and if you rub steel or iron with the other end, it will be changed into silver.” “I must just try that,” said the student, and he went to a tree, tore off the bark with his ax, and rubbed the place with one end of the bandage. It closed up immediately and was healed. “Now it is all right,” he said to the spirit, “and we can part.” The spirit thanked him for his release, and the boy thanked the spirit for his present and went back to his father.

“Where have you been racing about?” said the father. “Why have you forgotten your work? I said at once that you would never succeed at anything.” “Do not worry, father. I will make it up.” “Make it up, indeed,” said the father angrily. “There is no skill in that.” “Take care, father. I will soon hew that tree there so that it splits.” Then he took his bandage, rubbed the ax with it, and dealt a mighty blow, but since the iron had changed into silver, the edge bent. “Hey, father, just look what a bad ax you have given me. It has become quite crooked.” The father was shocked and said, “Ah, what have you done? Now I shall have to pay for that, and I do not have the means, and that is all the good I have gotten from your work.” “Do not get angry,” said the son. “I will soon pay for the ax.” “Oh, you blockhead,” cried the father, “with what will you pay for it? You have nothing but what I give you. These are students’ tricks that are sticking in your head, but you have no idea of woodcutting.” After a while the student said, “Father, I can really work no more. We had better take the rest of the day off.” “Eh, what!” he answered. “Do you think I will sit with my hands lying in my lap like you? I must go on working, but you may take yourself off home.” “Father, I am in these woods for the first time. I do not know my way alone. Do go with me.” As his anger had now abated, the father at last let himself be persuaded and went home with him. Then he said to the son, “Go and sell your damaged ax and see what you can get for it, and I must earn the difference in order to pay the neighbor.” The son took the ax and carried it into town to a goldsmith, who tested it, laid it in the scales, and said, “It is worth four hundred thalers. I do not have that much on hand.” The son said, “Give me what you have. I will lend you the rest.” The goldsmith gave him three hundred thalers and remained a hundred in his debt. The son then went home and said, “Father, I have the money. Go and ask the neighbor what he wants for the ax.” “I know that already,” answered the old man. “One thaler, six groschen.” “Then give him two thalers, twelve groschen. That is double and enough. See, I have money in plenty,” and he gave the father a hundred thalers and said, “You shall never know want. Live as comfortably as you like.” “Good heavens!” said the father, “how have you come by these riches?” The student then told how all had come to pass, and how he, trusting in his luck, had made such a good hit. But with the money that was left, he went back to the high school and went on learning more, and since he could heal all wounds with his bandage, he became the most famous doctor in the whole world.