Goha had a son who was always worried about what people would think or say. The boy could never do anything because he was always afraid that people might think him foolish. Goha wanted to show his son that it was a waste of time to worry about the opinions of others. He therefore saddled his donkey and told his son that he was going to the neighboring village.

Goha got on his donkey and asked his son to walk behind him. On the way they passed by some people who pointed at Goha and said, "Look at that heartless man who rides his donkey and makes his son walk."

When he heard this, Goha got off the donkey and asked his son to get on, while he walked. Again they passed by some people who pointed at the boy and said, "Just look at the boy who has no manners or respect for the elderly — he rides the donkey and lets his old father walk."

Goha thought about this, so he decided that both he and his son should now ride the donkey. Again they passed by some people who pointed at the donkey carrying both Goha and his son. "What a cruel man that is!" they said. "He has no pity for his donkey and allows both himself and his son to ride it at the same time."

Again Goha gave some thought to what the people had said, so he and his son got off the back of the donkey and both walked behind it. This time, passing by some people, he heard them saying among themselves, "What a couple of fools those two are! Imagine walking when they have a donkey they could ride."

This time Goha was at a loss. Finally, after a lot of thought, he said to his son,"Come along, let's carry the donkey between us."

So they lifted up the donkey and began carrying it along the road. As they were staggering along, some people saw them and burst out laughing. "Look at those two madmen," they said, "carrying the donkey instead of riding on it!"

So they put the donkey down and Goha said to his son, "You must know, my son, that whatever you do in this life, you will never please everyone."

THE TAOIST PRIEST OF LAO-SHAN

There lived in our village a Mr. Want, the seventh son in an old family. This gentleman had a penchant for the Taoist religion; and hearing that at Lao-shan there were plenty of Immortals, 1 shouldered his knapsack and went off for a tour thither. Ascending a peak of the mountain he reached a secluded monastery, where he found a priest sitting on a rush mat, with long hair flowing over his neck, and a pleasant expression on his face. Making a low bow, Wang addressed him thus: "Mysterious indeed is the doctrine: I pray you, Sir, instruct me therein." "Delicately nurtured and wanting in energy as you are," replied the priest, "I fear you could not support the fatigue." "Try me," said Wang. So when the disciples who were very many in number collected together at dusk, Wang joined them in making obeisance to the priest, and remained with them in the monastery. Very early next morning the priest summoned Wang, and giving him a hatchet sent him out with the others to cut firewood. Wang respectfully obeyed, continuing to work for over a month until his hands and feet were so swollen and blistered that he secretly meditated returning home. One evening when he came back he found two strangers sitting drinking with his master. It being already dark, and no lamp or candles having been brought in, the old priest took some scissors and cut out a circular piece of paper like a mirror, which he proceeded to stick against the wall. Immediately it became a dazzling moon, by the light of which you could have seen a hair or a beard of corn. The disciples all came crowding round to wait upon them, but one of the strangers said, "On a festive occasion like this we out all to enjoy ourselves together." Accordingly he took a kettle of wine from the table and presented it to the disciples, bidding them to drink each his fill; whereupon our friend Wang began to wonder how seven or eight of them could all be served out of a single kettle. The disciples, too, rushed about in search of cups, each struggling to get the first drink for fear the wine would be exhausted. Nevertheless, all the candidates failed to empty the kettle, at which they were very much astonished, when suddenly one of the strangers said, "You have given us a fight bright moon; but it's dull work drinking by ourselves. Why not call Ch'ang-ngo 2 to join us?" He then seized a chop-stick and threw it into the moon, whereupon a lovely girl stepped forth from its beams. At first she was only a foot high, but on reaching the ground lengthened to the ordinary size of woman. She had a slender waist and a beautiful neck, and went most gracefully through the Red Garment figure. 3 When this was finished she sang the following words:–

Ye fairies! ye fairies! I'm coming back soon,
Too lonely and cold is my home in the moon.

