The Little Tailor

There was once a poor nobleman who had three sons. The older two were apprenticed as locksmiths. His youngest son, Hans, was very small and weak and could not manage such hard work, and in any case his father could not afford to send him away for an apprenticeship. So he stayed at home and looked after the geese.

Hans’s parents wondered what would become of him. One day, they invited a wise old woman to their home and asked her for advice.

“What are we to do with our Hans?” they asked. “He is so weak, how can he ever earn a living?”

“Let him become a tailor,” the wise woman told them. “He’ll do just fine, you'll see! And here’s a little thimble for him, to bring good luck.”

When Hans brought the geese back from the pasture, he thanked the wise woman kindly for the thimble. The old woman was so delighted at how kind and polite he was that she gave him a pair of scissors as well.

“Never work with any other thimble or scissors than these, young lad,” she whispered to him.

Not a week had passed before little Hans reported for duty at the tailor’s in the village. With his small thimble, he could already sew better than any other tailor. So the tailor decided to teach him to cut cloth. But as soon as Hans picked up his scissors, it was clear that he could already cut flawlessly.

“I have nothing more to teach you,” the tailor told him, and he sent him to serve in a larger town.

But nobody in that town would take Hans on. He was too small and looked weak and sickly. Eventually, a widowed seamstress took pity on him.…