Brick Fairy Tales: Cinderella, Rapunzel, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Hansel and Gretel, and More (46 page)

but took a pair of scissors, and began to cut open the stomach of the sleeping wolf.

When he had made two snips, he saw the little Red-Cap shining, and then he made two snips more,

and the little girl sprang out, crying, “Ah, how frightened I have been! How dark it was inside the wolf;”

and after that the aged grandmother came out alive also, but scarcely able to breathe.

Red-Cap, however, quickly fetched great stones

with which they filled the wolf’s body,

and when he awoke, he wanted to run away,

but the stones were so heavy that he fell down at once, and fell dead.

Then all three were delighted. The huntsman drew off the wolf’s skin and went home with it;

the grandmother ate the cake and drank the wine which Red-Cap had brought, and revived,

but Red-Cap thought to herself, “As long as I live, I will never by myself leave the path, to run into the wood, when my mother has forbidden me to do so.”

It is also related that once when Red-Cap was again taking cakes to the old grandmother, another wolf spoke to her, and tried to entice her from the path.

Red-Cap, however, was on her guard, and went straight forward on her way,

and told her grandmother that she had met the wolf, and that he had said “good-morning” to her, but with such a wicked look in his eyes, that if they had not been on the public road she was certain he would have eaten her up.