Her voice was clear and well sustained, ringing like the notes of a flageolet, and when she had concluded her song she pirouetted round and jumped up on the table, where, with every eye fixed in astonishment upon her, she once more became a chop-stick. The three friends laughed loudly, and one of them said, "We are very jolly to-night, but I have hardly room for any more wine. Will you drink a parting glass with me in the palace of the moon?" They then took up the table and walked into the moon, where they could be seen drinking so plainly that their eyebrows and beards appeared like reflections in a looking-glass. By-and-by the moon became obscured; and when the disciples brought a lighted candle they found the priest sitting in the dark alone. The viands, however, were still upon the table and the mirror-like piece of paper on the wall. "Have you all had enough to drink?" asked the priest; to which they answered that they had. "In that case," said he, "you had better get to bed so as not to be behind-hand with your wood-cutting in the morning." So they all went off, and among them Wang, who was delighted at what he had seen, and thought no more of returning home. But after a time he could not stand it any longer; and as the priest taught him no magical arts he determined not to wait, but went to him and said, "Sir, I have traveled many long miles for the benefit of your instruction. If you will not teach me the secret of Immortality, let me at any rate learn some trifling trick, and thus soothe my cravings for a knowledge of your art. I have now been here two or three months, doing nothing but chopping firewood, out of in the morning and back at night, work to which I was never accustomed in my own home." "Did I not tell you," replied the priest, "that you would never support the fatigue? To-morrow I will start you on your way home." "Sir," said Wang, "I have worked for you a long time. Teach me some small art, that my coming here may not have been wholly in vain." "What art?" asked the priest. "Well," answered Wang, "I have noticed that whenever you walk about anywhere, walls and so on are no obstacle to you. Teach me this, and I'll be satisfied." The priest laughingly assented, and taught Wang a formula which he bade him recite. When he had done so he told him to walk through the wall; but Wang, seeing the wall in front of him, didn't like to walk at it. As, however, the priest bade him try, he walked quietly up to it and was there stopped. The priest here called out, "Don't go so slowly. Put your head down and rush at it." So Wang stepped back a few paces and went at it full speed; and the wall yielding to him as he passed, in a moment he found himself outside. Delighted at this, he went back to thank the priest, who told him to be careful in the use of his power, or otherwise there would be no response, handing him at the same time some money for his expenses on the way. When Wang got home, he went about bragging of his Taoist friends and his contempt for walls in general; but as his wife disbelieved his story, he set about going through the performance as before. Stepping back form the wall, he rushed at it full speed with his head down; but coming in contact with the hard bricks, finished up in a heap on the floor. His wife picked him up and found he had a bump on his forehead as big as a large egg, at which she roared with laughter; but Wang was overwhelmed with rage and shame, and cursed the old priest for his base ingratitude.

The Red Shoes

Once there was a little Girl – so delicate and pretty. Because she was poor, she had to go barefoot in the summer, and in the winter she had to wear big wooden shoes that rubbed against her instep until her little feet became quite red. It was awful.

Old Mother shoemaker lived in the middle of the village and used strips of old red cloth to sew a small pair of shoes as best as she could. They were crudely made, but she meant well, and she wanted the little girl to have them. The little girl's name was Karen.

On the very day that her mother was buried, Karen wore these red shoes for the first time. Of course, they were not the right thing to wear for mourning, but she did not have any other shoes. So she put them on her bare feet and followed the lowly straw coffin.

At that very moment a large old carriage passed by, with a large old woman inside. She looked at Karen and felt sorry for her. She said to the vicar, "Listen, let me have the little girl and I'll be good to her."

Karen thought that all this happened because of the red shoes, but the old lady said that they were hideous. The shoes were burned and Karen given neat, clean clothes. Now she had to learn to read and sew, and people said that she was pretty. But the mirror said, "You're much more than pretty – you're beautiful!"

One day the queen traveled through the country with her little daughter who was a princess. People swarmed outside the castle – Karen was there too – and the princess, dressed in fine white clothing, stood in a window and let people admire her. The princess did not have a train or a gold crown, but she did have lovely red shoes, made of fine leather. They certainly looked a lot nicer than the ones that Mother Shoemaker had made for Karen. There was really nothing in the world like red shoes.

Eventually, Karen was old enough to be confirmed. She got new clothes and was supposed to get new shoes. The rich shoemaker who lived in town measured her little foot; his shop was in his house where large glass cases were filled with pretty shoes and shiny boots. It looked very nice, but the old woman could not see very well, so she got no pleasure from it. Among the shoes was a red pair, just like the ones the princess had worn. They were exquisite! And sure enough, the shoemaker said that he had sewn them for a nobleman's daughter, but they hadn't fit.

