Array The Brothers Grimm - Fairy Tales from the Brothers Grimm - A New English Version

‘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).

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.’