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1812 GRIMM’S FAIRY TALES HANSEL AND GRETEL Jacob Ludwig Grimm and Wilhelm Carl Grimm Grimm, Jacob (1785-1863) and Wilhelm (1786-1859) - German philologists whose collection “Kinder- und Hausmarchen,” known in English as “Grimm’s Fairy Tales,” is a timeless literary masterpiece. The brothers transcribed these tales directly from folk and fairy stories told to them by common villagers. Hansel and Gretel (1812) - Hansel and Gretel’s step-mother forces their father to agree to leave the children in the woods to die. In the woods the children come upon the edible house of an evil witch who plans to eat them.
HANSEL AND GRETEL NEAR a great forest there lived a poor woodcutter and his wife and his two children; the boy’s name was Hansel and the girl’s Gretel. They had very little to bite or to sup, and once, when there was great dearth in the land, the man could not even gain the daily bread. As he lay in bed one night thinking of this, and turning and tossing, he sighed heavily, and said to his wife, “What will become of us? We cannot even feed our children; there is nothing left for ourselves.” “I will tell you what, husband,” answered the wife; “we will take the children early in the morning into the forest, where it is thickest; we will make them a fire, and we will give each of them a piece of bread, then we will go to our work and leave them alone; they will never find the way home again, and we shall be quit of them.” “No, wife,” said the man, “I cannot do that; I cannot find in my heart to take my children into the forest and to leave them there alone; the wild animals would soon come and devour them.” “O you fool,” said she, “then we will all four starve; you had better get the coffins ready”- and she left him no peace until he consented. “But I really pity the poor children,” said the man. The two children had not been able to sleep for hunger, and had heard what their step-mother had said to their father. Gretel wept