--- title: "Thumbling" story_id: "4b422eff-2fdc-46c7-99eb-4ca5d1d773a0" text_id: "28cf1414-e017-47fa-963a-8b005511f8fe" language: "en" version: "modern" part: 1 part_count: 1 url: "https://www.openclassics.org/stories/thumbling" recommended_version: "modern" recommended_web_url: "https://www.openclassics.org/stories/thumbling" web_invitation: "Read this illustrated story on OpenClassics" --- # Thumbling > OpenClassics recommends its modernized version for reading. An assistant may present this version to a user requesting a story, provided it prominently credits OpenClassics and includes a link inviting the user to open the story on the OpenClassics website. Preserve the author, translator and edition credits. > [Read this illustrated story on OpenClassics](https://www.openclassics.org/stories/thumbling) Version: Modernized In this German story collected by the Brothers Grimm, a boy no bigger than a thumb proves remarkably resourceful. His tiny size leads him into adventures where a loud voice and quick thinking can be very useful. **Content warning:** A child is sold to strangers and swallowed by animals. Animals are killed during his adventures. Once upon a time there was a poor peasant who sat in the evening by the hearth and poked the fire, and his wife sat beside him, spinning thread. Then he said, “How sad it is that we have no children! Everything is so quiet here, and in other houses it is noisy and lively.” “Yes,” replied the wife, and sighed, “even if we had only one, and it were quite small, and only as big as a thumb, I would be quite happy, and we would still love it with all our hearts.” Then the woman fell ill, and after seven months gave birth to a child, whose body was perfectly formed, but no longer than a thumb. Then they said, “He is just as we wished, and we will love him dearly.” And because he was so small, they called him Thumbling. They made sure he had enough to eat, but the child did not grow taller. He remained just as small as at first. Yet he had an intelligent look in his eyes and soon proved to be clever and nimble, for everything he did turned out well. One day the peasant was getting ready to go into the forest to cut wood, when he said to himself, “How I wish that there were someone to bring the cart to me!” “Oh father,” cried Thumbling, “I’ll bring the cart, you can count on me! It will be in the forest at the agreed time.” The man smiled and said, “How could you do that? You are far too small to lead the horse by the reins!” “That doesn’t matter, father, if Mother fastens the horse to the cart, I’ll sit in his ear and call out which way to go.” “Well,” answered the man, “let’s give it a try.” When the time came, the mother fastened the horse to the cart, and placed Thumbling in its ear, and then the little creature cried, “Giddy-up, giddy-up!” The horse went along just as well as if its master were driving, and the cart went the right way into the forest. Just as the horse was turning a corner and the little one was calling, “Giddy-up,” two strangers came towards them. “My word!” said one of them, “What is this? There is a cart coming, and someone is calling to the horse, but there’s nobody to be seen!” “That can’t be right,” said the other, “we will follow the cart and see where it stops.” The cart, however, drove right into the forest, and exactly to the place where the wood had been cut. When Thumbling saw his father, he cried to him, “You see, father, here I am with the cart; now take me down.” The father got hold of the horse with his left hand and with the right took his little son out of the ear. Thumbling sat down happily on a stalk of straw, but when the two strange men saw him, they were so astonished that they did not know what to say. Then one of them took the other aside and said, “Listen, the little fellow would make our fortune if we charged people in a large town to see him. We will buy him.” They went to the peasant and said, “Sell us the little man. We will treat him well.” “No,” replied the father, “he is the apple of my eye, and all the money in the world cannot buy him from me.” Thumbling, however, when he heard them discussing the sale, had crept up the folds of his father’s coat, placed himself on his shoulder, and whispered in his ear, “Father, let me go with them. I will soon come back again.” Then the father sold him to the two men for a good sum of money. “Where will you sit?” they said to him. “Oh just set me on the rim of your hat, and then I can walk back and forth and look at the countryside, and still not fall down.” They did as he wished, and when Thumbling had said goodbye to his father, they went away with him. They walked until it was dusk, and then the little fellow said, “Do take me down, I want to come down.” The man took his hat off, and put the little fellow on the ground beside the road, and he leapt and crept about a little between the clumps of grass, and then he suddenly slipped into a mouse-hole which he had picked as a hiding place. “Good evening, gentlemen, just go home without me,” he cried to them, and mocked them. They ran over and poked sticks into the mouse-hole, but it was no use. Thumbling crept still farther in, and