Children's Legends, No. 3

The Rose

Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm

Once there was a poor woman who had two children. The youngest one had to go into the forest every day to fetch wood. Once when he had gone a very long way to find wood, a child who was very little but very strong came to him and helped him gather the wood and carried it up to his house, but then in the wink of an eye he disappeared. The child told his mother about this, but she did not believe him. Finally the child brought a rose and said that the beautiful child had given it to him and that when the rose was in full blossom he would come again. The mother placed the rose into water. One morning the child did not get up; the mother went to his bed and found him lying there dead. On that same morning the rose came into full blossom.

• Source: Die Rose, Kinder- und Hausmärchen (Children's and Household Tales -- Grimms' Fairy Tales), Kinderlegenden (Children's Legends), no. 3.

• Translated from Low German by D. L. Ashliman. © 2000.

• The Grimms received this legend from the Westphalian family von Haxthausen.

• "The Rose" is one of ten "Children's Legends" added as an appendix to the Grimms' Children's and Household Tales with the second edition (1819). In succeeding editions, until and including the final edition of 1857, "The Rose" underwent only superficial stylistic changes.

Links to related sites

• For more accounts of foretold deaths, see the following texts (all in the original German) from the Grimms' Deutsche Sagen: Der Tod des Domherrn zu Merseburg (263), Die Lilie im Koster zu Korvei (264), Rebundus im Dom zu Lübeck (265), Glocke läutet von selbst (266), Todesgespenst (267).

• The Grimm Brothers' Children's and Household Tales (Grimms' Fairy Tales).

• The Grimm Brothers' Home Page.

• Aging and Death in Folklore. An essay by D. L. Ashliman, with supporting texts from proverbs, folktales, and myths from around the world.

• D. L. Ashliman's folktexts, a library of folktales, folklore, fairy tales, and mythology.