Tischchen deck dich, Goldesel, und Knüppel aus dem Sack

The Wishing Table, the Gold Donkey and the Cudgel in the Sack

A tailor has three sons and one goat. Each son grazes the goat all day, and each evening she says she is so full she wants no leaf, but to the father she bleats that she found nothing at all; the tailor drives each son out with his measuring stick. When he grazes her himself and she lies to him too, he sees the truth, shaves her head bald and whips her away, and sits alone and sad. The eldest son, now a carpenter, is given a little table that sets itself with food at the words „Tischchen, deck dich“; the second, now a miller, a donkey that spits gold at the word „Bricklebrit“. On the way home each stops at the same inn, and each time the innkeeper swaps the wonder for a plain one, so both sons are laughed at by the relatives at home. The youngest, a turner, is warned by his brothers' letter; his master gives him a sack with a cudgel that beats anyone at „Knüppel, aus dem Sack“. At the inn he boasts of his treasure, the greedy innkeeper tries to steal the sack in the night, and the cudgel beats him until he gives back the table and the donkey. At home the donkey rains gold, the table serves a feast, and the tailor lives happily with his three sons. The bald goat hides in a fox's den and frightens the fox and the bear, until a bee stings her and she runs off into the world, and no one knows where she went.

Retold from Kinder- und Haus-Märchen, Band 1, 7. Auflage (Ausgabe letzter Hand, 1857), KHM 36 by Brüder Grimm (public domain).