"It must be patent leather," the old lady said. "They are so shiny!"

"Yes, they are shiny," Karen said. They fit her, and they bought them, but the old lady didn't realize that they were red. She would never have allowed Karen to be confirmed in red shoes. Still, that is what happened.

Everyone looked at Karen's feet when she walked through the church to the choir door. Karen thought that even the ole pictures on the tombs – those portraits of vicars and vicars' wives, with stiff collars and long black robes – stared at her red shoes. She could think only about those shoes – even when the vicar put his hand on her head and talked about the holy baptism, about the covenant with God, and how she was about to become a grown-up Christian. The organ played solemnly, the children's choir sounded beautiful, and the old cantor sang, but Karen could think of nothing but her red shoes.

By afternoon everyone had told the old lady that Karen's shoes were red. The old lady said that red shoes were altogether inappropriate and that Karen had done a horrible thing. From that time on, whenever she went to church, Karen was told to wear black shoes, no matter how worn they were.

The following Sunday Karen was supposed to go to communion. She looked at the black shoes, and then she looked at the red shoes. She looked at the red ones again and put them on.

It was a beautiful sunny day. Karen and the old lady walked through the field along the path, which was a little dusty.

An older soldier leaned on a crutch by the church door; he had a peculiar long beard that was more red than white because it was red. He bowed all the way to the ground and asked the old lady if he could wipe off her shoes. Karen too stretched her little foot forward. "Look at those beautiful dancing shoes," the soldier said. "May they stay on tight when you dance!" Then he slapped the soles of the shoes.

The old lady gave the soldier a tip and walked inside the church with Karen.

Everyone in the church looked at Karen's red shoes, and all the portraits looked at them. When Karen knelt at the altar and put the gold chalice to her lips, she thought only about the red shoes. It was almost as if they were floating in the chalice – she forgot to sing the hymn, and she forgot to read the Lord's Prayer.

Everyone left the church, and the old woman got into her carriage. As Karen lifted her foot to follow her, the soldier standing nearby said. "Look at those beautiful dancing shoes," and Karen could not help herself: She had to dance a few steps. When she started, her legs kept dancing; it was as if the shoes had taken over. She danced around the corner of the church – she couldn't help it; the coachman had to run after her and grab hold of her, and he lifted her into the carriage. But her feet kept dancing and gave the kind old lady some terrible kicks. Finally, they managed to get the shoes off and Karen's legs calmed down.

When they got home, the shoes were put away in a closet, but Karen could not stop looking at them.

The old lady got sick, and they said that she wouldn't live long. Somebody had to take care of her and nurse her, and no one was closer than Karen. But there was a ball in town, and Karen was invited. She looked at the old lady, who was not going to live long anyway, and then at the red shoes. She saw no harm in that. She put on the red shoes, and that was all right, but then she went to the ball and started to dance.

When she wanted to dance to the right, the shoes danced to the left. When she wanted to move one way on the floor, the shoes went the other way, down the stairs, through the street, and out the city gate, and she danced – she had to dance – right into the dark forest.

Something bright shone above the trees, and she thought that it was the moon, because it was a face. But it was the old soldier with the red beard. He nodded and said, "Look at those beautiful dancing shoes!"

She was terrified and wanted to kick off the red shoes, but they would not come off. She ripped off her stockings, but the shoes were stuck to her feet. So she danced – she had to dance – over the fields and meadows, in the rain and shine, by night and by day. But it was worst at night.

She danced into the open churchyard, but the dead didn't dance – they had something much better to do than dancing. She wanted to sit on the grave of a humble person, where the bitter tansy weeds grew, but she found neither rest nor respite, and she danced toward the open door of the church. There she saw an angel in long white robes, with wings that reached from his shoulders all the way to the ground. His expression was serious and stern, and he held a shiny broadsword in his hand.

"You have to dance!" he said. "You have to dance in your red shoes until you're pale and cold – until your skin shrivels like a skeleton's. You have to dance from door to door, and wherever there are proud, vain children, you must knock on the door so that they hear you and fear you. You have to dance – dance!"

