Fairy Tales from the Brothers Grimm: A New English Version (3 page)

TWO

THE CAT AND THE MOUSE SET UP HOUSE

Once there was a cat who struck up a friendship with a mouse. He went on at such length about the warmth of the affection he felt for her, how kind she was, how prudent, how neatly she twirled her tail, and so on, that the mouse finally agreed to set up house with him.

‘But we must make provision for the winter,’ said the cat. ‘If we don’t, we’ll go hungry just when we need food most of all. And a little mouse like you can’t go out foraging in the cold. Even if you didn’t die of exposure, you’d be sure to get caught in a trap.’

The mouse thought this advice was excellent, and they put their money together and bought a pot of fat. The next question was where to put it. They discussed the problem at great length, and finally the cat said, ‘You know, I don’t think there’s anywhere safer than the church. No one would dare to steal anything from there. We can put it under the altar, and we won’t touch it till we really need it.’

So they hid the pot in the church. But it wasn’t long before the cat felt a craving for the delicious fat, so he said to the mouse, ‘Oh, by the way, I’ve been meaning to tell you: my cousin has just given birth to a little boy kitten, white all over with brown spots.’

‘Oh, how lovely!’ said the mouse.

‘Yes, and they’ve asked me to be godfather. Do you mind if I leave the housekeeping to you for a day and go and hold him at the font?’

‘No, of course not,’ said the mouse. ‘There’s sure to be some nice food afterwards. If you get a tasty mouthful, think of me. I’d love to taste that sweet red christening wine.’

Of course, the cat’s story was a pack of lies. He had no cousin at all, and no one who knew him would dream of asking him to be a godfather. What he did was to go straight to the church, creep under the altar, open the pot of fat and lick the skin off the top.

Then he strolled out as calm as you please and went up to his usual haunt on the rooftops. There he lay in the sun licking his whiskers and enjoying the memory of the fat. It was evening before he went home.

‘Welcome home!’ said the mouse. ‘Did you have a nice day? What did they call the child?’

‘Top Off,’ said the cat very coolly, inspecting his claws.

‘Top Off? That’s a strange thing to call a kitten,’ said the mouse. ‘Is it an old family name?’

‘I can’t see anything strange about it,’ said the cat. ‘It’s no odder than Crumb Thief, which is what each of your godchildren is called.’

Not long afterwards the cat felt a yearning for the fat again, and said to the mouse, ‘My dear friend, can I ask a favour? I’ve been asked to be godfather to another kitten, and since he has a white ring around his throat, it would be wrong to refuse. Can you keep house alone once more? I’ll be back this evening.’

The good mouse said yes, she didn’t mind at all, and wished the kitten well. The cat set off at once, and crept along behind the town wall to the church, where he slunk inside and licked up half the pot of fat.

‘Nothing tastes as good as what you eat by yourself,’ he thought.

When he got home the mouse said, ‘And what did they call the child?’

‘Half Gone,’ said the cat.

‘
Half Gone?
What sort of name is that? I’ve never heard of such a thing. I’m sure it’s not in the almanac of saints.’

The fat had tasted so rich and unctuous that the cat’s mouth was soon watering again.

‘All good things come in threes,’ he said to the mouse. ‘What do you think? I’ve been asked to be godfather yet again. This time the child is totally black – there’s not a white hair on his body apart from his paws. That’s very rare, you know, it only happens once every few years. You will let me go, won’t you?’

‘Top Off? Half Gone?’ said the mouse. ‘Such odd names they have in your family! They make me wonder, they really do.’

‘Oh, fiddle-de-dee,’ said the cat. ‘You sit indoors from morning till night twiddling your tail, and all kinds of nonsense comes into your head. You ought to get out in the fresh air.’

The mouse wasn’t sure about that, but while the cat was away she worked hard to clean their house and make everything neat and tidy.

Meanwhile, the cat was in the church, busily licking out the pot of fat. He had to scoop the very last of it out with his paws, and then he sat there admiring his reflection in the bottom of the pot.

‘Emptying the pot is such sweet sorrow,’ he thought.

It was late at night by the time he waddled home. As soon as he came in, the mouse asked what name had been given the third child.

‘I suppose you won’t like this one either,’ said the cat. ‘They called him All Gone.’

‘All Gone!’ cried the mouse. ‘Dear oh dear, I’m worried about that, honestly I am. I’ve never seen that name in print. What can it mean?’

Then she wrapped her tail around herself and went to sleep.

After that no one asked the cat to be godfather. And when the winter arrived, and there was no food at all to be found outside, the mouse thought of their pot of delicious fat safely hidden under the altar in the church.

She said, ‘Come on, Cat, let’s go and find that pot of fat we put away. Think how good it’ll taste.’

