Grimms' Fairy Tales The Salad Summary

Summary

A merry young huntsman meets a little old woman in the woods who, grateful for his charity, tells him where to find a flock of birds pulling a cloak and instructs him to shoot into them. He follows her directions, gains a wishing-cloak that transports him anywhere and cuts out a bird's heart that produces a piece of gold under his pillow each morning. Wealthy, he leaves home to travel and soon meets a beautiful young lady and an old woman at a castle; the old woman is in fact a witch plotting to take the huntsman's luck for herself.

The young lady steals the bird's heart so the gold now appears under her pillow, and the witch uses trickery to steal the wishing-cloak, carrying the huntsman to a granite rock where giants live. He feigns sleep to avoid them, then is whisked away by a cloud to a garden of greens and cabbages. Eating a head of a certain salad turns him into an ass; eating another reverses the change. He uses the remaining salad as a ruse to punish the witch, the servant-maid, and the young lady who taste it and turn into asses. He places the transformed women with a miller under specified conditions; later he gives them the restoring salad, the young lady confesses that her mother forced the theft, and they marry, keeping—or pretending to keep—the reclaimed talismans and living happily together.

Key events

1. Huntsman follows old woman's instructions, shoots birds, obtains wishing-cloak and bird's heart.
2. He uses the cloak to visit a castle, falls in love with a young lady; witch steals the bird's heart.
3. Witch tricks him onto a granite rock, steals the cloak and leaves him among giants; he survives by feigning sleep.
4. A cloud carries him to a salad garden; one salad turns him into an ass, another restores him.
5. He returns disguised, gives bad salad to witch and servant-maid so they become asses, then feeds the good salad to restore them.
6. The young lady repents, returns the wishing-cloak, they marry and live happily.

Analysis

This tale combines motifs of magical gifts, betrayal, transformation, and ingenious retribution to explore themes of luck, desire, and justice. The bird's heart and wishing-cloak function as externalized fortune—daily gold and instantaneous travel—establishing the huntsman’s rise from poverty and setting up conflict when others covet his gifts. The narrative contrasts naive trust (the huntsman's love and generosity) with calculated malice (the witch) and reluctant complicity (the young lady), suggesting moral complexity: the heroine is both victim to parental pressure and active in theft.

Symbolically, the cloak represents agency and mobility, while the bird's heart ties wealth to a vulnerable, embodied object—easy to steal. The salad sequence inverts the usual edible-magic trope: food effects identity rather than simple empowerment, enabling comic comeuppance and restoration. The episodic structure—gift, theft, exile, transformation, revenge, reconciliation—keeps forward momentum and balances dark trickery with moral closure. The narrator's neutral, sometimes ironic tone lets events speak for themselves, while repetitive magical rules (how the cloak works, the heart's gold, salad effects) create fairytale logic that aligns reader expectations and justifies the final restitution and marriage without later consequences.

Important quotes

“Listen, my friend, to what I am going to tell you; I will reward you for your kindness; go your way, and after a little time you will come to a tree where you will see nine birds sitting on a cloak.”

Little Old WomanThe old woman instructs the huntsman how to obtain the wishing-cloak and the bird's heart as reward for his charity.

“So he picked out a fine head and ate of it; but scarcely had he swallowed two bites when he felt himself quite changed, and saw with horror that he was turned into an ass.”

NarratorDescribes the first salad's transformative power and initiates the central comic-retributive episode of the tale.

Characters in The Salad

• The Huntsman
• The Little Old Woman
• The Witch
• The Young Lady
• The Giants
• The Servant-maid
• The Miller
• The Huntsman's Mother