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“Das Lumpengesindel“, known in English as “The Pack of Ragamuffins” or the “Pack of Scoundrels” among several other titles, is a German fairy tale collected by the Brothers Grimm. It was first published in their 1812 Kinder und Hausmärchen (Children’s and Household Tales), as tale number 10. This kind of folk-tale has an Aarne–Thompson–Uther (ATU) type of 210: The Traveling Animals and the Wicked Man.[1]
The story concerns a rooster and a hen who torment the landlord of an inn at which they spend a night.
Synopsis
As the nuts are ripening, a rooster and a hen decide to go up the mountain and eat their fill before the squirrel takes them all away. When evening falls they decide not to go home on foot, instead the rooster makes them a carriage out of nutshells. But he is too proud to pull it himself, and while he and the hen are arguing a duck comes along and accuses them of stealing her nuts. A fight ensues, which ends when the rooster injures the duck with his spurs; the duck agrees to be harnessed to the carriage, as a punishment.
They are joined by a pin and a needle on their journey home, but as it is getting late they decide to spend the night at an inn along the way. The innkeeper is at first reluctant, but agrees to let them stay after being offered the egg that the hen had laid earlier that day, and the duck, which laid an egg every day.
Early next morning, while everyone is still asleep, the rooster and the hen eat the egg, and throw the shell onto the fire in the hearth. They stick the needle into the cushion of the landlord’s chair, put the pin in his towel, and then make their escape. The duck, who had been sleeping outside in the yard, hears them leave, and escapes herself by swimming down a nearby stream.
Two hours later the landlord rises, and while drying himself after washing is scratched by the pin in his towel. He goes into the kitchen to light a pipe, but when he reaches the hearth the egg-shell explodes into his eyes. Angrily sitting down on his grandfather’s chair, he is pricked by the needle. He resolves never to have such ragamuffins in his inn again.
See also
- “Herr Korbes”
German fairy tale collected by the brothers Grimm. It concerns a group of animals and inanimate objects that inflict pain and suffering on the title character.
