Knoist un sine dre Sühne

Knoist and His Three Sons

Jacob Grimm and Wilhelm Grimm
Translated by Margaret Hunt*

Between Werrel and Soist there lived a man whose name was Knoist, and he had three sons. One was blind, the other lame, and the third stark-naked. Once on a time they went into a field, and there they saw a hare. The blind one shot it, the lame one caught it, the naked one put it in his pocket. Then they came to a mighty big lake, on which there were three boats, one sailed, one sank, the third had no bottom to it. They all three got into the one with no bottom to it. Then they came to a mighty big forest in which there was a mighty big tree; in the tree was a mighty big chapel; in the chapel was a sexton made of beech-wood and a box-wood parson, who dealt out holy-water with cudgels.

“How truly happy is that one
Who can from holy water run!”


*This tale has been taken from the 1884 translation by Margaret Hunt, of the ‘definitive’ 1857 edition of the Grimms’ Kinder- und Hausmärchen:

Household Tales by the Brothers Grimm
By Jacob Grimm and Wilhelm Grimm
Translated by Margaret Hunt.

This translation contains all the 200 tales in the final edition, and is faithful to the original German. This work is in the public domain.