"Have mercy!" Karen shouted. But she did not hear the angel's answer because her shoes carried her through the gate, into the field, across roads and trails – she had to keep dancing and dancing.

One morning she danced past a door that she recognized. She heard hymns inside, and they carried out a coffin covered with flowers. She knew then that the old lady had died , and she felt abandoned by everyone and cursed by God's angel.

So she danced – she had to dance – in the dark night. Her shoes carried her off, past whitethorns and over stubbled fields, which scratched her until she bled. She danced across the heath to a lonely house. She knew that the executioner lived there, and she tapped on the window with her finger and said:
"Come out! Come out! I can't come in because I'm dancing!"

The executioner said, "You don't know who I am do you? I cut off the heads of evil people, and I can feel my axe quivering."

"Don't cut off my head!" Karen cried. "Because then I won't be able to repent my sin. But chop off my feet with the red shoes."

She confessed all her sins, and the executioner cut off her feet with the red shoes. But the shoes, with her small feet in them, still danced over the fields and into the deep forest.

The executioner made wooden legs and crutches for her and taught her a hymn, the one that sinners always sing. Then she kissed the hand that had swung the axe and went away over the heath.

"I've suffered enough for those red shoes," Karen said. "Now I want to go to church so everybody can see me." She walked boldly to the church door, but when she got there, the red shoes danced in front of her. She was frightened and turned back.

All the next week she was miserable and kept crying heavy tears. But when Sunday came, she said "All right – I've suffered and struggled enough. I think I'm just as good as lots of those people who are sitting so smugly in church." She walked ahead confidently, but she didn't get any farther than the gate – that was when she saw the red shoes dancing in front of her, and she was terrified. She turned back, and in her heart she repented for her sins.

She went to the vicarage and asked whether they would taker her as a servant. She promised to work hard and do whatever she could – it didn't matter what they paid her if only she had a roof over her head and lived among good people. The vicar's wife felt sorry for her and took her in. Karen was hardworking and pensive. She sat quietly and listened each evening when the vicar read aloud from the Bible. All their children were fond of her, but they talked about dressing up in frills and finery – and they talked about looking as beautiful as a queen – she shook her head.

They all went to the church on the following Sunday, and they asked Karen whether she wanted to come along. With tears in her eyes she looked sadly at her crutches. While they went to hear God's word, she went alone to her little room, which was big enough for only a bed and a chair. She sat down with her hymnal and was reading it devoutly when the wind carried the sounds of the organ from the church. Tearfully, she lifted her head and said, "Oh, God, help me!"

At that moment the sun shone brightly, and right in front of her, in white robes, stood God's angel, the one she had seen at night in the doorway to the church. But rather than his sharp sword, he carried a beautiful green branch covered with roses. He touched the ceiling with the branch and the ceiling rose high in the air – a brilliant golden star appeared where he had touched it. Then he touched the walls and they widened. Karen looked at the organ as it was playing, and she saw the old pictures of vicars and vicar's wives; the congregation sat in the ornate pews and sang from their hymnals. The church itself had come to the poor girl in the little cramped room, or perhaps she had gone to the church. She sat in a pew with the other people from the vicarage, and when they had finished the hymn and looked up, they nodded and said, "It was good that you came, Karen."

"By the grace of God," she replied.

Then the organ swelled, and the children's choir sounded sweet and beautiful. The bright warm sunshine streamed through the window into the pew where Karen sat. Her heart was so filled with sunshine – with peace and happiness – that it burst. Her soul flew up to God on the rays of the sun, and no one there asked about the red shoes.

How Some Children Played at Slaughtering

I

In a city named Franecker, located in West Friesland, some young boys and girls between the ages of five and six happened to be playing with one another. They chose one boy to play a butcher, another boy to play was to be a cook, and a third boy was to be a pig. Then they chose one girl to be a cook and another girl her assistant. The assistant was to catch the blood of the pig in a little bowl so they could make sausages. As agreed, the butcher now fell upon the little boy playing the pig, threw him to the ground, and slit his throat open with a knife, while the assistant cook caught the blood in her little bowl.

