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Grimms' Fairy Tales
Clever
Grethel
There was once a cook named Grethel, who wore
shoes with red rosettes, and when she walked out with them
on, she turned herself this way and that, and thought, "You
certainly are a pretty girl!" And when she came home
she drank, in her gladness of heart, a draught of wine,
and as wine excites a desire to eat, she tasted the best
of whatever she was cooking until she was satisfied, and
said, "The cook must know what the food is like."
It came to pass that the master one day said to her, "Grethel,
there is a guest coming this evening; prepare me two fowls
very daintily." "I will see to it, master,"
answered Grethel. She killed two fowls, scalded them, plucked
them, put them on the spit, and towards evening set them
before the fire, that they might roast. The fowls began
to turn brown, and were nearly ready, but the guest had
not yet arrived. Then Grethel called out to her master,
"If the guest does not come, I must take the fowls
away from the fire, but it will be a sin and a shame if
they are not eaten directly, when they are juiciest."
The master said, "I will run myself, and fetch the
guest." When the master had turned his back, Grethel
laid the spit with the fowls on one side, and thought, "Standing
so long by the fire there, makes one hot and thirsty; who
knows when they will come? Meanwhile, I will run into the
cellar, and take a drink." She ran down, set a jug,
said, "God bless it to thy use, Grethel," and
took a good drink, and took yet another hearty draught.
Then she went and put the fowls down again to the fire,
basted them, and drove the spit merrily round. But as the
roast meat smelt so good, Grethel thought, "Something
might be wrong, it ought to be tasted!" She touched
it with her finger, and said, "Ah! how good fowls are!
It certainly is a sin and a shame that they are not eaten
directly!" She ran to the window, to see if the master
was not coming with his guest, but she saw no one, and went
back to the fowls and thought, "One of the wings is
burning! I had better take it off and eat it." So she
cut it off, ate it, and enjoyed it, and when she had done,
she thought, "the other must go down too, or else master
will observe that something is missing." When the two
wings were eaten, she went and looked for her master, and
did not see him. It suddenly occurred to her, "Who
knows? They are perhaps not coming at all, and have turned
in somewhere." Then she said, "Hallo, Grethel,
enjoy yourself, one fowl has been cut into, take another
drink, and eat it up entirely; when it is eaten you will
have some peace, why should God's good gifts be spoilt?"
So she ran into the cellar again, took an enormous drink
and ate up the one chicken in great glee. When one of the
chickens was swallowed down, and still her master did not
come, Grethel looked at the other and said, "Where
one is, the other should be likewise, the two go together;
what's right for the one is right for the other; I think
if I were to take another draught it would do me no harm."
So she took another hearty drink, and let the second chicken
rejoin the first.
While she was just in the best of the eating, her master
came and cried, hurry up, "Haste thee, Grethel, the
guest is coming directly after me!" "Yes, sir,
I will soon serve up," answered Grethel. Meantime the
master looked to see that the table was properly laid, and
took the great knife, wherewith he was going to carve the
chickens, and sharpened it on the steps. Presently the guest
came, and knocked politely and courteously at the house-door.
Grethel ran, and looked to see who was there, and when she
saw the guest, she put her finger to her lips and said,
"Hush! hush! get away as quickly as you can, if my
master catches you it will be the worse for you; he certainly
did ask you to supper, but his intention is to cut off your
two ears. Just listen how he is sharpening the knife for
it!" The guest heard the sharpening, and hurried down
the steps again as fast as he could. Grethel was not idle;
she ran screaming to her master, and cried, "You have
invited a fine guest!" "Eh, why, Grethel? What
do you mean by that?" "Yes," said she, "he
has taken the chickens which I was just going to serve up,
off the dish, and has run away with them!" "That's
a nice trick!" said her master, and lamented the fine
chickens. "If he had but left me one, so that something
remained for me to eat." He called to him to stop,
but the guest pretended not to hear. Then he ran after him
with the knife still in his hand, crying, "Just one,
just one," meaning that the guest should leave him
just one chicken, and not take both. The guest, however,
thought no otherwise than that he was to give up one of
his ears, and ran as if fire were burning under him, in
order to take them both home with him.
From Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, Household Tales, trans. Margaret
Hunt (London: George Bell, 1884), 1:307-309. |
