Grimms' Fairy Tales THE LITTLE PEASANT Summary

Summary

A very poor man known as the little peasant and his wife long for a cow they cannot afford. The peasant asks a carpenter to make a wooden calf, painted brown and posed as if eating; he convinces the local cow-herd to carry it to pasture and later accuses the herd of losing it. The mayor condemns the cow-herd to compensate the peasant with a real cow, which the couple cannot feed and so slaughter and salt for sale.

On his way to market with the salted hide, the peasant rescues a raven with injured wings and hides it in the skin. Caught in a storm, he takes shelter at a mill where the miller, the miller’s wife, and a parson are preparing a feast. The peasant pretends the raven is a soothsayer who speaks four prophecies; each pronouncement leads the miller to discover the hidden food and wine. The peasant bargains for the fifth prophecy for three hundred talers and reveals, by making the raven ‘‘prophesy,’’ that the Devil is hiding in a closet—forcing the miller to reveal the parson from hiding. The peasant flees next morning with the money.

At home he invests and becomes prosperous; the other villagers, envious, butcher their cows to sell the hides and fail to match his sale price. They accuse the peasant of trickery and sentence him to death by being rolled into the water in a pierced barrel. He cleverly frees himself by convincing a would-be mayoral shepherd to take his place in the barrel, then escapes with the shepherd’s flock. When the villagers attempt the same trick to fetch ‘‘sheep’’ from beneath the water, they drown, leaving the little peasant sole inheritor and rich.

Key events

1. Peasant commissions a wooden calf, passes it off to the cow-herd and accuses him when it disappears; receives a real cow by judgment.
2. Unable to feed the cow, the couple slaughters it and the peasant prepares to sell the hide.
3. Peasant shelters at the mill, hides a raven in the hide, and pretends it is a prophet to reveal the millers’ hidden feast.
4. He trades the raven’s fifth ‘prophecy’ for 300 talers, exposes the parson, and escapes with the money.
5. Villagers butcher cows to sell hides, fail to get price, and later accuse and condemn the peasant to death in a pierced barrel.
6. Peasant tricks a shepherd into the barrel, takes the flock, and later deceives the villagers into drowning while trying to fetch 'sheep' from the water.

Analysis

This tale combines trickery, social inversion, and irony to critique communal envy and gullibility. The little peasant is a trickster figure who uses cunning rather than violence; his wooden calf and the raven function as props in staged realities that manipulate communal authority (the cow-herd, the mayor, the miller). The narrative repeatedly pits appearance against reality: a painted wooden calf becomes a legal pretext for property, a raven is made to speak truth by performance, and reflections in water are mistaken for real sheep. These motifs underline theme that belief and social status are fragile constructs shaped by collective credulity.

Structurally the story advances by escalating deceptions that invert power: the peasant obtains wealth, then survives a legal death sentence through another deception and finally benefits from the villagers’ final, fatal credulity. Symbolically the raven—traditionally ambiguous—serves as an instrument of social exposure; the pierced barrel and submerged ‘‘lambs’’ (cloud reflections) dramatize the catastrophic consequences of imitation and envy. The narrator uses a straightforward, ironic tone, letting the peasant’s shameless opportunism and the villagers’ self-inflicted ruin speak for the moral: cunning can upend hierarchies, and communal folly can be deadly when it follows rumor and greed.

Important quotes

“I have a good idea, there is our gossip the carpenter, he shall make us a wooden calf, and paint it brown, so that it looks like any other, and in time it will certainly get big and be a cow.”

NarratorThe peasant suggests a ludicrous plan—commissioning a wooden calf—as the story's first trick and seed of later events.

“He says that the Devil is hiding outside there in the closet on the porch.”

NarratorThe peasant's bought 'fifth prophecy' forces the miller to reveal the parson and allows the peasant to secure payment.

“The entire village was dead, and the small peasant, as sole heir, became a rich man.”

NarratorA blunt, ironic closing that shows how the peasant benefits from the villagers' fatal credulity and greed.

Characters in THE LITTLE PEASANT

• The Little Peasant
• his wife
• the carpenter
• the cow-herd
• the mayor
• the miller
• the miller’s wife
• the parson
• the priest
• the shepherd
• the peasants
• the merchant
• the raven
• the Devil