Tales from the Brothers Grimm: Selected and Illustrated by Lisbeth Zwerger

Author:Brothers Grimm; Zwerger, Lisbeth
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: minedition
Published: 2012-06-10T16:00:00+00:00

THE SEVEN RAVENS

There was once a man who had seven sons but no daughter yet, however dearly he wished for one. At last his wife gave him good reason to hope for another child, and when the baby was born it was a girl. The couple were overjoyed, but the child was small and sickly, and had to be given immediate baptism because she was so weak. Her father sent one of the boys in haste, to fetch water from the well for her baptism; the other six brothers went with him, and because each of them wanted to be the first to draw water they were jostling each other, and the jug they had brought fell into the well.

So there they stood, and didn’t know what to do. None of them dared to go home. When they didn’t come back their father was impatient, and said, “I’m sure those godless boys have been playing some game and forgotten about the water.” He was afraid that the little girl would die unbaptised, and he cried in anger, “I wish those boys were all turned into ravens!” As soon as he had spoken those words, he heard a whirring in the air above his head, looked up, and saw seven pitch-black ravens rise from the ground and fly away.

The parents couldn’t undo the wish now, and sad as they were to lose their seven sons they found some comfort in their dear little daughter, who quickly recovered her health and grew up to be more beautiful every day. For a long time she didn’t even know that she had ever had brothers, because her mother and father were careful not to mention them, until one day, by chance, she overheard people talking about her, saying that she was certainly a beautiful girl, but her seven brothers’ misfortune was really her fault. Then she was very sad, went to her father and mother and asked if she had ever had brothers, and what had become of them. Now her parents couldn’t keep the secret any longer, but they told her it was Heaven’s will, and her birth had been only the innocent cause of it. However, the story weighed on the girl’s mind every day, and she decided that she must break the spell on her brothers. She could not rest until she set off in secret to go out into the wide world, track down her brothers wherever they might be, and break the spell on them at any price. She took nothing with her but a little ring as a memento of her parents, a loaf of bread to satisfy her hunger, a jug of water to quench her thirst, and a little chair to sit on when she felt tired.

The girl went on and on, a long, long way, all the way to the end of the world. Then she came to the Sun, but the Sun was hot and fierce and ate children. The girl hurried away and

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