‘Yes,’ said the cat. ‘You’ll enjoy it as much as sticking that dainty little tongue of yours out of the window.’

So they set out. And when they got to the church, the pot was still there, to be sure, but of course it was empty.

‘Oh! Oh! Oh!’ said the mouse. ‘I’m beginning to see a pattern here! Now I know what sort of a friend you are. You were no godfather! You came here and guzzled it all up. First top off—’

‘Be careful!’ said the cat.

‘Then half gone—’

‘I warn you!’

‘Then all—’

‘One more word and I’ll eat you too!’

‘—gone!’ said the mouse, but it was too late: the cat sprang on her and gobbled her up in a moment.

Well, what else did you expect? That’s just the sort of thing that happens in this world.

***

Tale type:
ATU 15, ‘The Theft of Food by Playing Godfather’

Source:
a story told to the Grimm brothers by Gretchen Wild

Similar stories:
Italo Calvino: ‘Mrs Fox and Mr Wolf’ (
Italian Folktales
); Joel Chandler Harris: ‘Mr Rabbit Nibbles Up the Butter’ (
The Complete Tales of Uncle Remus
)

A simple and very common fable
.
Several of the variants employ a scatological earthiness: the real culprit smears butter under the sleeping partner’s tail to demonstrate the partner’s guilt. I borrowed the idea of the reflection in the bottom of the pot from the Uncle Remus tale, which, like this version, ends in a shrug about the world’s injustice: ‘Tribbalashun seem like she’s a waitin’ roun’ de cornder fer ter ketch one en all un us’ (
The Complete Tales of Uncle Remus
, p. 53).

THREE

THE BOY WHO LEFT HOME TO FIND OUT ABOUT THE SHIVERS

Once there was a father who had two sons. The elder one was quick-witted and bright and able to deal with anything, but the younger one was so dim that he understood nothing and learned nothing. Everybody who knew them said, ‘His father’s going to have trouble with that boy.’

If there was any job that needed doing, it was always the elder son who had to do it. But there was one thing the elder son wouldn’t do: if his father asked him to get something as night was falling, or when it was completely dark, and if his way took him through the graveyard or some creepy place like that, he’d say, ‘Oh, no, father, I won’t go there, it gives me the shivers.’

Or in the evening when people were sitting around the fire telling stories of ghosts or hauntings, the listeners would sometimes say, ‘Oh, that gives me the shivers.’

The younger son used to sit in the corner and listen, but he didn’t understand what the shivers were. ‘Everyone says: “It gives me the shivers, it gives me the shivers!” I don’t know what they’re talking about. I haven’t got any shivers, and I was listening just as hard as they were.’

One day his father said to him: ‘Listen, boy, you’re getting big and strong. You’re growing up, and it’s time you began to earn a living. Look at your brother! He’s learned to work hard, but you’ve learned nothing, as far as I can see.’

‘Oh, yes, father,’ he said. ‘I’d like to earn a living, I really would. I’d love to learn how to get the shivers. That’s something I don’t understand at all.’

His elder brother heard him, and laughed. ‘What a blockhead!’ he thought. ‘He’ll never come to any good. You can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear.’

The father could only sigh. ‘Well, it won’t do you any harm to find out about the shivers,’ he said, ‘but you won’t get a living by shivering.’

A few days later the sexton dropped in for a chat. The father couldn’t help it: he poured out all his worries about the younger son, what a fool he was, how he couldn’t learn anything, how he understood nothing at all.

‘Take this, for example,’ he said. ‘When I asked him what he wanted to do for a living, he said he wanted to learn how to get the shivers.’

‘If that’s what he wants,’ said the sexton, ‘you send him along to me. I’ll give him the shivers all right. It’s time he was licked into shape.’

‘That’s a good idea,’ said the father, thinking, ‘Maybe it’ll come better from someone else. It’ll do the boy good, anyway.’

So the sexton took the boy back to his house, and gave him the job of ringing the church bell. Once he’d got the hang of that, the sexton woke him up at midnight one night and told him to go up the church tower and ring the bell.

‘Now you’ll learn what the shivers are,’ he thought, and while the boy was pulling on his clothes, the sexton crept up the tower ahead of him.

The boy reached the belfry, and when he turned around to get hold of the rope, he saw a white figure standing there at the top of the stairs just opposite the sound hole.

‘Who’s that?’ he said.

The figure didn’t speak or move.

‘You’d better answer me,’ shouted the boy. ‘You’ve got no business here in the middle of the night.’

The sexton kept quite still. He was sure the boy would think he was a ghost.

The boy shouted again: ‘I warn you. Answer me, or I’ll throw you downstairs. Who are you and what do you want?’

The sexton thought, ‘He wouldn’t throw me downstairs, I’m sure.’

And he stood there like a stone, not making a sound.

