Skip to content
A gingerbread man with an icing smile runs down a country lane at sunset, the old couple, a cow and a pig behind him and a fox waiting in the grass.

The Gingerbread Man

Unknown author

4 min read ages 3 and up Readers’ rating across all languages: 4.2 out of 5, from 6 votes. How did you like this tale?

A little old woman who longs for a child cuts the last of her dough into a little man with currant buttons. The moment she opens the oven door, he jumps out and runs off down the lane as fast as he can go.

Once there was a little old man and a little old woman who lived in a little old house at the edge of a wood.

They were happy nearly all the time, and only one thing was missing. They had no child of their own, and they wished for one very much.

One morning the little old woman was baking gingerbread. She rolled the dough out thin and cut her cakes, and because she was thinking, as she often did, of the child they had never had, she cut the last piece of dough into the shape of a little man. She gave him currants for eyes and a row of currants down his front for buttons, and she slid him into the oven and shut the door.

An old woman in a cap and apron presses a round cutter into rolled dough, a little man already cut from the same sheet, a tray of hearts and stars by the fire.

After a while she went to see whether he was baked.

The moment the oven door was open, out jumped the little gingerbread man. He landed on the floor, crossed the kitchen and was out through the doorway, running away as fast as he could go.

The little old woman called her husband, and the two of them ran after him down the path and out along the lane. But they could not catch him.

Soon the gingerbread man came to a barn full of threshers. He called out to them as he went by:

I’ve run away from a little old woman, A little old man, And I can run away from you, I can!

Then the whole barn full of threshers put down their flails and ran after him. They ran fast, but they could not catch him.

Three threshers stop work in a sunlit barn doorway, flails lowered among the sheaves, one pointing down the track where the gingerbread man is running away.

On he went, until he came to a field full of mowers. He called out to them:

I’ve run away from a little old woman, A little old man, A barn full of threshers, And I can run away from you, I can!

Then the mowers ran after him too, and they could not catch him either.

On he went, until he came to a cow. He called out to her:

I’ve run away from a little old woman, A little old man, A barn full of threshers, A field full of mowers, And I can run away from you, I can!

The cow set off after him at once, but she could not catch him.

On he went, until he came to a pig. He called out to the pig:

I’ve run away from a little old woman, A little old man, A barn full of threshers, A field full of mowers, A cow, And I can run away from you, I can!

The pig ran and ran, and could not catch him.

On he went, until he came across a fox lying in the grass at the edge of the wood. To him he called out just the same:

I’ve run away from a little old woman, A little old man, A barn full of threshers, A field full of mowers, A cow and a pig, And I can run away from you, I can!

Then the fox set out to run. Now, foxes can run very fast. Before the gingerbread man had gone much farther, the fox caught him and began to eat him up.

A red fox sits among bare trees at dusk with the gingerbread man held crosswise in its jaws, his mouth open, the sky orange and violet behind them.

“Oh dear,” said the gingerbread man. “I’m a quarter gone!”

And then he said, “I’m half gone!”

And soon after that, “I’m three-quarters gone!”

And at last he said, “I’m all gone!”

And he never spoke again.

How did you like this tale?

Retold by Talerie from St. Nicholas (opens in a new window) Public domain

Print the coloring page for this taletalerie.com/en/coloring-pages/gingerbread-man-on-the-run

Similar tales

Kolobok

4 min read ages 3 and up

Stone Soup

9 min read ages 4 and up

About this tale

The Gingerbread Man has no known author. The earliest printing we know is the unsigned “The Gingerbread Boy” in St. Nicholas, an American children’s magazine, in May 1875. In that issue the story’s author wrote that a servant girl from Maine had told it to the author’s children; the girl learned it as a child from an old lady.

The author added: “it may possibly have been in print, though I have never seen it.” In 1889 Fanny D. Bergen published “Johnny-Cake”, a very different telling she remembered from her childhood in Northern Ohio. Our own text follows the 1875 magazine story, with a gingerbread man in place of the boy.

“The Gingerbread Boy” (1875) and “Johnny-Cake” (1889)

St. Nicholas, 1875Bergen, 1889
The runawaya gingerbread boya johnny-cake
At homean old couple with no childan old man, an old woman and their little boy
The escapejumps out when the oven door is openedthe oven door pops open, he rolls off
Chasers on the waythreshers, mowers, a cow, a pigwell-diggers, ditch-diggers, a bear, a wolf
The rhyme ends“And I can run away from you, I can!”“and I can outrun you too-o-o!”
The foxsimply runs fasterpretends not to hear, lures him close
The endeaten a quarter at a timesnapped up at once
Show more
I’ve run away from a little old woman, A little old man, And I can run away from you, I can!
St. Nicholas, 1875

What our text does

Our text keeps the whole 1875 chase in its order: the old couple, a barn full of threshers, a field full of mowers, a cow, a pig and at last the fox. The gingerbread man’s rhyme grows by a line at each meeting up to the pig; in the rhyme for the fox, the cow and the pig share a single line, so the last rhyme is no longer than the one before, just as in the magazine. A few things are our own. The magazine opens by saying that somebody’s great, great-grandmother told this story to a little girl; we start straight with the old couple. The old woman cuts out a little man rather than a little boy, and she does it because she is thinking of the child they never had (the magazine tells of their wish for a child and then of the baking, without linking the two). She also gives him currants for eyes and buttons.

The fox plays no trick: foxes can run very fast, so the fox soon catches the gingerbread man and begins to eat him, and the gingerbread man says four short lines, from a quarter gone to all gone. The story says this in a few plain words; nobody comes to the rescue, no moral is added, and nothing else in the tale is frightening.

Other tellings and a different ending

Bergen’s “Johnny-Cake” appeared in The Journal of American Folk-Lore, and Joseph Jacobs reprinted it almost word for word in his English Fairy Tales, with a note pointing to the St. Nicholas story. In G. H. P.’s picture book The Little Gingerbread Man (1910), a cook bakes the gingerbread man for little Bobby, and a cat, a dog and a monkey chase the runaway; there is no fox, and Bobby eats him in three bites, a third at a time. On our site, Kolobok tells of a bun that rolls away singing until a fox outwits it.

The fox who offers to carry the runaway across a river is not in our text or in the 1875 story. That ending is found in another telling printed in the same journal in 1889, sent in by Julia D. Whiting, in which the fox lets Johnny-cake climb onto him to cross the water and eats him on the way.

Sources

Period texts

Catalog

Claims checked against these sources on October 30, 2026.

Coloring pages to print

Where else to find this tale