# Little Red-Cap _Brothers Grimm_ · 8 min read · ages 6-10 A girl in a red cap strays from the forest path and a wolf swallows her grandmother, then her, until a huntsman cuts him open and frees them alive. A second wolf climbs onto the roof to wait for her, so the grandmother has the girl fill the trough below with sausage water, and the smell draws him down, only to drown. --- Once upon a time there was a sweet little girl whom everyone loved at first sight, and no one loved her more than her grandmother, who could never think of enough to give the child. Once she gave her a little cap of red velvet, and it suited her so well that she would wear nothing else, and so everybody called her Little Red-Cap. One day her mother said to her, “Come here, Little Red-Cap. Here is a piece of cake and a bottle of wine. Take them out to your grandmother. She is ill and weak, and they will do her good. Set off before the day grows hot, and when you are on your way, walk properly and do not run off the path, or you will fall and break the bottle, and then your grandmother will have nothing. And when you come into her room, do not forget to say good morning, and do not go peeping into every corner first.” “I will do everything just as you say,” said Little Red-Cap, and she gave her mother her hand on it. Her grandmother lived out in the wood, half an hour’s walk from the village. Just as Little Red-Cap came in among the trees, a wolf met her. She did not know what a wicked animal he was, and she was not the least bit afraid of him. “Good day, Little Red-Cap,” he said. “Thank you kindly, wolf.” “Where are you off to so early?” “To my grandmother’s.” “And what are you carrying under your apron?” “Cake and wine. We baked yesterday, so my poor sick grandmother is to have something good, to make her stronger.” “Where does your grandmother live, Little Red-Cap?” “A good quarter of an hour farther on in the wood. Her house stands under the three big oak trees, with the hazel hedges just below. You must surely know it,” said Little Red-Cap. The wolf thought to himself, “What a tender young thing. What a plump mouthful she will make, better eating than the old woman. I must go about this cleverly, so that I catch them both.” So he walked along beside her for a while, and then he said, “Look at the pretty flowers standing all around you, Little Red-Cap. Why do you not look about you? I do not believe you even hear how sweetly the little birds are singing. You walk straight ahead as solemnly as if you were going to school, and out here in the wood everything is merry.” Little Red-Cap lifted her eyes, and when she saw the sunbeams dancing here and there among the trees, and flowers standing everywhere she looked, she thought, “If I bring grandmother a fresh bunch of flowers, that will please her too. It is so early in the day that I shall still be there in good time.” And she ran off the path into the wood to look for flowers. Whenever she had picked one, she thought she saw a prettier one a little farther on, and ran after it, and so she went deeper and deeper into the wood. The wolf, meanwhile, went straight to the grandmother’s house and knocked at the door. “Who is out there?” “Little Red-Cap, bringing cake and wine. Open the door.” “Just press the latch,” the grandmother called. “I am too weak to get up.” The wolf pressed the latch, the door swung open, and without a word he went straight to the grandmother’s bed and swallowed her down. Then he put on her clothes, set her cap on his head, lay down in her bed and drew the curtains shut. Little Red-Cap, meanwhile, had been running about after flowers, and when she had gathered so many that she could carry no more, she remembered her grandmother and set off on the way to her. She was surprised to find the door standing open, and when she stepped into the room, everything felt so strange to her that she thought, “Oh dear, how uneasy I feel today, and other times I am so glad to be at grandmother’s.” She called out, “Good morning,” but no one answered. So she went to the bed and drew back the curtains. There lay her grandmother with her cap pulled far down over her face, looking very strange indeed. “Oh, grandmother, what big ears you have!” “The better to hear you with.” “Oh, grandmother, what big eyes you have!” “The better to see you with.” “Oh, grandmother, what big hands you have!” “The better to take hold of you with.” “But, grandmother, what a dreadful big mouth you have!” “The better to eat you with!” Hardly had the wolf said it when he sprang out of bed in one bound and swallowed poor Little Red-Cap. Once the wolf had satisfied his hunger, he lay down in the bed again, fell asleep and began to snore very loudly. A huntsman was just going past the house and thought, “How the old woman is snoring. I had better see whether anything is wrong with her.” So he stepped into the room, and when he came to the bed he saw the wolf lying in it. “So I find you here, you old sinner,” he said. “I have been looking for you a long time.” He was about to raise his gun when it came into his mind that the wolf might have eaten the grandmother, and that she might still be saved. So he did not shoot. He took a pair of scissors instead and began to cut open the sleeping wolf’s belly. When he had made a snip or two he saw the little red cap shining, and after a snip or two more the girl sprang out and cried, “Oh, how frightened I was! How dark it was inside the wolf!” And then the old grandmother came out alive as well, though she could hardly breathe. Little Red-Cap ran and fetched great stones, and they filled the wolf’s body with them, and when he woke and tried to spring away, the stones were so heavy that he dropped down at once and fell dead. Then all three of them were glad. The huntsman drew off the wolf’s skin and went home with it, the grandmother ate the cake and drank the wine that Little Red-Cap had brought and grew strong again, and Little Red-Cap thought to herself, “As long as I live, I will never again leave the path by myself and run into the wood, when my mother has forbidden it.” It is also told that another time, when Little Red-Cap was bringing baked things to the old grandmother again, a second wolf spoke to her and tried to coax her off the path. But Little Red-Cap was on her guard and went straight on her way, and she told her grandmother that she had met the wolf, and that he had wished her good day, but had looked at her with such wicked eyes. “If we had not been on the open road, he would have eaten me,” she said. “Come,” said the grandmother, “we will lock the door, so that he cannot get in.” Soon afterwards the wolf knocked and called, “Open the door, grandmother. I am Little Red-Cap, and I am bringing you some cakes.” But they kept quite still and did not open the door. So the old grey wolf crept round the house once or twice, and at last he jumped up onto the roof, meaning to wait until Little Red-Cap went home in the evening, and then to steal after her and eat her in the dark. But the grandmother saw what he had in mind. In front of the house stood a great stone trough, and she said to the child, “Take the pail, Little Red-Cap. I boiled sausages yesterday, so carry that water out to the trough.” Little Red-Cap carried and carried until the great trough was quite full. Then the smell of the sausages rose to the wolf’s nose. He sniffed and peered down, and at last he stretched his neck so far that he could no longer keep his footing and began to slide, and he slid down off the roof, straight into the great trough, and drowned. And Little Red-Cap went happily home, and no one ever did her any harm. --- - Read online: https://talerie.com/en/tales/little-red-cap-original - Source: Household Tales by Brothers Grimm, trans. Margaret Hunt (Project Gutenberg #5314) (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/5314) - Public-domain basis: Talerie contemporary retelling (CC0 2026), based on: Household Tales by Brothers Grimm, trans. Margaret Hunt (Project Gutenberg #5314) — translation: author died 1859/1863 (+70 passed); translator Margaret Hunt died 1912 (+70 passed) - License: CC0-1.0 (https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/)