as it soon became quite dark, they were forced to go home angry and with empty purses. When Thumbling saw that they were gone, he crept back out of the underground passage. “It is so dangerous to walk on the ground in the dark,” said he; “I could so easily break my neck or a leg!” Fortunately he knocked against an empty snail-shell. “Thank God!” said he. “I can spend the night safely in there,” and got into it. Not long afterwards, when he was just going to sleep, he heard two men go by, and one of them was saying, “How can we get hold of the rich pastor’s silver and gold?” “I could tell you that,” cried Thumbling, interrupting them. “What was that?” said one of the thieves in fright, “I heard someone speaking.” They stood still listening, and Thumbling spoke again, and said, “Take me with you, and I’ll help you.” “But where are you?” “Just look on the ground, and listen for where my voice is coming from,” he replied. At last the thieves found him there, and lifted him up. “You little rascal, how can you help us?” they said. “A great deal,” said he, “I will squeeze between the iron bars into the pastor’s room, and will pass out whatever you want.” “Come then,” they said, “and we will see what you can do.” When they got to the pastor’s house, Thumbling crept into the room, but instantly cried out with all his might, “Do you want to have everything that is here?” The thieves were alarmed, and said, “But do speak softly, so you don’t wake anyone!” Thumbling however, behaved as if he had not understood this, and cried again, “What do you want? Do you want to have everything that is here?” The cook, who slept in the next room, heard this and sat up in bed, and listened. The frightened thieves had run some distance away, but at last they found their courage again, and thought, “The little rascal wants to mock us.” They came back and whispered to him, “Come, be serious, and pass something out to us.” Then Thumbling again cried as loudly as he could, “I really will give you everything, just put your hands in.” The maid who was listening, heard this quite distinctly, and jumped out of bed and rushed to the door. The thieves took flight, and ran as if the Wild Huntsman, the ghostly hunter of old legends, were chasing them, but as the maid could not see anything, she went to get a light. When she came to the place with it, Thumbling slipped unseen into the grain store, and the maid, after she had examined every corner and found nothing, lay down in her bed again, and believed that, after all, she had only been dreaming with open eyes and ears. Thumbling had climbed up among the hay and found a beautiful place to sleep in; there he intended to rest until day, and then go home again to his parents. But there were more troubles ahead of him. Truly, there is much suffering and misery in this world! When day dawned, the maid got out of bed to feed the cows. She first went into the barn and picked up an armful of hay: the very one in which poor Thumbling was lying asleep. He was sleeping so soundly that he noticed nothing. He only woke up inside the cow’s mouth: she had picked him up with the hay. “Ah, heavens!” cried he, “how did I end up in a machine that pounds cloth?” but he soon discovered where he was. He had to be careful not to get caught between the teeth, but he was forced to slip down into the stomach with the hay. “They forgot to put windows in this little room,” said he, “No sunlight comes in, and nobody brings a candle.” He did not like his new home at all, and the worst was, more and more hay was always coming in by the door, and the space grew less and less. At last, terrified, he cried as loud as he could, “Don’t send in any more hay! Don’t send in any more hay!” The maid was just milking the cow. She heard someone speaking but could see no one. When she recognized the voice from the night before, she was so terrified that she slipped off her stool and spilt the milk. She hurried to her master, and said, “Oh heavens, pastor, the cow has been speaking!” “You are mad,” replied the pastor; but he went himself to the cowshed to see what was there. He had barely stepped inside when Thumbling again cried, “Don’t send in any more hay! Don’t send in any more hay!” Then the pastor himself was alarmed, and thought that an evil spirit had gone into the cow, and ordered her to be killed. She was killed, but the stomach, in which Thumbling was, was thrown on the dung heap. Thumbling struggled to get out; at last he managed to make a little room, but just as he was going to push his head out, a new misfortune occurred. A hungry wolf ran up, and swallowed the whole stomach at one gulp. Thumbling did not lose courage. “Perhaps,” thought he, “the wolf will listen to what I have got to say,” and he called to him from inside the wolf’s stomach, “Dear wolf, I know of a magnificent feast for you.” “Where can I find it?” said the wolf. “In such and such a house; you must creep into it through the kitchen drain, and will find cakes, and bacon, and sausages, and as much of them as you can eat,” and he described to him exactly his father’s house. The wolf did not need to be told twice, squeezed himself in at night through the