Clever Gretel

There was once a cook named Gretel who wore shoes with bright red heels, and when she went out in them she turned herself this way and that in the street, admiring her own step, and was very merry. “You are a pretty girl!” she would say to herself. When she came home she drank a little wine for cheer—and when wine is tasted, she said, one drinks more. Then she tasted the food she cooked until she was satisfied, and said, “A cook must know how the food tastes.”

One day her master said, “Gretel, I have a guest coming this evening; roast two fine fowls for me.” “I will see to it at once,” she answered. She killed the birds, scalded and plucked them clean, put them on the spit over the fire, and toward evening they began to brown and smell wonderful. The guest had not yet arrived. Gretel ran to her master: “If the guest does not come, I must take the fowls from the fire—and it would be a sin and a shame not to eat them while they are at their best.” “I will run myself and fetch the guest,” said the master.

When he was gone, Gretel foresaw that if he brought the guest the fowls would be eaten and she would get little. So she slipped down to the cellar for a drink to steady herself, then put the spit with the birds to her mouth and thought one crisp wing would taste good—and ate it right off. Then she thought, “The other must go too, or the guest will see something is missing.” When both wings were gone she went for another drink, then thought the fowls would stay dry without basting—so she might as well finish them. She ate until nothing remained but the bones.

The master came back and called for the fowls. Gretel said she would bring them at once. Meanwhile the guest knocked. Gretel ran to him and whispered, “Softly—my master asked you only so he might cut off both your ears. Listen how he sharpens the knife!” The guest heard the knife and fled down the steps. Gretel then screamed to her master that the guest had taken the chickens from the dish and run. “If he had only left me one!” cried the master, and ran after him with the knife still in hand, shouting “Just one, just one!”—meaning one chicken. The guest thought he meant one ear, and ran as if fire burned under him, determined to keep both.

About this story

“Clever Gretel” is number 77 in Margaret Hunt’s translation of the Grimms (“Das kluge Gretel”). This page follows Project Gutenberg’s Grimms’ Fairy Tales (#2591), an English text based on the translations of Edgar Taylor and Marian Edwardes.

It is a comic tale about a cook who drinks her master’s wine and eats both roast fowls before the guest arrives, then saves herself with a quick lie. The wine-drinking is part of the original and is kept; the knife is intended for carving, although Gretel makes the visitor fear an attack.

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

Best for ages 9–12 — a short comedy about a greedy cook whose wine-drinking and sly lie suit older readers best.

Reading the story closely

The last cry, “Just one,” has two meanings because Gretel has given the men different stories. The master wants a chicken; the guest thinks he wants an ear. Readers know both explanations, so the chase becomes comic to us while remaining frightening to the guest.

Act out the ending with three speech cards: what Gretel tells the guest, what she tells the master, and what each man thinks “one” means. Then add a conversation in which the two men compare accounts. The lie works only while they cannot do that; escaping punishment does not make Gretel’s deception fair.

Talk about it

• How did Gretel talk herself into eating the first chicken, and then the second?
• Why did the guest believe Gretel’s story about his ears?
• Gretel gets away with it. Which parts of her trick are ingenious, and who pays for it?

Related stories

• Doctor Knowall — another Grimm comedy where a quick-thinking trickster escapes trouble
• The Little Peasant — a Grimm trickster who lies his way out of every tight spot
• Frederick and Catherine — a Grimm kitchen comedy where food and drink keep disappearing