How Partlet Died and Was Buried, and How Chanticleer Died of Grief

Another day Chanticleer and Partlet agreed to climb the mountain for nuts again, and to share everything equally. Partlet found a huge nut and said nothing. She tried to keep it for herself, but it was too big to swallow and stuck in her throat. Terrified, she cried to Chanticleer to run for water before she choked.

He raced to the river and begged for water for Partlet, stuck on the mountain with a great nut. The river sent him first to the bride for a silken cord to draw the water up. The bride sent him first to fetch her garland from a willow in the garden. He brought the garland; she gave the cord; the river gave water; he carried it back—too late. Partlet had already choked and lay still.

Chanticleer wept bitterly, and the beasts came to weep with him. Six mice built a little hearse, harnessed themselves before it, and he drove. On the way the fox asked where they were going. “To bury my Partlet.” The fox asked to come; Chanticleer said yes if he sat behind so the mouse-team could pull. Then wolf, bear, goat, and other beasts climbed onto the hearse too.

They reached a rapid stream. A straw offered to lie across as a bridge, but it slipped, and the six mice fell in and drowned. A large log offered next; they managed so clumsily that it washed away. A stone then laid itself across; Chanticleer got the hearse over and lifted Partlet out, but the heavy mourners behind tipped back into the water and were carried off and drowned.

Alone with his dead Partlet, he dug a grave, laid her in, and raised a little hillock. He sat by it mourning until he died too—and so all were dead.

About this story

This is the third and last Chanticleer and Partlet adventure in Project Gutenberg’s Grimms’ Fairy Tales (#2591), an English text based on the translations of Edgar Taylor and Marian Edwardes. Margaret Hunt’s translation calls it “The Death of the Little Hen” (number 80; in German, “Von dem Tode des Hühnchens”).

It is a chain tale: each helper sends Chanticleer on to someone else before he can get what he needs. Here the chain of prerequisites delays help until it is too late, and the funeral journey produces another series of losses. The fatal ending is retained.

Read the original: Grimms’ Fairy Tales (Project Gutenberg #2591)

Reading guidance: older readers; adults should preview before sharing. The hen chokes to death, the funeral party drowns, and the rooster dies in grief. The water-fetching sequence is a folktale device, not choking first-aid guidance.

A chain of help that fails

The first sequence runs backward through conditions—water requires cord, cord requires garland—before Chanticleer can return. The second accumulates mourners until the little vehicle and its crossings cannot bear them. More steps and more companions both make the task harder, even when the intention is to help.

It is too severe to explain every death as a punishment for Partlet’s selfishness. Later decisions about delay, loading and crossing contribute their own failures. Draw the two chains and mark where someone could act differently. Which changes prevent the first loss, and which prevent grief from causing further losses?

Talk about it

• Where does the agreement to share break down, and why does Chanticleer’s rescue arrive too late?
• Each time Chanticleer asked for help he was sent somewhere else first. How do you think he felt?
• The story ends with everyone gone. Would you change the ending, and why or why not?

Related stories

• How They Went to the Mountains to Eat Nuts — the first, much jollier trip Chanticleer and Partlet take to the nut mountain
• The Mouse, the Bird, and the Sausage — a Grimm tale where small companions come to a sad end
• The Straw, the Coal, and the Bean — a straw tries to act as a bridge over a stream, with bad results