The Wolf and the Seven Little Kids

Once upon a time there was an old goat who had seven little kids, and she loved them the way a mother loves her children. One day she had to go into the forest to fetch food, so she called all seven of them to her and said,

“Dear children, I am going out into the forest. Be on your guard against the wolf. If he gets in, he will eat you all up, skin, hair and everything. The villain often disguises himself, but you will know him at once by his rough voice and his black feet.”

“Dear mother,” said the little kids, “we will take good care of ourselves. You can go without worrying about us.”

Then the old goat bleated and set off down the road with a light heart.

It was not long before someone knocked at the door and called,

“Open the door, dear children. Your mother is here, and she has brought something back for each of you.”

But the little kids heard the rough voice and knew that it was the wolf. “We will not open the door,” they cried. “You are not our mother. She has a soft, sweet voice, and your voice is rough. You are the wolf!”

So the wolf went off to a shopkeeper and bought himself a big lump of chalk. He ate it, and it made his voice soft. Then he came back, knocked at the door and called,

“Open the door, dear children. Your mother is here, and she has brought something back for each of you.”

But the wolf had laid his black paw on the window ledge. The children saw it and cried, “We will not open the door. Our mother’s feet are not black like yours. You are the wolf!”

Then the wolf ran to a baker and said, “I have hurt my foot. Spread some dough over it for me.”

And when the baker had spread his paw with dough, the wolf ran to a miller and said, “Sprinkle white flour on my paw.”

The miller thought to himself, “The wolf means to cheat somebody,” and he refused.

“If you will not do it,” said the wolf, “I will eat you.”

Then the miller was afraid and made the paw white for him. That is how people are.

Now the villain came to the door for the third time, knocked and said, “Open the door, dear children. Your mother is here, and she has brought something back for each of you from the forest.”

“Show us your paw first,” cried the little kids, “so that we know you are our dear mother.”

So he laid his paw on the window ledge, and when they saw that it was white, they believed that everything he said was true, and they opened the door. And who walked in? The wolf.

They were terrified and tried to hide. The first sprang under the table, the second into the bed, the third into the stove, the fourth into the kitchen, the fifth into the cupboard, the sixth under the washbasin, and the seventh into the case of the tall clock. But the wolf nosed them out one after another and did not stand on ceremony: he swallowed each one down as he came to it. Only the youngest, in the clock case, he never found. When the wolf had eaten his fill, he ambled away, lay down under a tree in the green meadow outside and fell asleep.

Not long afterwards the old goat came home from the forest. Oh, what a sight met her there! The door stood wide open. The table, the chairs and the benches were knocked over, the washbasin lay in pieces, and the quilt and the pillows had been dragged off the bed. She looked for her children, but they were nowhere to be found. She called them by name, one after another, and nobody answered. At last, when she came to the youngest, a small voice called,

“Dear mother, I am here in the clock case.”

She lifted him out, and he told her that the wolf had come and had eaten all the others. You can imagine how she wept for her poor children.

At last, in her grief, she went outside, and the youngest kid ran along with her. When she came to the meadow, there lay the wolf under the tree, snoring so loudly that the branches shook. She looked him over from every side and saw that something was moving and struggling in his stuffed belly.

“Good heavens,” she thought, “can my poor children still be alive, the ones he gulped down for his supper?”

So the little kid had to run home and fetch scissors, a needle and thread. Then the goat cut open the monster’s belly, and she had hardly made one snip when a little kid stuck out its head, and as she cut further all six sprang out one after another, every one of them alive and not hurt in the least, for in his greed the monster had swallowed them down whole. What a joy that was! They hugged their dear mother and skipped about as if it were a wedding.

But the old goat said, “Now go and look for big stones. We will fill the wicked beast’s belly with them while he is still lying there asleep.”

Then the seven little kids dragged the stones over as fast as they could and put as many of them into his belly as would fit. The mother sewed him up again in a great hurry, so that he noticed nothing and never even stirred.

When the wolf had finally slept his fill, he got to his feet, and because the stones in his stomach made him so thirsty, he set off for a well to drink. But as soon as he began to walk and to sway from side to side, the stones in his belly knocked together and rattled. So 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 came to the well and bent over the water to drink, the heavy stones pulled him in, and he drowned there miserably. When the seven little kids saw it, they came running to the spot and cried out, “The wolf is dead! The wolf is dead!” and they danced with their mother round the well for joy.