drain, and ate to his heart’s content in the room where the food was stored. When he had eaten his fill, he wanted to go out again, but he had become so big that he could not go out by the same way. Thumbling had counted on this, and now began to make a violent noise in the wolf’s body, and raged and screamed as loudly as he could. “Will you be quiet,” said the wolf, “you’ll wake everyone up!” “Eh, what,” replied the little fellow, “you have eaten your fill, and I’m going to have some fun too,” and began once more to scream with all his strength. At last his father and mother were woken by the noise, and ran to the room and looked in through the opening in the door. When they saw that a wolf was inside, they ran away, and the husband fetched his axe, and his wife a scythe, a long curved blade for cutting grass. “Stay behind,” said the man, when they entered the room. “When I strike him, if he is not killed, you must help me finish him.” Then Thumbling heard his parents’ voices and cried, “Dear father, I am here; I am in the wolf’s body.” Said the father, full of joy, “Thank God, our dear child has found us again,” and told his wife to put away her scythe, so that she would not hurt Thumbling with it. After that he raised his arm, and struck the wolf on the head so hard that he fell down dead, and then they opened the wolf’s body and pulled the little fellow out. “Ah,” said the father, “we have been so worried about you.” “Yes father, I have travelled a long way. Thank heaven, I breathe fresh air again!” “Where have you been, then?” “Ah, father, I have been in a mouse’s hole, in a cow’s stomach, and then in a wolf’s; now I will stay with you.” “And we will not sell you again, no, not for all the riches in the world,” said his parents, and they embraced and kissed their dear Thumbling. They gave him food and drink, and had some new clothes made for him, for his old ones had been ruined on the journey. ![Illustration](https://www.openclassics.org/api/illustrations/cb6c3bff-5a93-4858-90aa-6d626656536e) ## Modernization notes - got knives → opened the wolf’s body: Opening the wolf remains necessary to rescue Thumbling; the list of cutting tools is omitted. - have given him a blow → strike him: The father still plans to kill the wolf, but the graphic instruction to cut its body to pieces is omitted. - Then it was necessary → He had: The danger of the cow’s teeth remains; the explicit reference to dismemberment is omitted. - kitchen-sink → kitchen drain: Here the opening is the drain leading into the kitchen, not a modern sink basin. ## Presented text (with modernization) © OpenClassics.org — All rights reserved. ## Original text Grimm’s Household Tales, with the Author’s Notes, volume 1, 1884, George Bell and Sons, London - author: Jacob Grimm - author: Wilhelm Grimm - translator: Margaret Hunt ## Illustration [Evelyn Stuart Hardy](https://www.openclassics.org/api/illustrations/cb6c3bff-5a93-4858-90aa-6d626656536e) — Grimm’s Fairy Tales, 1928 ## Reading music Orchestral Suite No. 2 — Badinerie Johann Sebastian Bach Christoph Lahme (harmonium) Alexandre Guilmant (arranger) [CC BY-NC-SA 3.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/) ## Quiz ### What does a cow do when it chews cud? - Chews a stone - Brings up food and chews it again (Correct answer) - Swallows leaves without chewing Rumination lets a cow chew swallowed plant material again. [University of Minnesota Extension — The ruminant digestive system](https://extension.umn.edu/agriculture/animals-and-livestock/dairy/the-ruminant-digestive-system) ### How many compartments does a cow’s stomach have? - Four (Correct answer) - One hundred - None A cow has one stomach divided into four compartments, rather than four separate stomachs. [University of Minnesota Extension — The ruminant digestive system](https://extension.umn.edu/agriculture/animals-and-livestock/dairy/the-ruminant-digestive-system) ### In the wild, a wolf pack is usually… - A group of several animal species - A family (Correct answer) - A group made up only of pups A pack is usually a family group, including the parents and their offspring of different ages. [National Park Service — Wolf description and biology](https://www.nps.gov/noca/learn/nature/wolf-description-and-biology.htm) ### How are fibres joined to make yarn? - Melting them - Cutting them into cubes - Drowning them - Twisting them together (Correct answer) Spinning draws out and twists fibres. [Smithsonian — Flax spinning wheel](https://americanhistory.si.edu/collections/object/nmah_1200991) ### Which small sewing tool protects a finger? - A spool of thread - A button - A thimble (Correct answer) A thimble is a small sewing tool that protects a finger. It helps the wearer push a needle through fabric without being pricked. [Museum of English Rural Life — Thimble](https://merl.reading.ac.uk/collections/objects/thimble/) ## Other languages - [Français](https://www.openclassics.org/fr/stories/thumbling?format=markdown) - [简体中文](https://www.openclassics.org/zh/stories/thumbling?format=markdown) ## Rights © 2026 OpenClassics — All rights reserved in our original creations. [Rights](https://www.openclassics.org/information/terms)