So the boy shouted once more, and still getting no answer, he yelled, ‘Well, you’ve asked for it, and here it comes!’

And he rushed at the white figure and shoved him down the stairs. The ghost tumbled all the way down and lay moaning in a heap in the corner. Seeing that there was going to be no more trouble from him, the boy rang the bell as he’d been told and then went back to bed.

The sexton’s wife had been waiting all this time, and when her husband didn’t come back she started to worry. She went to wake the boy.

‘Where’s my husband?’ she said. ‘Did you see him? He climbed the tower before you did.’

‘Dunno,’ said the boy. ‘I never saw him. There was someone in a white sheet standing near the sound hole, and he wouldn’t answer and he wouldn’t go away, so I thought he was up to no good and I shoved him down the stairs. Go and take a look – he’s probably still there. I’d be sorry if it was him. He fell with ever such a thump.’

The wife ran out and found her husband groaning with the pain of a broken leg. She managed to carry him home, and then she ran screaming and yelling to the boy’s father.

‘Your fool of a son!’ she cried. ‘D’you know what he’s done? He threw my husband right from the top of the belfry! The poor man’s broken his leg and I shouldn’t wonder if half the rest of his bones are in pieces as well! Take the good-for-nothing wretch out of our house before he brings it down around our ears. I never want to see him again.’

The father was horrified. He ran to the sexton’s house and shook the boy out of his bed.

‘What the hell are you playing at?’ he said. ‘Desecrating the sexton? The Devil must have put you up to it!’

‘But father,’ said the boy, ‘I’m innocent. I had no idea it was the sexton. He was standing there by the sound hole with a white sheet over him. I couldn’t tell who it was, and I warned him three times.’

‘God in heaven!’ said the father. ‘You bring me nothing but trouble. Get out of my sight, go on. I don’t even want to look at you any more.’

‘I’d be glad to,’ said the boy. ‘Just let me wait till daylight, and I’ll go out into the world and leave you alone. I can look for the shivers, and then I’ll have a skill and I’ll be able to earn a living at last.’

‘Shivers, indeed! Do what you like, it’s all the same to me. Here you are – here’s fifty talers for you. Take them and go out into the wide world, but don’t you dare tell anyone where you come from or who your father is. I’d be ashamed.’

‘All right, father, yes, I’ll do as you wish. If that’s all you want me to do, I’ll easily remember it.’

And as soon as morning came, the boy put his fifty talers in his pocket and set off, saying to himself all the time, ‘I wish I could get the shivers! If only I could get the shivers!’

A man who happened to be going along the same way heard what the boy was saying. They hadn’t gone much further when a gallows came in sight.

‘Look,’ said the man, ‘here’s a tip for you. See that gallows? Seven men got married to the rope-maker’s daughter there, and now they’re learning to fly. If you sit down there beneath it and wait till night comes, then you’ll get the shivers all right.’

‘Really?’ said the boy. ‘It’s as easy as that? Well, I’ll soon learn in that case. If I get the shivers before morning, you can have my fifty talers. Just come back here and see me then.’

He went to the gallows, sat himself down beneath it, and waited for night to fall. He felt cold, so he made himself a fire, but by midnight a wind arose and he couldn’t get warm in spite of the blazing logs. The wind pushed the hanged men to and fro so that the bodies jostled against one another, and the boy thought, ‘If I’m freezing down here by the fire, those poor fellows up there must be even colder.’ He put up a ladder, climbed up and untied them, one after the other, and brought all seven of them down.

Then he put another couple of logs on the fire, and arranged the dead men around it to warm themselves; but all they did was sit there quite still, even when their clothes caught fire.

‘Hey, watch out,’ he said. ‘I’ll hang you up again if you’re not careful.’

Of course, the dead men took no notice. They just continued to stare at nothing while their clothes blazed up.

This made the boy angry. ‘I told you to be careful!’ he said. ‘I don’t want to catch fire just because you’re too lazy to pull your legs out of the flames.’

And he hung them all up again in a row, and lay down by his fire and fell asleep.

Next morning, he woke up to find the man demanding his fifty talers.

‘You got the shivers last night all right, didn’t you?’ he said.

‘No,’ said the boy. ‘How could I learn anything from those stupid fellows? They didn’t say a word, and they just sat there quite still while their trousers caught fire.’

The man saw there was no chance of getting his fifty talers, so he threw his hands in the air and left. ‘What a fool!’ he said to himself. ‘I’ve never met such a dimwit in all my life.’

The boy went on his way, still muttering to himself, ‘If only I could get the shivers! If only I could get the shivers!’

A carter was walking along behind him, and hearing what he said, caught up with him and asked: ‘Who are you?’

‘Dunno,’ said the boy.

‘Where d’you come from, eh?’

‘Dunno.’

