The Wolf and the Seven Kids

Once upon a time there was an old nanny goat who had seven kids whom she loved as a mother loves her children. One day as she left them to go into the forest for fodder she warned the children against opening the door of the house to anyone lest the wolf come into the house and eat them all. The evil one, she told them, has a way of dissembling. After first being refused admission by the children, the wolf goes to the store and buys chalk which he eats to make his voice nice and soft; then he goes to the baker and covers his paws with dough, next to the miller to cover the dough with flour which make his paws soft and white. Thus disguised, the children let him in and he eats them all, except the youngest who hid in the clock. After his big meal the wolf falls asleep under a tree. The mother comes home to find all her kids gone until she finds the youngest one in the clock. The wolf is discovered snoring under the tree, and the mother cuts his stomach open. One after the other the heads of the kids emerge and all six are rescued unharmed. The wolf's stomach is then filled with stones and sewed closed. As the wolf awakes he goes for a drink to a well into which he falls from the weight of the stones in his stomach which sink him to the bottom and his doom.1

In a Rumanian version of this tale the narrator makes a curious slip. The mother goat's excursion to seek provender for her children is introduced: 'einmal ging sie auf Raub aus …'.2 The choice of the word 'Raub' in this context makes the mother a rapacious beast of prey which a goat is not