The Wolf and the Seven Young Kids

The Wolf and the Seven Young Goats (original: Der Wolf und die sieben Geißlein) is a German fable collected by the Brothers Grimm, tale number 5. It is Aarne-Thompson type 123, but has a strong resemblance to The Three Little Pigs and other Aarne-Thomspson type 124 folktales, and to the variant of Little Red Riding Hood that the Grimms collected, where she is rescued.

Synopsis

A mother goat leaves her seven children at home while she ventures into the forest to find food. Before she leaves, she warns her young about the big bad wolf who will try to sneak into the house and gobble them up. The evil wolf will pretend to be their mother and convince the kids to open the door. The young goats will be able to recognize their true mother by her white feet and sweet voice.

The mother goat leaves and the seven kids stay in the house. Before long, they hear a voice at the door; "Let me in children, your mother has returned". His gruff voice betrays him and the goats do not let him in. A little while later, they hear another voice at the door: "Let me in children, your mother has returned". This time the voice is high and sweet like their mother's. They are about to let him in when the youngest kid looks under the crack in the door and notices the wolf's big, black feet. They refuse to open the door, and the wolf goes away again.

The wolf goes to the bakery and buys some flour, smearing it all over his coat, turning his black feet white. He returns to the goat's house, and says "Let me in children, your mother has returned". The kids see his white feet and hear his sweet voice, so they open the door. The wolf jumps into the house and gobbles up six of the kids. The youngest goat hides from the wolf and does not get eaten.

Later that day, the mother goat returns home from the forest. She is distraught to find the door wide open and all but one of her children missing. She looks around and sees the wolf, fast asleep under a tree. He had eaten so much, he could not move. The mother goat calls to her youngest child to quickly get her a pair of scissors, a needle and some thread. She cuts open the wolf's belly, and the six goat children spring out miraculously unharmed. They fill the wolf's belly with rocks, and the mother sews it back up again. When the wolf wakes up, he is very thirsty. He goes to the river to drink, but falls in and drowns under the weight of the rocks. The goat family lived happily ever after.

See also

• Big Bad Wolf
• The Boy Who Cried Wolf
• The Goat and Her Three Kids
• Three Little Pigs

Trivia

• A spoof of this story appears in an episode of The Noozles, with the goat family replaced with a koala family and the wolf replaced by a human who plans to sell them to a zoo.
• In one of Richard Scarry's versions of the story (adapted in 1975 for Richard Scarry's Animal Nursery Tales, he had previously adapted it in 1953 for a Little Golden Book), the wolf was supposed to eat the kids when he gets into their house. Instead, he puts them into a large sack and tries to take it back to his cave. While the wolf is napping the mother goat cuts the sack open and frees the kids. She then fills it with stones. When the wolf returns home and finds he's been tricked, in the book version, he merely packs his things and heads over to his mother's for supper and never returns. When the story was adapted by Golden Book Video in 1986 on the videocassette "3 Richard Scarry Tales," the ending was modified so after finding the stones, the wolf vows to return, but a police officer arrives to interrogate him about his earlier thieveries. He goes out to his well to ditch the stones, but ends up falling down the well with them. Notably, this same wolf appeared in Scarry's version of The Three Little Pigs as well.
• There is movie based on this fable called Rock'n'Roll Wolf in English, and "Mama" in Russian and Romanian. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ma-ma
• There is children's tabletop game based on this tale, The Uncatchables (Nicht zu fassen), designed by Fréderic Moyersoen and originally published in Germany in a multilingual edition by Zoch in 2009.
• The Ōkami-san (novel series) spawned an anime: Okami-san and Her Seven Companions.
• In May 2012, musician Maïa Vidal released a music video that references this fairy tale.

External links

• Nice old English version