Das eigensinnige Kind
The Wilful Child
Jacob Grimm and Wilhelm Grimm
Translated by Margaret Hunt*
Once upon a time there was a child who was wilful, and would not do at her mother wished. For this reason God had no pleasure in her, and let her become ill, and no doctor could do her any good, and in a short time she lay on her death-bed. When she had been lowered into her grave, and the earth was spread over her, all at once her arm came out again, and stretched upwards, and when they had put it in and spread fresh earth over it, it was all to no purpose, for the arm always came out again. Then the mother herself was obliged to go to the grave, and strike the arm with a rod, and when she had done that, it was drawn in, and then at last the child had rest beneath the ground.
*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.