A councilman was walking nearby and saw this wretched act. He immediately took the butcher with him and led him into the house of the mayor, who instantly summoned the entire council. They deliberated about this incident and did not know what they should do to the boy, for they realized it had all been part of a children's game. One of the councilmen, an old wise man, advised the chief judge to take a beautiful red apple in one hand and a Rhenish gulden in the other. Then he was to call the boy and stretch out his hands to him. If the boy took the apple, he was to be set free. If he took the gulden, he was to be killed. The judge took the wise man's advice, and the boy grabbed the apple with a laugh. Thus he was set free without any punishment.

II

There once was a father who slaughtered a pig, and his children saw that. In the afternoon, when they began playing, one child said to the other, "you be the little pig, and I'll be the butcher." He then took a shiny knife and slit his little brother's throat.

Their mother was upstairs in a room bathing another child, and when she heard the cries of her son, she immediately ran downstairs. Upon seeing what had happened, she took the knife out of her son's throat and was so enraged that she stabbed the heart of the other boy, who had been playing the butcher. Then she quickly ran back to the room to tend to her child in the bathtub, but while she was gone, he had drowned in the tub. Now the woman became so frightened and desperate that she did not allow the neighbors to comfort her and finally hung herself. When her husband came back from the fields and saw everything, he became so despondent that he died soon after.

Why I Taught the Source

Folktales and fairy tales are excellent resources for dealing with historical topics related to children and youth. In the first place, the genres themselves are often associated with children and childhood, especially since editors, writers, and pedagogues in 19th-century Europe began presenting folktales and fairy tales as tools to be utilized in the moral and cultural education of children. Secondly, the child characters in these traditional narratives also reveal how children and childhood were perceived by the societies that produced or adapted the tales.

In my course, Understanding the Fairy Tale, I use Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm's canonical collection to demonstrate the development of the fairy tale as children's literature and to examine the construction of childhood and the experiences of children from a sociohistorical perspective. Two of the texts that I use appeared under the provocative title "How Some Children Played at Slaughtering" ("Wie Kinder Schlachtens miteinander gespielt haben") in the first edition of their Kinder- und Hausmärchen (commonly translated as Children's and Household Tales) published in 1812. Because the two violent and disturbing stories were omitted from later editions, however, they are not well known to students. The first of the two stories tells of a childhood game that results in one boy being butchered by another who is then tried before the adult authorities. The second story involves the destruction of an entire family through a chain of tragic deaths that begins after one child kills another after witnessing his father slaughter a pig.

How I Introduce the Source

The students are given these stories on a handout at the end of the first class session and asked to read them before the next class meeting. This first, "cold" encounter with the texts is meant to stimulate the students' critical thinking about the Grimms' collection. Inevitably, in their first confrontation with these two stories, the students ask themselves the questions I will eventually ask in class: Why would these gruesome and disturbing tales be included in Grimms' collection? Are they really fairy tales? What are they about?

I identify the stories only as having been published in Grimms' collection of fairy tales, but I do not provide any further contextualization when making this initial assignment. Context is ultimately important in a sociohistorical approach; and during our subsequent discussion, I provide further historical background by pointing out that the Grimms' own sources allow us to trace the tales back to at least the 16th and 17th centuries, respectively. 1

Reading the Source

While students have come to expect that unexpurgated versions of Grimms' 19th-century tales can be more violent than the sanitized versions they remember from childhood, they are not prepared for the senseless violence involving children in these brief stories. Unlike other tales, where violent acts are justified as a form of moral punishment, "How Some Children Played at Slaughtering" depicts gruesome events that have no convincing justification.

The students' own question about the appropriateness of such tales within the Children's and Household Tales was one that contemporary readers also asked. Grimms' German contemporaries had deemed the two tales inappropriate for children as notions of childhood underwent a profound shift. Changing childhood ideals influenced the emergence of a new literature for children that imparted moral training. The Grimms responded to the historical changes they also furthered by reshaping the content of their canonical work.

After the publication of "How Some Children Played at Slaughtering" in the first edition of Grimms' collection in 1812, it was omitted from all subsequent editions. Students are able to discern from this example how canonical texts, which are often assumed to be universal and transcendent, develop in a historical context and are shaped by historically constituted conceptions of childhood.

The most compelling issue for students, however, comes from questions pertaining to the significance of the stories themselves. Since the tales have been disqualified as children's literature, the question arises why adults would compose such troubling stories about children in the first place. I attempt to demonstrate how traditional narratives about children give expression to adult anxieties about childhood and parenting.

