Read the fairy tale Elena loves
Hansel and Gretel
Two children lost in a forest, a house built of gingerbread and sugar, and a sister whose quick thinking saves them both: one of the oldest tales the Brothers Grimm wrote down.
At the edge of a great forest lived a poor woodcutter with his two children, Hansel and Gretel. One year the harvest failed, and there was so little bread in the house that the woodcutter lay awake at night, not knowing how he would feed them. His wife told him there was only one way: to take the children deep into the forest and leave them there, so that at least the two grown-ups might survive.
Hansel heard them talking through the thin wall. He crept outside in the moonlight and filled his pockets with small white pebbles from the path. The next day, as the family walked into the forest, Hansel quietly dropped a pebble every few steps. When their father left them by a fire and did not come back, the children waited until the moon rose, and the pebbles shone like little coins, and led them all the way home.
The second time
But the hard winter was not over, and before long the children were led into the forest again. This time Hansel had not been able to get outside for pebbles, and he had only a piece of bread, which he crumbled behind him as they walked. When night came and they looked for the trail, it was gone. The birds of the forest had eaten every crumb.
Hansel and Gretel walked for two days, hungry and cold, until they came to a clearing they had never seen before. In the middle of it stood a little house, and as they came closer they saw that the walls were gingerbread, the roof was cake, and the windowpanes were clear spun sugar. Too hungry to be careful, they broke off a piece of the roof and began to eat.
The house in the clearing
The door opened, and an old woman came out, leaning on a stick. She spoke kindly and invited them in, and gave them pancakes and milk and two small beds. But in the morning her kindness was gone. She locked Hansel in a cage in the yard and told Gretel to feed him well, so that soon there would be enough of him to make a meal. Gretel cried, but she did as she was told, and she watched, and she waited.
The old woman could barely see, and every few days she would come to the cage and ask Hansel to hold out a finger, so she could feel whether he had grown plump enough. Hansel held out a thin dry chicken bone instead, and the old woman, puzzled that he stayed so bony, grew impatient. One morning she told Gretel to light the great oven, saying they would not wait any longer.
Gretel’s turn
The old woman opened the oven door and told Gretel to lean in and see if it was hot enough. But Gretel had understood by now what kind of house this was. She said she did not know how to lean in, and asked the old woman to show her. The moment the old woman bent forward to look, Gretel gave her a firm push, closed the iron door, and ran to let her brother out of the cage.
The house was full of the old woman’s treasure, pearls and pieces of gold, and the children filled their pockets before they left. They found their way out of the forest, crossed a wide pond on the back of a white duck, and came at last to their father’s door. He had grieved for them every day since, and their stepmother had died that same hard winter, and from then on the three of them shared what little they had, and it was always enough, because they were together.
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Franconian Lullaby
Play this softly while you read Hansel and Gretel aloud: a traditional handplayed lullaby from Franconia, a land of deep forests in the south of Germany.
More stories, more lullabies
This is one tale in a growing collection of traditional stories from around the world, each one paired, where we can, with a real lullaby from the same culture.