"The Little Peasant" - The Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm

There was once a village in which there was only one poor Peasant ; all the others were very well-to-do, so they called him the Little Peasant. He had not even got a single cow, far less money with which to buy one, though he and his Wife would have been so glad to possess one.

One day he said to his Wife, ' Look here, I have a good idea : there is my Godfather, the joiner, he shall make us a wooden calf and paint it brown, so that it looks like a real one, and perhaps some day it will grow into a cow.'

This plan pleased his Wife, so his Godfather, the joiner, cut out and carved the calf and painted it properly, and made its head bent down to look as if it were eating.

Next morning, when the cows were driven out, the Little Peasant called the Cowherd in, and said : ' Look here, I have a little calf, but it is very small and has to be carried.'

The Cowherd said : ' All right,' took it in his arms, carried it to the meadow and put it down in the grass.

The calf stood there all day and appeared to be eating, and the Cowherd said, ' It will soon be able to walk by itself ; see how it eats.'

In the evening, when he was going home, he said to the calf, ' If you can stand there all day and eat your fill, you may just walk home on your own legs, I don't mean to carry you ! '

But the Little Peasant was standing by his door waiting for the calf, and when the Cowherd came through the village without it, he at once asked where it was.

The Cowherd said, ' It is still standing there ; it would not stop eating to come with us.'

The Little Peasant said, ' But I must have my little calf back.'

So they went back together to the field, but some one had stolen the calf in the meantime, and it was gone.

The Cowherd said, ' It must have run away.'

But the Little Peasant said, ' Nothing of the kind,' and he took the Cowherd up before the Bailiff, who condemned him, for his carelessness, to give the Little Peasant a cow, in place of the lost calf.

So at last the Little Peasant and his Wife had the longwished-for cow ; they were delighted, but they had no fodder and could not give it anything to eat, so very soon they had to kill it.

They salted the meat, and the man went to the town to sell the hide, intending to buy another calf with the money he got for it. On the way he came to a mill, on which a raven sat with a broken wing ; he took it up out of pity and wrapped it in the hide. Such a storm of wind and rain came on that he could go no further, so he went into the mill to ask for shelter.

Only the Miller's Wife was at home, and she said to the Little Peasant, ' You may lie down in the straw there.' And she gave him some bread and cheese to eat.

The Little Peasant ate it, and then lay down with the hide by his side.

The Miller's Wife thought, ' He is tired, and won't wake up.'

Soon after a Priest came in, and he was made very welcome by the woman, who said, ' My husband is out, so we can have a feast.'

The Little Peasant was listening, and when he heard about the feast he was much annoyed, because bread and cheese had been considered good enough for him.

The Woman then laid the table, and brought out a roast joint, salad, cake and wine. They sat down, but just as they were beginning to eat, somebody knocked at the door.

The Woman said, ' Good heavens, that is my Husband ! '