‘Who’s your father, then?’

‘I’m not allowed to say.’

‘And what are you muttering to yourself all the time?’

‘Oh,’ said the boy, ‘I want to get the shivers, but no one can teach me how.’

‘You’re a poor simpleton,’ said the carter. ‘Step along with me and I’ll see that you find a place to stay, at least.’

The boy went along with him, and that evening they came to an inn where they decided to stay the night. As they went into the parlour the boy said again, ‘If only I could get the shivers! Oh, if only I could get the shivers!’

The innkeeper heard what he said, and laughed, saying, ‘If that’s what you want, you’re in luck. There’s a chance for you very close to here.’

‘Sshh,’ said the innkeeper’s wife, ‘don’t talk about that. Think of all those poor fellows who lost their lives. It would be such a pity if this young man’s lovely eyes never saw the light of day again!’

‘But I want to get the shivers,’ said the boy. ‘That’s why I left home. What did you mean? What’s the chance you talked about? Where is it?’

He wouldn’t stop pestering till the innkeeper told him that there was a haunted castle nearby, where anyone who wanted to learn about the shivers could do so easily if only he managed to keep watch there for three nights.

‘The king promised that whoever does that can have his daughter in marriage,’ he said, ‘and I swear the princess is the most beautiful girl who ever lived. What’s more there are great heaps of treasure in the castle, guarded by evil spirits. You can have the treasure too, if you stay there for three nights – there’s enough to make anyone rich. Plenty of young men have gone up there and tried, but no one’s come out again.’

Next morning the boy went to the king and said, ‘If you let me, I’ll stay three nights in the haunted castle.’

The king eyed him, and liked the look of him. So he said, ‘I’ll let you take three things into the castle with you, but they must be things that aren’t alive.’

The boy said, ‘In that case, I’d like things to make a fire with, a lathe and a woodcarver’s bench with a knife.’

The king ordered that all these things should be taken to the castle during daylight. When night fell the boy went inside and lit a bright fire in one of the rooms, dragged the woodcarver’s bench and knife beside it, and sat down at the lathe.

‘Oh, if only I could get the shivers!’ he said. ‘But this place doesn’t look very promising either.’

When it was nearly midnight he stirred the fire up. He was just blowing on it when he heard voices from a corner of the room.

‘
Miaow, miaow!
We’re so cold!’ they said.

‘What are you yelling about?’ he said over his shoulder. ‘If you’re cold, come and sit down by the fire.’

Next moment two huge black cats leaped out of the shadows and sat on either side of him, staring at him with their coal-red eyes.

‘Fancy a game of cards?’ they said.

‘Why not?’ he replied. ‘But let me see your claws first.’

So they stretched out their paws.

‘Good God,’ he said, ‘what long nails you’ve got. I’ll have to trim them before we start to play.’

And he seized the cats by their necks, lifted them up to the woodcarver’s bench, and tightened the vice around their paws.

‘I don’t like the look of these at all,’ he said. ‘They’ve put me right off the idea of playing cards.’

And he struck them both dead, and threw them into the moat.

He had just sat down again when from every corner of the room there came black cats and black dogs, each of them wearing a red-hot collar with a red-hot chain. They piled in from every direction until he couldn’t move. They howled, they barked, they shrieked horribly, they jumped into the fire and scattered the burning logs in all directions.

He watched curiously for a minute or two, but finally he lost patience. Seizing his knife, he cried, ‘Out with you, you scoundrels!’

And he hacked away merrily. Some of them he killed, and the others ran away. When all the live ones had fled, he threw the dead ones into the moat, and came back inside to warm up.

But his eyes wouldn’t stay open, so he went to the large bed in the corner of the room.

‘This looks comfortable,’ he thought. ‘Just the job!’

But as soon as he lay down, the bed began to move. It trundled to the door, which flew open, and then rolled all the way through the castle, gathering speed as it went.

‘Not bad,’ he said, ‘but let’s go faster still.’

And on it rolled as though drawn by six fine horses, along the corridors, up the stairs and down again, until suddenly – hop! It turned upside down, trapping him underneath. It lay on him like a mountain.

But he threw off the blankets and the pillows and clambered out.

‘I’ve finished with the bed now,’ he called out. ‘If anyone else wants it, they can have it.’

And he lay down by his fire, and went peacefully to sleep.

When the king came in the morning he found him lying there, and said, ‘Oh, that’s a pity. The ghosts have killed him. Such a handsome young man, too!’

The boy heard him, and got up at once. ‘They haven’t killed me yet, your majesty,’ he said.

‘Oh! You’re alive!’ said the king. ‘Well, I’m glad to see you. How did you get on?’

‘Very well, thanks,’ said the boy. ‘One night down, two more to go.’

He went back to the inn. The innkeeper was astonished.