I begin this discussion by pointing out that the second of these two stories is related to the legend known as "The Inept Mother." The legend that is still circulated by female friends, relatives, and others is familiar to women and students. "The Inept Mother" can be read as a story whose horrific chain of catastrophes expresses the anxiety of women who feel overwhelmed by the responsibility they bear for the lives of their children. 2 In summarizing this interpretation for students, I attempt to demonstrate how traditional narratives about children give expression to adult attitudes towards childhood and parenting.

Adults' efforts to define childhood and to demarcate it from adulthood finds expression in the first of the two stories, which begins with a fatal game of butchering among children and concludes with the town council's judgment that the boy who played the butcher is innocent of murder. My primary strategy in elucidating adults' understandings about children is to ask my students to explain the test of innocence devised by a member of the town council and to identify the assumptions and ambiguities in the test that requires the boy to choose between an apple and a coin.

Choosing the apple would suggest an innate affinity for the concrete and the natural, and thus signify the child's natural purity and inability to commit a crime with conscious intent. Selecting the coin would suggest that the boy has the ability to reason and to comprehend the value of the abstract, thus signifying a "higher" adult state of mind and the ability to distinguish right from wrong. Students recognize that the boy's choice of the apple is the cause for his being "set free without any punishment." Yet, pressed to search for ambiguities, they also conclude that the boy's laughter might express his witting pleasure in outfoxing the judge instead of his innocent delight in gaining the apple. Indeed, his choice of the all-too-obvious apple might suggest his criminal (sinful) nature instead of his natural purity.

At this point, the stage is set for a discussion of the problems that societies encounter in defining the difference between children and adults. In this context, the Grimms' text can be easily related to those widely covered news stories in contemporary America involving children who commit crimes and the decision that authorities must make whether to try them as juveniles or adults—stories that tell us about our own struggle to define childhood in the 21st century.

Reflections

The effectiveness of this assignment and the discussion it provokes stems in part from the surprises that await students in their encounter with these two texts. Because the Grimms removed "How Some Children Played at Slaughtering" from the editions of their collection that they published from 1819 onwards, the two tales have not been associated with the Grimms and have not become part of the classical fairy-tale canon. Students are excited to learn that two such unusual and, for some, disturbing stories were once published alongside nursery-friendly tales.

Once juxtaposed with these familiar tales of childhood, "How Some Children Played at Slaughtering" prompts students to reflect not only on the generic and moral issues that influenced Grimms' construction of the fairy-tale genre; it also gives them reason to question and examine more closely the tales that have taken up permanent residence in the nursery and become a part of nearly every child's literary experience. The violence depicted in these two tales now becomes a touchstone for reconsidering the otherwise clichéd questions about violence in fairy tales.

For example, how different is the violence in these two tales from the kind of violence inflicted on children in "Hansel and Gretel" or "The Juniper Tree"? Such questions and comparisons require students to think about the ways in which adults depict children and childhood, and how these depictions can be interpreted. They also demand that students be sensitive to context and ambiguity. Indeed, to make sense of "How Some Children Played at Slaughtering" and its literary reception, students must develop interpretive skills that take into account the editorial history of Grimms' tales, the history of childhood, and the moral ambiguities at play in the two stories.

These are big topics, of course, and teachers will find it necessary to adjust the assignment not only for the level of students in their classrooms but also for the focus of their particular course. A course on the image of children in literature and culture, for example, need not undertake a full-fledged review of Grimms' work as editors of fairy tales. Basic information of the kind offered above (and available in the introduction to Jack Zipes's translation of The Complete Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm 3) can be easily presented by the instructor.

While I use lecture and discussion to pursue the questions and issues described in this case study, some instructors might consider other strategies for engaging students. For example, students might be asked to identify and collect news stories and editorials in the media that reflect the ongoing debate about the proper age at which a child becomes—or can be tried in the judicial systems as—an adult. Similarly, the tale of the childhood game of butcher could provide the basis for a mock trial in the classroom, in which students could prosecute, defend, and judge the actions of the accused boy butcher. This could serve as an effective exercise to get to the heart of the questions about childhood and about guilt and innocence at work in this intriguing tale.