The Valiant Little Tailor
Seven flies killed at one blow, three tricks played on a giant, and a belt that talked a little man all the way to a throne
Page 1
In a small town in old Germany, a little tailor sat by his open window one summer morning, spreading good jam on a thick slice of bread. The sweet smell drew a whole swarm of flies, and they landed all over his bread before he could take a single bite. Furious, the tailor snatched up a strip of cloth he had been cutting and brought it down on the flies all at once. When he lifted the cloth, he counted seven flies lying still beneath it. 'Seven at one blow!' he cried, so delighted with himself that he could not sit still. He found a strip of good leather and stitched the words into a belt, buckled it proudly around his waist, and decided that a man who could do such a thing was far too brave to spend his life sewing shirts. He packed a round of old cheese and caught a little bird to carry in his pocket, and set off down the road to see what the wide world thought of him.
Page 2
The tailor had not gone far down the road before he met a giant sitting on a boulder at the edge of a stony hillside. The giant looked down at him and laughed, for the tailor was barely as tall as his knee. To show how strong he was, the giant picked up a stone, squeezed it in his huge fist, and water trickled out between his fingers. 'Can you do that, little man?' he asked. The tailor was not strong at all, but he was clever. He took the round of old cheese from his pocket, held it up as though it were a stone, and squeezed it hard. Water ran out of the soft cheese just as it had from the giant's rock. The giant's eyes went wide with surprise, for he could not tell cheese from stone at a glance, and he decided that this small stranger must be stronger than he looked.
Page 3
Pleased to find a companion as strong as himself, the giant invited the tailor to walk on with him, and before long they came to a clearing in the forest. The giant wanted another contest. He picked up a huge stone and threw it with all his might, so far that it vanished over the treetops before it ever landed. 'Now you try,' he said, certain the little man could never match that. The tailor reached into his pocket, took out the little bird he had caught that morning, and tossed it gently into the air instead of throwing a stone at all. The bird spread its wings and flew up and away over the trees, and because it never came down, the giant could not tell where it had landed — and he could not deny that it had gone even farther than his own stone had.
Page 4
The giant decided he liked this strange little fellow, and asked for his help carrying a tree he had just cut down, so they could take it back to his den for firewood. The tree was enormous, far too heavy for one man to lift, let alone carry — but the tailor had a plan. 'You take the heavy end at the front,' he said, 'and I shall manage the branches at the back.' The giant hoisted the thick trunk onto his shoulder and set off down the path, while the tailor climbed up among the leafy branches at the rear and settled himself comfortably, as though he were carrying his share, swinging his legs and whistling a cheerful tune. The giant, with the whole weight of the tree pressing down on him and his view blocked by branches, never once looked back to see that he was carrying it all alone, and he began to wonder why the tree felt so very heavy that day.
Page 5
That evening the giant brought the tailor to his den, a great rocky cave where several other giants lived together, and gave him a bed for the night. But the tailor was uneasy, for the bed was far too big and the giants' smiles were a little too knowing. Instead of climbing into the bed, he quietly slipped down and curled up to sleep in a dark corner of the cave on the floor. In the middle of the night, one of the giants crept over to the bed with a heavy iron bar and struck it again and again with all his strength, certain he was crushing the little stranger to nothing. Then, satisfied, he went back to sleep. In the morning the tailor strolled out of the cave, stretching and whistling as if nothing at all had happened. The giants stared at him in disbelief, and fearing that no blow on earth could kill such a man, every one of them gathered their things and fled deep into the forest, leaving the tailor quite alone.
Page 6
News of the belt that read 'Seven at One Blow' ran ahead of the tailor, and by the time he reached the king's city, soldiers in the street were already stepping out of his way. He was brought before the king himself, who looked at the strange little man and his bold belt and decided that a soldier of such reputation should be made captain in the royal army at once. But the king's own soldiers were not at all pleased. They had fought for years and never been given such an honor, and they began to whisper among themselves, afraid that this newcomer would outshine them all — or worse, that his temper might turn on them next. Two of them went secretly to the king and told him that two giants were terrorizing a forest nearby, destroying crops and frightening travelers, and that surely a man who could slay seven at one blow should be sent to deal with them. The king, seeing a convenient way to test the stranger, agreed at once and sent for the tailor.
Page 7
Deep in the forest, the tailor found the two troublesome giants fast asleep high up in the branches of an enormous oak tree, snoring loudly enough to shake the leaves. He climbed quietly into a tree close by and began dropping stones down onto them, one after another. Each time a stone struck, one giant woke and angrily accused the other of hitting him. 'Stop pelting me!' the first shouted, and shoved his companion hard. The second, furious at being blamed for nothing, shoved back twice as hard, and in moments the two of them had tumbled down out of the tree together, wrestling and grappling in the undergrowth, each one certain the other had started it. They rolled and struggled until both were worn out and lying flat on the ground, beaten by each other rather than by the tailor at all. He climbed down, quite unharmed, and went back to tell the king that the forest was safe again.
Page 8
The king was not yet ready to accept that the tailor was as brave as his belt claimed, so he set him one more task: to capture the fierce unicorn that roamed the forest, goring anyone who came near. The tailor walked along a forest stream until the unicorn caught his scent and came charging straight at him, its long spiraled horn lowered to strike. At the very last moment, the tailor stepped neatly behind a broad tree trunk. The unicorn, unable to stop in time, drove its horn straight into the wood, where it stuck fast no matter how the creature pulled and twisted. The tailor stepped calmly back out, looped a sturdy rope around the unicorn's neck, and led the astonished animal, still fixed to the splintered tree for a moment longer, all the way back to the palace to show the king his task was done.
Page 9
For his third and final task, the king sent the tailor after a wild boar that had been tearing up the forest floor and frightening woodcutters for months. The tailor tracked the boar to an old, half-ruined chapel standing alone in the trees, its door hanging loose on broken hinges. He waited near the doorway until the boar came snorting and rooting through the undergrowth close by, then let out a shout and darted toward it, driving the startled animal straight in through the chapel door. The moment the boar was inside, the tailor slipped out through a narrow side window, dropped to the ground, and ran around to shove the heavy door shut, sliding the old bolt firmly into place. The boar charged and grunted furiously inside the stone walls, but it could not get out, and the tailor walked back to the palace to tell the king that all three tasks were finished.
Page 10
Having finished all three tasks, the tailor was given the king's daughter to marry and a share of the throne beside her, exactly as promised, and for a while all was well. But one night the new princess heard her husband talking in his sleep, murmuring about needles and thread and a tailor's shop, and she ran to tell her father that the great hero he had married her to was nothing but a common tailor after all. Furious at being tricked, the king sent his soldiers one last time to kill the tailor as he lay sleeping. But word of the plan reached the tailor just in time. When the soldiers crept to his door that night, they heard him muttering loudly in his sleep about the giants, the unicorn and the boar he had beaten, and grew so frightened that they crept away and never came near him again. In time the old king died, and the little tailor became king in truth, and ruled happily beside his wife for the rest of his days.
About this story
- Audience: kids (ages 6–12)
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