Two more Grimm Brothers 'Fairy Tales'.

1. How the children played butcher. (second version)

In a city called Franecker located in West Friesland, it happened that young children ages five to six, both boys and girls, were playing together. And so they decided that on little boy should be the butcher, one should be the pig, and a girl was to play the cook, and another girl to be the cook’s assistant. The assistant’s job was to catch the blood from the pig so that they could make sausages from it. The Butcher, as had been agreed, chased after the boy who was playing the pig, pulled him down to the ground and cut his throat with a little knife. The assistant to the cook quickly caught the blood in her little basin, and they made sausages with it and ate them.

A councillor who happens to be passing by happens to see the whole miserable spectacle. He dashes off with the ’butcher’, takes him up to the house of the mayor, who immediately calls for a meeting of all the local councillors. They deliberated at length on the matter and had no idea what to do, for they realised that it had all been child’s play. So one of them, a wise old man, ventured the opinion that the chief judge should put a nice red apple in one hand and a guilder ( a kind of old gold coin, quite valuable) in the other hand. If the child took the apple, he would be declared innocent. If he took the guilder, he would be killed. This was done, and the child, laughing, reached out for the apple and was therefore not subjected to any kind of punishment, and went back to his play.


2. Mother Trudy.

Once upon a time there lived a little girl who was very stubborn and inquisitive, and whenever her parents told her to do something, she refused. How could things possibly go well for her? One day she said to her parents, “I’ve heard so much about Mother Trudy. I’d like to go and visit her. They say that her house is quite strange and that odd things happen there. That’s made me really curious about her.”

The girl’s parents gave her strict orders not to go near the house, and they told her, “Mother Trudy is an evil woman, who does wicked things. If you go and see her, you’re no longer our daughter.”

But the child paid no attention to what her parents said and went to see Mother Trudy anyway. When she arrived at the house, Mother Trudy asked her, “Dear child, why are you so pale?”

“I saw something that really scared me.”

“What did you see?”

“On your staircase I saw a black man.”

“That was just the charcoal burner.”

“Then I saw a green man.”

“That was just the huntsman.”

“And then I saw a blood red man.”

“That was just the butcher.”

“Oh Mother Trudy, I was so scared. I looked through the window and couldn’t see you, but I did see a devil with a fiery head.”

“Aha! Then you saw the witch in all her finery. I’ve been hoping that you would come here, and I’ve been waiting for a long time. You can provide me with some light.”

And with that, she turned the girl into a block of wood and threw it into the fire. And when it was blazing, she sat down beside it, warmed herself up and said, “Now that really does give off a nice bright light.”

(The ‘black’, ‘green’ and ‘red’ men that the girl saw are kinsmen of three horsemen that are associated with the witch of Russian Folklore, the Baba Yaga.)