The Wolf and the Seven Little Kids

Once there was an old goat who had seven little kids and loved them dearly. One morning, before she went into the forest for food, she called them to her.

“Dear children, I am going out to the forest,” she said. “Watch out for the wolf. If he gets in, he will swallow you all. You will know him by his rough voice and his black feet.”

The kids promised, and off she went with an easy mind.

Before long someone knocked and called, “Open the door, dear children. Your mother is home, and she has brought something back for each of you.”

“We will not open the door,” cried the kids. “Our mother’s voice is soft and sweet, and yours is rough. You are the wolf!”

So the wolf ate a lump of chalk to soften his voice, came back and called, “Open the door, dear children. Your mother is home, and she has brought something back for each of you.”

But he had laid his black paw on the window ledge, and the kids cried, “Our mother has no black feet. You are the wolf!”

Then he had a baker spread dough over his paw, and frightened a miller into dusting it white with flour.

A third time he knocked and called, “Open the door, dear children. Your mother is home, and she has brought something back for each of you.”

“Show us your paw first,” cried the kids, “so we know it is you.” He laid it on the sill, and it was white, so they opened the door.

In walked the wolf, and the kids ran to hide: under the table, into the bed, into the stove, into the kitchen, into the cupboard, under the washbasin, and the youngest into the clock case. The wolf found them one by one and swallowed them down, all but the youngest. Then he went out to the meadow and fell asleep under a tree.

Soon the old goat came home. The door stood open and the house was turned upside down. She called her children by name, and no one answered. Then a small voice said, “Dear mother, I am inside the clock.”

She lifted him out, and he told her that the wolf had come and eaten all the others. How she wept for her poor children!

At last she went out to the meadow with the youngest. There lay the wolf, snoring so loudly that the branches shook, and something was stirring inside him.

“Can my children still be alive?” she said.

She sent the youngest home for scissors, a needle and thread, and with one careful snip she opened the sleeping wolf. Out sprang all six, alive and not hurt at all, for the greedy creature had swallowed them whole.

What rejoicing there was! They hugged their mother and jumped for joy.

“Now fetch some good heavy stones,” said the old goat, “and we will fill him up while he sleeps.”

The kids brought them as fast as they could and packed them into his belly, and their mother stitched him up so neatly that he never stirred.

When the wolf woke, he was so thirsty that he set out for the well. At every step the stones knocked and rattled inside him, and he cried,

What rumbles and tumblesand knocks at my bones?I thought it was six little kids,but it’s nothing but stones.

And when he bent over the water to drink, the heavy stones pulled him in, and that was the end of him. The seven kids came running and called, “The wolf is dead! The wolf is dead!” and danced round the well with their mother.